Root scraps England’s curfew and tells his players to be adults
Joe Root has removed the midnight curfew England imposed after the Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson night out in June, six days before he leads the side out against Pakistan at Headingley.
Aug 13, 2026
England’s players will not have a bedtime this summer. Joe Root has scrapped the midnight curfew that had been in place since June, six days before he leads the side out at Headingley against Pakistan, and he does not want the decision treated as a statement of intent.
“There’s not going to be a curfew,” Root said on the Sky Sports Cricket podcast on Wednesday. “I don’t think this needs to be a big deal, to be honest.”
Why there was a curfew in the first place
The rule existed because of a night out in June. Hours after England beat New Zealand by 115 runs in the first Test at Lord’s, Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson carried on into the early hours at a nightclub in Chelsea, past the midnight cut-off the squad was working to. Both were stood down for the second Test, with Root taking over as interim captain for that match.
Investigations by the ECB and the independent Cricket Regulator later cleared both players of any responsibility for the violence that had been alleged, and neither faced further sanction beyond a written warning for breaching team conduct obligations. They were back in the squad for the third Test at Trent Bridge in late June. England lost the series 2-1 anyway, and by the time it was over Stokes had retired from Test cricket and Brendon McCullum had stepped down as Test coach.
What the episode left behind was a set of ECB behavioural guidelines issued in July, curfew included. Root has now taken the curfew out of them, and the board has gone along with it. “We have a Test captain and coach, who are looking at how they set team standards and culture,” the ECB said. “As part of this, the curfew will no longer be in place.”
Root’s argument
His reasoning is about consistency rather than leniency. “My view on curfews is that I don’t think they work, and if you want guys to take responsibility on the field, they’ve got to feel like they can be grown adults and make good, strong decisions off it,” he said.
The instruction to the dressing room, as he put it, runs to about a dozen words: “Be adults, look after yourselves, look after each other, be smart, be sensible.”
It is a reasonable position and it also carries obvious risk. A captain who removes a rule owns whatever happens next, and Root is a fortnight into this second spell. He captained England in 64 Tests between 2017 and 2022, winning 27 and losing 26, both England records, and gave the job up sounding like someone who had been carrying it too long. He got it back at the end of July after Stokes retired.
A summer of transition, and a coach who is not here yet
Stephen Fleming is England’s new Test coach but does not start until the tour of South Africa in December. Marcus Trescothick takes the side through the Pakistan series as interim, so the standards Root is setting are, for now, largely his own.
He was candid about the man he lost. “I was gutted when I found out Brendon was no longer going to be the Test coach,” Root said. “He’s someone that I feel has really got the best out of me personally.” The two still work together, since McCullum remains in charge of England’s white-ball sides under Harry Brook.
On Fleming, Root talked about the way the New Zealander carried himself as a captain before anything he did as a coach. He was also willing to mark his own homework on Jofra Archer, who he used heavily in his first spell as captain: “I think at times maybe I did over-bowl him and over-use him.” Archer he called a generational talent, which is code for handling him more carefully this time.
Asked whether Stokes might come back for the 2027 Ashes, Root gave the only answer available. “I don’t know, let’s get there first.”
Pakistan, and a first Test at home
The series is Pakistan’s first Test tour of England since 2020, when the two sides played out a summer behind closed doors, and it opens at Headingley on 19 August, which is Root’s home ground. Lord’s follows on 27 August and Edgbaston on 9 September, all three starting at 11am local time. England named a 16-man squad for the first two Tests, with Dan Lawrence recalled at six and Jordan Cox in at three after Jacob Bethell’s knee injury.
Root will be judged on those three matches rather than on the curfew, which is how he wants it. The trust only becomes a story again if somebody breaks it.