Key, England’s managing director, did not travel to Noosa and said that he believed his players had been “very well behaved”. But reports since their subsequent 82-run defeat in Adelaide have compared the trip to a stag do, and Key said at the MCG on Tuesday that he will “look into what happened” to determine whether any further action is required.
“If there’s things where people are saying that our players went out and drank excessively then of course we’ll be looking into that,” Key said. “Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol for an international cricket team is not something that I’d expect to see at any stage, and it would be a fault not to look into what happened there. But from everything that I’ve heard so far, they were very well behaved.
“I’ve read what’s been written in the last day or so, and if it goes into where they’re drinking lots and it’s a stag do, all that type of stuff, that’s completely unacceptable. I’m not a drinker. I think a drinking culture doesn’t help anyone in any stretch whatsoever.
“I have no issue with the Noosa trip if it was to get away and just throw your phone away, down tools, go on the beach… Everything that I’ve heard so far is that they sat down, had lunch, had dinner, didn’t go out late, had the odd drink. I don’t mind that. If it goes past that, then that’s an issue as far as I’m concerned… There’s lots of people there that might disagree with that, but that’s what we’ll find out.”
“I don’t mind players having a glass of wine over dinner. Anything more than that I think is ridiculous, really,” Key said. “There wasn’t any formal action… I didn’t feel like that was worthy of formal warnings, but it was probably worthy of informal ones.”
“I don’t necessarily believe that had we just gone and played there then we’d now be 3-0 up in the Ashes,” he said. “Even with that, we’ve still got to get more out of our players… You’ve got to look at yourselves as a set up, I think. If your players are playing to their potential and they’re getting beat, that’s fine. But in this series so far, we haven’t done that.”
He conceded that England have stripped back their support staff too far, leaving the set-up without a fielding coach for this tour. “When we started, I looked at the huddle on the first day at Lord’s [against New Zealand in June 2022] and there were 38 people in there… We wanted to strip all of that back and go, ‘Right, we want the messaging to come from just a few people’.
“I don’t think the argument is to bring in loads of specialist coaches… [But] there’s probably a few spots where we’re weak in terms of our set-up at the moment, where we’ve stripped it back too much and there’s probably a few places we need to start bringing in some of that resource again.”
“The decision really for the ECB will be whether or not they want to rip it up and start again, or whether they want to evolve and whether we’re the right people to do that. Clearly, I believe that Brendon… He’s an excellent coach. His record is very good. This is only the third [Test] series we’ve lost in four years. His win record [25 out of 44 Tests as coach] is very good as well.
“Clearly, we’ve mucked up on the big occasions, whether that was the home Ashes series, whether that was last summer against India… The big ones have eluded us. There’s been some brilliant moments along the way. I still feel like there’s plenty of life in this whole thing now, but we have to evolve. We have to make sure that we’re doing things better.”
Bethell looks set to play in the fourth Test at the MCG on Boxing Day, and Key described him as an “incredible talent” with the potential to become a “world-class” batter. “I have no issue with him being able to go out and play a match-winning innings in the Ashes for us.”
Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98