England all-rounder Ben Stokes returns to New Zealand with dad battling cancer

Ged Stokes, father of the New Zealand-born England cricket star Ben Stokes, has revealed that he is battling with brain cancer. He further explained this as the reason for his son pulling out of the Test series against Pakistan to return home to be with his family.

Ben Stokes left England after the first test in Manchester, and is now undergoing a 14 day quarantine as a precautionary measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic before he can join his family in Christchurch.

Advertisement

Ged, a former New Zealand rugby league international, was hospitalised while in Johannesburg in December when he required an emergency surgery for an internal bleeding in the brain, three days before England’s first Test against South Africa.

Further medical tests on his return to New Zealand found tumours on his brain.

“So, basically brain cancer,” Ged Stokes told the New Zealand Herald in an article published on Saturday.
” How that came about nobody knows but obviously I’ve had a few bangs on my head through my life so that’s probably contributed to it. It would’t have helped.”
Ben Stokes, who played the man-of-the-match role in the 2019 World Cup final to give England a win over New Zealand, said he sensed when his father collapsed in South Africa that it was something serious.
” I was carrying a knee injury in South Africa but I felt my attitude change. What’s a sore knee? I can bowl another over or I can bowl another spell. I decided an injury meant very little compared with what Dad was going through. That has been there since because I felt Dad might not see me play again,” he said.
“Even when I left South Africa to get back home(to England), I had a feeling something else would happen. I felt like I was constantly preparing myself for another phone call, so when it came it wasn’t necessarily a surprise but it didn’t make it any easier.” 
He praised his father, and his experience as a professional rugby league player, for showing him the discipline required to be a professional sportsman.
“He was hard on me, especially as a teenager- 17,18,19, when you’re a bit rebellious– he was tough. But as I got older I realised it was for a good reason. He knew I wanted to be a professional sportsman and he was drilling that into me as I started to make a career in cricket,” Ben said.
“I didn’t realise it back at the time but when I look back I know he was doing it for the right reasons.”
“He used to get me out of bed early to go to the gym with him when I didn’t want to… all that kind of stuff you don’t appreciate at the time but looking back now I do.” 
Ben Stokes is also set to miss the rest of the Pakistan series along with the Australian series following it.