Source : ABC NEWS
Former England captain Ben Stokes has hit back at claims his side had a drinking problem, instead claiming cricket as a sport has a drinking culture.
Stokes, who abruptly retired in June, appeared on a podcast with former England teammate Stuart Broad where he addressed a range of different topics.
Among those was a suggestion that England’s team has a drinking problem after a number of off-field incidents during last summer’s ill-fated Ashes tour to Australia.
“God, that’s such an extreme thing to put on a team,” Stokes told Broad on the For Love Of Cricket podcast when asked whether England had a drinking problem.
“I think cricket has just a drinking culture and it hasn’t changed. We’re in 2026 where the game has gone more professional over the years, and one thing that I think has just stayed within cricket is its relationship with alcohol, from club cricket and then works its way up. It’s just stayed there and it’s been embedded within the sport.
“The relationship with alcohol and cricket is just something that hasn’t moved on as the game of cricket has become more professional.
“There’s been more science and medicine, there’s more nutritional information, there’s more this, there’s more that, but the one thing that has been a constant and stayed around and has been for a very long time is its relationship with alcohol.
“So for people who think that the English cricket team has a drinking culture, I’d say no.
“I would just say cricket has culture that is associated with alcohol.“
England’s team under Stokes faced heavy criticism during its mid-Ashes break in Noosa last year, which came with the team already in an 0-2 hole.
Opener Ben Duckett was filmed by fans while heavily intoxicated and struggling to find his way back to England’s hotel, while during the final Test in Sydney, it emerged that vice-captain Harry Brook had gotten into an altercation with a bouncer on the team’s New Zealand tour.
“I think it can be a problem,” Stokes said of cricket’s drinking culture.
“If you look at everything over the years, you look at a lot of people that have been involved within cricket and have had bad relationships with alcohol. It’s just, I don’t know what you do to change it.”
Ben Stokes’s Ashes understudy Harry Brook (right) was involved in an altercation with a nightclub bouncer in New Zealand prior to the Ashes. (Getty Images: Gareth Copley/ECB)
Stokes also referenced his own personal experience with alcohol throughout his career.
He was arrested in 2017 after his involvement in a street brawl near a nightclub with then-teammate Alex Hales and served an eight-match suspension for the incident.
“I’ve had … I don’t want to say problems, but I’ve had relationships with alcohol at times over my career that have been potentially dangerous, if that makes sense, but it’s completely different to me now,” he said.
“I just think that there’s this relationship with alcohol within cricket that has been the same from the 80s.
Former Australian Test batter David Boon (centre) has become well known for his love of beer, namely the 52 he consumed on a flight to the UK. (Getty Images: PA Images)
“As the game has got better and better and better, that thing has just stayed around. That’s my opinion on cricket and alcohol.”
Stokes’s theory regarding cricket and its athletes’ relationship to alcohol is not without credence.
In Australian cricket, the story of David Boon drinking 52 beers on a flight to the UK ahead of the 1989 Ashes series is spoken about as the stuff of legend.
Boon appeared on a podcast in 2023 saying he regretted the whole episode.
“I’ve got to be brutally honest here, I won’t deny it happened. We all do stupid things in our lives and I’ll finish by just being serious,” he said on the BackChat Sports Show.
“You have fun, you do something and then you think: ‘Shit, what about the ramifications to everything else’, to your family, to your children.
“”It caused some crap over the years, and it’s something that I regret a lot. Can’t deny it but I do regret it. And I was stupid to be able to do that when you’re in the public eye.”
