Ben Stokes has played his final card. In the Trent Bridge dressing room on the morning of Day 4 of the third Test against New Zealand, England’s captain told his teammates: “There’s something that I know is going to happen over the next two days. Which will be my last two days as your Test captain and my last two days representing England.” Then he walked out and took a wicket. That is, in its entirety, Ben Stokes.
The announcement, confirmed by the ECB on Sunday, brings the curtain down on a 15-year international career that began in August 2011, when a raw Durham all-rounder made his ODI debut against Ireland, and has wound its way through nightclub brawls, mental health breaks, two World Cup finals, Headingley miracles and one previous retirement that didn’t stick.
The speech, captured on video and released by England Cricket, was everything the man is — blunt, emotional, unsentimental in structure but devastating in effect. “Reasons can wait,” Stokes told his players, “but I have had many trips to the well before, for this team, for you blokes, for people before. And I have got one more trip to do.” He asked only one thing in return.
“All I want is to be able to walk off the end of that field, regardless of the result, knowing that I have had this group of men and one lady” — a laugh broke through — “give their everything for the last two days and it’s the only thing I want.” Then came the closer: “We have got a sh**load of work to do and let’s go fu**ing give it our everything for the last two days.”
The players applauded. Then they went out and played cricket.
From Adelaide to Trent Bridge
Stokes made his Test debut in December 2013 at Adelaide during the Ashes, and has captained the Test side since April 2022. He was appointed after Joe Root stepped down following a 4-0 Ashes drubbing in Australia, and alongside new coach Brendon McCullum ushered in an era of hyper-aggressive red-ball cricket the press dubbed Bazball.
The retirement that didn’t stick came in July 2022, when Stokes walked away from ODIs, citing the unsustainable demands of playing all three formats while managing a chronic knee problem. He had played 105 ODIs at that point, scoring 2,924 runs and taking 74 wickets, with the 2019 World Cup final as the summit of that one-day career.
He reversed the decision fourteen months later to play at the 2023 World Cup in India, scored a century against the Netherlands, and has not played white-ball cricket for England since.
One last trip to the well
This retirement, announced mid-match, mid-spell, in a series decider, is characteristically Stokes. No sooner had the ground tannoy confirmed his retirement than he found the outside edge of Zak Foulkes, with Harry Brook stooping at second slip to complete the catch. Stokes stampeded to the cordon with his fists pumped; the crowd rose; his wife watched from the stands.
The context is a genuine series decider. The last time England played New Zealand at Trent Bridge, they made light work of a fourth-innings run chase to launch the Bazball era in June 2022. Four years on, England faced a repeat requirement — chasing a sizable target on a pitch that had started to deteriorate.
Stokes took 4-70 in New Zealand’s first innings, also claiming his 250th Test wicket when Mitchell Santner fended a short ball to gully during a fiery morning spell on day two. He returned to dismiss Santner again and take the wicket of Foulkes in New Zealand’s second innings — the latter coming in the very over in which Trent Bridge learned he was retiring — finishing the match with six wickets in total.
With the bat, Stokes scored 15 in the first innings before being undone by a Foulkes nip-backer, and went the same way second time around — caught by Daryl Mitchell off Foulkes for a 20-ball 30, a cameo that had briefly threatened to rewrite the script one final time.
More than the numbers
Stokes has scored more than 10,000 international runs and taken more than 300 wickets across his career. He recently became just the second cricketer to reach 7,000 Test runs and 250 Test wickets. The numbers have always been a sidebar. What Stokes means to English cricket lives in moments: the 84 not out in the 2019 World Cup final that forced a Super Over, the 135 not out at Headingley won from 286-9, the unbeaten 52 in the 2022 T20 World Cup final against Pakistan.
ECB chairman Richard Thompson called Stokes one of England’s greatest ever cricketers and one of the defining figures of his generation, saying his performances under pressure and ability to produce the extraordinary when it matters most had created memories that would endure forever.
There are, as Stokes himself said, one or two days left. The reasons can wait.