The Ashes: England cricket concern over culture and drinking

Why does it always turn out like this?

Not the losing. The losing is easy to understand.

Australia are a better cricket team than England, especially in Australia. Twenty-seven Australia wins in 35 Ashes Tests in this country since the turn of the century tells a conclusive story.

No, the feelings of bewilderment, dismay and downright anger come from yet another Ashes tour with concerns over England cricketers and whether there is a problematic drinking culture.

Eight years ago, Jonny Bairstow was lampooned in the Australian media for a ‘headbutt’ to home opener Cameron Bancroft in a Perth bar. On the same trip Ben Duckett, then with the England Lions, was punished for pouring a drink over James Anderson.

At the end of the Covid Ashes of 2021-22, an early hours drinking session had to be broken up by police in Hobart.

Now, after a 4-1 defeat and England’s most disappointing Australia tour for decades, has come the revelation that Harry Brook got into a fight with a nightclub bouncer on the tour of New Zealand that preceded the Ashes. It was the night before a one-day international in Wellington in which Brook was captain and England lost.

This was supposed to be England’s big opportunity to finally compete in Australia after a miserable run of one away series win in 40 years.

But it has been a shambles of a tour. Preparation called not fit for purpose. Awful shots, dropped catches and scattergun bowling on the pitch. Off it, concern over England players drinking in bars.

In what was supposed to be the crowning glory of the Bazball project, England’s moniker could be cruelly be renamed Boozeball after the latest revelations.

Just as the players were relaxing on the outfield of the Sydney Cricket Ground in the aftermath of yet another defeat in the fifth Test, the Brook report dropped in the Telegraph, followed by statements from England and the man himself.

An hour earlier, the England and Wales Cricket Board had released a statement from chief executive Richard Gould. Gould said he would review the tour of Australia, including behaviour of the players.

There was no mention of New Zealand, even though he already knew what happened, as the details had not been made public. His organisation had not felt it necessary to utter a word until the Telegraph newspaper did it for them two months later.

In the home summer, ECB chairman Richard Thompson insisted that a white-ball tour of New Zealand was good preparation for the Ashes.

By the time the Ashes began, all of the top brass knew what had gone on with Brook in Wellington. The tourists had been 31-4 and actually did well to only lose by two wickets. Brook, the Test vice-captain, was out for six.

Should such details have been made public? Or, perhaps more importantly, should they have prompted a different approach to discipline? Coach Brendon McCullum had previously scrapped a midnight curfew which was in place on the England team.

The ECB will point to the fact that action was taken – and a «formal and confidential ECB disciplinary process». Brook was fined around £30,000 and placed on a final warning for his future conduct.

The public apology only came after the Telegraph story – but we don’t know what contrition had been expressed internally.

When you look at it with hindsight, it is difficult not to try and piece it together with some of things that followed during the Ashes, whether they are connected or not.

And why does it matter? Because it means so much.

England fans had emptied their bank accounts to travel to Australia in the hope they might see an Ashes win.

Countless others flicked on the TV or radio in the middle of the night, ruining their Christmas sleep patterns to follow the calamitous cricket being played in a different hemisphere.

When they lost the first Test in Perth, inside two days and some of their players spent the resulting time off in the casino attached to their hotel.

The Ashes were lost in Adelaide where one player was out in a club without his team-mates or security until the early hours of the following morning.

Captain Ben Stokes asked for «empathy» in the aftermath of a video of Duckett, apparently drunk in Noosa, appearing on social media.

As for Noosa, quite how that holiday between the second and third Tests was allowed to go ahead in the aftermath of the Brook incident is staggering.

Even before the emergence of Brook’s misdemeanour, the excesses of Noosa were an abiding memory of this tour. That England players – including Brook – sat in bars for hours on end, in plain sight of the public and the media, beggars belief.

In fact, the ECB had announced just before Christmas that reports of players drinking excessively in Noosa would be investigated.

However director of cricket Rob Key denied there was a drinking culture within the squad – but made no mention of the New Zealand incident.

In his statement released on Thursday, Brook said he was «determined to learn» from his New Zealand mistake. Noosa perhaps suggested that was still an ongoing process.

Days after Noosa, when England played the crucial third Test in Adelaide, with the Ashes on the line and temperatures on the way to 40C, it was Brook who put down an edge off Usman Khawaja on the first morning.

The drop was just a small part of an Ashes tour where Brook was nowhere near his best on the field.

A return of 358 runs at an average of 39.77 in this series is respectable, but well below Brook’s career mark of almost 55. He is yet to make an Ashes century in 10 Tests.

Who knows if it is all connected – but he has put himself in a position of being closely scrutinised.

The 26-year-old may be the England captain next time they visit Australia. Sport is cruel, fickle and unpredictable. What if this turns out to be Brook’s only Ashes tour? He should be boarding his flight home on Friday with a deep sense of regret over a missed opportunity.

England are also not the only team who like a drink. Travis Head turned up to Australia’s training ahead of the fourth Test a little dusty following the Adelaide celebrations. Australia won the series, Head made three centuries.

This whole episode is a further damning indictment of the concern that there is a slack culture around the England team that has manifested itself in mediocre results and performances.

Once, the Bazball regime was about getting the best out of proven Test cricketers who had lost their way in a struggling team – Anderson, Stuart Broad, Chris Woakes, Jonny Bairstow and Mark Wood.

Now, a younger generation has been found wanting on the biggest stage because they have not been given the right grounding at the highest level. To Brook and plenty of his team-mates, drinking, not bothering with fielding practice and a lack of accountability for awful batting is all they know.

These players do not need slogans – «run towards the danger», «take the game on», «live, laugh, love» – they need teaching how to play Test cricket.

Stokes says he wants to remain England captain and almost certainly will, not least because his next in line is Brook.

McCullum and Key will be given the chance to stay on if they can improve the culture of the England team, a metric determined by Gould and Thompson.

The question is if any of these men can do what is necessary, or if England will have another Ashes hangover in four years’ time.