The spectral figure of Ben Stokes, lurking on the fringes of the latest tedious embarrassment for English cricket – Brydon Carse’s arrest at a Derby nightclub – said everything about the risible sense of denial and victimhood we were asked to stomach amid his walking away from the national team.After the sulk-fest in which Stokes complained that media duties were stalling ‘a proper drink with the boys’ before a late-night altercation at a Chelsea nightclub, we were treated to a 140-minute soft focus PR interview with him on the For the Love of Cricket podcast, which Kevin Pietersen declared to be a terribly clever example of him choosing a player-owned business to open his heart to.It was a safe space for Stokes to dissemble on the question of whether England had a drinking culture. ‘No, that’s such an extreme thing to put on a team,’ he complained, before going on to discuss his own ‘bad relationships with alcohol’ in that thoroughly modern way, where you can infer it’s a two-way relationship and the alcohol is somehow partly to blame.The depth of the drinking culture was spelt out to me two years ago by an individual whose partner had left the England set-up for another international sports side because she loathed the boys’ club air of entitlement so much. The depth of that culture needs no elaboration now. Ben Duckett at Noosa in Australia last December, Harry Brook in Wellington, New Zealand, in January, Stokes and Gus Atkinson at Chelsea’s Rex Rooms in June and now Carse at Molly Malone’s in Derby.If Stokes had an iota of care for the England team he once led – or for his friend Joe Root, left to pick up the pieces – then he would have moved heaven and earth to ensure that his Durham team-mate Carse was nowhere near that nightclub on Saturday night. An adult approach to Carse after Durham had just beaten Derbyshire would have gone along the lines of ‘Get yourself home. You’re in the England squad for a Test against Pakistan on Thursday.’ A ‘hacked off’ Joe Root has to discuss the latest ugly off-field incident involving one of his England players Brydon Carse is put in handcuffs outside a Derby nightclub on Saturday night – five days before a Test match he could have been involved inBut the nightclub it had to be. Another evening’s ‘relationship with alcohol’ which concluded with Carse in handcuffs, Stokes skulking at the pillar and Matthew Potts, a third of the laughing boys, also adjacent. Prepare yourselves for another sugar-coated podcast on how it was all someone else’s fault, quite soon.It’s been rather unfashionable to argue, as I have done for several years now, that there is something deeply unattractive about the booze and banter scene which Stokes gave full rein to as England captain. The brilliance of his cricket seems to render him untouchable in the eyes of the majority on the social media channels, where all the power resides nowadays. We have to stomach a hagiographic narrative about Stokes’ ‘bravery’ and ‘courage’ – as if laying off the ales, making adequate preparations for a Test match and treating journalistic questions with a modicum of respect don’t even enter the equation.Root’s return to the helm has served as a beautiful antidote to all that. A refreshing reminder that English cricket does not need a creed of boorish, alpha male entitlement to somehow ‘save’ it and give it a contemporary relevance. When Root first sat down to discuss his captaincy a few weeks back, you simply thanked God for the restoration of basic common sense.His vocabulary felt like a return to the real world – the use of the words like ‘adult’ and ‘grown up’ speaking to the fact that neither is such a huge ask in an elite professional environment where South Africa and Australia lie up the road. The need of a curfew to bring some decent behaviour was a dreadful look and Root immediately removed it. This felt like the recovery of a lost kind of Englishness. Proof to those of us who hated the way the national team we loved had been hijacked that we’d been entitled to make our argument.Root also addressed the problem without appearing to lecture anyone. We were witnessing humility again. That first press conference, taken with the comfortable innings victory over Pakistan at Leeds, seemed like the start of an unpicking of the booze and banter culture stitched into England by Stokes and Brendon McCullum. If Ben Stokes had an iota of care for the England team he would have ensured that his Durham teammate Carse was nowhere near that nightclub on Saturday night Root also addressed the problem of Carse without appearing to lecture anyone. We were witnessing humility againMolly Malone’s has taken him right back to square one and the fact that Root, who has never put a foot wrong off the pitch, found himself having to deal with the same old questions this week is nothing less than a disgrace. Stokes, who never seems to be far away when trouble starts, will no doubt not see it that way. Some public contrition from him for not steering Carse away would have been appropriate. The silence has been deafening. Stokes is above all that sort of thing. Root has declared himself ‘hacked off’ with the situation, which must be putting it mildly. In another necessary balancing act, he has made his displeasure with Carse quite clear, whilst being mindful to ask Stokes about ‘the emotional state’ of the bowler. Carse has been emblematic of the worst of modern England. The player who had a three-month ban from cricket for betting on the sport in breach of regulations before he’d even bowled a ball in Test cricket.The player who, sitting at a Perth cafe with Zak Crawley and Brook the morning after England lost the first Ashes Test inside two days last winter, put his hand in his pocket and sent thousands of dollars in cash flying into the air. Bystanders, including English cricket journalists in the place for a coffee, scrambled to grab the cash and return it to him.As England head into their second Test under Root, the formidable on-field challenges of the future begin to loom large. Victory at Lord’s, to wrap up the series, would create the potential to experiment with the bowling lineup at Edgbaston with South Africa in mind. Carse, with his flagrant disregard of Root’s words when he took the captaincy again, has no place in this team, either now or at any time in the future Root and England managing director Rob Key in talks at Lord’s – where cricket may not have been top of the agenda If Root is to thrive against a competitive Test nation like that, then the virus of booze-related indiscipline must be expunged and players lacking the fundamental respect which ought to come with Test selection must have no place. Carse, with his flagrant disregard of Root’s words, has no place in this team, either now or at any time in the future.Stokes, the man standing at the pillar, declared a wish to coach England in the future during that self-aggrandizing podcast appearance. To which the response must be, ‘Heaven help us.’ A cricketing force of nature he might be, yet the bombast and braggadocio which has diminished England will never be punctured if he returns with his current offended perspective.Discipline, intelligence and rigour must be recovered if England are to remotely aspire to reclaim the Ashes. They need a new world, expunged of the rogue elements which have brought them here.