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The room filled with laughter as the alcohol-related anecdotes flowed.
“We had a warm-up game in Bundaberg and what’s that famous for in Australia? Rum,” said the former fast bowler Gladstone Small. “It’s fair to say we sampled the local product.”
Allan Lamb, one of the most dominant batters of the era, continued the story. “We went to a reception put on by the local mayor and Beefy (Ian Botham) says: ‘Everybody must drink their rum.’ So the boys are knocking Bundaberg back and everyone’s fairly p***** by the end of it. We get on this coach to go back to the hotel and the mayor’s waving goodbye.
“Suddenly David Gower (the former England captain) opens this window and throws up all over the place with the mayor looking on. That’s how it started…”
The stage was the Stick to Cricket podcast, the topic was England’s victorious 1986-87 Ashes tour and the inquisitors lapping up the stories included former England captains Alastair Cook and Michael Vaughan, as well as former national coach David Lloyd.
It was one of the best and most uproarious episodes of one of the best podcasts in cricket, and the stories of how booze was a constant companion of Mike Gatting’s side during their famous victory over Australia 40 years ago have become legendary.
England’s Phil DeFreitas (left), Phil Edmonds and Allan Lamb have a celebratory glass of Champagne with Elton John in the dressing room after their Ashes victory Down Under in 1986 (Adrian Murrell/Allsport/Getty Images)
Different times, of course, but how different? For cricket still has a relationship with alcohol like few other sports, certainly in the western world, and it again became a hot and controversial topic during last winter’s rather less successful Ashes tour.
England players were pictured drinking during their mid-series break in Noosa, Ben Duckett was captured on video looking the worse for wear, and it emerged that white-ball captain Harry Brook had become involved in an altercation with a nightclub bouncer during the tour of New Zealand earlier that winter.
It is not like the 1980s but English cricketers, on the whole, still drink — even elite ones — and alcohol was again on the agenda when managing director Rob Key gave his first press conference of the season ahead of next week’s start of the Test series against New Zealand.
“Yes,” said Key when asked if the midnight curfew put into place by England management after the Ashes debacle would still be in effect this summer. And his one-word answer that invited no elaboration epitomised the tetchiness surrounding the subject.
So, does cricket still have a drinking culture? Yes, but the sport’s relationship with alcohol is complicated and more nuanced than it sometimes appears.
Cricket’s link with social drinking is deeply entwined and can be the lifeblood of clubs at grassroots level where the clubhouse and bar are often central to the community. But, increasingly at the top level, a compromise has to be reached. “One of my best mates is a football agent and he hammers cricket and cricketers over alcohol,” the former England fast bowler Steve Harmison tells The Athletic. “It’s nowhere near where it was and there is far more professionalism with all the money that is in the game now.
“But it’s clearly still an issue. Brendon McCullum (the England coach) won’t apologise for running an informal ship and I’ve heard lots of stories from the England camp that the best way for them to get over a disappointment is to get it all out over a few beers.
Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff and wicketkeeper Geraint Jones celebrate England’s victory in the fourth Ashes Test of 2005 (Tom Shaw/Getty Images)
“It may sound a bit rich coming from me because I liked a drink during my career but I do think alcohol is detrimental to performance now, especially when it comes to the shorter game. There’s high intensity and high energy and there’s a lot more resting on big moments.
“Look at Ben Stokes. He doesn’t drink anymore and has come out in public and said that alcohol can hinder recovery from injury and his body doesn’t need it. Look at Andrew Flintoff. He hasn’t had a drink for 12 or 13 years but his whole playing career had been based on this larger than life ‘Freddie’ character. I could drink with the best of them when I played but I had a break from alcohol recently when I had glandular fever and even I‘ve worked out you can feel and perform better without drinking.
“There’s a balance. You’re away for weeks and months and there are times you can let your hair down. Noosa would have been the perfect trip in the middle of a demanding Ashes series if England had been winning. But unfortunately, because they were losing and because of what came out about New Zealand and Brook, they put themselves under more pressure.”
The former England and Essex fast bowler Mark Ilott played at a time, in the 1980s and 1990s, when cricket and alcohol went hand in hand, but he can see how things have changed with the next generation as he is now cricket and football master at St Albans School.
“I’d have no problem with a young cricketer sitting down with me after a day’s play to talk about the game over a beer,” Ilott tells The Athletic. “I think it’s a rite of passage.
“You can learn so much that way. My first-team debut for Essex came against Northants and I put on a few runs with Allan Border (the former Australia captain) and he ended up with a hundred. He took me out for a beer to thank me for helping him and I sat and talked to him about cricket for three hours. It was priceless for me. People might say you could do that over a glass of lemonade but it wouldn’t be the same.
