Ben Stokes retires: The midnight call before Trent Bridge

Ben Stokes told Joe Root and Harry Brook he would retire from international cricket the night before the Trent Bridge Test, while Brendon McCullum had to wait because he was already asleep. The decision, shaped by weeks of inner strain after the Ashes and inju

Before Ben Stokes went to bed in Hart’s Hotel in Nottingham city centre on Saturday night, he made sure two people knew first.

He told Joe Root and Harry Brook—his predecessor as Test captain, and no doubt his successor—of his plans to announce his retirement from international cricket the following day.

Brendon McCullum was meant to be told too. But England’s head coach was already asleep, and, like the ECB’s communications team, would have to wait until the following morning to hear the news.

Sunday morning was still moving when McCullum—walking from Hart’s past Nottingham railway station towards Trent Bridge around 8.45am. with assistant coach Jeetan Patel and team operations manager Wayne Bentley—fell into a day like no other. Senior members of the communications team kept close as the squad’s building process began. even as the core story had already been decided in a hotel room the night before.

To McCullum, the retirement announcement would not have been a total shock. He had been in daily contact with Stokes during his fortnight’s exile because of the now infamous trip to the Rex Rooms in west London after England’s 115-run victory at Lord’s.

Stokes’s mind, in fact, had been made up ever since the last day of that first Test. He was sitting next to Root in the dressing-room when the feeling of an ending took hold.

From the outside. England’s Lord’s win looked like the start of something new: a convincing reply to Ashes disappointment and a step on the road to regaining the urn in 2027. Inside, Stokes had not been right all week. He was tetchy during the build-up to the match. and while McCullum had dominated the airwaves—speaking at length about his relationship with his captain—Stokes was fighting off what he later described as a ‘strange. interesting feeling’ ahead of the Test.

As he spoke on the outfield about his decision, he admitted he had taken time away to talk to ‘as many people as possible’ with experience of calling it a day, including Stuart Broad. Stokes said the feeling he had was not a passing blip.

‘Everyone I spoke to about the day it happens, saying “What’s it like?”, they just say it kicks you straight in the face,’ he said. ‘And I thought, a few weeks ago, that it did. As I was putting my pads on yesterday getting ready to go out there, that was the last nail in the coffin.’

His relationship with international cricket had shifted the way some things do after a long decline—slow at first. then suddenly irreversible. The description that came to mind was Ernest Hemingway’s account of going bankrupt: gradual, then sudden. Stokes said the break started in earnest after the Ashes. when England never managed to recover from a lunch-time advantage during the second day of the first Test at Perth. By stumps, the position had shattered into defeat.

He spent the next few months wrestling with disappointment, telling his wife, Clare: ‘I don’t think I have any more fight left in me to get over this.’

An injury crisis only added weight. Stokes injured his groin during the final Test at Sydney, and his rehab was set back in February after a horrific accident in the Durham academy nets, when a ball broke his right cheekbone. He said he was left grateful to be alive.

He turned 35 on the first day of the Lord’s Test. and by the time this Trent Bridge match arrived. he felt he had almost nothing left to give. In the Trent Bridge dressing-room before the start of the fourth day. he told his team-mates: ‘I’ve had many trips to the well before for this team. for you blokes. for people beforehand. and I’ve got one more trip to do.’.

Looking back, it was hard to miss the timing around the Rex Rooms episode with Gus Atkinson, after which Stokes’s release in the weeks that followed looked less like rebellion than a sign of the end approaching.

The ECB did not see it that way. Stokes—back home in County Durham—briefly considered jacking it in there and then. For a while, what happened next was anybody’s guess.

His time away from the England set-up did give him something back, though. Playing for Durham against Northamptonshire in a County Championship game at Chester-le-Street. he batted with the freedom of the old days. charging the opening bowlers during a powerful innings of 95. He described that experience of returning to his county colleagues as ‘a new lease of life’ in terms of his ‘affection’ for the game.

But Stokes couldn’t replicate it in Nottingham. When describing his feelings during the week, he said, ‘I just couldn’t get that same feeling back here [in Nottingham] this week, as much as I was trying.’

