England white-ball captain Harry Brook has apologised for his altercation with a nightclub bouncer on the eve of an ODI in Wellington last year and admitted that he is lucky to still be skipper.
The incident was one of a series of off-field controversies centred on the national team’s culture, with the ECB launching a formal review of the Ashes tour and imposing tighter behavioural rules, including a midnight curfew.
Brook is now focused on leading England through a six-match tour of Sri Lanka – including three ODIs and three T20s – ahead of the T20 World Cup, which begins in Mumbai on February 9.
Brook apologises for Wellington controversy
“I made a terrible mistake, not only as a player but as a captain,” Brook told reporters in Colombo.
“It’s very unprofessional and I should be leading from the front and showing the players how it should be as a professional cricketer and a captain, and I put myself in a bad situation.
“I want to say sorry to my team-mates, to all the fans that travel far and wide and spend a lot of money to watch us play cricket.
“We went out for a couple of drinks beforehand and then I took it upon myself to go out for a few more and I was on my own there.”
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Lucky to remain England captain
“I trusted the ECB in telling them that I made a mistake, and thankfully I’m still playing cricket for England and that’s a childhood dream,” Brook added.
“I told them mid-game [during the Wellington ODI]. I felt like I needed to reflect on it and try and come up with a plan to negate what happened.
“[Resigning] never came into my mind.
“I left that decision to the hierarchy and look, if they’d have sacked me from being captain, then I’d have been perfectly fine with it as long as I was still playing cricket for England.”
Asked if he was lucky to keep the captaincy, Brook admitted: “Probably slightly.
“Even if I had been sacked, I’d have held my hands up and said, ‘look, I’ve made the mistake’ – and I’d have been perfectly fine with getting sacked from the job as captain as long as I was still playing cricket.”
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Looking ahead to Sri Lanka
Regarding the tour of Sri Lanka, Brook kept it simple, saying: “We won’t be taking these games lightly at all. We want to go out there and win and play our best cricket.
“Every tour we go on we want to try to win. Every game we want to win.
“We’ve got a big series coming up here against a strong side in their own conditions, and it’s good preparation before the T20 World Cup.
“We just haven’t been consistent enough and haven’t performed to the best of our ability enough. We’ve probably struggled with the aggressiveness of the way we want to play.”
England XI for first ODI: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Joe Root, Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook (c), Jos Buttler (wk), Will Jacks, Sam Curran, Jamie Overton, Liam Dawson, Adil Rashid.
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