England Test captain Ben Stokes revealed that his Durham house was burgled on October 17 when his family was inside and he was on tour to Pakistan. Stokes took to social media to make a public appeal to get the burglars found while thanking the police to have helped him and his family thus far now and when he was in Pakistan while mentioning that the incident has affected his family's emotional and mental state since his wife and his children were in the house when the incident took place.
"APPEAL. On the evening of Thursday 17th October a number of masked people burgled my home in the Castle Eden area in the North East," Stokes wrote in a long post on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram while sharing pictures of some of the items stolen which included jewellery, his OBE and Christian Dior bags.
"They escaped with jewellery, other valuables and a good deal of personal items. Many of those items have real sentimental value for me and my family. They are irreplaceable. This is an appeal for any help in finding these people who carried out this act."
Stokes was most disappointed with the fact that it happened with his family inside the house but was grateful that no harm was done to any of those three. "By far the worst thing about this crime is that it was carried out whilst my wife and 2 young children were in the house.
"Thankfully, none of my family came to any physical harm. Understandably, however, the experience has had an impact on their emotional and mental state. All we can think about is how much worse this situation could have been."
The England all-rounder went on to state that he released the photographs of the items stolen not to get them back but to be able to help anyone who can identify those burglars through them. "Although we have lost cherished possessions, to be clear, my sole motivation in sharing these photographs is not the recovery of material items. It is to catch the people who did this," Stokes further added while pleading to help him find out who did it.
The fans wished Stokes and his family love and safety and hoped that he and the Durham Police can find the robbers.
Stokes, who missed the first Test against Pakistan in Multan, played the second and the third one in Rawalpindi. The burglary as per the date mentioned by Stokes took place during the second Test. It was a disappointing tour for Stokes and Co as after winning the series opener, England went on to lose the remaining two games to concede the series, their second in Asia this year having lost to India 1-4.
