Ben Stokes is a busy cricketer; if he is not busy with bat and ball, he is busy with his tongue and as he was not able to use his bat much against Pakistan in the semi-finals, he didn’t mind using his tongue.
Sledging is not considered inappropriate in the modern day cricket and Ben too had some banter with the Pakistani fielders during the semi-final of ICC Champions Trophy 2017. England must have been hopeful till Ben was on the crease but Pakistanis were very clinical in the implementation of their strategy and got England wickets at regular intervals.
Ben scored 34 runs of 64 balls and not even a single boundary was hit by him, which proved that it was completely Pakistan’s day. Ben was indulged in verbal spats with Pakistani fielders throughout his innings but it became ugly when Imad Wasim got involved.
Moeen Ali, the England batsman, mistimed the shot that he played in the last ball of the over and ball went to Imad Wasim who acted as if he was throwing the ball at non-strikers end when Ben was standing. Ben and Imad got engaged in a verbal spat and it increased to such an extent that Umpires had to ask Sarfaraz to calm Imad down.
A cricket fan took this banter to Twitter and wrote, “I know we gave you abuse from the stands yesterday.. It worked quiet well as you were frustrated.. #intelligent #pakistan”
@benstokes38 i know we gave you abuse from the stands yesterday.. It worked quiet well as you were frustrated .. #intelligent #pakistan
— Imran khan (@imrankh4n) June 15, 2017
How can Ben Stokes remain silent? He also responded and took the name of the user in his answer, “Nearly as intelligent as you replacing the A in your name with a 4…you’re a bloody genius”
https://twitter.com/benstokes38/status/875452961736056832
As you can see, number “4” written in the Twitter handle of the troller, i.e., @imrankh4n, instead of the letter “a”.
We will really like to see Ben more active on the play ground rather than on social media but it was definitely a good response! What do you say?