Unfair to question team culture: Anderson

PERTH: James Anderson has played down the incident in the Perth bar where Ben Duckett poured a drink over him. The England pacer also defended his team and said it wasn’t right to question team’s culture.

Duckett has been suspended from all England Lions games and was fined by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) after the incident. Several off-field issues have put England’s Ashes tour in jeopardy, and the Duckett episode only added to the misery.

“The incident with Ben Duckett was not malicious and was a bit of a non-event but we understand that in this climate we have to be smarter in the future,” he wrote in a newspaper column on Tuesday. “The frustrating thing is that what was a pretty silly incident would have gone unnoticed before but now puts an unfair question mark over our culture.”

“We have been working really hard and every now and then on a tour like this, you need a release. We don’t shout about the things we do behind the scenes. We are not those type of people but, for example, five players from the squad have today gone to see an England fan who is terminally ill and can’t come and watch the Test match. That sort of thing is not reported, which is fine, but is a fairer representation of this group of players rather than a couple of minor incidents in bars that have been blown out of all proportion.”