1) How have England ended up in this mess?
Their nightmare week began last Sunday when, towards the fag-end of what has been the longest and busiest international summer and in keeping with the management’s relaxed approach to post-match celebrations, members of the limited-overs squad ventured out into Bristol city centre to toast their 124-run win over West Indies in the third ODI. At 2.35am, Ben Stokes was arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm after an altercation in the Clifton area that left a 27-year-old man in hospital with facial injuries.
Stokes was released under investigation and named in England’s Ashes squad on the Wednesday, while retaining the vice-captaincy role he assumed back in February. But after alarming footage of the incident was published by the Sun that evening, he and Alex Hales, who was present at the time, were suspended indefinitely on full pay by the England and Wales Cricket Board pending the outcomes of the police investigation and the governing body’s own internal inquiries.
2) Will Ben Stokes play in Australia?
Picturing a scenario where Stokes travels and is available from the outset – a broken finger from the incident notwithstanding – is extremely difficult. It remains a fluid and hugely unpredictable situation, however, with the ECB desperate not to pre-empt the outcome of the investigation by Avon and Somerset police. Accordingly, the governing body has handed the internal case of the two players to the independent Cricket Discipline Commission but this process will not kick in until the police have completed their inquiries.
The timeline of events from here is therefore out of the ECB’s hands as Stokes waits to discover whether he will be charged. England’s coaches and players are privately desperate for him to tour given his lynchpin status in the side but also the sport’s public image is at stake, coming at a time it is looking to broaden its family appeal and attract sponsors for Test cricket and the new Twenty20 league.
If Stokes somehow emerges from all of this available, Andrew Strauss, the team director, may still decide his presence would prove too great a distraction, or too great a burden for the player himself, given the inevitable media circus that would result.
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3) If Stokes does not tour Australia, what are England’s options on the field of play?
Stokes is unquestionably the heartbeat of the side, both as a totemic presence in the dressing room that team-mates gravitate towards and as the world’s premier seam-bowling all-rounder. He is capable of producing jaw-dropping interventions, be it with bat, ball or through his electric fielding, and there is simply no like-for-like cricketer waiting in the wings.
His absence may mean England react by calling up a batsman and a bowler, such is the two-in-one player they would be trying to replace. The Essex No3 Tom Westley was the batsman to miss out originally but if the desire is to match the power-hitting of Stokes, it will bring Jos Buttler or Liam Livingstone into consideration. Bowling-wise, it would be between the brawny splice-thudding talents of Liam Plunkett or the mercurial fast-medium threat of Steven Finn. Mark Wood is another alternative – and in theory the quickest – but he first needs to prove his fitness on the Lions training camp that shadows the senior tour.
As for the team that takes the field at the Gabba, Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes are all capable of moving up a spot should they play the extra bowler but this will increase the pressure on those at the top – England’s area of weakness in the past two years. Pack the batting and it will up the workloads for Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, which is far from ideal. In short, Stokes holds the whole thing together.
4) What are the implications for the tourists in terms of their behaviour and conduct?
The events of last Sunday night have prompted a review into the team’s rules and conduct by Strauss. The former captain hired the head coach, Trevor Bayliss, back in 2015 to put in place a laid-back team atmosphere that allows players to perform unimpinged but the pair are furious how far the players have taken it. Three of them, understood to be Bairstow, Jake Ball and Plunkett, were also out drinking that evening, albeit not present at the incident, and are in a disciplinary process too. Australia is a hostile country for touring cricketers – the media storm that engulfed South Africa’s Faf du Plessis last winter when charged with ball-tampering is one such example – and England’s players will doubtless have their off-field responsibilities drilled into them before they depart for Perth on 28 October. The ECB have played down a report that they will employ minders to chaperone the squad on nights out but Bayliss has admitted he is pondering a possible curfew, something that would go against his philosophy.
5) What have Australia made of all this disruption?
The Australia players and management on the current tour of India have offered a straight bat to what have been sparse questions about Stokes. David Warner, he of the Walkabout punch in 2013, was incredibly not asked about it at all last week. But the newspaper columns have been filled with reaction to England’s chaos. Malcolm Knox, in the Melbourne Age, accused the ECB of “contorting themselves into a pretzel in an attempt to retain both Ben Stokes and their principles” and added their “desperate desire to win the series in Australia can be measured by Stokes not having been sacked”. Andrew Wu stated: “There is a belief that an Australian player would have had his contract torn up had he behaved in such a way.” Ian Chappell, the former Australia captain, put England’s predicament over Stokes in typically blunt fashion: “I don’t think they’ve got a hope in hell without him.”