Stokes saga humiliates McCullum and exposes England’s captaincy succession crisis | Mark Ramprakash

<p>With Stokes now 35, the ECB needs to identify rising talents with the capacity to be serious people, not just young men having fun with their mates</p><p>If we learned one thing at the Oval last week, it is that this England team really needs Ben Stokes. So it came as a relief when, a couple of hours after the second Test against New Zealand <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jun/21/cricket-england-new-zealand-second-test-day-five-report">ended in heavy defeat</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jun/21/cricket-ben-stokes-gus-atkinson-withdrawn-county-matches-ecb-england">he and Gus Atkinson were exonerated</a> by the England and Wales Cricket Board after an investigation into their celebrations following victory in the first Test. But the governing body found itself in a process with no perfect outcome, and if the one it has ended up with is not the disaster it flirted with a week ago when Stokes was apparently considering retirement, it is still embarrassing.</p><p>Its handling of the incident was understandable, given the public drunkenness that marked <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/dec/10/england-cricket-team-ben-stokes-mid-ashes-beach-break-australia">the players’ trip to Noosa</a> during the Ashes, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jan/08/harry-brook-scuffle-bouncer-before-ashes-deepens-crisis-around-england-team-cricket">Harry Brook’s altercation with a nightclub bouncer</a> in Wellington before that. There was a real lack of transparency around Brook’s incident, which was not revealed to the public until a newspaper discovered and reported it, and that led to a kneejerk reaction when the ECB thought there had been a repeat. All three incidents could have been handled better – it just keeps finding different ways of getting it wrong. At least no one can accuse it of not taking