Ben Stokes, acquitted of affray, will look to take his England career back to the heights of centuries and devastating bowling
“The Hit Man. Don’t mess with Ben Stokes – he’s fast and furious”. So trumpeted the front page of the Times magazine on Saturday 23 September less than 48 hours before his early-hours arrest in Bristol city centre following a street brawl. The tonally prescient interview with the England cricketer honed in on his reputation for being short-fused and pulled out the quotes: “The adrenaline is there. But I’d never get close to punching someone” and “I’ll have a few pints the night before a match. I’m 26, not 14.”
Here was the latest celestial all-rounder of the England cricket team, cut from the same talismanic cloth as Sir Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff before him. But Stokes was also presented as the bad-boy sportsman a casual weekend reader needed to know: a flame-haired, tattooed athlete with a supreme talent but also the propensity to be a lightning rod for incidents on and off the field.
Written by Ali Martin
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/aug/14/firestarter-ben-stokes-walked-line-brilliant-bolshy under the title “Firestarter Stokes has long walked a line between brilliant and bolshy | Ali Martin”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
