Posted by We’re inclined to agree with Brendon McCullum that it’s “quite annoying” there’s currently so much focus on the night Harry Brook got chinned by a bouncer. We would however disagree with his assessment that it’s all about the specific players involved and that, “piling on to them is not helpful for anyone.”
We don’t doubt that there’s hand-wringing in the usual places – hand-wringers gonna wring hands – but who’s piling on exactly? To our eyes, the focus is not on the players, but on McCullum and other higher-ups at the ECB, no?
Because ‘young sportsman has wild night out’ isn’t really much of a story, in all honesty. ‘Young England captain has wild night out on the eve of a game against backdrop of wider concerns the head coach might be running a bit of a loose ship’ has more of a hook.
Those concerns don’t need to be 100% legitimate, but they do need to have at least a faint air of truth about them for the story to stick.
Loose ship
"Small or big - take your pick. It doesn't have to be legit. It's gotta be a loose ship. It's gotta be a loose ship."
For what it’s worth, McCullum takes issue with the perceived looseness of his ship. He says it’s a “misconception”.
We’d agree that while there’s certainly evidence some players have drunk too much a couple of times during his three and a half year tenure, we haven’t exactly been washed away by a tsunami of piss-ups. But that’s the other reason the ‘quite annoying’ focus on the Brook thing persists – because the ECB clearly tried to keep this one quiet. In which case, WHAT ELSE ARE THEY HIDING?
This is perhaps the crux of it. If you’re the one who hid something and it then came out, but you know you aren’t hiding anything else, then constantly being asked “What else are you hiding!?” is probably ‘quite annoying’.
At the same time, from the opposite vantage point – where a thing that was hidden subsequently came to light – it’s perfectly natural to wonder if there might be a second, third and fourth thing you haven’t been told about. It’s then ‘quite annoying’ when the people who tried to conceal Thing 1 get all stroppy and demand that you move on.
Of course none of this clears up what should be done with our drunken sailor above and beyond the £30,000 fine he’s already been given.
Hoo-ray and up she rises!
It has to be said that as drunken sailors go, right now Harry Brook is performing perfectly acceptably. We don’t feel any burning desire to rage against the ECB’s decision to deal with him by inviting him to captain England in a T20 World Cup. What else could they do? Put him in the scuppers with a hosepipe on him? Drag him by the leg in a running bowline? Who even knows what those things mean?
Somehow, despite a perception that England’s red and white ball teams are both starting to fall apart under McCullum, the T20 one has in fact won 10 of its last 11 games.
It’s become quite an interesting team too.
Where the Test XI has tightened to right-arm fast-medium monotony, the short format strategy has become a looser fit. Run your finger down the team’s top wicket-takers of the last 12 months (like a literacy-challenged simpleton) and the bowling types progress as follows:
- Leg-spin
- Slow left-arm
- Left-arm fast-medium
- Slow left-arm
- Left-arm medium
- Off spin
- Right-arm fast
Lovely stuff. A veritable household of misfits; a team that has won after making 304 for 2 and also when defending 128-9.
It’s a fickle format, of course, and cricket’s sole superpower is in prime form and on home turf for the tournament ahead, which begs the question what is England’s strong recent record actually worth?
Maybe not so much – but it’s better than a taste of the bosun’s rope-end, isn’t it?
On the boozing, McCullum’s argument seems to be: ‘Why should we release information to the media? We’ve dealt with it internally. Why is it any of your business?’
To what extent is a sporting body accountable to the public? I suppose he’s not an elected official running a political party. But the people pay for their tickets and telly subscriptions, which ultimately pay his wages.
Anyway, it’s all a welcome relief from the actual news. It’s only cricket.
I was wondering what the King thought about the booze, given that the other sport he follows is road cycling. I can’t imagine Geraint Thomas and co needing a midnight curfew, even between grand tours. Obviously cycling is in some ways a lot more physically demanding, but cricket – Test cricket anyway – is also an endurance affair, hours of concentration etc needed. Yet it sends to have quite the drinking culture (with this current team not at all an outlier, in fact probably relatively moderate). Botham could maybe get away with it when he was younger, but everyone definitely isn’t young Botham. (That would be weird.) Is it crazy that nights out on the lash are still part of international cricket?
But I’d be interested to hear the opinions of people who actually know about cycling…
Well times change. They used to drink heavily during stages. Numbing the pain was advantageous in one respect, although obviously not in others. Tom Simpson had been mixing brandy and amphetamines when he died on Mont Ventoux.
These days they’re more likely to live like monks for 10 months and then some of them have a bit of a blow-out in the off season; get it (into and) out of their system kinda thing.
Thomas was one. In the 2023 off season he said he’d found form after being drunk 12 nights out of 14. “For sure, the tolerance is lower at the start, but I feel like I have a good drinking condition now.”
Not for the first time, I feel at a genuine advantage for not paying any attention whatsoever to coverage of sportsmen outside of actual sporting events.
Its fascinating because mccullum was captain under hesson when ryder was disciplined quite a bit.
As always, if they were winning we wouldn’t care, and they are, except they’re winning somewhere nobody cares about, so because we don’t care we care about the drinking
Had forgotten that. Interesting bit of back story to throw into the mix.
The important question re H. Brook is what led to his irresponsible batting in the Ashes when he really could have made a big difference. If England had won the Ashes, he could have turned up pissed to 10 Downing Street and no questions asked.
Probably his average of 70 from batting irresponsibly up till then and Australia being a good team, no? Brook did a few responsible innings and wasn’t spectacular in those. He simply hasn’t developed his game yet to face the conditions that were in front of him. Joe root also didn’t get across Australian tours until this summer. If he is a great batter, brook will work it out eventually. Or he might not, like plenty of good but not great bats
Two words: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.
Try saying that towards the end of a night on the lash with Harry Brooks.
Entirely possible we’d manage it while striving to say something else.
What’s the official editorial position re the T20 World Cup? I hadn’t even realised it started today.
Your question is ALMOST a request, Sam. No wonder you’ve had the silent treatment from KC. Here’s my take on it so far.
All three matches yesterday allowed the minnows to shine briefly before, ultimately, fizzling out. The tournament has been designed thus. There is real jeopardy for the top teams in that one loss to one of the better minnows is quite likely to lead to elimination. Pakistan only just dodged that bullet yesterday.
Group D is the group of death because it contains three highly decent teams: South Africa, New Zealand & Afghanistan, only two of which can qualify.
England’s Group C match this morning against Nepal should be a walk in the park for England, except that the first match of a tournament rarely is a walk in the park and note my comment about real jeopardy above. Let’s just hope that the England management have kept the batsmen in the guard room and heaved the pace attack by the leg in a runnin’ bowline, ahead of today’s match.
It’s a fun event. We’ll be covering it. Not sure how beyond the piece we’ve got lined up for the start of next week.
Fun, yes. But so far a little disappointing in the matters of infeasible body shapes and quirky names from the associate nations.
Flipping heck, Nepal
Ah – Netherlands v Namibia. A good few puntastic names on the team sheets. Loftie-Eaton has just lofted one for six as I type.
A few familiar names too. Associate nations’ cricket teams can seem a little like T20 franchises these days. That factor intrigues me more than bothers me.
But I do sense that the progress made by Nepal, for example, is a more grass roots thing than the progress in some of the other nations being represented in this T20 World Cup. Whatever. Bring it on.