Ashes: England cricket’s concern over culture and drinking

And in the domestic summer, ECB president Richard Thompson insisted the white-ball tour of New Zealand was good preparation for the Ashes.

By the time the Ashes started, all the senior brass knew what had happened with Brook in Wellington. The tourists were 31-4 and actually performed well as they lost by just two wickets. Brook, Test vice-captain, was out for six.

Should such details have been made public? Or perhaps more importantly, should they have pushed for a different approach to discipline? Coach Brendon McCullum had previously scrapped the midnight curfew imposed on the England squad.

The ECB will point to the fact that action has been taken – and to a “formal and confidential ECB disciplinary process”. Brook was fined nearly £30,000 and was placed on a final warning for his future behaviour.

A public apology did not come until after the Telegraph story, but we do not know what remorse was expressed internally.

When you look at it in hindsight, it’s hard not to try to piece it together with some of the stuff that followed during the Ashes, whether connected or not.

Why does it matter? Because it means a lot.

England fans have emptied their bank accounts to travel to Australia in the hope of seeing an Ashes win.

Countless others were clicking on the TV or radio in the middle of the night, disrupting their Christmas sleep patterns to catch a disastrous game of cricket being played in the other hemisphere.

When they lost the first Test in Perth, within two days, some of their players spent the resulting time in the casino attached to their hotel.

The Ashes was lost in Adelaide as one player was out in the clubhouse without teammates or security until the early hours of the next morning.

Captain Ben Stokes has asked for “sympathy” following a video of Duckett, apparently drunk in Noosa, appearing on social media.

As for Noosa, how that break between the second and third Tests was allowed to go ahead in the wake of the Brock incident is astonishing.

Even before Brock’s misdemeanor came to light, Noosa’s transgressions were a lasting memory of the tour. That England players – including Brook – would remain in pubs for hours on end, in full view of the public and the media, is unbelievable.

In fact, the ECB announced just before Christmas that reports of players drinking excessively in Noosa would be investigated.

However, director of cricket Rob Key denied there was a drinking culture within the team, but did not mention the New Zealand incident.

In his statement released on Thursday, Brook said he was “determined to learn” from New Zealand’s mistake. Nosa might have suggested that this process is still ongoing.

Days after Noosa, when England played the crucial third Test in Adelaide, with the Ashes on the line and temperatures on their way to 40C, it was Brook who put the edge over Usman Khawaja on the first morning.

The drop was just a small part of an Ashes tour in which Brook was nowhere near his best on the field.

A return of 358 runs at a 39.77 average in this series is respectable, but well short of Brook’s career mark of nearly 55. He is yet to reach an Ashes century in 10 Tests.

Who knows if it’s all connected, but he’s put himself in a position that’s subject to close scrutiny.