If we learned one thing at the Oval last week, it is that this England team really needs Ben Stokes. So it came as a relief when, a couple of hours after the second Test against New Zealand ended in heavy defeat, he and Gus Atkinson were exonerated by the England and Wales Cricket Board after an investigation into their celebrations following victory in the first Test. But the governing body found itself in a process with no perfect outcome, and if the one it has ended up with is not the disaster it flirted with a week ago when Stokes was apparently considering retirement, it is still embarrassing.
Its handling of the incident was understandable, given the public drunkenness that marked the players’ trip to Noosa during the Ashes, and Harry Brook’s altercation with a nightclub bouncer in Wellington before that. There was a real lack of transparency around Brook’s incident, which was not revealed to the public until a newspaper discovered and reported it, and that led to a kneejerk reaction when the ECB thought there had been a repeat. All three incidents could have been handled better – it just keeps finding different ways of getting it wrong. At least no one can accuse it of not taking this one seriously, and if it hasn’t truly established its competence it has established that all players are accountable, which will help to set a standard of acceptable behaviour.
