{"id":748206,"date":"2026-08-24T13:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T13:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/748206\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T13:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T13:22:11","slug":"englands-cricketers-revealed-as-a-bunch-of-boozers-is-no-longer-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/748206\/","title":{"rendered":"England\u2019s cricketers revealed as a bunch of boozers is no longer funny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in September 2005, after England had won the Ashes<\/a>, the victorious team took an open-topped bus ride through London<\/a>. It was immediately evident in the manner in which our much-lauded cricketers had been celebrating their series win. The morning after the night before, the players were not just a tad tipsy; they were completely bladdered. The hero of the summer, the totemic Andrew Flintoff<\/a>, was barely able to stand, later admitting on Jonathan Ross\u2019s chat show that he took a leak in the Downing Street rose garden even as his teammates were being congratulated by the prime minister. <\/p>\n

How we chuckled. Their bleary-eyed, naughty-boy behaviour quickly became embroidered into the legend of that summer. Freddie to the fore, these were lads who knew how to celebrate<\/a>. And we loved them for it.<\/p>\n

Twenty-one years later<\/a>, how things have changed. After winning a Test at Lord\u2019s against New Zealand, the then England captain Ben Stokes and the fast bowler Gus Atkinson decided to break the team\u2019s after-hours curfew and head to a central London nightclub to mark their victory. Here, they became embroiled in a confrontation with an uppity rugby player. When the news was leaked, the public response to drinking cricketers was markedly different to 2005. <\/p>\n

\"WorseWorse for wear: Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen at Downing Street in 2005 after their Ashes triumph (PA)<\/p>\n

This time, there was no chuckling. The reaction was one of despondency, disappointment and derision. Not so much outraged as dismayed. Why were they so unprofessional? Why so lacking in focus and discipline? Were they not aware of their coach Brendon McCullum\u2019s recent observation that \u201cnothing good happens after midnight\u201d? Had they not learnt their lesson?<\/p>\n

With Ben Stokes announcing a shock retirement<\/a> from international cricket and Brendon McCullum sacked as Test coach, at the start of his second reign as Test England captain Joe Root urged his players to be “really good role models and human beings”.<\/p>\n

“You always want to represent your country in the best possible light,” Root, 35, told BBC Sport. “We might have fallen short of that on a few occasions in the recent past.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing we can do to rectify that is be really good role models, good human beings and put in really strong performances on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet five days later, England bowler Brydon Carse is under investigation after a nightclub incident<\/a> in Derby at the weekend. Videos circulating on social media on Sunday appeared to show Carse in handcuffs, being led away from a club by four police officers.<\/p>\n

The Durham bowler, who is in England’s squad for the second Test against Pakistan this week, was seen with team-mate Matthew Potts while former England captain Ben Stokes was also pictured.<\/p>\n

England\u2019s cricketers revealed as a bunch of boozers: it is no longer funny. And, in the years since that Ashes summer, it has been getting ever more wearisome. After a summer of turmoil, we have had enough. <\/p>\n

Not least because the game appears to be lagging so far behind other pursuits in its attitude to the drink. Three decades ago, much of the build-up to the international football tournament about to be hosted on home soil centred around the booze-soaked antics of the England squad during a pre-competition bonding session in Hong Kong ahead of Euro 1996. Gazza and the dentist\u2019s chair came to be symbolic of a footballing system marinated in alcohol. <\/p>\n

Thirty years on, there were no such headlines as Harry Kane<\/a> and his teammates prepared for this summer\u2019s World Cup. No surprise there. Most of them are teetotal, spurning putting anything in their systems that might diminish their performance. Captain Kane leads by example: those pictures of him with his Bayern teammates taken every year at the Munich Oktoberfest invariably show him holding a full stein of ale, one he never empties down his throat. He simply doesn\u2019t touch the stuff. <\/p>\n

\"ArsenalArsenal and England star Tony Adams led a booze-soaked existence in the early Nineties (Getty)<\/p>\n

He is not alone. Once upon a time, every leading professional football squad had a Tuesday club, when the lads would go off on a regular midweek booze session, drinking themselves into oblivion. It was called team-bonding. Tony Adams, one of the stalwarts of England\u2019s Euro 1996 bevvy boys, recalls going on the first Tuesday Club outing at Arsenal after he had recognised his alcoholism. He thought it best, for team spirit, not to lecture his colleagues, but simply to match the rest drink for drink. Except when they ordered alcohol, he would go for a cappuccino. After 18 coffees, he recalls he didn\u2019t sleep for about three days. <\/p>\n

But there are no Tuesday clubs in football anymore. No top player can afford to compromise their fitness. At Manchester United\u2019s new training facility, there are sensors in the urinals, checking hydration levels; even a quiet drink at home would alert the sports science department. Football players and booze are no longer acquainted. <\/p>\n

Cricket, though, still seems in hock to the drink. For players stuck in dressing rooms for hours on end, away from home on lengthy tours, cast together in communal living, drink has long been the common escape valve: win or lose, always on the booze. And if we draw, we\u2019ll have some more. <\/p>\n

It is curious that, as other sports have spurned alcohol in the embrace of diet and nutrition, cricket\u2019s thirst appears to remain unsated. Not just on the workaday county circuit, either. But among the elite. <\/p>\n

This winter\u2019s shambolic England tour of Australia was pockmarked with incidents fuelled by alcohol. Indeed, during the mid-series break in Noosa, Ben Duckett was filmed by a passerby<\/a> in the early hours so inebriated he clearly had no idea where he was. Unlike in 2005, these guys were not using the bottle to mark a wonderful win. It just seemed part of everyday life. <\/p>\n

So much so that Rob Key<\/a>, the head of the ECB, on the team\u2019s tail-between-their-legs return to Blighty, initiated a review into dressing room behaviour. He was not happy with what he described as a drinking culture. Protocols were put in place to prevent any repetition of those nights in Oz. Stokes, was said to be right behind the measures. Not that he would need them. He had given up the booze altogether last year, he had announced. <\/p>\n

Yet there he was, almost as soon as they had been introduced, breaking the very rules of engagement he had endorsed. So often in the past a hero with bat and ball, a figure much admired in the dressing room, a potent symbol of English resistance \u2013 he was less leading by example than skulking about hoping nobody would notice. And what made the incident all the more head-scratching was that the person allegedly punched in the altercation was the security guard<\/a> employed by the MCC to look after their playing assets. This suggests that when Stokes decided to skip the curfew, he took the precaution of taking protection with him. <\/p>\n

It will not end well. The cricket authorities will be irked at the latest publicity, angered at the assumptions that can all too easily be made of a sport unable to control its practitioners. Stokes is no longer in play, and Root decided earlier this month to scrap the midnight curfew that was imposed in January.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Sky Sports, Root said: “There’s not going to be a curfew. I don’t think this needs to be a big deal, to be honest.”<\/p>\n

He may need to think again.<\/p>\n

A version of this article was first published in June<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in September 2005, after England had won the Ashes, the victorious team took an open-topped bus ride…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-748206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748206","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=748206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}