England's World Cup hero Ben Stokes said he don’t want to look back at his career threatening off-field Bristol incident and even view his sensational performance in the summit clash against New Zealand at Lord’s last week as his public redemption.
The all-rounder carried England all the way in the final of the World Cup 2019 with his swashbuckling unbeaten 84 and Super Over heroics against New Zealand at Lord’s.
Following a fight outside a Bristol nightclub in September 2017, Stokes was banned and fined by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) after accepting a charge of bringing the game into disrepute.
Stokes told ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Wednesday, 17th July, “I won’t look back and say I redeemed myself or anything like that - I’m an athlete and a cricketer and it’s what we are paid to do, to win trophies. That's not a word I'll ever use.”
The 28-year-old continued, “It was coming back from all of that, it was tough. Getting back into cricket obviously massively helped straight after that. It was a stressful time for me, my wife, my family back home. I had amazing people around me, my team-mates, friends, family. They have to take a lot of credit for helping me to get through that.”
Meanwhile, Stokes admitted that he got emotional as the memories of the Bristol incident triggered his tears of joy at Lord’s after playing a key role in England’s maiden World Cup triumph.
He added, “I got emotional there, at the end, and that was probably a culmination of lots of things, happiness that we won it and subconsciously thinking and remembering back to what I went through.”
The all-rounder also stressed on the need to shift focus from the euphoric World Cup celebrations to the upcoming Ashes 2019, saying England must start preparing for the high-voltage Test series starting from 1st August against old rivals Australia.
Stokes signed off by saying, “We’ve achieved half of what we wanted to do, which is winning the World Cup. Everyone who is involved in the Test team, as well as the one-day team, has sort of had to get their heads around the fact that we have an Ashes series coming up and we still have a serious amount of work to do.”
(With AFP Inputs)
