England's Test captain Ben Stokes has come out of ODI retirement to be included in England's squad for the upcoming Cricket World Cup.
Stokes, who won the Man of the Match Award when England won the 2019 World Cup has been managing the amount of cricket he plays due to a knee issue. But he was reportedly contacted by ODI skipper Jos Butler and asked if he would reverse his decision to retire. It is a similar tactic to that employed by Stokes himself, when he called Moeen Ali ahead of the Ashes to ask him to reverse his retirement decision.
Stokes has been included in a squad of 15 who will tackle the World Cup as well as a warm-up series against New Zealand. The squad is missing batsmen Harry Brook and Ben Duckett and bowler Jofra Archer who will not be fit in time to make the tournament. Young Surrey paceman Gus Atkinson has been called up.
England will open their World Campaign against New Zealand – a repeat of the 2019 final – in Ahmedabad on 5 October.
Commenting on the return of Stokes to the ODI format selector Luke Wright said: “It wasn’t really a case of changing his mind. He was always interested in coming back.
“It wasn’t a case of needing to beg him or anything like that, he was always keen, so it was actually fairly straightforward.
“Once his body was in a good place and he’d had a rest, he was really keen to play.”
The full England World Cup squad is: Jos Buttler (captain), Moeen Ali, Gus Atkinson, Jonny Bairstow, Sam Curran, Liam Livingstone, Dawid Malan, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, Reece Topley, David Willey, Mark Wood, Chris Woakes.