“The young cricketers I see today are pretty responsible. I don’t think alcohol is a huge issue with them. I actually have more concerns over young people and gambling.”
It is a point echoed by former England and Essex captain and one of England’s greatest batters in Graham Gooch, whose foundation has funded courses on alcohol awareness in young cricketers through the Professional Cricketers Association.
“In our era, rightly or wrongly, social drinking was the norm,” Gooch tells The Athletic. “You had a couple of beers with the opposition generally after play. And in Test cricket the England and Australia players would go into each other’s dressing rooms for a drink in the middle of a game, let alone the end of it.
“When I first played county cricket you learnt a hell of a lot in that social environment with different players of different experience, but that’s all gone now. And that has been an unintended consequence of the greater professionalism in the game.
“I don’t mind today’s players having a drink but there has to be a time and place. You have to be super fit now to have a place in the game. I’ve never seen a fitter, stronger cricketer who is disciplined about what he eats and drinks become a worse player.
“Also, concentration is everything and I couldn’t stay out there a long time and influence a game if I couldn’t concentrate properly. If you’re not feeling the effects of alcohol you can stay out there longer, it’s as simple as that.”
England captain Mike Gatting enjoys a post-match beer with his opposite number, Australia’s Allan Border, after the second World Tri Series final at the SCG in 1987 (Adrian Murrell/Allsport/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
How about at grassroots level, where takings from the bar can still be vital to a club’s very existence? The Athletic ran a quick survey with the players at this correspondent’s club, Chigwell CC in Essex, to ask how things have changed.
“When we were young we would go back to the bar at our club and stay there late into the evening,” says Chigwell captain Rob Allum. “It was a safe place for young folk to drink. But after most matches now people tend to go straight home. A lot of the guys we play with are Muslim and don’t drink anyway.
“The only time I still see the bar getting a fair bit of use after a game is when I play with Essex seniors.”
Batter Will MacFarlane concurs. “I think there is a change and it does reflect wider shifts in society,” he says. “For example, young people generally drink less and there’s a greater proportion of teams from backgrounds where drinking is less of a thing.
“But it is quite striking that when I take my son to all-stars cricket on a Friday they announce the bar is open in the pavilion as soon as the coaches take the kids off the parents and they expect us all to pile in. They recognise how much income from the bar can mean.”
One of our club’s younger players, Vis Balakumar, is also a member of a bigger club up the road in Woodford Wells. “It’s still popping in their clubhouse,” he says. “In fact a lot of people join from rival clubs for the social element, and fines still revolve around alcohol.”
A beer snake on Headingley’s Western Terrace (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
Arfan Akram is the head of player liaison and east London cricket strategist advisor at Essex, and a team liaison with the ECB who has worked in England with several touring sides including Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. He is also a club cricketer with Wanstead and sits on the main MCC committee.
He is perfectly qualified to comment on the changes in cricket and society and the challenges the presence of alcohol can provide in ethnically diverse areas.
“The social element of cricket is part of western culture and no one I’ve ever come across in England, whether they’re a Muslim or not, has an issue with others drinking,” Akram tells The Athletic. “Certainly in my experience — playing at Wanstead, an incredibly diverse club, and captaining the side as a Muslim — it was never an issue or barrier.
“Our approach as a club is that there’s a bigger profit margin in soft drinks than alcohol and that means our bar is still the hub of the club whatever background you come from.
“If you go back there was no real acknowledgment of the Muslim faith so the bar might have been a barrier, but things have changed. I go back to the England setup when Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid came through and now others like Saqib Mahmood, Shoaib Bashir and Rehan Ahmed. These guys feel they are in a very safe place.
“Yes players still celebrate when they win and those who drink will do so. Equally those who do not can still celebrate and not feel left out. When I worked with Australia I saw Usman Khawaja going through soft drinks like there was no tomorrow during a team celebration and he had no issues with team-mates around him cracking on with alcohol.
“Equally we have seen England players moving all the alcohol away from a team picture after a win so that Moeen and Adil can celebrate with them. It has only happened after years of education and understanding.”
Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid celebrate England’s World Cup triumph in 2019 (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
For Ilott, some traditions are worth preserving. “My club is Potters Bar in Hertfordshire and, for a while, we had a lot of good players brought into the club who lived a distance from Potters Bar and we lost our identity. Players were driving home immediately after games without putting any money behind the bar or getting a jug in. By 9pm the place was dead.
“I joined the committee and asked the club: ‘What is success? Is it winning the league with all these good players from outside or is it having a bar that’s packed until late and the place is buzzing?’ Now we have a bit of both.
“The bar still goes hand in hand with cricket. It’s how clubs thrive and survive. And the top players should still be allowed to celebrate by drinking as long as it’s at the right times. That’s cricket. And I for one wouldn’t have it any other way.”
