England drop captain in latest discipline issue

30 Jan 2018 cricket.com.au

The England Under 19 captain left out of final World Cup game for undisclosed disciplinary reasons

Discipline issues have hit England again, with the U19 team dropping captain Harry Brook for the final match of their World Cup campaign in New Zealand for an unspecified issue.

Coach Jon Lewis refused to offer much detail as to the rule broken after England's win over the hosts earlier today.

"Harry missed the match because he broke a team rule, so we decided to leave him out and deal with it internally," Lewis told media. " We’ll let you know if anything happens after that. He just broke a team rule.

"The rules apply to everyone so the captain breaks the rule and he missed the game.

"One thing I would like to stress about this group of people is that they’ve been extremely well behaved here in New Zealand.

"They’re a really good group of people. We take a lot of pride in our duty of care for the Under-19s as a support staff and we do put rules in place. If rules are broken then disciplinary action sometimes needs to be taken."

Will Jacks took over the reins for England's seventh placed playoff against host nation New Zealand today. Jacks took 3-31 as England claimed a 32-run win over the Kiwis.

Brook had been one of England's shining lights in the tournament, having scored 239 runs with a century and two fifties, and averaged 119.5.

However he made a duck in England's quarter-final defeat to Australia, one of eight victims to fall to the leg-spin of Lloyd Pope.

Pope spins a web to skittle England at World Cup

The U19 discipline issue is the latest to strike the England set-up in a problematic four months, dating back to Ben Stokes' alleged involvement in a Bristol street brawl that will see the allrounder front court to face a charge of affray next month.

England's Test wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow was revealed to have greeted Australia's Cameron Bancroft with a headbutt in a Perth bar on the squad's first night in Australia.

In the same bar when the squad returned to Perth later in the tour, England Lions batsman Ben Duckett was suspended from the remaining matches of the tour, fined "the maximum allowable amount" and given a final warning after pouring a drink over the head of James Anderson.