Ben Stokes' sensational revelation: 'I thought I might never cricket play again'

Talking to BBC Breakfast, Ben Stokes shared how the Bristol incident in 2017 that led to his exclusion from England Cricket team, the death of his father, who was his major motivator and a couple of other incidents badly affected his mental health.

In 2021, Ben Stokes, now the captain of the England Test team, had taken a five-month break from cricket to focus on his mental health. The all-rounder has shed light on mental health struggles during that phase and said that he feared he might never play cricket again. Stokes gave an interview to BBC Breakfast before the release of his documentary Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes - which airs on Amazon Prime from 26 August, where he shared how the Bristol incident in 2017 that led to his exclusion from England Cricket team, the death of his father, who was his major motivator and a couple of other incidents badly affected his mental health.

Captain of the England Test Cricket team, Ben Stokes had taken a five-month break from cricket in 2021 to focus on his mental health. Later Stokes announced his retirement from ODI Cricket in July 2022. (AFP)

The 31-year old Stokes mentioned that he suffered panic attacks after bottling up his emotions for several years. Stokes said: "It was like I had a glass bottle I kept on throwing my emotions into. Eventually, it got too full and just exploded."

Stokes had faced difficult times in recent years, when he took a leave of absence from cricket in 2020 to be with his ailing father Ged, who later passed that year from brain cancer. However, Stokes returned and captained the England ODI team against Pakistan in July 2021. But then, he took an indefinite break and returned for the Ashes in Australia in December 2021. Just eight months later though, Stokes announced his retirement from ODI Cricket in July 2022.

Recalling the massive motivator that his father was for him, Stokes shared, "When he wasn't there, for him not be able to text me to say 'well done' - that just stopped and that was a reason as to why I ended up being where I was." He further added "Such a big inspiration to me had left the world and left me. I had to then find what it was to get me going again, what my inspiration was".

Stokes further said that his father's influence was shaping him into the kind of cricket captain he wished to be. Stokes remembered his struggles after he was found not guilty of affray in September 2018 following a fight near a nightclub in Bristol a year earlier.

Recalling his struggles, he said, "Being in the dressing room at the time was great, because I was around people. The hardest bit was when the day had finished and I had gone back to my room. I didn't want to leave the hotel, I just sat on my bed". He further explained "Those periods for me were the loneliest and the hardest. For me that was the start of another part of that Bristol thing."

The star all-rounder shared the most problematic part of his struggles when his teammate, fast bowler Stuart Broad said that he could see him not playing again. Sharing that episode of his career, Stokes said: "I had never spoken to Stuart about that through my time away. I spoke to him a lot through that period but just general chit-chat, nothing too serious. I had never said the words to him but the fact that he got that feeling was an eye-opener to me that at that time, things were quite bad.

"I did an interview where I'd give off this bravado of being a big tough northern lad with tattoos. I was like 'well, I am tough, but that doesn't mean that I can't struggle mentally'."

Stokes also recalled the negative comments from some people, around his mental health break when he was named Test captain earlier this year.

"It felt like people were saying I couldn't do the job because I decided to take a break last year." Adding further, he said "I was like, 'what's that got to do with being England captain'? If anything, it shows that you can do anything, even if you have decided to take a break," he said.