Ben Stokes will have a camera crew with him during next month’s Caribbean tour after becoming the latest high-profile sportsperson to sign up to a documentary about his life and career.
The Guardian has learned that Stokes, 30, has spent the past 18 months secretly working on a feature-length film with the TV production company Whisper and his sponsors, Red Bull, that charts his time on and off the field.
The period of filming has included the death of his father, the former New Zealand rugby league international Ged Stokes, in December 2020, and the break he took from cricket last summer in order to address his mental health and a longstanding finger injury.
Stokes responded to the recent 4-0 Ashes loss by declining an invitation to play in this year’s Indian Premier League and declaring that Test cricket will be his prime focus, starting with the three-match series against West Indies. As well as documenting this next phase of his career in the film, the all-rounder will be looking back on his highs and lows.
The golden summer of 2019 will be re-lived, when Stokes powered England to World Cup glory at Lord’s and pulled off his stunning Headingley heist in the Ashes, as well as his formative years and family life after moving to Cumbria from New Zealand aged 12.
It is understood the Bristol street fight in 2017 – an incident that cost Stokes a place on that winter’s Ashes tour and saw him found not guilty of affray the following year – will also be addressed, despite some previous reluctance on the player’s part.
The project is still at the production stage and no release date or broadcast partner has been confirmed. But Whisper will continue filming next month, while also producing the television coverage of the Test series in the Caribbean.
Teammates have already been interviewed and the England and Wales Cricket Board has given its blessing to the project, which, given that it involves a centrally contracted England player, will ultimately need ECB signoff before being released.
Other sportspeople who have recently released official documentary films about their lives include Andy Murray, Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo. Cricket’s recent forays into this world include The Test – Cricket Australia’s burnished Amazon series that charted the year after the 2018 ball-tampering scandal – and Cricket Fever: Mumbai Indians on Netflix.
