England all-rounder Ben Stokes was an emotional person when he notch a well deserved ton against West Indies in the ongoing Test at the Kensington Oval, Bridgetown. Through the course of an explosive knock that included 11 boundaries and six sixes, Stokes became the fifth player in Test cricket history to have scored 5000 runs with the bat and taken 150 wickets. The 30-year-old joined Gary Sobers, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, and Jacques Kallis in the rare list of players to have achieved the same.
As he reached the three-figure mark, Stokes looked up to the sky and gave a crooked finger salute to his late father, who had the same finger amputated after incurring multiple dislocations during a career as a New Zealand rugby international. Ged died of brain cancer in 2020 and Stokes subsequently took a mental health break from the game last year while recovering from a broken finger. "It’s a very special feeling. I don’t like to speak selfishly but it was nice out there to look up to the sky and say ‘cheers’."Of the hundreds, I’ve got that’s personally one of the more memorable ones because of everything that’s gone on over the last 18 months or two years. It was great. In India last year I got 99 and it was a bit of a dagger in the heart so it was nice to get there and remember him that way," said Stokes as quoted by BT Sport.Talking about the match, England put up a massive first innings score of 507 on the board with skipper Joe Root leading way courtesy of a sublime knock of 153. West Indies went into stumps on Day 2 at a score of 71/1.
