How best to prepare for the rigors of a five-match Ashes series? With a tour of some of the best golf courses Britain has to offer, naturally.
With tour matches increasingly an anachronism, both England and Australia will decamp to different corners of the country with golf bags, not cricket coffins, in tow as they gear up for the series.
England’s cricketers have long been golf obsessives, but the use of the sport as a team-building activity has stepped up a notch over the last year with Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key in charge.
It has not just been about lowering handicaps, but team bonding. The management have used time on the golf course to have delicate conversations with players in need of a confidence boost; for instance, when Zak Crawley was short on runs and confidence last summer, Stokes and McCullum paired themselves with him and provided a pep talk.
At the start of the tour of New Zealand in February, England left their cricket kit on the country’s north island while heading for a camp at the Millbrook Resort just outside Queenstown on the south island, with golf top of the agenda.
This time, England are heading to Scotland following their four-day Test against Ireland, which starts at Lord’s on Thursday. While some of the team and coaches will go for an extended trip, the whole squad is set to gather north of the border for the weekend of June 9-11, before heading to Birmingham to prepare for final Ashes preparations.
England’s trip kicks off with the Professional Cricketers’ Association golf day at the Grove in Hertfordshire the day after the Ireland Test ends. From there, some players will return to spend time with family, but a considerable group will head straight to Scotland for extra golf. There, they are set to play St Andrews Old Course, nearby Kingsbarns, Gleneagles and the fiercely exclusive Loch Lomond.
Interestingly, before the Ireland Test, England’s players are also set to play at Stoke Park, the Berkshire resort now owned by the Ambani family, who count IPL franchise Mumbai Indians as part of their business portfolio.
Not every player in England’s squad is an avid golfer (Mark Wood is among those who doesn’t play), but most are. When asked recently who the best golfer in the squad is, the new vice-captain Ollie Pope instantly said Crawley, whose handicap is 1, with the likes of Jimmy Anderson, Joe Root and Pope himself in close pursuit. Stokes, unsurprisingly, is known for his fearless big hitting.
England’s enthusiasm for golf has seen one mishap, of course, when Jonny Bairstow suffered a devastating ankle injury slipping on a tee box at Pannal Golf Club in Yorkshire in September. When asked recently if he was back playing golf, Bairstow offered a sheepish smile and a “no comment”.
Many of the Australian squad are keen golfers, too. They arrive in the country on Saturday and are heading straight to the Liverpool coast for a team-bonding camp at Formby. This weekend, some of the players will play at Open venue Royal Birkdale.
Only after the golf will they head south to London, where they will have a training camp at Beckenham to prepare for the World Test Championship final against India, which starts on June 7 at the Oval.
Before the 2019 series, which began soon after the World Cup ended, they played an internal match at the Ageas Bowl, then squeezed in a tour match against Derbyshire between the third and fourth Tests. There is no such fixture scheduled amid this series, making it the first Ashes tour in which Australia has not played a single county side.
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