Hit for Six: Mark Butcher on Ben Stokes, Test crowds and snow stopping play

Mark Butcher talks Test match crowds, Ben Stokes' comeback and training with the Royal Marines during pre-season with Surrey in our latest Hit for Six...

The eagerly-anticipated South Africa v Australia Test series began on Thursday, but even with two of the world's top sides going head-to-head, the stands in Durban were largely empty. Is it a concern for Test cricket that such a big clash should draw such a sparse crowd?

Yes, it is. Ever since South Africa were readmitted this has been one most eye-catching series in Test cricket. It's always very closely contested, they are two sides that beat each other on a regular basis away from home which obviously bucks the trend everywhere else.

So for there to be more people in the Sky Sports gallery this morning than there are watching at the ground is a real worry.

To be perfectly honest though, of all the cricket that I have watched out of South Africa, unless England are there, there is very rarely a big crowd at any other of their grounds, with the exception of Cape Town perhaps.

This is not a new phenomenon for Test cricket in South Africa. It is a real shame, but it's nothing new.

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Ben Stokes was back in an England shirt this week for the first time since September. He put in a man-of-the-match display in just his second game back, but how difficult is it for a player to get back up to speed at the highest level after so long out?

That can very much depend on the player. I think for somebody like Ben, he does a lot of hard work but his game is based on feel and instinct, it is less of a problem than for guys who are overly technical or reliant on slightly more metronomic ways of going about things

It is no surprise whatsoever that he was desperate to come back in and kind of pay back his team-mates for the fact that he was missing for a very tough Ashes tour, and I've seen him do it before.

When he was picked up in the IPL for $1.7m, he was under huge pressure and everybody thought he might not have the game to score runs on Indian pitches - he scored hundreds, put in man-of-the-match performances. Any time the stakes are raised against Ben Stokes, for whatever reason, he always seems to come up with the answer.

He's a fabulous cricketer and you just really hope that first and foremost that his career doesn't get interrupted again by this particular incident and also that he learns a huge lesson from it and doesn't have any of this sort of trouble again in his career.

The return of Stokes has seen Alex Hales drop out of the side with Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow preferred at the top of the order. Roy's brilliant 180 in Melbourne aside, neither of them have found much form in ODI cricket this winter. Do you think Hales could be in line for a recall anytime soon?

It's a difficult one, it was always going to be one of the top-order players who dropped out when Stokes came back. The fact it was Hales, I'm guessing it was almost a flip of a coin for the selectors on that one!

I think Roy, over the course of 18 months, deserves his spot there, I have no doubt about that. He was unlucky to have been left out for the semi-final of the Champions Trophy, even though his form hadn't been great in that tournament up until then.

At the minute, Bairstow is the other one that is being preferred and I don't think England will change that until perhaps we get to the back-end of this series, when they might look at it again for this summer.

I certainly don't think, particularly after the performance they put in at Mount Maunangui, that they'll be changing anything.

The ICC World Cup Qualifying tournament begins this weekend with the Windies among the sides battling for a place at next year's World Cup. Is there a danger of the two-time winners failing to qualify?

I'm going out there to work on the World Cup qualifiers and I'm very, very excited about the tournament as a whole.

The West Indies are perhaps the most eye-catching team as past winners of the World Cup, but Afghanistan are going to be in there fighting hard, Zimbabwe - even though they are a full member - are by no means guaranteed to go through, while Ireland have the chance to go through to another World Cup.

I think it is going to be very close, the West Indies really ought to make it given the experience they have in their side. Obviously Chris Gayle is back, guys like Shai Hope and Kemar Roach have played plenty of high-quality cricket.

They really should be favourites but that is no guarantee that they're going to be, this is going to be a very exciting competition and I, for one, can't wait to get out there and watch these matches.

Surrey began training outside this week - albeit in a marquee - but what was the most difficult thing about pre-season when you were playing?

The cold is definitely a part of it and Surrey have done the marquee thing for a number of years now, Somerset are doing it now too, I think Essex have done it as well.

There are things like getting bruised hands - I know nowadays the players stay doing ball work all the way through the year now, whereas it used to be that if you went on a tour that come September you didn't see another cricket ball until March, maybe.

They probably don't have those difficulties in terms of getting those welts on your hands from getting the first catches on board!

The toughest parts were often going away on pre-season junkets. I remember our coach Keith Medlycott at Surrey came up with the idea that we'd go down and train with the Royal Marines down at Exmouth.

It was cold, about minus 5C or something and we were breaking the ice on lakes and wading through them up to the neck - that was one of the hardest things I've ever done but we won the Championship that year so maybe that was a good idea.

The coach actually decided he was going to be away in South Africa while we did that so he read the race well!

The 'Beast from the East' is wreaking havoc as snow continues to fall across the UK. Have you ever been involved in a match where snow stopped play?

Yeah, I have, it was against Durham. I think it might have been the same year that we went down to Exmouth. David Boon was captain of Durham at the time and we had several delays for snow and us southern softies from Surrey, I think we might have won the game but we fielded in beanie hats instead of caps to go along with the seven jumpers and three pairs of trousers - not pleasant but fun nonetheless.

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