Ben Stokes has posted a picture on social media of a severely bruised right eye and bleeding nose after being hit in the face by a cricket ball.
The England captain was coaching young players in the nets with his county, Durham, and the incident occurred when he was standing to the side while his team-mates were training. He did not see a ball flying towards him, and was struck hard on the right side of the face.
The Sun reported that the young wicketkeeper-batsman Robbie Bowman hammered a ball towards Stokes, who was struck on the right side of his face. Stokes later phoned Bowman from hospital to tell him not to worry, and insisted that he was at fault for not watching the ball.
“Stokesy said he broke the No1 rule of being a coach in the nets — never turn your back on the batter,” Ryan Campbell, the Durham coach, said. “By chance, our medical team were at the ground doing simulations. Suddenly, they had a real emergency to deal with.
“Robbie hit the ball hard. Players shouted out a warning but Stokesy ended up turning his head towards the ball.
“I’ll tell you this because Stokesy never would. He phoned Robbie Bowman from his hospital and told him not to worry. He’d have known that Robbie would have been beside himself but Ben said it was his fault. That sums up the sort of bloke Stokesy is.”
Stokes is recovering from a right adductor injury sustained in the final Ashes Test last month. He bowled ten deliveries on the fourth day at the Sydney Cricket Ground before pulling up in his follow through holding his right groin.
Since then, he has been recovering and is slowly returning to training. He will continue his rehabilitation in the UAE later this month, when he will also be part of the England Lions coaching staff working with Andrew Flintoff on the series against Pakistan A in Abu Dhabi.
The picture on social media shows Stokes with a black eye and cotton wool inserted in his right nostril, although it is not confirmed whether his nose was broken. Stokes put a caption alongside the post which read: “You should see the state of the ball.”
Stokes is no longer part of England’s white-ball teams, so will not return to international action until the end of May, when England play a three-match Test series against New Zealand.