England defeated New Zealand by 181 runs in the third ODI of the four-match series to take an unassailable 2-1 lead. Ben Stokes was the hero for the hosts smashing a record-breaking 182 off just 124 with 15 fours and nine sixes to his name. It is also the highest individual score for England in ODI cricket. Stokes went past Jason Roy who held this record with a knock of 180.
Stokes doesn't think too much about records and also conceded that he was unaware of the same until the announcement was made. Moreover, he also revealed that he apologised to Roy after returning to dressing room even as the latter congratulated him. "I apologized to Jason [Roy] upstairs. He said 'well done' and I said 'sorry'. I don't think there was too much to it. He'll be pretty happy he's seen one of his teammates, who he's played a lot of cricket with, take that off him. But individual stuff like that I'm not too fussed about. I didn't really know I'd done it until the bloke on the tannoy started announcing it and then I got out next ball. It was his fault!" Stokes said after the match.
Before this series, Stokes hadn't played ODI cricket for almost a year and had also retired from the format in 2022 citing hectic international schedule as one of the reasons. He came out to bat in the third over of the innings with England in trouble at 13/2 and batted till 47th over before getting out. Opening up about the same, the 32-year-old admitted realising the fact there is a lot of time in ODI cricket. "You have way more time than you think. In terms of game awareness and game smartness, today was good for that.
"There were a couple of times I had to check myself because I looked up and there were still 23-24 overs left - that's how one-day cricket can go. The thing that I came to realize throughout the innings was how much time there actually is. There were a couple of stages where I was scoring quite freely and felt like I wanted to keep on going and going and going, but realizing how many overs I had was the big thing for me," Stokes further added.
