Ben Stokes and Alex Hales have both been charged with two counts of bringing the game into disrepute and face a two-day disciplinary hearing this December following last year’s involvement in a street brawl in Bristol.
While Stokes was last month found not guilty of affray at Bristol crown court for his part in the incident on 25 September 2017 – and Hales was not charged – the pair are centrally contracted England players and still liable for cricketing sanctions.
The Cricket Discipline Commission has confirmed a three-man panel of chairman Tim O’Gorman, the former Derbyshire batsman, Mike Smith, the former England and Gloucestershire left-armer, and Chris Tickle, a former employment tribunal judge, which will hear their case behind closed doors in London across two days on 5 and 7 December.
A statement from the CDC, which is funded by the England and Wales Cricket Board but is meant to operate independently, read: “[The CDC] today confirmed that Ben Stokes and Alex Hales have each been charged by the ECB with bringing the game into disrepute. Each player has been charged with two counts of breaching ECB directive 3.3 and will be required to attend a CDC disciplinary panel hearing in accordance with the CDC regulations.
“ECB directive 3.3 states: No participant may conduct themself in a manner or do any act or omission at any time which may be prejudicial to the interests of cricket or which may bring the ECB, the game of cricket or any cricketer or group of cricketers into disrepute.”
The hearings, therefore, take place some 15 months after the night in question and between the winter tours to Sri Lanka (October-November) and the Caribbean (January-February 2019). Both could receive suspensions for the latter if found guilty of the charges.
It remains to be seen whether any England matches missed since the incident, which took place during the early hours while the pair were out celebrating a one-day victory over West Indies in Bristol, will be factored into any possible punishments.
Stokes sat out 11 white-ball matches and five Ashes Tests while waiting to be charged by the Crown Prosecution Service in January (and missed the Lord’s Test against India last month to attend the court case), while Hales missed two ODIs in the immediate aftermath.
