‘Pom tourists posing as cricketers’ panned
ENGLAND have been dismissed as “tourists masquerading as cricketers” by Australia’s media, which yesterday turned the screw after Ben Duckett was fined for pouring beer over teammate Jimmy Anderson.
Duckett was slapped with a reported £1,500 ($2,000) fine and will play no further part in the remaining England Lions matches following the latenight bar prank in Perth on Thursday.
It plunged their already difficult tour into another crisis after wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow headbutted Australian Test opener Cameron Bancroft in a Perth bar during the tourists’ first night in Australia.
That followed star all-rounder Ben Stokes being suspended from the Ashes campaign after an incident outside a Bristol nightclub in September that led to police investigations.
England have so far lost the opening two Tests and have their work cut out in the third this week at Perth’s WACA Ground, where they have not beaten Australia since 1978.
“These English Contiki tourists masquerading as cricketers are about to seal their places in Ashes infamy,” infamy, Sydney’s Daily ly Telegraph said on its back page.
Drinking culture? ure?
Contiki is a tour company that t caters for younger travellers and has earned a reputation for attracting the boozefilled party crowd. owd.
The Telegraph ph stuck the knife in n further with a blazing g headline “Perthetic”, adding: “Tour degenerates erates into farce as rudderless Poms face whitewash.”
The Sydney ney Morning Herald also jumped on the bandwagon, screaming “Teetering on the drink” on its back page in a story that said their Ashes campaign was “again again in disarray disarray”. .
“It is the third time tim in four months that England’s p preparations have been derailed by an alcoholfuelled incid incident,” it wrote. Earlier in the tour, England cricket chie chief Andrew Strauss insisted there the was no drinking culture in the team, but he still slapped sla a midnight curfew on the Ashes tour.
The incident with Duckett (pictured, AFP) happened on the first night nigh that the curfew had been bee relaxed.
The Australian newspape paper spared England som some of the more striden dent criticism dished out by other media, and instead ran a story highlighting the drinking on England’s 1986-87 tour to Australia.
That side featured the likes of Ian Botham, Allan Lamb and David Gower, who all enjoyed a tipple, but they still won the series – and without a curfew.
“Mike Gatting’s squad got the job done, winning 2-1 against Allan Border’s side while burning the candle at both ends,” the newspaper said, suggesting that currently England “do not have the troops to hang onto the Ashes urn”.
While Australia’s media made the most of England’s problems, coach Darren Lehmann played a much straighter bat on Sunday, saying the alcohol-fuelled indiscretions were no laughing matter.
“I’ve been through all that, so no, I don’t have a chuckle at that,” he told reporters. “You have those situations at various stages throughout your career. It’s not funny.”