When a cricketer turned science into an ass

Aug 18, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are things in life we will never know the real meaning of. How English cricketer, Ben Stokes, got off from his assault charges (he wasn’t charged with assault but “affray’) will remain one of the deepest mysteries in the world of sports.
In the developed world, there are surveillance cameras everywhere. There are on the street posts and outside homes, places of entertainment and business buildings. The cameras showed Stokes beating up people, one of whom had his eye socket badly damaged. The video was there for the world to see. The online newspapers carried the video.
In a world of the ubiquitous surveillance camera, how did Stokes get off?
The most compelling evidence in a court of law is when a judge or a magistrate looks at a video and sees the accused stabbing or shooting or assaulting someone, or a thief entering a store and robbing the proprietor. It has to be a sad day for science when a jury can watch at a tape and see a drunken hooligan in a vicious assault on others, yet find him not guilty. The world is in a bad shape, but more so, Homo sapiens. After the Stokes acquittal, can the courts ever rely on video evidence again?
Here is the horrific dimension of his release. Soon after, he was selected for the third game in the current test series against India. Stokes does not belong to the world of international sports at the highest level. According to the BBC, this man’s salary from his contract with English cricket is 750,000 pounds a year. So he is back on the job after a night of mayhem in which he used loud violence on his victims.
Stokes is a football hooligan. Look at his indiscretions. Way back in 2013, he was sent home from Australia for misconduct. In 2016, he was charged four times for drunken driving. English cricket authorities in 2017 reprimanded him for an outburst of staccato expletives hurled at West Indian test players. Now read this – Ben Stokes was again reprimanded for imitating a disabled boy, caught on video. Imagine an international sports star did that.
Stokes is now back in business. But wait! Here is the part that shows us that something about race in this world is going to bring down 21st century civilization. Stokes has been selected to play in the Australian Big Bash. This was before his night of mayhem. But do you think the Australians would frown on him the way they did a Black cricket star – Chris Gayle?
Given the Australian mentality, they would find nothing weird about a night fight in which a cricketer almost killed his victims. Australians would find Ben Stokes a cool guy. That is the Australian way of life. Stokes will play in the Big Bash, but not Gayle. Gayle was not selected in 2017. What was this terrible crime of Gayle? In an interview with a female, Australian reporter, he went beyond protocol, told her, he finds her eyes beautiful and invited her for a drink.
I don’t believe a huge international superstar like Gayle should disrespect a woman like that. Disrespect for female sports reporters by chauvinistic make athletes must stop. When asked by an Antiguan female reporter how the pitch feels, Gayle told her while laughing, that he doesn’t know, because he hasn’t felt her pitch as yet. Surely that crossed the line.
But comparing the action of Stokes and Gayle would be an act of dishonesty. There can be no comparison. Stokes is a violent man. He is a serial defender. Gayle simply has to be advised on how he answers female reporters. I doubt Gayle will be employed by Big Bash teams. Stokes will play. Gayle is Black. And this we must not forget. If a Black cricketer from the English test team had been violating international sporting ethics since 2013, you think he would still be in the team?
The recall of Ben Stokes to the English test team a day after he was wrongly freed of his charges is simply another indication of the type of world we live in. The English knocked into the heads of cricket fans over a hundred years ago that of all the different types of sports in the world, cricket is a mannerly game, in which the virtue of good behaviour is its chief characteristic. The Australians damaged that angelic image decades and decades ago. They are still doing it. After Ben Stokes, science and cricket have become asses, just like the law.

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