Kuldeep Yadav puts Ben Stokes out of his misery, guides Yorkshire to a thumping win in the One-Day Cup

The Indian spinner returned extraordinary figures of 2/23 in his quota of 10 overs and put the recently retired Stokes out of his misery. Stokes had scoffed 38 balls for his 12 runs when Kuldeep had him caught by George Hill. Later, Kuldeep, who didn’t get a single game in the three ODIs against England last month and as a result went out of the top-10 in the ICC rankings for bowlers, dispatched Colin Ackermann for 26 to make further inroads. Durham were eventually bowled out for 165 in the 49th over, after which Yorkshire’s batters did the rest for a seven-wicket victory, even though they lost both their openers early on.

Key also said that if Stokes decided to return, he wouldn’t have any issues with it. He has no problems with the way the allrounder called it quits in late June, in the middle of an international match that took the spotlight and importance completely away from the contest. “No, not at all. Not as far as I'm concerned.”

Australia coach Andrew McDonald has a similar line of thinking on Stokes. “I think the fairytale would be that he comes back out of retirement and takes on one more Ashes and builds a lot of hype on the way in,” he told radio station SEN a couple of days ago.

"If you're looking at promoting that series, that's probably the angle that you would want, that he comes out of retirement.

"To me, he's still got a lot of good cricket left in him. It'll be a fascinating watch. I think that whoever the new head coach that comes in potentially has a conversation with him.

"We don't know why Ben left. I don't think there's been anything on the record around the definitive reason as to why. He may have just called it a day on Test cricket, and that's it, so there might be a full stop there,” he added.

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