Why does Ben Stokes get hit in the nuts so often?

Stokes is clearly the sort of player that gets hit in the groin more than other players. There is so much proof of this, we can no longer deny the evidence right in front of our watery eyes.

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Test match red is the colour of a cricket ball. A cherry on the bat - hopefully near the centre of the blade - is like lipstick on the collar for cricketers. It’s a mark that they’ve achieved something. Even young bowlers love to drag the ball on their trousers to get the red pattern on them to show how much they’ve helped rub one out for their team.

Cricketers love these red marks.

But that is not what we see with Ben Stokes. The red cherry on his trousers is closer to his overall fruit bowl. It signifies that again he’s been struck, as he might put it, right in the dick.

Ben Stokes gets hit in the dick a lot. Today, we go balls deep on that topic.

We have no official numbers for how often someone gets hit in nuts. ESPNcricinfo and NV Play don’t keep stats on this. Even CricViz don’t have DickViz (trademark Charlie Reynolds) stats. Andy Zaltzman does write down “nuts” in his notes when a player is hit. But he has a lot of notes, and his nut notes are not always searchable on a database.

So we have no actual number on how many times a player is hit in the groin. We know that there was a period when Joe Root was struck there quite a lot. Liam Livingstone and Alex Hales, certainly more than their fair share. So, maybe it’s an England thing.

But without the actual stats, it’s not easy to work out.

The only way to make this official was to head to our Discord channel and put up a poll, and 82% of the people think Ben Stokes gets hit more in the groin than any other player. This is now scientifically accurate, peer-reviewed. The English captain is the most likely to be struck in the balls of any modern cricketer.

It is not really an easy thing to search on, partly because in the modern world we have so many different terms for the male genitalia. Not to mention the specifics: technically anyone struck there has been hit in the groin, the box, the testicles and the penis.

ChatGPT really struggled with the query. And you can understand why. This is not the easiest thing to categorise.

But if you search, you can find some - if not all - of the times that the allrounder has been struck on middle stump. Last week, Ben’s Balls were in the news again, and so was his catchphrase of “in the dick”, which he sometimes repeats just to make sure the stump cam operator can’t mute them all.

It’s not that he let us know only verbally. While Stokes is hit in a very particular part of his anatomy, it is actually his entire body that shows the pain. He can quite often be found just completely spreadeagled after one of these blows. He often looks completely knackered.

Letting the entire world be in no doubt that yet again he’s been hit in the unmentionables, and yet again, it hurts. He really does, for want of a better term, milk it.

As you can see, this also happens in the nets. This Cricket Australia video shows he is very sick and tired of the entire thing.

Stokes is clearly the sort of player that gets hit in the groin more than other players. There is so much proof of this, we can no longer deny the evidence right in front of our watery eyes.

Noted Nutologist, Vithushan Ehantharajah of Cricinfo even suggested that one of the reasons Stokes struggles so much is that he doesn’t wear a box, instead going with a less protective option.

I had to check this, so I contacted the ECB Media Manager Danny Reuben, who assured me that Ben Stokes does wear a box (this did actually happen).

What kind of box, no one was completely sure. But he definitely has something in there, he’s not freeballin’.

Stokes is clearly not the only player who has this issue. Faf du Plessis had a special box that we know about because Cricket South Africa made an entire video about it. “For those who don't know, I'm one of the guys that get hit in the nuts, probably the most in the world.” Quite a claim, but how did he overcome it?

Faf du Plessis invented his own, SUPER BOX.

His uber protector aside, he and Stokes are not very similar batters other than the obvious fact they stand on different sides of the bat. The South African is more technically correct, while Stokes has his own method. Many of du Plessis’ nut shots are on the front foot, leaning in to defend and being beaten by the extra bounce. Stokes has that too, but the main one for him is on the backfoot, which is rarer.

This is because of the way Stokes plays. He will often be bowled on the backfoot by a seamer with a ball that keeps low. That is not an accident, as he’s keeping his pad out the way, because he doesn’t want to be LBW. So his front leg clears out, meaning he is squared up. You’ll often see him get outside edges to straight and even leg side deliveries.

But this leg clearance also means that he’s a front on player, when most batters are side on. His hip is often facing square leg, where a more conventional player would only do this for certain shots. Many players can hurt their groin when pulling.

Stokes is always clearing out this side of his body, so when he misses the ball, his thigh pad is not in the way and there is only a groin protector between him and disaster.

There is more than that, as his bat path also comes from wider than most top six players. It means he is constantly playing across the ball, it is why he can struggle with the deliveries moving away, and can often be trapped on the crease by straight ones. He is rarely ever coming down with a fully straight bat. So other players are going to make contact with the ball directly at them far more often than he will. And there is nothing more straight than your groin.

Also people like to bowl around the wicket to him, and being that he has an open stance, they are kind of aiming the ball right at his balls. Due to the way he bats, whether he means to be or not, he’s actually pointing his dick at the bowler far more than any normal player.

Now, there are other things worth knowing about Stokes that aren’t just technical. He seems to enjoy pain, or handle it at least, better than usual people. He has a little bit of Gordon Greenidge about his cricket. When he is hurt, or limping, you need to watch out. So, does he need a ball to the crackers to focus himself more?

Or, is it simply that he has a bigger playing area? Is he more well-endowed? Or does he have a Santa Sack down there, meaning that the landing zone is engorged beyond that of a standard player?

Sadly, without a DickViz, cricket may never know. But Ben Stokes gets hit in the groin a lot. And we can confirm it is 100% funny every time.

In the dick. In the dick. In the dick…