By the time he stood at Trent Bridge and fielded questions in the pre-match press conference. the retirement decision was already in place. He repeatedly insisted he wasn’t thinking beyond the third Test. a stance that was widely interpreted as reluctance to create more headlines when England’s immediate job was to win the series.

Behind the scenes, the ECB was relieved his words had not set off a bigger media firestorm. Yet they were surprised he wasn’t pushed harder by journalists over the damage his behaviour had caused to England’s series chances. particularly after a weakened team led by Root had been thrashed in the second Test at The Oval.

Stokes did admit he had apologised to his team-mates. But there was no contrition offered to the ECB. By then, the organisation had lost the PR battle. It also emerged that the details of the curfew imposed after the Ashes had not been properly conveyed to the players.

As Sunday unfolded, even the possibility that this would be his last Test could not be ruled out. Stokes’s friends were taking the view that he was simply focusing on the Trent Bridge decider.

That focus had a human layer too. Before the Oval Test, McCullum had cut a relaxed figure over dinner at Nottingham’s popular Memsaab curry house. Yet before that match, he had repeatedly said he was ‘worried about Ben’. He felt Stokes was ready for the decider. even though it was not clear he was fully aware of Stokes’s precise plans.

The broader drama wasn’t just about one player, either. Speculation was swirling about both McCullum and Key. Key had missed the first morning of the game because he travelled back to London for an MRI scan on a knee.

Both McCullum and Key had come under pressure after admissions that they failed to prepare the team adequately in Australia, while Key also faced scrutiny over the fine print of the curfew.

When Marcus North—the new national selector—was wheeled out to speak to Sky and the BBC on the second day of the Nottingham Test. rumours spread that he was being lined up to take Key’s job. The ECB denied that claim, saying the interviews had been pre-arranged. Key returned to watch the next few days from the second floor of the Radcliffe Road Stand. accompanied by England Lions coach Andrew Flintoff.

McCullum, meanwhile, had done enough to keep his position. Two relatively successful white-ball trips after the Ashes—first to Sri Lanka and then to the T20 World Cup on the subcontinent—convinced officials he had evolved. Victory in the Lord’s Test seemed to confirm that. and the general feeling was that the Oval defeat—caused largely by wholesale changes after the nightclub saga—could not be held against him.

Even so, during much of Sunday morning’s play, ECB officials went AWOL. It was the kind of timing that makes everyone watch a little more closely, wondering whether an announcement was in the offing. No one expected quite what arrived.

Plans had been drawn up with help from Neil Fairbrother and Michael Lumb from Stokes’s management team for the moment New Zealand, who began the day on 120 for three in their second innings, had lost seven or eight wickets. Once that point came, the retirement news would be made public.

Stokes told them: ‘You guys just come up with a plan, and let me concentrate on what I need to do with the team.’

At 3.25pm, 15 minutes before tea, the decision went public. The news spread through Trent Bridge and drew a standing ovation from spectators as it travelled around the ground.

Two minutes later, with the match already rolling into that charged moment, Stokes removed Zak Foulkes — New Zealand’s eighth wicket.

At tea, McCullum joked with Stokes that they should have made the announcement ‘an hour earlier’, saying: ‘We might have bowled them out by now.’ Around the team, team-mates were struck by the atmosphere, describing it as ‘absolutely electric’.

After the announcement, Stokes made a deliberate batting decision. He chose to open the batting. aiming to score as many quick runs as possible against the new ball before run-scoring got harder against the old one. Some interpreted the move as self-indulgent. Stokes’s 20-ball 30 did not settle that debate one way or the other.

Later, with England now four down and critics arguing about the rights and wrongs of the choreography, the day still shifted back to something personal. Fans chanted him to the middle, and Clare, along with their children Layton and Libby, hugged him.

It was. in the end. a human finish to a turbulent few weeks and 15 impossibly action-packed years as an international cricketer. A kick in the face for those who supported him—certainly for the man himself. and for his followers too—but also a pat on the back that felt deserved. just as the moment demanded.

Ben Stokes retirement Trent Bridge Joe Root Harry Brook Brendon McCullum Jeetan Patel Wayne Bentley Rex Rooms England cricket New Zealand second innings Zak Foulkes Marcus North Key MRI scan Stuart Broad