On Wednesday all England players and staff gathered on the beach to play ‘pig’ – the football game they often play in the warm-up for training and matchdays. They then moved into the town centre for a fish-and-chip lunch.<\/p>\n
The break is Noosa was planned before the Ashes series began and was arranged in conjunction with Cricket Australia.<\/p>\n
One alternative to this trip would have been arriving in Adelaide well ahead of the third Test.<\/p>\n
The three days of training before the third Test is in keeping with England’s usual preparation for a Test. The tourists had five days of training before the defeat in Brisbane, which McCullum said left them “overprepared”.<\/p>\n
During the last Ashes in the UK in 2023, Australia’s players took a break in the middle of the series, with some travelling to various cities across Europe.<\/p>\n
Australia wicketkeeper Alex Carey, who spent his downtime in Edinburgh during the 2023 series, said it is “not new” for a team on tour to move away from cricket between Tests.<\/p>\n
“It’s a pretty big series – there is a lot of time in between games,” he said. “For the Australian cricket team, we get to go home for a few days and be with the families.<\/p>\n
“For touring parties, you’ve got to find time to fill in those little windows, and Noosa’s not too far from Brisbane.<\/p>\n
“The Ashes is a very hotly contested contest and you don’t want to be thinking cricket every single day of the tour. If you do have a little break, it’s probably not a bad time to refresh the batteries.<\/p>\n
“Our boys played a bit of golf. I’m probably watching Netflix or taking the fishing rod away if I can.<\/p>\n
“It’s not new stuff that the English guys are doing, having a little break.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Wednesday all England players and staff gathered on the beach to play ‘pig’ – the football game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-308462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}