England all-rounder Ben Stokes who took centre stage in handing the Three Lions the much-coveted ICC Cricket World Cup in 2019. However, he is again in the headlines now. This time the reason is totally different. His controversial statement in his book regarding India’s defeat against England in the 2019 World Cup league stage game raised a lot of eyebrows. People thought that India intentionally lost against the hosts to remove Pakistan from the tournament.
“Arguably, the way MS Dhoni played when he came in with 112 runs needed from 11 overs was even stranger. He appeared more intent on singles than sixes. Even with a dozen balls remaining, India could still have won,” the statement read in Ben Stokes’ book named ‘Ben Stokes On Fire.’
Why Stokes Was Angry Again?
India was off to a flying start with Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma made a 138 runs stand to chase the target. With all the firepower down the order, most of the fans thought that the game was in India’s favour. However, things did not go as per plan for the Men in Blue. Stokes criticised the desire to win among the lower middle-order batsmen which titled the game in their favour.
“They allowed their team to get so far behind the game. They showed no desire to put any pressure back onto our team, content instead to just drift along, a tactic that was clearly playing into our hands,” Stokes wrote in his book. Also, the England allrounder wasn’t happy about some of Virat Kohli’s comments after the game.
However now when things are making headlines in news, Stokes has come up with a clarification where the 28-year old accused the news channels of twisting his words around for their convenience without knowing the actual matter. “You will not find it cause I have never said it… it is called “twisting of words” or ‘clickbait’,” Ben Stokes said in his Twitter.
Before this scene, former Pakistan cricketer Sikander Bakht also raised allegations on the Indian cricket of losing deliberately on the same matter referring to the book which the star allrounder has written.” Ben Stokes writes in his book that India lost to England deliberately to remove Pakistan from World Cup 19 and we predicted it Pakistan India relationship,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
What Next For Ben Stokes?
This is not the first time that such a thing has happened with Ben Stokes. He has previously as well faced problems with the media and has lashed out at them. This is just another case, where he is unhappy with what has been published.
Ben Stokes had previously lashed out at The Sun. They had posted a story about his arrival in England and family problems without his consent. The topic of the article was something else but the story had taken a complete U-turn. Due to this, the entire Stokes family was unhappy about the story.
Eventually, things probably got calmed down, though there was a point when his fans were boycotting the paper. The Sun was in deep trouble and were trying their best to sort things out. It took some time and it seems the matter was finally settled.
Hopefully, this incident is not that serious and things get sorted out quickly. We want to see Ben Stokes play in the upcoming edition of the IPL for sure. He is a top player and loved by his fans in India too. It will be good to see some of the foreign players back. The pandemic has really hurt all sports including cricket. Hopefully, things can improve soon.
