Ben Stokes has been given a few send-offs in his time and received another on Friday afternoon at Headingley. Shannon Gabriel shot a few choice words the all-rounder’s way after he had him caught behind for 100 on the opening day of the second Test. “It’s not the first time,” Stokes said, chuckling.
He has had worse from Gabriel’s former team-mate Marlon Samuels. “It comes along with the game,” added the England player after West Indies finished on 19 for one in reply to the home team’s total of 258. “There’s nothing to it. He’s got me out. It’s international sport and you all try and do well, so emotions can come out.”
He reckoned Gabriel was “probably still a little bit annoyed with himself” after he dropped a simple catch at mid-on moments earlier on the first day of the second Test. Stokes sympathised. He has been known to lose his temper once or twice too.
The dynamic all-rounder was on 98 when that catch went down. “It was a brain fart, I’m not quite sure what I was thinking,” said Stokes. “But to do well you need luck every now and then. You get dropped, you put it to the back of your mind, on another day they hold it and you’re walking off.”
Despite that he felt it was one of his better Test innings, given how well the West Indies quick bowlers Gabriel and Kemar Roach performed. “Their seam bowling unit bowled a lot better than they did at Edgbaston,” he said. “The conditions were more in the bowlers’ favour, there was always a bit of seam movement and every now and then the ball swung, and they exposed that.”
Roach said West Indies had “a very open discussion” after their defeat at Edgbaston. “The guys were very honest with themselves that we weren’t good enough in the first Test, so had a point to prove and we’re going to try our best to go out there and play the best brand of cricket we can.”
The tourists had the better of the day’s play, as Stokes admitted. “It’s probably not one of our best days with the bat,” he said, “but we’ll never know if it’s a good score until West Indies have finished, and it’s 260 more than we had this morning. It’s just all up to how we respond.”
Stokes also defended England’s three new batsmen, Tom Westley, Mark Stoneman and Dawid Malan, who were all out cheaply. “It’s an easy thing to judge people on how many runs they score in their first couple of games but they’re playing international cricket for England and the way they got here was by scoring runs for their counties. So I don’t think it’s a concern; they’re all class players in their own right.”
New players, he said, “are only ever one knock away” from breaking through. The third innings at Headingley would be a fine moment for one or two to do it.
