Ben Stokes' position as England Test captain is hanging by a thread following an independent referral to the Cricket Regulator.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has launched an immediate investigation into a "breach of team protocols" after Stokes and teammate Gus Atkinson broke a strict midnight curfew and were involved in a fracas with rugby player Totoa Auvaa, which left an England security officer requiring stitches.
This incident has put the spotlight back on the England dressing room, as the team management was attempting to fix cultural issues from past indiscretions.
Amid the probe, legendary England opener Sir Geoffrey Boycott has called for Ben Stokes' suspension, arguing that the captain must set the tone for discipline and cannot be immune to consequences.
"The England and Wales Cricket Board has to make an example of Ben Stokes and slap him with a suspension after he was caught breaking the team’s curfew. You cannot have the captain blatantly breaking the rules and not do anything about it just because he is so important to the team," Boycott wrote in his column for The Telegraph.
"If Rob Key, the England director of cricket, or Richard Gould, the ECB chief executive, are not up to the task of disciplining Stokes then they should not be in a job. I said before that Brendon McCullum and Key should have been sacked. Come on Rob and Brendon, what are you going to do about this? Whether Stokes should be sacked depends on the full circumstances of the incident. An investigation is ongoing and it has to get to the bottom of what happened before making that judgment call," he added.
Boycott insisted that a financial penalty is ineffective because modern players earn too much money for it to matter.
"But that does not detract from the fact that Stokes as captain should be setting the tone. England cannot beat Australia next summer without discipline. And discipline applies off the field as well as on it. We don’t want a paltry fine. They earn so much money now that a few thousand quid means nothing to them. It is a suspension we need to see," Boycott wrote.
