Cricket’s biggest boozers including Ashes star who necked 52 cans on one flight
The days of cricket and alcohol going hand in hand are becoming a thing of the past – at least at the top of the game.
While England and Australia players may enjoy the odd beer or glass of red between days, and a few more after a match, we’re unlikely to see the kind of binges their predecessors enjoyed.
Many of those players of the past have etched themselves into cricket folklore for their boozing exploits. Some prepared for series for getting blind drinks while others actually entered the field of play, and thrived, while inebriated
As the Ashes gets underway at Edgbaston, Daily Star Sport celebrates some of the sport’s best guzzlers…
READ MORE: Inside 2005 Ashes bash as Flintoff wees in garden and PM Blair called "k***head"
David Boon
The Australian batting legend is at the centre of cricket’s most legendary drinking tale of all time when he downed 52 cans of beer on the plane to England for the 1989 Ashes.
But this wasn’t just a random drinking binge, it was a genuine record attempt. As the players boarded the long flight, the benchmark was 51 cans, set by Rod Marsh, and it looked set to stand as the plane approached Heathrow.
Legend has it that Boon was stuck on 49 cans, only for the pilot to be told to make a couple of loops before landing. That allowed Boon to down the three cans he needed to make history.
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Andrew Flintoff
A cricket boozers’ list wouldn’t be complete without ‘Freddie’, who led the iconic binge which followed England’s 2005 Ashes triumph.
Following such a legendary victory, no one begrudged Flintoff and his teammates a night (and day) on the lash. However, the same couldn’t be said during England’s disastrous 2007 World Cup campaign in the West Indies.
Following a night drinking away the memory of a heavy defeat to New Zealand, Freddie drunkenly commandeered a pedalo.
“I couldn’t find the oars, so I dragged this pedalo into the water,” Flintoff told Piers Morgan’s Life Stories in 2014. “The next morning I woke up, I was on my bed and, still wet and [with] sand between my toes.
He added: “It was a real low point. I had this press conference and walked across the hotel reception – and the England fans, who were only months previously cheering my name and high-fiving me, were shaking their heads. I couldn’t make eye contact with them and I thought, ‘This isn’t good’.”
After getting into one too many scrapes due to his alcohol consumption, Flintoff is now teetotal and says he feels much better for it.
Ian Botham
‘Beefy’s’ drinking exploits are the stuff of legend. He was also an innovative boozer, as demonstrated during a tour to India in the 1980s.
In Bombay (now Mumbai), alcohol was hard to come by, meaning Botham had to think outside of the box (or should that be bar?) as the England team prepared to fly to the subcontinent from Australia.
The all-rounder and his teammates took the ‘precaution’ of cramming as much amber nectar into their hold bags as possible.
In one of his autobiographies, Botham wrote: "We were determined to win the game, but we were equally determined to let our hair down off the field.
"The lack of decent beer on the sub-continent at the time – the situation has improved considerably now – made that difficult, but we took the precaution of importing as much Aussie beer as we could cram into our hold bags on the flight."
Rod Marsh
The aforementioned Marsh, an Australian cricket legend and former selector, who died last year, set an impressive tally for Boon to beat. His own 51-can effort took its toll on the wicketkeeper, who was so drunk he had to leave the plane in a wheelchair.
Shane Warne
The sadly missed cricket icon loved to let his hair down, even in the early days of his illustrious career. Amid struggles to control his weight, he once admitted to consuming “10 pints and chicken and chips” every night. He also smoked heavily at one stage with up 50 cigarettes a day.
Reflecting on his life the year before he died suddenly, Warne said: “I liked loud music, I smoked, I drank, and I bowled a bit of leg spin. I don't have any regrets.”
Jesse Ryder
The hard-hitting New Zealand batsman got himself into numerous alcohol-fuelled scrapes. In 2008, his season was ended when he cut his hand trying to break into a toilet in a Christchurch bar the day after the Black Caps had won a one-day series against England.
It later emerged that Ryder had been boozing until 1.30am BEFORE the game. A subsequent drinking session in the West Indies led to Ryder missing a team meeting and the day’s training session. He was dropped for the following game as a result.
Merv Hughes
A teammate (and lookalike) of Boon’s could handle the booze himself. In fact, the intimating fast bowler felt it was his duty.
"Have a think about it, on both the '89 and '93 tours of England we were sponsored by XXXX. If you don't get right behind the sponsor, you get chastised by the Australian Board,” he told The Guardian in 2002.
"We were out doing pub nights every night, making personal appearances to promote a beer. Personally, I couldn't see anything wrong with that. When Paul Reiffel and I didn't make the '97 trip, I told him it was a good one to miss because it wasn't sponsored by a brewery!"
Herschelle Gibbs
While boozing following a match is generally welcomed, it is frowned upon before a match. But in the case of South African batting icon Gibbs, it appeared to aid his game.
Take his legendary 175 against Australia in 2006 as South Africa remarkably chased down a record 434 in an ODI. Gibbs admitted in his autobiography to being hungover as he bludgeoned the Aussie attack around The Wanderers in Johannesburg. Gibbs’ alcohol-fuelled knock took just 111 balls and featured 21 fours and seven sixes.
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