Ben Stokes said he was prepared to go through “blood, sweat and tears” for England after it was announced he will undergo surgery in January and is out of action for at least three months with a torn hamstring.
The men’s Test captain sustained the injury while bowling in the third Test against New Zealand in Hamilton last week and scans have revealed the extent of the damage will keep him on the sidelines until the spring.
An ECB statement said: “Ben Stokes has been ruled out of all cricket for at least three months after further assessments confirmed he has torn his left hamstring. The Durham all-rounder will undergo surgery in January.”
The all-rounder will hope his Test career is unaffected, with England not returning to red-ball cricket until a one-off Test against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge in late May. He will, though, miss the SA20, the Twenty20 tournament in South Africa next month in which he was the headline signing for MI Cape Town. Stokes had already been left out of the 15-man England squad for the Champions Trophy in February.
“Something else to overcome …go on then!” he posted on X on Monday night. “I’ve got so much more left in this tank and so much more blood sweat and tears to go through for my team and this shirt. There’s a reason I have a Phoenix permanently inked on my body.”
It is Stokes’s second hamstring injury in little more than four months – he missed the three-Test series against Sri Lanka in the summer and the first Test of the autumn tour of Pakistan after tearing a hamstring while batting in the Hundred – but after the Test in Hamilton the all-rounder said he had no regrets and would not be holding back.
“Obviously, I was incredibly disappointed walking off,” Stokes said. “I was very emotional about the whole thing. You’re asking yourself: ‘Could I have done more? Should have done this, should have done that?’ But you know, when you sleep on it, and you take the emotion out of it, you realise you’re always putting yourself at risk of an injury.
“I worked my arse off to get to where I was in this game in particularly with my body. It’s just sod’s law – the first time in a while I feel like I’m young again, something happens.
“I worked really hard to get myself into position to play the role that I did this game. It’s just one of those unfortunate things. But no, I’m not holding back.”
