Ben Stokes shares how he had completely forgotten about getting his stomach injury in Sri Lanka while taking throwdowns.

The England cricket team were to play a Test series in Sri Lanka after a couple of practice matches. However, after the practice games, the tour got canceled due to the pandemic Coronavirus and the visitors returned home.

England all-rounder Ben Stokes could not play the second game due to a stomach injury that he had picked up while taking throwdowns during practice.

Stokes wrote in his column for Mirror, “One thing the break has allowed me to do is to get over the stomach injury that caused me to miss the second warm-up match in Colombo. I’d had a bat, then sat down in a chair and had some lunch. When I got up to move it felt like someone was stabbing me in my abdomen, it was so painful. The doctor thought it might be appendicitis but a scan ruled that out, and we still didn’t know why I was in such pain.”

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He did not know the exact reason for the pain until the fielding coach Carl Hopkinson reminded him of the blow.

“The next day when I got to the ground Carl Hopkinson our fielding coach saw me and asked: “Do you reckon it was where I hit you?” And then it suddenly dawned on me. He had hit me quite hard giving me throwdowns when I was batting and I had just completely forgotten about it. I’m all good now and will be ready to play again whenever the time comes, and maybe next time my memory won’t be such a sieve,” he wrote.

The break enabled him to recover from the injury and now is fit again to play a match whenever he gets an opportunity.

(With inputs from Mirror)