| LV= County Championship Division Two, New Road, Worcester (day two) |
| Durham 580-6 dec: Stokes 161, Bedingham 135, Dickson 104; Gibbon 2-94 |
| Worcestershire: Yet to bat |
| Worcestershire 1 pts, Durham 5 pts |
| Scorecard |
Ben Stokes hit a County Championship record 17 sixes in smashing 161 on his first Durham appearance of the summer at Worcestershire.
Stokes raced to his ton in 64 balls, sharing 220 for the fifth wicket with David Bedingham (135).
The England Test captain brought up his century – the fastest in first-class cricket by a Durham player – with five successive sixes off Josh Baker.
Stokes finally fell after lunch as Durham declared on 580-6.
He came to the crease early on the second morning when Scott Borthwick was trapped leg before by Ben Gibbon and, after a steady start, produced an awesome display of power hitting.
The all-rounder went to his hundred with his 10th six, the last five of which came from the first five balls of an over by slow left-armer Baker.
The final ball of the over narrowly failed to clear the ropes and went for four as 34 runs were taken off it and he was 147 not out at lunch.
It is the second time Stokes has hit five consecutive sixes in a County Championship game, having also performed the feat against Hampshire in 2011.
In reaching his century off 64 balls the 30-year-old beat the previous fastest first-class ton in Durham’s 30-year history, eclipsing Paul Collingwood’s previous mark of 75 deliveries set at Taunton in 2005.
Stokes smashed 15 sixes in total before the interval at New Road, as well as eight fours, as he cruised past the score of Bedingham, who resumed the day unbeaten on 69, and helped Durham secure maximum batting points.
He added two more sixes early in the afternoon session to pass the 16 hit in a first-class county game by Andrew Symonds for Gloucestershire against Glamorgan in 1995 and Graham Napier for Essex against Surrey in 2011.
Stokes is playing in the County Championship for the first time since July last year when he was unable to finish Durham’s game with Warwickshire after being called up to captain England in their one-day international series against Pakistan when an entirely new 18-man squad had to be named because of a Covid outbreak.
He is set to lead England for the first time since being appointed to succeed Joe Root as Test captain in next month’s three-match series against New Zealand.
