{"id":47831,"date":"2026-04-15T15:04:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T15:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=47831"},"modified":"2026-04-15T15:04:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T15:04:27","slug":"stokes-targets-durham-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=47831","title":{"rendered":"Stokes targets Durham comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Ben Stokes plans to play a maximum of three first-class matches before England\u2019s Test series against New Zealand in June as he continues his recovery from serious facial injuries.<br \/>\nStokes, who oversaw England\u2019s 4-1 Ashes defeat in Australia, underwent surgery in February after being struck by a ball in the Durham nets. He had initially planned to play a block of County Championship fixtures in April and May after recovering from a groin injury sustained at the SCG in January, but his comeback has been delayed.<br \/>\nHe now intends to play two four-day matches for Durham against Worcestershire on May 8 and Kent on May 15 and will also consider playing for England Lions in a first-class match against South Africa A at Arundel on May 22 before linking up with England for the first Test against New Zealand at Lord\u2019s on June 4.<br \/>\nIn a pre-recorded interview with the ECB\u2019s in-house media team released on Wednesday Stokes described his facial injuries as a \u201cfreak incident\u201d and said they could easily have been far worse.<br \/>\n\u201cI copped one straight in the face,\u201d he said. \u201c[It was] pretty nasty, but funnily [enough], probably the best result of a bad situation, to be honest.<br \/>\n\u201cA couple of inches one way or the other and I might not be here doing this interview if I didn\u2019t turn my head around. All things considered, although I had pretty major facial surgery to sort it out\u2026 I\u2019ve got quite lucky, so I\u2019m pretty thankful for that.\u201d He added: \u201cIt was a pretty scary situation to be in, but thankfully I\u2019m still here and everything\u2019s alright.\u201d<br \/>\nStokes said that the blow had set his return back by \u201cabout a month [to] five weeks\u201d and that his potential Lions appearance would depend on \u201chow I feel\u201d and his workload for Durham.<br \/>\n\u201cIf I can get through the loads that I want to get through and feel pretty good out in the middle, then hopefully I\u2019ll be good to go for the summer,\u201d he said.<br \/>\nStokes used the same interview to defend his relationship with England coach Brendon McCullum, but said that his team had no choice but to \u201ctake a few bullets\u201d after their performance bordered on \u201cunacceptable\u201d in Australia.<br \/>\nEngland will closely monitor his progress over the coming weeks as they prepare for the Test series against New Zealand.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Stokes plans to play a maximum of three first-class matches before England\u2019s Test series against New Zealand in June as he continues his recovery from serious facial injuries. Stokes, who oversaw England\u2019s 4-1 Ashes defeat in Australia, underwent surgery in February after being struck by a ball in the Durham nets. He had initially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}