{"id":381611,"date":"2026-04-16T00:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T00:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/381611\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T00:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T00:41:08","slug":"ben-stokes-lucky-to-be-alive-after-horrific-facial-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/381611\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Stokes \u2018lucky\u2019 to be alive after horrific facial injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Stokes has opened up on the horrific facial injury he suffered in the nets, admitting he is lucky to be alive.<\/p>\n<p>Stokes was struck in the face with a cricket ball and <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/cricket\/2026\/02\/05\/ben-stokes-suffers-facial-injuries-after-being-hit-by-ball\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">suffered a broken cheekbone<\/a> while training with Durham in February.<\/p>\n<p>He underwent facial surgery and is still waiting to make his return to competitive cricket. He is not due to play again until early next month, when Durham play Worcestershire in a four-day game starting on May 8.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a pretty scary situation,\u201d he said in an interview on the ECB\u2019s website. \u201cI copped one straight in the face. Just a couple of inches one way or the other, I might not be here doing this interview if I didn\u2019t turn my head round.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a bit of a mess. I\u2019ve got out quite lucky. Thankfully I\u2019m still here and everything\u2019s all right. Obviously it set everything back about a month, five weeks, with getting back to where I wanted to be to play at the start of the season for Durham, but just had to sort of quickly go back to the drawing board and put a plan together to get me ready to play a couple of games for Durham before the Test summer starts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He posted photographs on social media of his bruised and swollen face following the operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Stokes has opened up on the horrific facial injury he suffered in the nets, admitting he is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[131623,16558,181826,111,139,69,2022,213,1177],"class_list":{"0":"post-381611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ben-stokes","9":"tag-cricket","10":"tag-england-cricket-team","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-sport","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-standard"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}