Durham

Stokes’ future as Test captain is uncertain with England head coach Brendon McCullum not offering any guarantees when he faced the media on Monday.

But Stokes has the full backing of Australian Campbell, who has been unimpressed at how his player has been treated since news of the incident in a London nightclub emerged last week.

“Ben knows he made a mistake and broke the curfew, but some of the reaction has been a little over,” Campbell added.

“I’m a bit old school, I like a beer after a game of cricket if you’ve got 10 days off but I’m not the coach, I don’t run that system.”

Stokes played two county games for Durham in the run-up to the New Zealand series and Campbell has already suggested he has a “75% chance” of featuring against Northants.

With his availability for the third Test at Trent Bridge, starting on 25 June, uncertain, the four-day Championship game could be Stokes’ last red-ball cricket before the Test series with Pakistan in mid-August.

“Ben is a competitor and he loves to play and he wants to play,” Campbell said. “He put his hand up and said he made a mistake.

“From what I’ve seen, he’s in good spirits, he’s back in training, working hard and the rest will take care of itself.”

On the day he learned he would be England’s new opener, Emilio Gay drove from Durham to Bedford to tell his parents about his first international call-up.

The 26-year-old Durham batter received a phone call at 08:00 BST from his county director of cricket and new England national selector Marcus North, telling the left-hander he is in the squad to play New Zealand at Lord’s on 4 June.

“He actually kind of woke me up,” Gay told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Instead of then calling his parents to relay the news, Gay decided to jump in the car as part of his journey to the County Championship game against Kent at Beckenham on Friday.

“I didn’t really want to ring them, because we’ve been through so much,” said Gay. “I thought I’ve got to be there to tell them. I drove back to Bedford.

“My brother videoed it and it was a moment I’ll never forget. It was a really good day.”

Gay’s mother is Italian, which is how he qualified to play three T20 internationals for Italy last year.

His father’s family hail from Grenada and it was a trip to the Caribbean in 2007, around the time West Indies hosted the World Cup, that sparked Gay’s love of cricket. He even got a signed shirt from former Windies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo.

“I fell in love with the game through my dad’s family roots in the Caribbean,” said Gay.

“That’s how I really got into it properly at seven years old, and from there it built and built. One day I dreamed of getting called up to play for England and that day came today.”

Just like Sir Alastair Cook, the most successful opener ever to play for England, Gay is a former pupil of Bedford School.

He began his professional career at Northamptonshire and moved to Durham last season. A specialist opener by trade, he usually bats at three for the north-east county.

Though Gay is one of two uncapped batters in the England squad for the first Test against New Zealand, alongside Somerset’s James Rew, director of cricket Rob Key has confirmed it will be Gay opening at Lord’s against the Black Caps.

He will take the place of Zak Crawley, who has been dropped following the 4-1 Ashes defeat in Australia.

Crawley’s omission has been expected for some time, with Gay’s three centuries at the beginning of the new County Championship season putting him in the spotlight.