Former captain Joe Root is standing in for Stokes this week, having accepted the job on a “game-by-game” basis.<\/p>\n
Stokes and bowler Gus Atkinson breached the team’s midnight curfew the night after victory in the first Test and were present when a member of England’s security staff was struck by a Saracens rugby player.<\/p>\n
Key was first to speak in the aftermath. <\/p>\n
Asked if Stokes would return as a player he said, “I don’t see why not” – but he turned down repeated opportunities to back him as a captain.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Monday, McCullum said he was “worried” about his captain, but again would not be drawn on whether he would lead the team again.<\/p>\n
Two investigations, one by the ECB and another by the Cricket Regulator, remain ongoing.<\/p>\n
“I find it a worry for English cricket – the Ben Stokes-Brendon McCullum relationship, the Ben Stokes-Rob Key relationship,” said Vaughan.<\/p>\n
“On the back of what we saw in the press conference, I would doubt whether those relationships can be moulded together again.”<\/p>\n
Stokes, McCullum and Key, who have held a close relationship since taking charge of England’s Test cricket in 2022, were all kept in their jobs despite England’s 4-1 Ashes defeat this winter.<\/p>\n
Stokes said reports of a rift between he and McCullum had been overstated in Australia. On Monday, McCullum denied their relationship was strained.<\/p>\n
Other than a brief Instagram post wishing his team-mates well in the second Test, Stokes has not spoken publicly since the incident.<\/p>\n
His county coach at Durham, Ryan Campbell, said he was in “good spirits” and the all-rounder could feature for them on Friday.<\/p>\n
If Stokes does not captain again, Vaughan said Root is the only player he would return to play under.<\/p>\n
The pair are close friends and Stokes played in 46 of Root’s previous 64 Tests as captain.<\/p>\n
“If the ECB make a call Ben can’t come back in a leadership role, the only captain he could play under is Joe,” said Vaughan.<\/p>\n
“I don’t see Ben as the kind of character that would just walk into the dressing room as a player. I see him purely as the leader. <\/p>\n
“I would have found it very difficult to go into a team after captaining for a while. <\/p>\n
“I think Ben would struggle but, if there was one respected player in the dressing room he would do it for, it is Joe.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former captain Joe Root is standing in for Stokes this week, having accepted the job on a “game-by-game”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-644755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}