Ben Stokes has been warned that his all-action approach to training may backfire come the Test series in Sri Lanka after the all-rounder ended the victorious one-day leg of the tour badly afflicted by cramp from the sweltering heat and humidity.
The England management believe Stokes is on the verge of returning to some more fluid form with the bat following a troubled 12 months off the field. Certainly his 67 from 60 balls at the end of Tuesday’s 219-run DLS defeat – a frictionless innings that included 12 well-timed fours – was a far cry from a summer spent mainly grinding out the runs.
But having spent the previous evening typically pushing himself to the limits in practice as Sky Sports filmed a feature on his training regime, he had to have treatment for cramp in his legs towards the end of the innings before the condition moved to his arms after the match.
As a player who sweats profusely on the field, Stokes will need to be mindful of avoiding a repeat come the three-match Test series that begins in Galle on 6 November. Once Saturday’s one-off Twenty20 international is out of the way, the five-day format will challenge bodies as much as minds and techniques.
“I think he is slowly starting to believe that he may not be able to go 100% every single time and train a little bit smarter, especially in these types of conditions,” said the head coach, Trevor Bayliss. “We’ve got a couple of days off now so that will give him a bit of time to recover. But we’ll have another chat about how much work he does.”
Following this tour, thoughts for Stokes will once again turn to the late night street fight in Bristol on 29 September last year. Though found not guilty of affray by a jury during the summer, both he and Alex Hales still face a cricket disciplinary hearing in December.
Mark Wood, a close friend and teammate at Durham, is confident this final chapter in the whole saga is not proving a distraction, but rather the source of his desire to perform.
Wood said: “I have never seen him work so hard on his fitness, we have finished games and he would still be on the treadmill afterwards or doing sprints around the ground. He’ll not admit he’s a cricket badger [a cricket obsessive]. To me his mind seems in a good place, he doesn’t seem flustered and around the group he’s his same daft self.”
