From the 60,000-strong baying crowd at Eden Gardens to the more tranquil and familiar surroundings of Chester-le-Street, Ben Stokes returns for Durham on Sunday for his first outing since Carlos Brathwaite heaved four mighty sixes into Kolkata’s night sky to secure West Indies’ World Twenty20 win against England.
Stokes has been rested since that fateful last over three weeks ago, which left him sitting on his haunches and feeling like his “whole world had come down”, but will now strap on the bowling boots once more as Middlesex pitch up for this third round of fixtures in the County Championship.
The all-rounder’s captain at Durham, Paul Collingwood, who was part of England’s coaching set-up during the tournament, is confident the 24-year-old remains unchanged by the experience. “You wouldn’t even know he’s come back from a World Cup final,” he told the Observer.
“And in many ways, if that final over was going to happen to somebody, you’re glad it’s happened to someone like him, because he’s such a tough character and you know he will bounce back from it strongly. It’s been great to have him back with us in training this week and he’s raring to go again. He just loves playing cricket and I don’t think that strength of his – his competitiveness – will ever be taken out of him, which is a good thing.”
The return of Stokes provides a welcome boost for a side whose campaign feels scarcely under way. After rain ruined the final two days of their opener with Somerset – a draw, unsurprisingly – Durham sat out the second round of fixtures. They have suffered two injury setbacks during this time too, with their overseas player, the Australian all-rounder John Hastings, ruled out of the entire season following an ankle injury picked up playing in the ongoing Indian Premier League.
In addition to this, the England fast bowler Mark Wood, who was slated to play in the first few rounds of the season, is now out for a further two months after undergoing a second operation on his troublesome left ankle last Thursday.
A replacement for Hastings looks unlikely, with Durham having slashed their budget in recent seasons and been tipped to struggle as a result. They are the longest-standing team in the top flight, however, and having secured their third title as recently as 2013, after these cuts were introduced, Collingwood is refusing to get too down.
“We’re proud of what we’ve done here,” he said. “You start the season, look at the team on paper and with Hastings out, you think: ‘Are we going to struggle?’ But someone always seems to put their hand up with big performances. That’s what we’ll do again. We’re a team where you just don’t know – get on a roll and something special could happen.”
One such person to step up so far is the 23-year-old opener Keaton Jennings, who scored a century in both innings of that truncated first match, while the seamers Graham Onions and Chris Rushworth, last season’s leading wicket-taker in the country, shared seven victims in Somerset’s solitary innings.
For the visitors Middlesex, who began their campaign with a run-filled draw with Warwickshire in which Sam Robson scored a club record 337 runs in the match, the pitch at the Riverside in April would in past seasons represent radical change from Lord’s. But Collingwood believes it is starting to become more batsman-friendly, with the groundsman Vic Demain putting his own stamp on it since being hired last April.
“Our new groundsman has had a full winter now and the wicket looks completely different to the past and we will have to adapt to that ourselves. All we have ever wanted was a good cricket wicket, with nicks carrying to slip, runs available for batsmen, good balls rewarded and turn on the last day,” Collingwood added.
Elsewhere in Division One, Surrey host Somerset at the Kia Oval, with the visitors buoyed by the return of last season’s leading wicket-taker, Craig Overton, after the completion of a two-match ban that was triggered by his abuse of the Sussex batsman Ashar Zaidi at the end of last season. His twin brother Jamie is also back following a calf injury.
Yorkshire, after their draw with injury-stricken Hampshire on Wednesday, travel to Edgbaston for the second match of their title defence against Warwickshire, one of the teams tipped to challenge them this season.
