A lot of action has been taking place in the ongoing Twenty 20 World Cup, whether it was Australia’s loss to Zimbabwe or the early exit of West Indies from the championship. But now there is action off the field as well with England’s one-day captain Paul Collingwood being fined £1,000 for visiting a lap dancing club in Cape Town on the eve of Sunday’s Twenty20 match against South Africa.
South Africa beat England in the Super Eight game by 19 runs with Paul Collingwood departing from the field without troubling the scoreboard. He apologized for his action in front of the English Cricket Board.
Paul said
It’s obviously unacceptable. I’m England captain and going to these places isn’t the thing to do. You learn from these lessons and hopefully it won’t happen again. I had one beer there and thought, I need to get out of this place. I’ve made apologies to them and I realise it was inappropriate to go there and that was my mistake. Hopefully we can quickly get over it and concentrate on this game on Wednesday. Mathematically we’re still hoping we can get through.
This decision to fine the England one day skipper was made by a panel including England coach Peter Moores, chairman of selectors David Graveney and ECB chief executive David Collier. The Board stated that Collingwood has been fined enough to straighten the matter and this issues must be closed.
The 31 year olds visit to the club was first reported by The Sun newspaper where reports say that the witness in the club saw him looking relaxed and drinking in the bar.
A lot of controversies have been hovering around the English camp including the one at the World Cup in West Indies this year, where Andrew Flintoff was stripped of the vice-captaincy and around 5 other players were fined for drinking into the wee hours of a Saturday when there was a match to be played the next day.
With a lot happening on and off the field with Collingwood, he states now that the focus will be the next match against India where he wants to keep all thats happened in the past few days aside and just concentrate on the game and take his captaincy to greater levels of success.
