England cricket chief Rob Key has left the door open for a dramatic international comeback by former Test captain Ben Stokes, who announced his shock retirement in late June.<\/p>\n
Key, the managing director of men’s cricket for the England and Wales Cricket Board, was speaking a day after the ECB confirmed Stephen Fleming as the new head coach of the Test team.<\/p>\n
The appointment of the former New Zealand skipper, alongside a return to the Test captaincy for Joe Root, comes after a turbulent few weeks for England.<\/p>\n
First, Stokes announced he was quitting international cricket during play in the third Test against New Zealand — the visitors won the match to clinch the series 2-1.<\/p>\n
The Durham all-rounder, 35, had been dropped for the second Test after breaking a team curfew at a London nightclub, the latest in a series of off-field incidents involving England players.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later coach Brendon McCullum was axed as the red-ball coach, bringing the curtain down on the “Bazball” era of ultra-attacking Test cricket he had led alongside Stokes.<\/p>\n
McCullum, another former New Zealand captain, remains in charge of England’s white-ball teams.<\/p>\n
Speaking at Lord’s on Friday, Key said he would not rule out a headline-grabbing return for Stokes, with a home Ashes series against Australia looming in 2027.<\/p>\n
Asked if Fleming had floated the idea, he said: “We haven’t got round to that at the moment, but it would be a great story.”<\/p>\n
Pressed on Stokes giving any indication of a change of heart, Key added: “No, he hasn’t but I wouldn’t be surprised. Anything’s possible with Ben.<\/p>\n
“No (bridges have been burned)… not at all. Not as far as I’m concerned.”<\/p>\n
Fleming will not arrive in Britain until September, meaning he will not take charge of the three-match Test series against Pakistan, that starts in August.<\/p>\n
But Key played down concerns over Fleming’s delayed start.<\/p>\n
“My job is to get the best person,” he said. “It wasn’t a stipulation for any of the candidates that you had to be there for Pakistan.<\/p>\n
“Had that been the case, that would have limited the field drastically.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England cricket chief Rob Key has left the door open for a dramatic international comeback by former Test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":836037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-836036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836036","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=836036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}