England’s captain Ben Stokes has been ruled out of the final test of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy due to a shoulder injury.
He was the player of the Match in the third and fourth tests for his all-rounder abilities. Meanwhile, Ollie Pope will take over the captaincy for the fifth test.
Meanwhile, Jofra Archer, Brydon Carse and Liam Dawson has not named in England Playing 11 for the final test.
Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton and Josh Tongue has been named in the squad. Ben Stokes has an extended bowling spell in the fourth test where India batted for 143 overs more than five sessions in their innings to draw the test.
Ben Stokes has bowled a total of 35 overs across both innings and was visibly clutching his right shoulder during the spell.
Speaking at the press conference on the eve of the fifth test, Ben Stokes revealed his extent of the injury and the difficult decision-making process.
“I’ve got a decent tear in one of the muscles that I can’t pronounce because I don’t know how to say it. It took as long as we could to make that decision around that. Obviously, a bit of emotion going into this kind of stuff when you find out what you’ve done.”
“I came down here this morning to give myself every chance. Obviously, just to play as a batter, bowling was ruled out as soon as we got the scan results.”
“But, yeah, I think you need that time chatting with the medical team, Baz [Brendon McCullum], and then almost just 20 minutes to myself out there in the middle of the morning just to really be clear around the decision that we made.”
Gutted for the skipper, who misses out on our final Test of the summer 🙏 pic.twitter.com/LgtwXPqntE
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) July 30, 2025
“Yeah, it’s one of those where you’re weighing up the risk reward. The risk was way too high for damaging this any further than it currently is. I wouldn’t expect to put anyone else, any of my other players at risk with an injury like this,” said Stokes.
Ben Stokes acknowledged the priortizing long-term fitness said over short-term gains. “When I’m out on the field, I play to win. I give absolutely everything that I possibly can.”
“I feel like there’s a moment in a game where I need to put everything that I’m feeling aside and I’ll do that. Because it’s how much this team means to me, it’s how much playing for England means to me, it’s how much winning means to me.”
“But there’s absolutely nothing that I could have done before. Being a professional sportsman, injuries is part of this game and I can’t do anything about that,” he added.
Ben Stokes will now focus on rehabilitation ahead of the Ashes series beginning in November.
“I’ve got to start rehabbing now and obviously focus on what we’ve got coming up in the winter. I’m obviously very disappointed but I just needed a bit more time than I normally would give to these kinds of things to make a decision.”
“It helps that we’ve got a really good strong squad to be able to select from to put a team out there that we think can get us a win this week,” he added.
The final match of the five match series will be played between July 31 and August 04 at The Oval.
