{"id":649312,"date":"2026-06-20T17:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T17:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/649312\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T17:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T17:43:09","slug":"ben-stokes-england-captain-makes-95-for-durham-as-national-team-struggle-in-new-zealand-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/649312\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Stokes: England captain makes 95 for Durham as national team struggle in New Zealand Test"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rothesay County Championship, Division Two, Banks Homes Riverside (day two)<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Northamptonshire 450: Vasconcelos 187; Raine 3-63<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Durham 183-3: Stokes 95 (118), Rhodes 58*; Conway 2-23, Sanderson 2-64<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/cricket\/scorecard\/e-233532\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Match scorecard<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ben Stokes made 95 for Durham against Northamptonshire as England slipped towards defeat by New Zealand at The Oval.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The England captain, absent from the second Test having been made unavailable pending an investigation into an incident in a London nightclub, was bowled five runs short of a century by seamer Harry Conway just after tea at Chester-le-Street.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It would have been Stokes&#8217; first century in first-class cricket since hitting 141 against India in the fourth Test in July 2025, which was his first in Tests since August 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His 118-ball knock, which featured 18 fours, was still a welcome return to form for the all-rounder with the bat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Since Stokes&#8217; ton against India at Old Trafford, he had scored only 350 runs in nine first-class matches at an average of 25, prior to facing Northants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rothesay County Championship, Division Two, Banks Homes Riverside (day two) Northamptonshire 450: Vasconcelos 187; Raine 3-63 Durham 183-3:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-649312","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\/649312","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=649312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}