Expediency triumphs principle as Ben Stokes is rushed back to England duty with questions swept under the carpet

Trevor Bayliss's words suggested this is an England side more concerned with its own self-interest than in repairing some of the damage caused by flying fists and poor judgment

The swift return of Ben Stokes to the England team is fraught with issues, perhaps the least of which is where he fits into a winning side replete with all-rounders and form players, none of whom were arrested for punching a guy in the street at 2am. And the words of coach Trevor Bayliss on Thursday suggested that this is an England side still more concerned with its own self-interest than in repairing some of the damage caused by the flying fists, poor judgment and casual disablism of Stokes last September.

“For us and the team, it’s business as usual,” Bayliss said at Trent Bridge ahead of the third Test against India, a sentence that should alarm any follower of English cricket hopeful that lessons might be learned from this affair. Bayliss admitted that there would be “ongoing work” on team culture, that the players had “finally woken up” to their responsibilities after a couple of high-profile incidents during the recent Ashes tour, and called for Stokes to publicly apologise for the trouble he has caused.

But the decision to rush Stokes back to action at the earliest possible opportunity, before any semblance of an apology, belies the real motives at play here. The England and Wales Cricket Board simply want their prize asset back making money for them as quickly as possible. Stokes is a cricketer around whom English cricket is seeking to base its commercial appeal for the next decade or more. And once you understand that, then everything else falls into place.

The disclosure by Bayliss that Stokes was restored to the side “for his own wellbeing” was another telling admission. Certainly the ECB have a duty of care to Stokes, one they have ably fulfilled by being present throughout his trial and making counselling and psychological support available to him throughout the last 11 months. But it’s hard to escape the sense that Stokes is running the show here.

According to the statement issued by Stokes’s solicitor, he “was minding his own business” in Bristol that night, a claim that both the available video footage and the testimony heard in court exposed. The roughly 90 seconds during which the fight began – which was not caught on camera – has still not been satisfactorily explained, nor the apparent flicking of a cigarette at Kai Barry and William O’Connor, the two men Stokes later claimed to be saving.

Ben Stokes has been swiftly returned to the England setup (Reuters)

The reference by Stokes to his “11-month ordeal” and his desire to “get back to cricket being his sole focus” are simply insulting to all involved, not least the two men who ended up in hospital and the thousands of England fans who travelled out to Australia over the winter.

There is also the curiously underplayed video that emerged around the same time of Stokes mocking Harvey Price, the disabled son of the celebrity Katie Price. Though Stokes offered a swift and grovelling apology, there has been not a mention of this from the ECB in the months since: no censure, no re-education, indeed no indication at all that it even perturbs them. For an organisation rightly proud of the way it has championed disability cricket in recent years, it is, to say the least, a curious omission.

But then, consistency is not a charge to which the ECB could ever plead guilty. They were wrong not to take Stokes to the Ashes before any charges had been brought, wrong to then reinstate him once they were, and wrong again to smooth his passage back into the team the moment the judge’s gavel came down. Now the England coach is declaring it “business as usual”. Not for the first time, expediency has triumphed over the slightest shred of principle.

In an ideal world, you would hope that the ECB would grasp the gravity of the situation, force Stokes to answer the questions he would rather sweep under the carpet, finally show some consideration to something other than their own bottom line. But his team-mates want him back, England have a series to win and ticket sales for Trent Bridge have been sluggish. I wouldn’t hold your breath.