BUTCH REACTS: Ben Stokes & Gus Atkinson recalled for third NZ Test following incident investigation

The main question I cannot get my head around, the main thing that's confusing me about this whole incident is if everything's fine, if no one did anything wrong aside from being out past their prearranged bedtime, which in itself is being disputed, if Ben Stokes is fit enough to be back captaining England in two days' time, why did England, the ECB, spend a week basically bringing his mental well-being into question and inferring that he was in serious trouble?

I have no idea.

I really don't know.

I mean, look, none of us are privy to the conversations that Brendan, Rob and Ben Stokes have had.

What we do know is that Ben Stokes hasn't said anything.

What we also know is that Ben was fit enough mentally and physically to make himself available to play for Durham at the weekend.

And the other thing that we know for certain is that there was, you know, there was no wrongdoing beyond being out beyond the curfew.

Now, curfew wasn't mentioned in that statement at all.

The statement sort of covered off pretty much anything or any contract that you would have would have contractual obligations in it, not bringing the organisation into disrepute, you know, behaviour, whatever it might be.

Any contract for pretty much any job nowadays, I should imagine, not that I've had very many outside of the game of cricket for the last, well, since I was 17, would have clauses in it like that.

So the curfew, number one, wasn't mentioned.

We also know that there is a pretty hefty dispute as to whether or not the curfew was quite as official as we were led to believe when the story first broke and then subsequently with anything that has come out from the leadership group since.

So that's where we are.

We also know, I think it's safe to say that both Stokes and Atkinson will take their place in the 11 for the decider at Trent Bridge.

And as far as the rest of it goes, now we sit here and you sort of think, well, wow, what a storm has been built up over what appears to be very, very little.

And still the question that I can't escape and that was put to Brendan McCullum by both Ian Ward and Nasser Hussain at the end of the test match was why, when asked whether or not Ben Stokes was still your captain, did you not answer in the affirmative with the obvious caveat that if something untoward or something really bad shows up in the report, then obviously we'd have to review it.

But otherwise, yes, he most definitely is.

And so that's kind of the lingering question from all of the other half answered ones that we've got at the moment that stays with me.

Because we're dealing with relationships between people here, yes, the story in itself might end in the next day or two.

I don't really understand how the effects of this don't more than linger on.

You're basically dealing, talking about how Stokes and McCollum are getting on, how Stokes and Keir are getting on, who's getting on with who.

Does everyone want to be working with each other? For me, I've kind of increasingly, I think I believed them when over the past six months, everyone stuck together after the ashes.

Everyone wanted to still Stokes backs McCullum in, McCullum backs Stokes in.

They wanted to have another crack at this to get things right.

And now I'm kind of looking at it thinking, how healthy is that relationship? Has that relationship been strained for longer than we realize? I know they obviously went their separate ways slightly in the Ashes, but I kinda took it on face value that that was a cricketing dispute.