Now it’s high time cricket sobered up

CRICKET has a problem. And until the administrators and the players central to the game face up to it and determine to do something about it, the Ben Stokes trial will not be an isolated incident.

Most obviously it is a problem with alcohol, before games, after games, on tour, at home. It is central to dressingroom life for too many players.

But actually it is about more than just drink. It is more encompassing than that, more insidious. It is about a culture and a way of life for fit young men with money and status.

It is a problem other sports have wrestled with. Rugby and football have had legendary drinking cultures and it would be naive to think everything is now sweetness and light – note the story of an alleged pilfering of a taxi on a night out by West Brom players in Spain last season.

However, with increased money flowing into those sports there appears to have been an increased level of professionalism that goes with it, and cricket has to up its game.

While plenty of players look after themselves and if they do drink do so in small amounts, there remains an acceptance of drinking to excess.

A few beers in the dressing room after a win turn into a few more at the hotel, which turns into a night in a club, which invariably includes shots and jagerbombs and more. And if you’re part of three successful England teams that might mean 20 nights out a summer. The revelations from Stokes on the stand as to how much he drank the night in question tells you what a night out in the middle of a series can look like.

Michael Vaughan was England captain 10 years ago and admits: “We shouldn’t talk about what we did as if it was great because it wasn’t. We were unprofessional for the majority of our playing days, went out too much.

“I remember the 2006-07 Ashes tour and it was a joke. We drank too much but the difference is the team weren’t under surveillance.

“There has always been the feeling that cricketers drink too much. As soon as the game stops, we get stuck in.”

One player on that tour to Australia even said: “Most people would say there is only one problem with our cricket team and that’s the drink, but actually you could say there is only one problem with our drinking team and that’s the cricket.”

There are still plenty in the England team and in the county game who were around during Vaughan’s time and who have grown up with that culture. Are things different now? You wouldn’t think so based on Stokes’ testimony.

But it is not just about Stokes. What about Tom Maynard? The Surrey player fled from police drunk and high on drugs before he was involved in a fatal accident on train tracks in London in 2012.

Cricket has the chance to use this close shave with the law to look at itself and move forward.

Perhaps Ben Stokes’ trial will have a more sobering effect across the game full stop.