{"id":92665,"date":"2025-05-11T11:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T11:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/92665\/"},"modified":"2025-05-11T11:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T11:57:09","slug":"englands-cricketers-want-us-to-stop-talking-about-golf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/92665\/","title":{"rendered":"England’s cricketers want us to stop talking about golf"},"content":{"rendered":"

England managing director Rob Key has reportedly asked players to refrain from posting about the sport on social media <\/p>\n

Type \u201cMark Wood golf\u201d into Google and the first thing that comes up is the website for a golf instructor from Hampshire, not the England<\/a> fast bowler who recently complained about media focus on the team\u2019s passion for the sport.<\/p>\n

The irony is that Wood, the cricketer, is one of the few players in the squad who does not play golf. Indeed, during rest days on tour, the Durham bowler is often put up for media duties while his teammates are getting in 18 holes.<\/p>\n

Yet his comments at the end of last month spoke of a wider annoyance in the camp that chatter about the team\u2019s golf obsession<\/a> has hit a nerve at the start of a huge year that includes Test series against India and Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that does bother me is this narrative of \u2018golf, golf, golf\u2019,\u201d Wood told the Sky Sports Cricket podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t play golf. I don\u2019t like it. It\u2019s not a game for me. I know the lads enjoy it and that\u2019s their time off. At times it\u2019s as if the golf is more important, and that is not true at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis narrative of \u2018Oh well, we\u2019ll play golf, this is the best gig in the world\u2019, I can understand people\u2019s frustration with it, but I\u2019m telling you, people genuinely care and work hard. That\u2019s what makes me feel uncomfortable, this narrative we don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EnglandJos Buttler, Ben Stokes and Joe Root back in 2019 (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n

It was assumed that Wood was responding to comments made by Kevin Pietersen during the white-ball tour of India earlier this year, when the former England captain criticised the team for not training once the one-day series got underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get paid to win games of cricket,\u201d Pietersen said. \u201cYou don\u2019t get paid to play golf. This isn\u2019t a golf tour, this is a cricket tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pietersen is not the only one who has commented on the team\u2019s liking for golf. Indeed, The i Paper flagged it up during England\u2019s shambolic first-round exit from the 50-over World Cup<\/a> in India in 2023. It hit a nerve then, too, with Jonny Bairstow biting back at the story during one press interaction in Mumbai.<\/p>\n

That inspired The i Paper to base their tournament player ratings<\/a> on golf. The verdict on Bairstow, rated at three, was \u201closing his Tour card\u201d. He\u2019s not played an ODI since.<\/p>\n

Bairstow infamously suffered a horrendous lower-leg injury on a golf course in September 2022, slipping on a tee box, that ruled him out for eight months.<\/p>\n

But England Test captain Ben Stokes also leapt to the defence of the players\u2019 love of golf recently.<\/p>\n

Talking on a promotional video for a hotel chain that has 120 golf resorts around the world, he said: \u201cAs a team, playing golf the day before a game starts, or two days out, it\u2019s not only a great way to relax. It\u2019s four hours where you\u2019re not thinking about the stresses of playing international cricket.<\/p>\n

\"STJoe Root on the Old Course at St Andrews in 2022 (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a few people who take the piss out of us, like, \u2018You only get picked if you\u2019ve got a low handicap\u2019 and all that kind of stuff \u2013 because we play so much golf. But you\u2019ve just got to understand there\u2019s a bigger reason to why we do all this stuff as a team together. We\u2019re under enough pressure as it is without having to think about it [playing cricket] for longer than we have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stokes is right. England\u2019s players do deserve to switch off. If that\u2019s by playing golf, fair enough.<\/p>\n

Yet the perception that they are more interested in getting their handicaps down than cricket and that some players have been ostracised because they don\u2019t play golf rankles.<\/p>\n

Ben Foakes and Jack Leach are two non-golfers who have dropped out of favour in recent years. But to think that was for anything other than cricketing reasons is wrong.<\/p>\n

The real reason the golf chat might touch a nerve with England\u2019s players is because they know that it is likely to be a stick that they are beaten with if things go wrong this year, especially on this winter\u2019s Ashes tour.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also why Rob Key, managing director of England men\u2019s cricket, has now reportedly asked the players to stop talking about golf publicly and refrain from posting about it on social media. <\/p>\n

As revealed by The i Paper in February, England will not play any tour matches once the series starts. Instead, the players are likely to take some time off during the two long gaps in the itinerary before Christmas, with many playing golf.<\/p>\n

That will only become a discussion point if the team are losing.<\/p>\n

England found that out the hard way during the 2023 World Cup. It\u2019s a topic that will inevitably come up again if things do go wrong during the Ashes, especially from the Australian media.<\/p>\n

It would be best now for Stokes and his players to accept that they have lost control of the narrative and ignore it.<\/p>\n

Instead, England should be looking forward to a legacy-defining year in Test cricket without worrying about the outside noise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England managing director Rob Key has reportedly asked players to refrain from posting about the sport on social…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[43331,748,393,7504,4884,43786,31647,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-92665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-ben-stokes","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-england-cricket","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-sports-comment","14":"tag-test-cricket","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114489081473633700","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}