Essex and England have provided cricket with plenty of positive stories, yet Ben Stokes has overshadowed it all

Essex romped to the championship before England wrapped up the ODI series with Windies

Stokes has been suspended indefinitely (Getty)

Yesterday some excellent things happened in English cricket.

At the Oval, Jason Roy returned to form after a miserable international summer, setting England on course to victory against the West Indies. The win was assured by some big hitting from Moeen Ali, who has had success with both bat and ball this season. With two ODIs left in the series, England have an unassailable 3-0 lead.

In Chelmsford, Essex crushed Yorkshire, bowling out the northerners for just 74 in their second innings. Having already been crowned champions for the first time since 1992, Essex ensured that they finished the season unbeaten in the four-day competition, with 10 wins.

And lo and behold, Thursday morning there was a cricketer making the front pages. For all the wrong reasons…

Ben Stokes’s arrest this week on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm cast an immediate shadow over the announcement of England’s winter Ashes squad. After this afternoon's announcement of his suspension, he appears not to be a part of it for the time being. But however things pan out in terms of the police investigation and the ECB’s own disciplinary procedures - and whether or not Stokes makes the plane down under - the preparations for the upcoming confrontation with Australia are going to be compromised. Glenn McGrath must be straining at the leash to give his two penn’orth.

Still, if England will be disadvantaged by the additional scrutiny, I can’t help but feel more sympathy for the Essex players whose crowning achievement this year has been completely eclipsed by the focus on Stokes.

Essex won the league by a whopping 72 points (Getty)

Let’s not forget that the side head-quartered in Chelmsford only won promotion to the Championship’s first division at the end of last season – after years of rampant mediocrity in the second tier. Few commentators gave them much of a thought when it came to predicting this summer’s main contenders. And yet not only have Essex finished at the top of the table, they have been utterly dominant. To finish 72 points ahead of their nearest rival, Lancashire, is a stunning accomplishment.

The heroes of Essex’s season are hardly household names. Alastair Cook is their one bona fide star and is surely one of the least demonstrative England cricketers to have ever played the game. Tom Westley finally broke through this summer and gained international honours – for all the good that it’s done him. Beyond that, Essex have combined some hard-bitten pros (Bopara, Foster, ten Doeschate) with youthful exuberance (Dan Lawrence, Jamie Porter and Sam Cook to name just three), and thrown in a wily Kolpak signing in Simon Harmer.

Porter and Harmer alone have taken 147 wickets between them. Nobody else in the division has taken more than 60. These are the people whose efforts should be front page news.

England timed their run chase to perfection against West Indies (Getty)

The truth is, though, the days when county champions hit the headlines may simply be over. The demand for four-day cricket is an uneasy fit with modern working patterns – and the scheduling of almost no Championship cricket at weekends is an indicator that county chairman don’t believe they will attract bigger crowds on a Saturday. The expansion of the T20 format will push first class cricket further to the margins.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the bish, bash, bosh of the game’s shortest format. I also think Ben Stokes is a brilliant cricketer. But there are dozens of high quality players who ply their trade around the country, often under the gaze of grey skies, three spectators and a forlorn ice-cream seller. They deserve to be lauded – not forgotten amidst the hullaballoo of an alleged nightclub fracas.