Ben Stokes absent as England faces New Zealand amid team chaos

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“There’s been a bit of chaos,” England coach Brendon McCullum said with a forced smile and a tone of grim understatement after a week that all involved would wish to forget. As in politics, seven days can be a long time in cricket but one can scarcely remember a situation quite as mundane yet manic, rumbling on as it has in the time since a midnight curfew was broken in the hours that followed England’s first Test victory at Lord’s. To think that the mid-tour retirement of New Zealand’s greatest ever batter has been rendered a mere footnote – if he was seeking to avoid undue fuss or favour, then Kane Williamson has once again displayed an intuitive sense of timing.