Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson have criticised the “extreme and tiresome” flood of negative stories around the England cricket team’s drinking and socialising habits, with Anderson – England’s all-time leading wicket-taker – saying it is “just mind-numbing that people can still be putting themselves in these positions”.
The latest scandal involving members of the Test squad involved the bowler Brydon Carse, who was pictured being led away from a Derby bar in handcuffs in the early hours of Sunday morning. The 31-year-old was briefly arrested by police on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly before being “de-arrested”, though they continue to investigate an allegation of assault in connection with the incident. Carse was dropped from the squad for the Test against Pakistan that started at Lord’s on Thursday, but took two wickets for Durham on the first day of their County Championship game against Gloucestershire.
“Eight of the 30 centrally contracted players have now been reprimanded or involved and that is quite extreme and actually quite tiresome,” Broad said, at the unveiling of a joint portrait of himself and Anderson at Lord’s on Wednesday night. “Joe Root spoke beautifully on this and is a brilliant example of how to do it. If you won’t listen to him and follow him, then this is not for you. South Africa away [this winter] and Australia at home [next summer] – if you can’t commit every bit of your mind and body to wanting to perform on this field, then I don’t understand.”
Anderson was one of several players fined for a breach of discipline at a nightclub in St Lucia during the 2007 World Cup, when he was 24. “I learned my lesson the hard way early on,” he said. “You learn from it and I said to myself, ‘Right, I’m not going out for the next two years.’ It was a massive wake-up call. You can make a mistake when you’re young, but you have to learn from it and grow up fast. So it’s just mind-numbing that people can still be putting themselves in these positions when there is so much attention around it.”
Anderson went on to play 401 games for England across all formats, before retiring from international cricket in 2024 aged 41. He continues to play for Lancashire. “We went through our careers. People messed up and we were no angels – we enjoyed a beer and celebrated victory as hard as anyone,” he said. “But when we were successful, we had players who did that sort of policing. Someone would say, ‘Just come away, you don’t need another drink, you don’t need to go to a nightclub,’ and if someone wasn’t training properly someone would say to them, ‘You tossed off that net session, you didn’t practise properly.’ This is a young team and they’ll get there.”
