England show united front at New Year

Sydney: The England Test team, facing a repeat of the demoralising Ashes whitewash Down Under seven years ago, at least demonstrated more team unity on New Year’s Eve than the dysfunctional 2006-07 side.

All the squad and their partners attended the ECB function on Tuesday night at the Flying Fish waterfront restaurant that offered a prime view of the Sydney Bridge fireworks.

This contrasts with the splits in the camp under Freddie Flintoff’s leadership, when the captain went out on a boat with his testimonial committee chairman Paul Beck and took with him three other members of the squad in Jimmy Anderson, Steve Harmison and Geraint Jones, plus agent Neil Fairbrother.

Flintoff wrote in his autobiography: “The media made a big issue about us not celebrating the new year together as a team. Why would we want to do that? We’d hardly spent an evening together during the rest of the tour so why would New Year’s Eve be any different? I told the lads to do what they wanted.

“I’d flown out everyone who had worked on my benefit committee the previous year and we had a great night on a boat in Sydney harbour. We watched the fireworks and just for a few hours it felt like I wasn’t on this tour from hell.”

The ECB claimed all the tour squad had been invited on to the Flintoff boat.

Attendance at this year’s function at the same venue was optional but every player chose to go at some stage during the evening. The Aussies saw in the new year as a unit watching the fireworks from their hotel in the Sydney Rocks.

— Daily Mail