One job. That’s all England’s cricketers had as they celebrated Sunday’s first Test win over New Zealand at Lord’s. Be sensible. And that was it.
After the boozy escapades of the winter, Ben Stokes, their captain, and Gus Atkinson, who had just completed a five-wicket haul, have fallen at the first hurdle. There are times when observers of English cricket need only a brick wall against which to bang their heads. Now is such a moment.
The ECB’s investigation into exactly what went on in a nightclub not far from the team hotel in Kensington, west London, in the small hours of Monday morning is ongoing, but a few things are clear.
Stokes and Atkinson broke the team’s midnight curfew, laid down after the Ashes; drink was involved; and both men are unlikely to feature in the second Test at The Oval starting on June 17.
The fact that Stokes is set to hand the captain’s armband to Harry Brook, whose altercation with a nightclub bouncer in Wellington in November was swept under the carpet by the ECB until the final day of the Ashes in Sydney in January will be an irony lost on no one.
