It’s been 20 years since England won the famous Ashes series at home and the UK media are on the rewind mode. It has thrown up some interesting stories from that triumph. A couple of them relate to the open-bus parade that carried ‘drunk’ England team for a celebratory function at the then prime minister Tony Blair’s residence.
The team had celebrated through the night and next morning were on the bus. Stockill, the strength & conditioning coach of England explains the mood on that bus that day.
“When we got to Downing Street [PM’s official residence] the boys were half-hammered. We’d had a few on the bus. We get into the garden and there was one table with a tablecloth on it and a jug of water with 12 glasses. I said to someone you might need to up your game on the drinks. Then they rustled out a box of warm Beck’s. Hmm you’re still not cutting it. Anyway they did finally bring stuff in. It was incredible. It reflected the Prime Minister of the time not being a cricket follower and doing it out of a sense of duty or political points. Imagine if it had been the football team. They would have put on a full spread,” Nigel Stockill told UK’s Telegraph.
Stockill then zooms into the scene between Pietersen and the PM’s wife Cherie Blair.
“KP was chit-chatting. I wouldn’t say flirting, but there was a bit going on with Cherie. She was saying ‘you boys, behave yourselves’ as she was fluttering around the garden. KP went ‘Tell me Nige, who the **** is that?’”
Kirk Russell, England’s physio, sums up that bizarre meeting. “I reckon Cherie Blair had had a few before we arrived. She was quite flirtatious … It was incredible really. Something you never experience again. I remember getting drenched later that night with champagne in a nightclub. A whole bottle was poured over my head by KP.”
In its rewind feature The Telegraph mentions the incident of a England player allegedly urinating that evening in the garden of the official residence of the prime minister, but notes that no one was willing to admit it now. The voices in the story deny such an incident took place.
But interestingly a few years ago, Simon Jones, one of the star pacers of that series from England, had talked about it to Cricinfo. “I apparently peed in the garden at 10 Downing Street. That’s what they tell me. Did I do it? It could have been me – but I can’t remember. Harmy [Steve Harmison] was playing on the swing and Hoggy [Matthew Hoggard] was climbing a kids’ climbing frame. It was hilarious”.
