Disrespect the Game at Your Own Peril

PL follows a trail from an empty SCG change rooms to Trent Bridge and beyond

Could Ben Stokes please contact Lost & Found

SCG staff cleaning the away dressing rooms after the final Test of last summer’s Ashes discovered the cricket kit belonging to Ben Stokes abandoned. The commemorative Pink Day shirt with the number 55 on the back, and others worn by the England captain in what was his last Test in this country, all stuffed into a bag and left in the empty rooms.

It’s not unusual for odd bits of kit to be left behind by tired cricketers vacating a dressing room after a few beers, but nobody at the storied cricket venue could recall these shirts, usually cherished as either a memento for the player and as auction items for charity groups, being left behind.

Ricky Ponting had done something similar while filling in a remnant contract for the Antigua Hawksbills at the Caribbean Premier League after he’d retired from the international game. He said at the time that it had hit him that he was done with playing and he just wanted to leave it all behind. What, he asked himself, am I doing playing franchise cricket a million miles from home? Leaving the gear behind was a way of severing his last links to his playing days.

Was Stokes in the same mindset after the Ashes? If he was, as seems likely, it is understandable. He’s spoken about the mental torment he suffered on returning from the tour, but dismissed his obsession by rationalising that it meant he still cared about the game.