Bostock’s words were reflected in comments by others around Durham.<\/p>\n
Stokes had been “just like Stokesy” in recent days, one source told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
Durham has been his county home throughout his career. <\/p>\n
He has regained fitness from previous injuries by running around the athletics track behind the Finchale End, and by completing shuttles runs on the outfield.<\/p>\n
In the warm-ups before day one against Northamptonshire, he was throwing balls to former Durham captain Scott Borthwick, who was best man at Stokes’ wedding.<\/p>\n
The media interest in Stokes was clear. Various TV camera crews and photographers were pointing their lenses lenses towards the all-rounder before play.<\/p>\n
On the field, all seemed familiar. <\/p>\n
Stokes bowled better than his figures – 0-53 across his first three spells – suggest. <\/p>\n
He had a catch dropped in his first over by Ben McKinney standing at leg slip and any idea Stokes may had lost a spark since the nightclub incident was not in evidence here.<\/p>\n
At the end of his sixth over, his backside almost touched the pitch as he squatted in appealing for lbw. <\/p>\n
When former umpire James Tredwell – the former off-spinner who played 20 times with Stokes for England – turned down the decision he slapped the pitch in frustration.<\/p>\n
In the field, Stokes was often stood with his arms folded at mid-off under his blue cap – as he so often has been for England. He also appeared to give occasional tactical advice to Durham team-mates – spinner Callum Parkinson, in particular.<\/p>\n
In Cardiff, meanwhile, Atkinson had figures of 2-33 when bad light stopped play in the evening session. <\/p>\n
If Stokes and Atkinson are picked to play in Nottingham they may have to be withdrawn from the latter part of the county fixtures, given the Test begins on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bostock’s words were reflected in comments by others around Durham. Stokes had been “just like Stokesy” in recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-647576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647576","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=647576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}