It is, sadly, worth a reminder that before England’s men began happily dismembering India’s T20 team in recent days, their Test side was discarded in a pile on the floor. England currently have no captain, no all-rounder and an opening partnership on trial. They have no discernible style or approach, no clear idea or identity. The wicketkeeper is suspect and the bowling unit is uncertain. They haven’t won a series since 2024, the Ashes is 11 months away and England are woefully unprepared. Haven’t we seen this one before?
Fortunately, what England do now have is fully codified regulations for when and when not to get on the lash. Rob Key has updated the rules after a 10-month period in which Harry Brook got punched by a bouncer, the Test team went on a stag do in the middle of an Ashes series and Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson broke a curfew the latter didn’t know existed, leading to their security man getting hit in the face by a rugby player.
So, fair enough, it was probably time someone wrote a few things down. Inform management if you’re out after 10pm. Be back in bed by midnight. Don’t look drunk (the memo doesn’t actually forbid getting drunk, although abstinence is recommended). Don’t be seen drinking on social media during a series. In short: lads, please stop embarrassing us.
At which point, it’s worth asking who these rules are really for. The ECB says the document, revealed by The Telegraph, is designed to “protect the players, the reputation both of cricket in England and Wales and the ECB, and to optimise player performance.” In broad terms, it is all about that emetic phrase, “team culture”.
But optimising player performance hasn’t been much of a priority before. This is the same England hierarchy that didn’t take a specialist fielding coach to the Ashes, that didn’t arrange a serious practice match before the series began in Perth, or before the day-night Test in Brisbane. It is the same hierarchy that sanctioned a boys’ holiday in Noosa.
Perhaps it is to protect the players; certainly it is designed to protect the ECB’s reputation, to make it look as if the organisation that runs English cricket is actually doing something. But perhaps there is a tacit admission beneath all of the rhetoric that what the ECB is really doing is protecting Brand England, limiting the collateral damage, preserving the commercial package, insulating the revenue streams.
There is a strange dissonance here, when the ECB attempts to stamp out its flagship team’s drinking culture while English cricket feverishly monetises alcohol. The ECB has an official wine partner and an official English sparkling wine. Every Test match is an almighty piss-up. Lord’s has its own Veuve Clicquot Champagne Bar & Garden, roped off from the masses like a zoo where the main exhibit is dreadful people in blazers.
Drinking is part of English cricket, its hazy lens, which doesn’t have to be a bad thing. On any given Saturday in summer you can still find Kumar Sangakkara playing for Shillingstone Cricket Club, not because the Sri Lankan great wants to test himself against the best medium-slow bowling in Dorset but because he enjoys the post-match barbecue and a pint.
So it jars a little when the ECB takes a stand and becomes the arbiter of conduct. The news comes in the week when The Hundred voted to allow its family-friendly franchises to be sponsored by gambling companies.
England’s nightlife protocols probably won’t affect their chances in the Test series against Pakistan next month, nor in the Ashes on the horizon. But it sends out mixed messages at a time of flux. Go out and play with freedom, but tell us if you’re leaving the hotel at night. Follow Harry Brook into Test-match battle, your all-format batting totem, but for god’s sake don’t act like him. And don’t bat like him either.
The ECB seems increasingly unmoored from the game itself, spending time designing PowerPoints full of management-speak built by men in suits who have to Google a googly. No one looks good here, not the players who can’t be trusted, not the governing body bringing school-trip energy. Is this really what is to come from the potentially imminent Brook era, the hand-holding, camera monitoring, roll-calls and room checks? Will Key be hiding behind a winged chair in the hotel lobby ready to stop and search?
It all comes back to that word, culture, which always starts at the top. If you don’t want a boys-will-be-boys cricket team, perhaps don’t employ a coach who conducts much of his business lying horizontally while wearing a backwards cap. It was Brendon McCullum’s idea to go to Noosa during the Ashes, a well-known spot for beach bars and one of his favourite holiday destinations. Ultimately a team’s culture is shaped by the words, behaviour and values of its leaders, not by board-mandated codes of conduct.
Perhaps the ECB should do away with written rules and take a lead from Fred Trueman, whose tales of heavy drinking were mythologised. “Fred was not a big drinker,” his former England teammate Richard Hutton wrote in an article for the Guardian after Trueman’s death in 2006. “A pint and a half was enough for him – I never saw him the worse for wear. But everybody wanted to buy him a drink, so he provided a constant supply of good ale to us underlings who drank at his table.” Now that’s culture.
