Daily Times

LONDON (Agencies): Ben Stokes is the subject of a new documentary created with Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes focusing on the peaks and troughs of his action-packed cricket career. The all-rounder, announced as Joe Root’s successor as England Test captain last month, will star in Prime Video’s “Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes”. The 30-year-old will talk about his man-of-the-match performance in the 2019 World Cup final and his stunning century the following month to secure a remarkable one-wicket victory over Australia in an Ashes Test at Headingley. The film will also delve into Stokes’s life off the field, including his battles with mental health issues and a late-night fracas outside a nightclub in 2017 that threatened his career before he was cleared of a charge of affray. Stokes said the aim of the documentary was to show another side to his character.

“One thing I want to try and do with this is to get a side across to people that is quite tough to do in the image that we give across on TV,” he said Thursday. “Certain aspects in the media you have to do in a certain way, to come across in a certain way, to please a certain amount of people whereas for this I don’t feel like I’m having to do that.” Mendes, a successful schoolboy and club cricketer, said: “There are a lot of mysteries surrounding Ben Stokes, and a lot of questions I wanted to ask. To my amazement, he answered them all.” The 56-year-old Englishman, who won a best director Oscar for his 1999 debut movie “American Beauty”, added: “I was always a fan of Ben as a cricketer — how can you not be, if you are a lover of sport at the highest level? But now my admiration extends well beyond the boundaries of cricket.” Stokes’s first match as permanent England skipper will be against New Zealand in the opening Test of a three-match series starting at Lord’s on June 2.