England’s update to their squad for the second Test against New Zealand confirms one thing everyone knew was coming after Ben Stokes’ and Gus Atkinson’s midnight curfew breach after their Lord’s win, but gives little insight into the decision everyone is waiting for.
Jofra Archer and Jordan Cox will replace the pair in the squad. Joe Root, rather than Harry Brook, will stand in as skipper. The rest of the consequences remain to be decided.
That Stokes and Atkinson will be absent at The Oval is not a surprise, with the investigation ongoing into what exactly went on in the early hours of Monday morning. Really though, there is little that is unknown, thanks to the tireless cross-desk work of any number of rugby and cricket reporting teams. We know now all four establishments enjoyed by the England cricket team and Saracens rugby team, the identity of the Samoan rugby player who aimed a punch at Atkinson and missed, connecting instead with the security detail, and even the price of the double rum and cokes Stokes and England rugby captain Maro Itoje were drinking.
What remains to be decided is exactly what the appropriate punishment is for being out after midnight four days after your 35th birthday and 12 hours after your first win in over six months, when the added context of a winter spent pissing away a golden Ashes chance is taken into account. One or two Tests on the bench might do the job.
There remains the spectre of a sudden Stokes Instagram post, calling it quits out of a combined sense of shame and not being bothered with all the bullshit anymore. That prospect appears to have cooled. Political turmoil has a way of making a position seem untenable in the moment before easing with the mere passage of time.
Of the replacements, Root’s reappointment is a canny PR move. Harry Brook couldn’t have answered questions about late-night discipline with a straight face, while Root is basically blemishless in that regard and has experience of guiding all manner of crises. He will be able to strike the right tone. In a way, it’s a silver lining that he will get the chance to correct some of the perception around his captaincy. That ‘one win in 17’ stat obscures that, until then, he had done a commendable job in a turbulent, plague-ridden time.
Cox’s inclusion is interesting from a pecking order point of view, even if he’s unlikely to trouble the XI. Dan Lawrence is in red-hot form and loves The Oval, but it’s fair that Cox, one of the unluckiest men in English cricket, has only slipped one rung down the ladder due to being at the IPL.
On the XI, there’s still a decision to make. England could simply replace Stokes with James Rew and Atkinson with Archer. But, in terms of team balance, it could make more sense to bring in Rehan Ahmed to bat at No. seven and bowl some leg-spin, and then bring in Archer and one of Matthew Fisher or Sonny Baker, with Shoaib Bashir sitting out. It would be harsh on Bashir, who didn’t get a chance to do anything at Lord’s, but it would also be a very fun, watchable XI.
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