Ben Stokes will miss first month of season as he continues recovery

England captain Ben Stokes is set to miss the first month of the county season as he continues his recovery from the facial injuries he sustained in a training accident.

Stokes suffered a broken cheekbone, cuts and bruising last month after being felled by a ball struck by academy prospect Robbie Bowman in the nets at Chester-le-Street.

He declared his subsequent surgery a success on social media but the rehabilitation process means he has had to delay his return to action.

Stokes, who has not played since the final game of England’s Ashes thrashing in January, was originally hoping to make his comeback against Kent in the first round of the Rothesay County Championship fixtures next week.

But that will no longer be possible and he looks likely to sit out the first four matches of the summer before preparing for the New Zealand Test series by facing Worcestershire and Kent in May.

“He was going to play the first game, he’s been training so hard to be ready. But he won’t play in that obviously, we have to wait for the specialists to clear him,” said Durham coach Ryan Campbell.

“Unfortunately it’s made a change, the accidental bump. He is pencilled in for Worcester and Kent and I think it will just be those two, to be honest. He has got to recover from the facial injuries and then have to build up again. It is a long old summer and he will have that mapped out but is keen and ready to go.”

Campbell believes Stokes was lucky not to be in an even worse state after the nature of the blow and is still working through the after effects of the grisly incident.

“It was so, so much worse than you’d think. The ball was hit so hard, we are just lucky he got away with it,” he said.

“The initial whack was bad. If it hits him in the eye, it could have been different. That could have been horrific. His cheekbone worked the way it is supposed to: it caved in and looked after the rest of him.

“It is a bit scary but a reminder to all of us to keep our eye on the ball, because of that incident you can see all of the coaches are on edge. I noticed for Ben if someone hits one hard, I have seen him flinch which I hadn’t seen before but that is just going through a bad situation. You have got to come out of the other end.”

When Stokes does get the whites on, Durham expect to see the benefit of a difficult winter that took his tenure as England skipper hit new lows as Australia eased to a 4-1 win.

“He has a lot to prove. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know the Ashes didn’t go so well,” said Campbell.

“He is a proud man who wants England to be the best team in the world. I have no doubt the Ashes knocked him for six. He was gutted but now he has taken a breath.

“He is going to train his arse of and is going to come back as the best all rounder in the world that we know he can be. It is exciting for England to see what he is putting himself through to get ready because that boy can play.”

Campbell also revealed Stokes has agreed to play in this season’s Metro Bank One-Day Cup, having opted out of The Hundred. Stokes has not played a List A match since the 2023 World Cup but intends to use the tournament to build fitness ahead of the second Test assignment of the summer against Pakistan.