Ben Stokes has admitted that he considered walking away from cricket during his break from the game in 2021.

Stokes stepped back from cricket last July to “prioritise his mental wellbeing”, eventually returning to play in the 2021/22 Ashes series.

Upon the announcement of his return last year, Stokes admitted in his newspaper column that he’d been “in a real dark place and having some difficult thoughts”.

Ahead of the release of Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes, a documentary about the England Test captain, Stokes spoke to the Wisden Cricket Weekly Podcast.

Asked about comments from Stuart Broad, who tells the documentary that he could’ve seen Stokes never playing again, he said: “One of the standout things for me watching it back for the first time, the documentary, was actually hearing one of my friends say what I was thinking without me actually saying that to anybody.

“I never mentioned it to anybody outside of my circle. But the fact that I was giving off those vibes to someone without telling them, that to me was like, ‘Jesus Christ, that was bad’. At some stage, I was happy, I was just like, ‘I might not play again, we’ll just see how we go’. But then to see Broady come out and really seriously say, ‘I could see him not playing again’ – for me, that was a really powerful scene.”

Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes launches on Prime Video on August 26.