England rein in boozy cricketers with alcohol ban, midnight curfew

England cricketers have been told they should not drink, even the day after a match.

England introduced a midnight curfew after the 4-1 Ashes defeat, which was marred by stories of players drinking, not least when Harry Brook was punched by a bouncer hours before captaining the team in Wellington in November.

After the first Test of the summer, however, which England won, Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson stayed out after midnight at Rex Rooms on the King’s Road in west London, where a Saracens academy rugby player “attacked” Atkinson, injuring England’s security guard James Shaw in the process.

This infuriated the England hierarchy, but it became clear that Atkinson did not know there was a curfew in place and there was further confusion about when it applied and its exact codification.

Stokes, who did not witness the incident, and Atkinson were left out of the squad for the next Test at the Oval, but returned for the series decider at Trent Bridge, during which Stokes retired. After legal wrangling, rather than punishing them for breaching the curfew, England said the pair had “breached specific contractual obligations”.

In the days after the incident, Rob Key, the managing director, had floated the idea of an outright booze ban. Key did not go that far, but he did update the alcohol policy, sharing it with players between the first and second Test. It includes tweaks to the policy issued to players on the white-ball tour of Sri Lanka and India earlier this year. Atkinson was not on that tour.

The new policy says in a first section that on every day of an England men’s home series and tour:

• The midnight curfew is in place
• Players cannot appear under the influence of alcohol in public, or post on social media about any “alcohol-related material or activities”
• Players must inform the team management or security if they are out of the hotel after 10pm, including changes of plan.

The new policy continues in a second section:

• “In addition, from the day before the start of any match until the end of the day after that match has finished”
• “We recommend that no alcohol be consumed”
• Players cannot drink at all in public, including public areas of the team hotel, unless “specifically approved by Key or head coach Brendon McCullum”
• Players are “strongly discouraged” from consuming alcohol in private in this period because “preparation, recovery and professionalism must take priority”.

The England and Wales Cricket Board confirmed that if a match ends on day five, the above rules and recommendation apply until the end of what would be day six.

The document, which is signed by Key, says its aim is to “protect the players, the reputation both of cricket in England and Wales and the ECB, and to optimise player performance”.

It has also tightened up its wording of some issues. Recommending that players should not consume alcohol even after matches have concluded is a significant change for English cricket, with a post-Test drink a common occurrence. The recommendation in the first edition of the policy only covered up to the end of a match.

There are other tweaks as the ECB looks to tighten up the policy. In section one, the words “on every day of an England men’s series/tour” have become “on every day of the duration of an England men’s home series and tour”.

It appears to be in the management’s gift to tweak the policy as they see fit during a series. When England had a curfew between 2017 and 2022, it would regularly be lifted after a Test victory so players could let down their hair. After the Trent Bridge Test and Stokes’s retirement, England’s official social media account posted a picture of the captain holding a bottle of beer, suggesting that players were welcome to drink at that point.

The Rex Rooms saga became a crisis that Stokes admitted contributed to a retirement he had been considering during the Lord’s Test. It made the positions of Key and McCullum more unstable, and means England need a new Test captain, with white-ball captain Brook and veteran Joe Root, who stepped in at the Oval, the only realistic candidates.

Telegraph, London