A midnight curfew was enforced on the England team after the Ashes tour was dogged by off-field issues.
When the ECB first released details of the Stokes-Atkinson episode, the governing body said the pair had breached the curfew. It was confirmed the curfew was still in place despite the completion of the first Test and the second being more than a week away.
However, four days later, England director of cricket Rob Key revealed Atkinson did not know the curfew was in force, leading to the question of who knew what, and how the curfew was communicated.
In the aftermath of the second Test, McCullum said there was an “ambiguity” over the terms of the curfew and that it had not been put in writing. The coach said standards would be “better documented”.
There are different ways to look at this. On one hand, has an England environment often accused of being sloppy once again overlooked the details?
But do grown men – professional athletes – really need their bedtime to be put in writing? Plenty outside the team knew about the curfew, so how had the players managed to avoid hearing about it?
After all that happened in Australia, should the players not be taking it upon themselves to quell talk of a drinking culture and act like high-performance sportsmen?
The curfew remains in place for the third Test at Trent Bridge.
