Farewell Ben Stokes, England’s complicated, chaotic captain. It was not meant to end like this

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At first it looked like becoming a surreal, self-indulgent, disrespectful and, quite frankly, bonkers farewell to Ben Stokes.

There was the bizarrely timed announcement, at 3.25pm on the fourth day of a deciding Test England were looking more and more likely to lose, that the captain was retiring from international cricket. Could it not wait until the end of play, like Stuart Broad’s retirement announcement three years ago, and Stokes could then have his lap of honour on the final day?

Then came the moment that truly could not have been made up when Stokes, in the middle of one of his warrior-like spells that stretched to 11 overs, took the wicket of Zak Foulkes just after the news had filtered through to the Trent Bridge crowd and they had risen as one to him.

What followed were more standing ovations and guards of honour that culminated in the sight of Stokes coming out to open in place of Emilio Gay and batting like a man possessed in chaotic pursuit of England’s unlikely victory target of 374.

When Daryl Mitchell, who had earlier been battered and bruised by the England bowlers while making a courageous and surely series-winning unbeaten hundred, caught Stokes for a skittish 30 off 20 balls, it was a reminder of who was actually winning this Test.

It was terrific drama from one of the great England players and a truly inspirational captain, but he had overshadowed everything by retiring four days into a Test England had to win, had taken opener Gay’s place and was swinging recklessly like it was a T20 chase.

Surely it would have been better for England to just try to get through to the close with Stokes to come tomorrow rather than mixing up the order and burning through four wickets by the close, including that of the captain, to virtually throw away any remote chances of victory?

But then Stokes walked over to talk to Sky Sport’s Ian Ward and his old team-mate Broad at the end of play and suddenly everything made sense again.

It was possible to understand why he has decided to go now and even why it might not have that much to do with the nightclub incident that left him suspended for the second Test and seemingly at war with his bosses at the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and maybe coach Brendon McCullum.

The simple truth could be that the worst Ashes debacle in memory had left Stokes broken and he had just come to the end of the road, as it did appear at Lord’s even before the late night out in Chelsea that sparked one of English cricket’s biggest crises in years.

“There are all sorts of emotions when this day comes to everyone,” Stokes told Sky Sports. “There’s relief, happiness, excitement, sadness. There’s everything you go through. It’s the best thing I’ve ever been asked to do – captain this team. But there’s another side to it all which people don’t see. As good as it is there are bits when it does drain you, it does affect you in a negative way.

“I felt like I’d been pretty good throughout my career at overcoming on-field disappointment, off-field disappointment. And then the emotional side of things, since Australia… I told my wife I don’t actually think I have any more fight left in me to get over this, to be honest.

“The whole Lord’s Test brought back negative feelings about where I was in my career. I gave myself every opportunity to think, I don’t know, maybe it’s a blip but everyone I spoke to about retirement said: ‘It kicks you straight in the face.’ And a few weeks ago it did.

“Then you add another scenario (the nightclub incident) and that adds so much more to it. To be honest it’s never that easy or simple with me, is it?” That is an understatement.

It was after he became the first England captain to effectively be left out for disciplinary reasons that Stokes went back to Durham and the penny dropped.

“I found, not a reconnection, but a new lease of life and affection towards cricket back at my boyhood club,” Stokes continued. “I just couldn’t get that same feeling back here this week, as much as I’ve been trying. It might sound selfish but this decision is genuinely the best thing for me right now. Whether it means it’s the best thing for the team going forward, I hope so.

“But it comes down to what I think will allow me to still love the game.”

The decision to announce the decision mid-session was not, it seems, taken by Stokes but the ECB communications staff and his own management team of Neil Fairbrother and Michael Lumb. “We had a little plan where, if we got New Zealand seven or eight down, we would put out the message. I just said: ‘Do what you think best’, and of course I had to take a wicket as soon as it was announced, didn’t I?

“When I walked off Baz (McCullum) was like: ‘Bloody hell, you should have announced it an hour earlier. We might have bowled them out by now!’ Then it was always going to be a tactical decision for me to open the batting because of that wicket and what we felt we needed to do against the new ball.

“I know we’ve lost four wickets but we’ve knocked a good chunk off the target.”

There could, of course be more to come from Stokes when he is not contracted to ECB and perhaps when he wants to write another book.

The reasons can wait, he had earlier told his team, and there will be those in the corridors of power waiting with bated breath, and not a little trepidation, to find out if there is more to Stokes’ shock decision to walk away from international cricket now.

