“I know there was a bit made of Beth batting at three with his inexperience and the lack of first-class cricket batting up the top of the order,” Stokes said.
“But me and Baz (Brendon McCullum) don’t think like that. You’ve got a young lad with so much potential and so much talent, why not let him go out there and expose himself to Test cricket at its toughest.”
Batting four runs away from what would’ve been his maiden Test hundred, Bethell was caught behind by Tom Blundell after he nicked one off Tim Southee.
“As a young lad, I was devastated for him to not get that three figures,” Stokes said. But I walked in and I said to him, ‘it’s only four runs, isn’t it?’
“And his response was, ‘Yeah, but it would have been flair if I smacked that through the covers to bring it up.’ Class. I think he’s proved a lot to a lot of people and proved why we rate him so highly.”
England will now lock horns against New Zealand for the third and final Test in Hamilton, starting December 14.
This post is an official release by the ICC.
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