After a brief reprieve following the dominant Test victory last week against a timid Pakistan, once again talk of England and cricket is focused not on the game but on the behaviour of the people playing it. The England and Wales Cricket Board has reacted quickly to videos that emerged over the weekend showing Brydon Carse in handcuffs outside a Derby nightclub by dropping him for the second Test at Lord’s and referring the incident to the Cricket Regulator. This is a solid baseline, but it is clear that there is an issue with this group of players that isn’t being dealt with by this group of coaches and executives.
When I was coaching with England, early in our Ashes tour in 2017-18 there was an incident with Ben Duckett pouring a pint of beer over Jimmy Anderson. Andrew Strauss, who was the ECB’s director of England cricket, flew out and did a terrific job of addressing the squad and letting them know the boundaries of what would be considered acceptable behaviour.
I thought it was a brilliant performance from Strauss, and nobody left that room in any doubt about where they stood. From then on we ran a very tight ship: once a Test match was over players were able to go out and relax, but we’d book a place where they could have an area cordoned off, there would be a security team with them at all times, and it was organised in a very professional way. You just cannot be too careful on an Ashes trip.
I thought that was exactly the right way to handle a difficult situation. Representing your country is the pinnacle of your career, and once you’re in that side until the moment you hang up your boots, even if you’re not on international duty at the time, you’re an England player. There are responsibilities that come with that.
But who could do for this squad the job that Strauss did in December 2017? It couldn’t be Rob Key, the current managing director of men’s cricket, under whose watch the messaging about what is acceptable has become hopelessly blurred, and who has allowed a culture to take root that culminated in the shambles we saw in Australia over the winter.
At the start of the summer Brendon McCullum, picked and repeatedly backed as head coach by Key, said he would get “a firm grip”, but clearly it hasn’t happened and after he lost his position with the red-ball side last month he is no longer in a position to try to do better. Marcus Trescothick, the team’s interim head coach, is compromised by having been part of the staff that presided over the past four years, and his authority is undermined by the fact he is only in temporary charge. Meanwhile Stephen Fleming, McCullum’s permanent successor and the man who will lead this group over the next four years, isn’t even in the country, let alone the dressing room.
When Fleming was appointed he should have been on the first plane over to start the job of communicating and leading. Even if he had obligations back home that would have limited that first visit to just a few days, he could have looked each player in the eye and told them the standards he expects them to meet, both on and off the pitch. You can’t do that over Zoom and expect it to have the same impact. Fleming is due to arrive next month, but I think his presence is required sooner rather than later. This is a team that need good leadership, and Joe Root can’t be expected to do everything.
I was interested to hear Ben Stokes’s suggestion that the issue was never with him and his team but with an entire game that from grass roots to pinnacle has what he called “a culture that is associated with alcohol”. And to an extent this is true. The recreational game is called recreational for a reason, people coming together at the weekend to play the sport they love and continue with some socialising afterwards. Our young players go through that phase, but once they sign their first professional contract their county should instil its own standards, its own values, and its own culture.
When I played at county level it was very much the norm that we’d meet after the day’s play, go to the pub and discuss the game, maybe go for dinner and share some wine. I’ve been teetotal my whole life, but I always understood why lots of my teammates felt that helped them to unwind after the rigours of the day. But it does feel like the culture has become a bit more extreme since then. Something has changed, beyond the fact that there are more likely to be cameras around if anyone oversteps the mark.
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More than anything Stokes’s remarks felt like a cute way to dodge accountability from a player who has a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time – and Stokes was with Carse in Derby, seemingly blameless but caught in the background of the viral video along with the England-contracted seamer Matthew Potts, as the Durham squad celebrated their latest County Championship win.
I don’t know if this is business as usual for Durham but, as those three have been reminded, they are England cricketers – or at least Stokes was until recently – and will be talked about as such. You’re an international player until you’re not and, as Carse is hopefully recognising, for all its added responsibilities that is not a status you want to jeopardise.
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