Not to mention the English cricket loving public, who have shown their full support to Stokes and clearly have no issue with him over the late night out in Chelsea.

Why did Stokes feel the need to quit when he had clearly won his ‘war’ with the ECB over their handling of the latest and apparently last great controversy in an extraordinary career of the highest highs and lowest lows? Not least given his management and legal teams had picked apart the ECB’s insistence that the curfew introduced after the debacle of the Ashes was still in place on the night England won the first Test at Lord’s and Stokes said he was looking forward to a beer with his team.

It was not meant to end like this. It was meant to end with Stokes finally lifting the Ashes urn next summer, not after England’s first major home Test series defeat since they were beaten by South Africa in 2012 amid the Kevin Pietersen text-gate affair.

Yes, Stokes refused to commit to the England captaincy and playing on when he spoke for the first time since his ‘suspension’ ahead of the final Test after returning to the side. But he had looked back in full command during this match and was clearly in a much stronger position to continue than McCullum and managing director Rob Key, who now find themselves under more pressure than ever.

As, too, are the two men at the top of the ECB, chairman Richard Thompson and chief executive Richard Gould, who have the ultimate responsibility for the unsatisfactory way this whole sorry mess has been conducted by the governing body.

There were tributes to Stokes from Thompson and Gould in the hastily written ECB statement that accompanied the announcement but, at least initially, there was nothing from McCullum or Key. Only later did additional comments from both of the other leading protagonists in this soap opera come in the form of an additional ECB statement.

Both captain and coach bent over backwards before this Test to say there was no rift between them and they simply did not know where these stories about a strained relationship had come from. But did they both protest too much?

Certainly Stokes would have noted McCullum and Key did not offer their captain the remotest bit of backing when they spoke in the days immediately after his night at the Rex Rooms. And he will have known that, behind the scenes, the ECB were not exactly endorsing their leader, either. Clearly nobody at Lord’s expected Stokes to be England captain again.

But when it became clear that all he did wrong was break a curfew that was not actually technically in place, then there was nothing stopping the return of Stokes.

Rumours had been flying around Trent Bridge on Sunday that Key was about to become the first casualty of a cull that really should have begun after the Ashes. There is every chance that news will soon come anyway, but it was not the bombshell that arrived 15 minutes before the tea interval.

For now we must take Stokes at his word and celebrate the good times because there were plenty of them. Pride of place must, of course, go to the World Cup super over and Headingley 2019, but there was so much more.

Plenty of bad times too, of course, notably the brawl in Bristol that ended with him on criminal charges — Stokes was defending two gay men who had been subjected to homophobic abuse — and could easily have ended his career nine years ago. He was found not guilty of affray almost a year later and, instead, went on to become one of England’s best and most imaginative captains.

“I’m pretty happy and content with everything I’ve managed to do,” he added to Sky after being shown a montage of some of his greatest moments. “I’m an Ashes winner (as a player in 2015), I’ve won a 50-over World Cup, a T20 World Cup and I’ve had the opportunity to captain and play alongside some of the best players to have played the game. There’s not too much I can complain about really.”

Stokes will leave a huge hole to fill as the all-rounder who still balances and inspires this side, and also as a true leader of this England team.

If Key and McCullum survive the inquest that will follow England’s sixth defeat in their last eight Tests (unless something extraordinary happens on Monday) — and the latter is more likely to stay than the former — they have a tough decision to make over their next captain. When England left Stokes out at the Oval, Key said there were only two candidates to stand in for him: former captain Joe Root and vice-captain Harry Brook.

It was Root who got the nod, in main because Brook’s involvement in a nightclub incident of his own in New Zealand last winter ushered in the ill-fated curfew in the first place, but he had a bad time at the Oval and is unlikely to want to do it again.

“This week should be all about Ben Stokes,” Root told journalists after play on Sunday while paying his own fulsome tribute to his great friend. “Let’s not think about that now.”

Brook, meanwhile, is just too immature to take over the Test side, particularly as he has his hands full leading England’s white-ball team who immediately go into a T20 series against India on Wednesday at Durham. At least England’s next Tests series is not until mid-August against Pakistan, so the hierarchy have time to think about it. If they are all still in position of course.

For now it really should be about Ben Stokes, who will be in demand in franchise cricket as well as carrying on playing for Durham, and we really do need to hope this has nothing to do with the tumultuous events of the last three weeks.

Otherwise the wrong man has paid the price for one of the most chaotic and self-defeating few weeks in modern English cricket.