Stokes close to speechless defending home record (7)
I believe the answer is:
minutes
'record' is the definition.
(minutes is a kind of record)
'stokes close to speechless defending home' is the wordplay.
'stokes close' becomes 's' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'to' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other) (I've seen this in other clues).
'speechless' becomes 'mute' (I've seen this before).
'defending' is an insertion indicator (inserted letters are defended).
'home' becomes 'in' ('he's home' can mean 'he's in').
'mute' enclosing 'in' is 'minute'.
's' after 'minute' is 'MINUTES'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for minutes that I've seen before include "Record of a meeting" , "Units of time" , "Recorded notes of a meeting" , "Record of a meeting's decisions" , "summary" .)