The current England Test skipper Ben Stokes opened up more on the half-a-year break he’d taken from the game in 2021 to tend to his mental health.
There is also a documentary that highlighted his mental health issues, Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes, which was released in August 2022.
Stokes was amongst the few high-profile international cricketers who have taken a break from top-level international cricket due to mental health issues. The likes of Australian pair Glenn Maxwell and Meg Lanning have also taken breaks due to various reasons.
“I was almost putting emotions and feelings into a glass bottle. The glass bottle got too full and exploded and then everything got a bit too much for me at that time,” the 31-year-old spoke about his mental health in an appearance on Red Bull’s Mind Set Win podcast as reported by mirror.co.uk.
The passing away of his father Gerard Stokes affected Ben Stokes in a huge way.
“Looking back it was a buildup of almost compressing emotions or feelings and not being comfortable in speaking about them to anybody. I was by myself in a hotel room where the team were staying, it was very early in the morning and things started happening that had never happened to me before,” Ben Stokes, England’s 2019 World Cup hero said.
“It’s very hard to look back on that specific moment but what I do know and I’ll openly say is that I wasn’t very good at talking to people before that fateful day. Whereas I’m a lot better now at doing that and I’m a lot more open to speaking to the right people who I feel comfortable to speaking about”
Ben Stokes gave a glorious recommendation of the person he went to see for his mental health, adding that having someone to open up with was of great help.
“The gentleman I ended up speaking to came as highly recommended, so I had a lot of long, really good face-to-face chats with him. It was great to be able to go in and speak to someone for a couple of hours and he actually got it.
“He could understand it and then explain to me what was going on by listening to the things I was telling him because although it’s great being able to open up to people who are close to you just for them to listen, but it’s even better to be able to do the same thing with someone who can almost explain everything to you so you get an understanding of what’s going on,” he further asserted.
Upon returning, Ben Stokes has revolutionized Test cricket along with head coach Brendon McCullum, the pair working wonders with their Bazball formula.
