A mid-tour jaunt by the England cricket team to a Queensland beach town was covered gleefully by Australia’s tabloid newspapers, which splashed a shirtless Ben Stokes across their pages amid taunting headlines.
“On back foot, England bails to the beach”, one read. “Life’s a beach, even for the sinking Poms,” added another. “Sun’s out, runs out”, offered a third, alongside a photo of Stokes’s tattooed biceps.
“Having a Bazball at Noosa!”, the top of the front page of Brisbane’s Courier Mail declared, alongside coverage of Jamie Oliver’s best Christmas ham recipe and Australia’s controversial ban of under-16s from social media which comes into force on Wednesday.
A double page spread inside the news section noted the “wounded” English team couldn’t altogether avoid cricket on their getaway, as Stokes was pictured striding behind a young beachgoer with bat in hand.
England lost inside two days in Perth in the first Test, and went down by eight wickets in Brisbane. The 2-0 scoreline means the tourists must win in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney if they are to regain the Ashes.
The West Australian – which had lampooned the team with the headline “Baz bawl” on their arrival in Perth – led with a photo of vice-captain Harry Brook, opener Zak Crawley and bowlers Brydon Carse, Will Jacks and Gus Atkinson drinking beer at the beachside Rococo Bistro & Bar.
“After gallivanting around golf courses in Perth and joyriding without helmets on E-scooters in Brisbane, England favoured rest and relaxation for their latest mid-series break,” the article read.
The front page had pointed to the piece with the headline: “‘Overprepared’: fails pub test”, citing coach Brendon McCullum’s explanation for the defeat at the Gabba that the players may have overtrained.
“I’m a horse racing man and you wouldn’t just keep doing the same thing with your horse – you’d send it around in figure eights or over the little jumps, just to switch it up a bit,” the coach said on Sunday. “So we’ll look at some alternative methods over the next few days.”
Relaxation appears to have part of a plan proving irresistible to Antipodean newsrooms. Even broadsheet The Australian weighed in, with more photos of a topless Stokes on the beach on page three, above the headline “Ashes in ruin: Poms take beach sabbatical”.
In the face of the media sledging, the Australia wicketkeeper Alex Carey has defended England’s right to “refresh the batteries”. “The Ashes is very hotly contested, you don’t want to be thinking of cricket every single day of the tour. If you do have a little break it’s probably not a bad time to refresh the batteries,” he said.
“It’s a pretty big series with lots of time between games. The Australia cricket team gets to go home for a few days and be with the families, so touring parties have got to find time to fill in those little windows.
“It’s totally up to the touring groups to find ways to take your mind off cricket for a little bit. It’s not new stuff the English guys are doing, having a break. And if the media likes to follow certain teams around, that’s totally up to them to do. We understand that comes with the privilege of playing the game. We’re in a pretty lucky position that we’re playing professional sport and people want to follow the journey.”
The England team have been afforded time off before they travel to Adelaide for the third Test, beginning on 17 December.
