Ben Stokes faces investigation after nightclub incident as ECB culture questioned

Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson are under investigation by the England and Wales Cricket Board after breaching team protocols in a west London nightclub in the early hours of Monday morning, just hours after England’s first Test victory over New Zealand at Lord’s. The pair are unlikely to be selected for the second Test at The Oval next week, with Harry Brook set to captain the side in Stokes’s possible absence. Brook himself was fined around £50,000 by the ECB last October after being punched by a bouncer in Wellington during a late-night incident – the very episode that prompted the introduction of a midnight curfew for the squad. ‘Stokes’s captaincy could be in the past tense,’ a former England cricketer told The Independent. The investigation comes after a winter in which ECB chief executive Richard Gould admitted there had been several ‘significantly unprofessional’ off-field incidents. At a March briefing at Lord’s, Gould and director of cricket Rob Key presented a slide titled ‘Culture and environment’ outlining three goals: ‘Positive, relaxed AND professional high performance’, ‘New expectations around team behaviours’, and ‘Better individual and collective decision making’. The latest episode suggests that cultural reset has failed. Writing in iNews, cricket correspondent Chris Stocks argued that head coach Brendon McCullum and Key should be sacked for fostering ‘a rotten environment in which Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson think they can get away with flouting team protocols’. Stokes’s future as Test captain is now in serious doubt, with Brook potentially taking the role on a permanent basis.