Stokes: 'It Just Didn't Feel Worth it Anymore'.

PL reports on Stokes' first excursion back into public life after his controversial resignation

“It can do it to you professional sport, can’t it? It just makes you do things that you don’t really see at the time, but then when you look back on it, reflect on it a few months later, you’re like, ‘god yeah, that’s why I was doing that’, but you never know when you’re in it, never know when you’re in it.”

Ben Stokes, August 2026.

Stokes on the For the Love of Cricket podcast

At the conclusion of the 2019 Ashes, the two teams got together, and as the beer flowed, things began to warm between those who’d so recently been engaged in battle. At some point in the evening, Justin Langer, a few drinks deep and no doubt relieved it was all over, asked Jos Buttler if Ben Stokes, whose innings at Headingley had been so significant, was a good bloke. Assured that he was indeed a solid sort of character, Langer put a Baggy Green on Stokes’s head, threw him over his shoulder, and made for the exit.

If there was one cricketer JL wanted to take home with him it was Stokes.

It’s no surprise; the Englishman at his best is a cricketer who can win from almost anywhere, but it’s probably not such a bad thing that two men of such singular passion were ever united in purpose. The game is not ready for such a Hadron collision.

England and Australia post Ashes drinks 2019.

Ben Stokes resurfaced overnight, and he seems to be going ok.