{"id":749734,"date":"2026-06-20T23:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T23:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/749734\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T23:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T23:37:08","slug":"ben-stokes-shines-in-county-cricket-as-england-struggles-against-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/749734\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Stokes shines in county cricket as England struggles against New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"

England’s slide towards likely defeat to New Zealand in the second Test has taken place on the same day absent captain Ben Stokes scored 95 for his county side Durham.<\/p>\n

Stokes was left out of the side pending an England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) \u200cinvestigation into an incident \u2060in a London nightclub after the \u200cfirst Test victory at Lord’s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He joined his Durham teammates in a four-day County Championship Division Two match against Northamptonshire in Chester-le-Street.<\/p>\n

England drops Stokes from second NZ test<\/a><\/p>\n

The decision to leave both the English captain and bowler Gus Atkinson off the side comes after a reported nightclub incident following the side\u2019s win in the first Test.<\/p>\n

The all-rounder \u200chas been missed by England at The Oval, where the hosts ended day four on 5-182, chasing a mammoth victory target of 463.<\/p>\n

No decision has been announced as to whether Stokes will return \u200cas captain or just \u200ca member of the team for the \u200cthird Test at Trent Bridge next week.<\/p>\n

The ECB is waiting for a report from the Cricket Regulator into Stokes and fast bowler Gus Atkinson, who broke the \u2060team curfew after the 115-run win in the opening Test<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joe \u200cRoot \u200chas deputised as England skipper in the absence of Stokes.<\/p>\n

Root became only the second player to reach 14,000 Test runs as he led his side’s resistance with an unbeaten half-century.<\/p>\n

He came to the crease two runs shy of the milestone, which only Indian great Sachin Tendulkar has reached and with England tottering on 2-13.<\/p>\n

Root reached stumps on 75 not out.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England’s slide towards likely defeat to New Zealand in the second Test has taken place on the same…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,2129,21850,740,79032,1208,24161,1736,63082,85,231,35754],"class_list":["post-749734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ben-stokes","tag-county","tag-cricket","tag-durham","tag-england","tag-gus-atkinson","tag-new-zealand","tag-nightclub","tag-sports","tag-test","tag-the-oval"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}