Hayter column: Strauss sent out the wrong message to England players

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By Peter Hayter

The off-field behaviour of England cricketers on the current Ashes tour and before has drawn all sorts of comment from some well qualified from personal experience, those with an axe to grind and those who just enjoy mouthing off.

The England team director Andrew Strauss obviously fits into the first of those categories but something he said the other day keeps coming back to me, and it sounds worse every time I hear it.

Following the controversy over Jonny Bairstow’s headbutt and the charge that the current crop of players are stuck in a drinking culture that, at best, indulges casual boorishness, and, at worst, may even encourage it, the only England skipper to win an Ashes Down Under for 30 years insisted: “These guys are not thugs. These are good, honest, hard-working cricketers who sacrifice a lot to play for England and I will back them to the hilt.”

One should have no objection to the first, second and fourth elements of that statement.

It is good to know that they are honest and hard-working, and it is also a great relief to all of us to have it confirmed officially that they are not thugs.

Leaving aside the Ben Stokes incident which, according to Alastair Cook, changed the world for England, what Trevor Bayliss calls ‘boys being boys’ and Michael Vaughan described as acting like students (the better-off ones, presumably) would barely have merited a mention had England been 2-0 up in the series.

But it is the bit about ‘sacrifice’ that made uncomfortable reading and I suspect that many may share that uneasy feeling. Talk of sportsmen making sacrifices is usually the cue for someone to list all those other professions which routinely require rather more painful ones than playing cricket for England all over the world, and getting paid a small fortune for doing so. And for very good reasons.

Of course, international cricketers spend many days and nights away from home and loved ones. Life in business class and five-star hotels is not all it’s cracked up to be, as those who have followed England to report on their successes, failures and all the soap operas in between will also testify, rather more shamefacedly.

The example of Marcus Trescothick having to quit playing for England is a reminder of what can happen when it all gets too much and if a man who was living the dream of playing for his country just couldn’t stick it any longer, it is clear those issues deserve understanding and attention.

But for Strauss to attempt to elicit sympathy for his charges by playing the sacrifice card is ill-judged, ill-timed and insensitive. No matter how much he is prepared to back his players to the hilt, he is better than that. I suspect he wishes some of them had been as well.