Drink didn't lose England the Ashes and shouldn't cost Stokes his job

Even now, after everything, we’re fixated. Maybe even more so. I know I am. Have been ever since I first saw him, this scowling teen in an untucked shirt, smashing things up for the youth team in some World Cup or other.

I saw his first hundred, that freak thing at Perth. I saw him take that claw-hand catch at the Bridge. I saw him at Cape Town that time. Headingley. I saw him last year at Lord’s, bowling all day till he fell over. I’ve seen him usher a line of paralytic county cricketers into a series of black cabs after midnight while holding a drink in one hand and a smoke in the other. I saw him win a World Cup on his own.

I’ve called him on a Friday night when he’s lone-parenting his kids. I’ve called him from a field in Essex while sat in a pair of pads waiting to bat. I’ve asked him for places to go in Cockermouth and in response received an essay-long list of restaurateurs and barmaids who’d see me right if I mentioned his name. I’ve seen him in a pair of socks bowling off-breaks to his father. I’ve seen him emerge from Bristol Crown Court looking like death with a skinhead. I’ve heard stories of his generosity, of the money he’s given for youth programmes and the like on the proviso that it doesn’t leak to the press. I’ve heard other stories too, of a different colour. Still fixated, all of us.

In recent years I’ve seen him retreat further into himself, growing weary of the hassle. I’ve seen him lose his accent and sense of joy. I’ve wondered about the toll it’s taken, and the man it’s turned him into. And like everyone else, I’ve despaired on a personal level – because we all feel it, that desperate human frailty – at what’s happened now.

So, OK, we don’t know. We weren’t able to wait any longer. The murmurs when we went to press appeared to indicate that he’d been dissuaded from retiring, talked off the ledge, but we’re hostage to events and his fragile state. He may by the time you read this have decided to jack it all in. My word, I hope he hasn’t.

Factually, we know that Stokes and Gus Atkinson broke the team’s midnight curfew by being out in the early hours in a Chelsea nightclub the evening after beating New Zealand at Lord’s, that there was an incident involving a player or players from Saracens rugby club, that the ECB’s security guy who was with the players was punched and required medical attention, and that the police were not called. And we know that neither player was named in the squad for the second Test pending the Cricket Regulator’s investigation into what specifically happened, leaving Joe Root, the poor sod, to step in as ‘interim captain’ – which could be interpreted as a rejection of Harry Brook’s credentials, or as an olive branch to Stokes to show that they’re not ready to move from him yet.

To many observers it doesn’t matter who threw the first punch or whether, as reported in The Telegraph, the cricketers were “categorically not the aggressors”. Breaking the curfew was enough. That was the line. The point of no return. They busted their own rules, and inside five days of the much-billed summer of redemption. All that stern-faced talk in the build-up, and from McCullum in particular, of “refining the culture” and “improving behaviours”, and it takes less than a week to blow it all up. Look, in the stupidity stakes, it’s right up there.

But stupidity is lamentable, not contemptible. Yet note how quickly we rush to judgment, how swiftly we defer to the lavish viciousness of the times. What is pretty contemptible is the way he’s been characterised, this slab of meat to be tossed around and pulled apart by elements of a sanctimonious media, a few of whom have clearly never had such fun.

All things considered, Rob Key fronted up pretty well on Thursday morning. He is not the most polished operator, but that is no criticism. The anguish was visible, the disbelief palpable. He was unable to offer much in the way of guarantees. The headline will be that ‘England boss refuses to back Stokes as leader’ but the bigger story, at least as I heard it, was how they are managing him at this critical and volatile moment. Key said that people underestimate just how much the last six months has affected Stokes.

Stuart Broad on the Stokes-Atkinson incident.

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Key had driven away from Lord’s on Sunday feeling something akin to optimism. A good debut for the opener. Reintegration for one of the tricky ones. A rousing win, and everyone still in the job. Then comes the phone call. “You might want to prepare yourself,” was the gist of it from Brendon McCullum. The embarrassment is acute. But any sense that these men are diverging, splintering into silos, even hiding their own necks from the guillotine, is ultimately misplaced. They are tied together, their fates ineluctably entwined. Their futures hinge on each other.

Stokes may belong to us, but we don’t own him. We’re talking here about a flawed, deeply human public figure who has injected more joy and hope into the soul of this weird movement than any other English cricketer of the last 20 years. He has lived a thousand lives for our amusement. And people want him sacked for not going to bed earlier. Sorry, that sounds flippant. Apologies. But you know what I mean.

I haven’t forgotten the sound and fury of watching that Ashes tour fall to ruin. I still can’t believe how badly it was run, by a boosterish vibes-man who stripped out the backroom staff, couldn’t be bothered to find any bowling or fielding coaches, shrugged at the lack of preparation, let light-touch coaching tip over into negligence, and oversaw a culture of complacency that eventually swallowed them up. That one’s on McCullum more than it lands on Stokes. But the ‘shame’ of Noosa? The long walk back for the ‘disgraced’ Harry Brook? Spare me your pearls, please. The real shocker was giving the new ball to Brydon Carse and not playing Josh Tongue until you’re two-nought down. Winning excuses a multitude of gins. We’re really only here, agonising over window-dressed curfews and existential angst, because bad decisions were made on the cricket field. Get those right, and the rest falls away. We know this.

That night, Stokes was celebrating his 24th Test match as England captain – a win rate, not that anyone cares any more, better than all post-war captains bar Brearley. He even foreshadowed what was to come in his post-game press conference, saying that he’d only feel truly happy with a beer in his hand in the company of his team. Those words look a little chilling now, and rather sad.

In the joy of the moment, Ben Stokes lost himself. For the first time in many months (forget the pyrrhic Melbourne match), he’d remembered what it was like to take real satisfaction from this game he loves and hates. He got carried away on that feeling, and lost his sense of perspective. Let not this be the end.

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