Sex, drugs and gambling: England’s wild NZ cricket tours revealed

There’s no lack of bloodletting after the Black Caps’ failed Twenty20 World Cup campaign. But Neil Reid reveals the trials and tribulations of their travel through the West Indies doesn’t come close to English
cricket’s drama-filled history in New Zealand revealed in award-nominated book.

Cricket was traditionally referred to as a gentlemen’s game in its birthplace in England.

But an award-nominated book published in the UK has highlighted how the antics of successive English cricket teams touring New Zealand were anything but gentlemanly.

The Tour: The Story of the England Cricket Team Overseas 1877-2022 chronicles the triumphs, tragedies and transgressions of teams that have toured the world.

That includes some wild times in New Zealand; including a 1984 trip here that was to be dubbed by the British press the “Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll” tour.

It has been longlisted for the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2024 and author Simon Wilde has drawn on fresh interviews, autobiographies and news reports to paint an eye-opening picture of life on the road.

That includes the excesses of 1984.

With a trip to Pakistan following the New Zealand tour, Wilde wrote in The Tour: “With Pakistan known to offer little in terms of Western-style nightlife, the team made the most of New Zealand”.

“Every night seems like Saturday night, one cricket correspondent wrote.”

England cricket legend Sir Ian Botham – after a lengthy legal battle – later revealed he had “smoked pot at various times, sometimes, he said, ‘simply in order to relax – to get off the sometimes fearful treadmill of being an international celebrity’.”

Star batsman Allan Lamb later admitted to smoking cannabis “here and there”.

And Wilde also quotes in The Tour – published by Simon Schuster UK – from fellow England cricketing great David Gower’s autobiography that there was “probably some sex and possibly some drugs.

“There was some partying for sure. There was a bit of waccy baccy [cannabis] on that tour.”

Wilde wrote how the tour “generated tabloid headlines of womanising and the use of recreational drugs”.

‘If you don’t keep your husband’s bed warm at night, then someone else might”

One who later reflected she wasn’t surprised by some of the headlines was Lamb’s wife, Lindsay.

Wilde wrote that she had spent time with the team in England in 1982-83 and realised then, sadly, that the behaviour of touring cricketers was no different to other groups of testosterone-pumped young men.

‘It would be dishonest to say that things didn’t change after that tour of New Zealand,’ she said.

‘I was shattered when all sorts of rumours came out, [and] it was the sex stories that tore me apart . . . I was not so much bothered whether it was true or not, I just couldn’t take it being all over the front pages’.

Wilde wrote: “It took a few years to stabilise the relationship, but the marriage survived. ‘If you don’t keep your husband’s bed warm at night,’ Lindsay Lamb concluded, ‘then someone else might’.”

The long-debated issue of partners going on tour with the cricket stars is well-versed throughout The Tour.

Wilde wrote how one veteran English cricket reporter said of the decision to allow partners and families on a 1974-75 tour to Australia: “It is no more the place for them than a trench on the Somme”.

The issue flared up again before England toured New Zealand in the late 1990s.

“When in the 1990s Darren Gough protested to Tim Lamb, chief executive of the Test and Country Cricket Board (the precursor to the ECB), about a blanket ban on partners during a winter in Zimbabwe and New Zealand spanning more than 100 days, Lamb replied: ‘What would you do if you were in the army?’.”

The captain who found a dead shark on his bed

While partners were for a long time not allowed to tour alongside their cricketing husbands or boyfriends, England was early movers in allowing their touring captains to have their own suite.

The other players had to share rooms.

But it backfired on England captain Mike Atherton during a one-day tour of New Zealand when he was pranked by one of his players; a prank which ultimately backfired.

Among those keen to fish on tour were Atherton and one of his fast bowlers, Alan Mullally.

Wilde wrote in The Tour: “’He [Atherton] is making all these flies and catches, nothing,’ Mullullay recalled.

“’I go fishing and land this mako shark. It had to be 90-100kg. I stick it in the ute. David Lloyd, the coach, says, ‘You know what you’ve got to do with it? But you will be dropped.’ I say, ‘Yeah, you’re a selector, help me out’. He said, ‘No . . . but you have to do it’.

“So Mullally took the bloodied, stinking fish back to the hotel, put it over his shoulder and asked at the reception desk for the key to Atherton’s room.”

Mullally put the shark on Atherton’s otherwise clean bed, with a note stating: “Athers, this is a fish.”

Shortly after the captain returned to his room, Mullally heard his captain first scream an obscenity, and then his name.

“The next day, Mullally was dropped, and did not feature in the last three ODIs of the series, having played in the first two.”

Banged up after betting fury – lucky to live after “ill-fated” travel decision

One of the most often-spoken quotes around life on the road for sports teams and fans alike is: “What goes on tour, stays on tour”.

Wilde’s book has lifted the lids on plenty of shenanigans and scandals involving England’s national cricket team around the world. But he also wrote many others were hushed up at the time by media who had close links and friends within the sporting team.

But Wilde said “some types of errant behaviour could not be swept under the carpet”.

That included the case of Ted Pooley – wicketkeeper of the 1876-77 touring team – who ended up in a jail cell before being called to appear in court in Christchurch.

His arrest came after he got into a fight with a would-be bookie after he refused to pay out on a bet Pooley had placed on England to beat a Christchurch selection.

“When Ted Pooley landed himself in jail over a betting dispute in New Zealand ahead of England’s first overseas test in Melbourne in 1876-77, his absence could hardly go unnoticed,” Wilde wrote in The Tour.

“He was eventually acquitted of breaking into and trashing the hotel room of a local man, Ralph Donkin, with whom he had fallen out, but not in time to take part in the tests across the Tasman Sea.”

It wasn’t the only drama the team faced while in New Zealand; including one which almost claimed several lives of the tourists.

After first enduring a mammoth sea voyage from the UK – and still with another boat trip across the Tasman for the Australian leg of the series – the tourists had decided to travel overland as much as possible.

But it was an “ill-fated decision” which led to a near-tragic stagecoach trip from Greymouth to Christchurch.

“Amid heavy rain they had to perilously traverse a swollen gorge near Ōtira, dragging horses and two coaches across the rapids, and only narrowly escaping with their lives,” Wilde wrote.

In a dispatch sent home from English cricketer James Southerton he wrote: “ … that there were serious misgivings as to our safety is beyond doubt”.

“There we were in the bed of the river, with the elements as bad as anyone can possibly imagine, on either side of us a mountain 3000 foot high, the river rising rapidly, no one knowing which was to move in the utter darkness, and not a soul to hear us, shout as loud as we could.”

Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 30 years of newsroom experience.