abrupt retirement<\/a> from international cricket during England’s third Test against New Zealand last month.<\/p>\nBefore that match, 35-year-old Stokes missed the second Test during an investigation into an incident in a London nightclub.<\/p>\n
In his period away from the England team, the all-rounder played in Durham’s County Championship match against Northamptonshire.<\/p>\n
Although Stokes said he had developed “negative feelings” around playing for England, he said his time back in county cricket rekindled his love for the game.<\/p>\n
“Being back at Durham, when I wasn’t playing in the second Test, I found a new lease of life for the game, but unfortunately I just couldn’t get that feeling back,” said Stokes.<\/p>\n
“I’m very excited about the next part of what I get to do. Going back to playing for my boyhood club Durham, I’m comparing this week to that week – right now I am buzzing.<\/p>\n
“But there have been moments this week that have been really tough and it just adds to everything and it makes it clear that I’ve made the right decision.”<\/p>\n
After playing in the One-Day Cup, Stokes could feature again in the Championship before the end of the season.<\/p>\n
The timing of his return means a clash with the launch of the revamped version of The Hundred.<\/p>\n
This season is the first since stakes in the eight franchises were sold to investors for about \u00a3520m, resulting in some new team names, branding and players earning more money.<\/p>\n
Stokes did not enter the auction and was scheduled to play for Durham in the One-Day Cup before he announced his retirement.<\/p>\n
Depending on the extent of his involvement, Stokes, perhaps the most high-profile cricketer in the country, could find himself playing at some intimate venues.<\/p>\n
Durham have home games scheduled at South Northumberland Cricket Club in Gosforth and Darlington CC. Their away trip to Yorkshire is at York CC.<\/p>\n
Stokes has not played any 50-over cricket since the 2023 World Cup, which was also his last limited-overs game for England.<\/p>\n
The game at Derby will mark the first time Stokes has played a domestic one-day fixture for Durham in 12 years.<\/p>\n
His most recent 50-over game for Durham was their victory over Warwickshire in the 2014 One-Day Cup final. Then aged 23, he made 164 in the semi-final win over Nottinghamshire.<\/p>\n
Stokes’ last domestic 50-over cricket anywhere was a stint playing for Canterbury in New Zealand in 2017, during the period when he missed England’s Ashes tour of Australia following an incident outside a Bristol nightclub.<\/p>\n
Since Stokes’ retirement from international cricket, Brendon McCullum has been sacked as England Test coach.<\/p>\n
McCullum said he had received “nice messages” from Stokes since the announcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Stokes is set to play for the first time since retiring from international cricket by appearing for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-692768","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\/692768","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=692768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}