![\"Brendon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CRICKET-AUS-ENG-ASHES-9_1766642181368_1766642212527.jpg\" "\\"Brendon")
Brendon McCullum chats with batsman Ben Duckett.(AFP) <\/p>\nEngland\u2019s Ashes tour has found a new way to leak oxygen, not through another batting collapse, but through a viral clip. A social-media video that appears to show opener Ben Duckett intoxicated during England\u2019s mid-tour break in Noosa has triggered an ECB fact-finding exercise at the worst possible moment: with Australia 3-0 up and the series already gone.<\/p>\n
Brendon McCullum chats with batsman Ben Duckett.(AFP) <\/p>\n
The board has said it is establishing the facts, while England managing director Rob Key has promised to look into accusations that the Noosa downtime took on a \u2018stag do\u2019 feel, a line that has become the headline shorthand for the entire episode.<\/p>\n
Vaughan\u2019s take: Don’t moralise, fix the culture<\/p>\n
Former England captain, Michael Vaughan<\/a>, has now weighed in on the fallout in his Telegraph coloumn, steering the debate away from outrage and towards something that he considers more honest: the spot\u2019s long-standing relationship with alcohol and the way tours are structured.<\/p>\n Reacting to the video, Vaughan wrote: \u201cI am not going to criticise England for what they got up to in Noosa. I criticise what they do on the cricket field, the way they play, and the way they prepare to play cricket. I am not going to point the finger at a group of young people who have had a few beers on a couple of days off. I did exactly the same as them when I played for England, although I did at least know when it was time to go home, and that is probably what Ben Duckett<\/a> needs to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s classic Vaughan: a defence with a barb hidden inside. He refuses to turn the incident in Noosa into a character trial, but still suggests Duckett\u2019s real lesson is judgment, not drinking, knowing when the night is done.<\/p>\n Vaughan then widens the frame, arguing that singling out one player misses the bigger point, that elite cricket has normalised this as release-valve behaviour for decades.<\/p>\n \u201cDuckett not be reprimanded at all on the evidence we have seen, and neither should the other players, because it is a wider issue: the game of cricket has created this drinking culture. England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all have the same culture. You give a group of young people three or four days off to relax, and they\u2019re going to something like this\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n