England captain Ben Stokes has given an update on his right shoulder injury, which ruled him out of the fifth and final Test against India at The Oval. Expressing his disappointment, he also revealed he had a muscle tear and even explored the chance to play purely as a batter, too, but that didn’t help.

While speaking to the press on Wednesday, July 30, Stokes said, as quoted by Sky Sports: “I am obviously disappointed. I have got a decent tear in one of the muscles I can’t pronounce. We took as long as we could to make the decision around that. Obviously, there is a bit of emotion that goes into this stuff when you find out what you have done. I came down here this morning to give myself every chance to play just as a batter.”

“I think you need that time chatting with the medical team, Baz (McCullum), then 20 minutes with myself to really be clear around the decision that we made. It is one of those of weighing up the risk and reward and the risk was way too high for the damage. I wouldn’t expect to put any of my players at risk with an injury like this so I will start rehabbing now and focus on what we have got coming up in the winter,” he shared.

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He further opened up on his workload after the five-match Test series, saying that he was going to rest until the winter after the Oval Test as well. He also applauded the depth of the England squad, saying that he was pleased with the players as well.

“Once the series was done, I was feet up anyway, so it doesn’t make too much difference from what I had at the end of the series until the winter anyway. We are still able to field an 11 that is going to give us a very good chance of winning this game and winning the series. That is the benefit of having a very strong squad. We have some good cricketers to choose from when we find ourselves in a situation like this. So, let’s put full concentration on the 11 we have got out there this week,” he said.

“We are very confident we have got the ability to win this game and the series. There was a lot more hype and pressure on his shoulders when he (Bethell) got given the chance to bat at no 3 in New Zealand and he handled that pretty well. I think being the type of player that he is where he plays all three formats probably allows him to be a bit more versatile with where he bats in the order,” Ben Stokes concluded.