Stokes has been hampered significantly by his chronic knee problem throughout the last 18 months. He has been playing as a specialist batter at the World Cup and has not bowled a ball in a competitive match in any format since July 1, the fourth day of the second Ashes Test at Lord’s.
“I will hopefully be fine for the Test series [against India],” Stokes said on the eve of England’s fixture against Australia in Ahmedabad. “I am having surgery after the World Cup… There was a lot of time put into deciding when to get it done. The India Test series, which we start at the end of January, I should be fine to go by then.”
Stokes did not reveal details of the procedure but expected to be out of action for between five and seven weeks and will not feature in England’s white-ball tour to the Caribbean in December. Dr Andy Williams, a leading knee surgeon in London, will perform the surgery.
“When we go to those meetings, we generally take a physio and doctor and they start talking. I just turn up, go to sleep, wake up and hope it is better… they use language that I’ve never heard before,” Stokes said. “There’s obviously something that needs to be operated on.
“It’s been a big hindrance on me, and affected what I can do for the team. Obviously that [being an allrounder] is what I want to be doing. You’d hope that it means that I can get back to doing what I’ve been known for, which is playing a role as a batter, and playing a role as a bowler as well.”
England’s five-Test series in India starts on January 25 in Hyderabad. They will travel to the UAE around two weeks earlier for a short camp before leaving for India two or three days before the start of the series, and Stokes said that his bowling fitness will depend on “more decisions and more discussions from myself and the medical team”.
He said, “Obviously it’s been a long time coming and obviously I want to get back to what I’ve been doing prior to the 18 months where I’ve had this injury. We’ll just see how everything goes, see how I respond to the surgery and all the rehab as well… I don’t think the surgery is going to have any hindrance on me taking part in the series in India.”
“It’s just been one of those tournaments where… yeah, it’s just been a disaster. And there’s no point sugarcoating it, because it’s probably what you’re all going to write anyway – and it’s true”
Ben Stokes
Stokes was non-committal when asked if he plans to take part in next year’s T20 World Cup, or the IPL which immediately precedes it. “Look, we’ve got three games left here in the World Cup and then a huge series against India,” he said. “That’s where everything is at, at the moment.”
He also revealed that he has been suffering from “exercise-induced asthma” during the World Cup. He was pictured using an inhaler during a training session before England’s defeat to Sri Lanka in Bengaluru, after doing shuttle runs on the outfield, and suggested it was due to a change in air quality after spending a week in Mumbai.
“Sometimes it happens when you go to a new city in India where the air is slightly different,” he said. “That could be a reason for it: Bangalore, when we actually turned up, just felt a lot fresher. Doing the running that I was doing [shuttle runs on the outfield] does bring it on a lot easier than normal.”
Despite his impending surgery, Stokes is not planning to leave the World Cup early, and was forthright in his analysis of England’s title defence in India. “We’ve had a disastrous World Cup,” he said. “There’s no point sugarcoating that, because it’s the truth.”
Asked to identify the main problem, he said, “The problem is that we’ve been cr*p.
“Everything we’ve tried throughout this World Cup, through trying to put pressure back on to the opposition in the way in which we know, or trying to soak up the pressure in a different way, which we know we’ve done before and been successful with, it’s just not worked.
“Every opportunity that we’ve had in front of us where we feel like we can take control of the game, the opposition’s managed to get it back towards them. We’ve just not been able to put a full game together, or even get close to putting a full game together – except against Bangladesh.”
Stokes missed the start of the World Cup with a hip injury suffered shortly after England arrived in Guwahati, and has only managed 48 runs in three innings since returning to the side. He insisted that he has no regrets about reversing his ODI retirement, but reiterated that England’s tournament had been “a disaster”.
“If you dive too much into it around cricket, you find you come out with more questions than answers… we’ve been nowhere near good enough to be able to compete in a World Cup, which has been incredibly disappointing because we know we’re so, so much better than what we’ve shown out here,” he said. “If we knew what had gone wrong, we would have been able to fix it. But unfortunately, we don’t.
“It’s just been one of those tournaments where… yeah, it’s just been a disaster. And there’s no point sugarcoating it, because it’s probably what you’re all going to write anyway – and it’s true.”
Matt Roller is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98
