From the archives: Cricketing over Christmas

How do cricket players get on with touring abroad over Christmas? Mike Atherton, the former England captain, penned an article on the matter for our Christmas issue in 2004. With England currently taking it to the Aussies in Melbourne, I thought it would be a good time to excavate it from the archives:
 
Some like it hot, Michael Atherton, The Spectator, 18 December 2004

‘It is no more a place for them than a trench on the Somme’ was the withering verdict of John Woodcock, the Times’s cricket correspondent, on the presence of wives on an England tour three decades ago. Woodcock, it must be said, was and is single, but he is no misogynist. He was simply reflecting the mainstream view of cricket’s establishment and, dare I say it, of most of the players themselves. When asked why his wife never came on tour, Jack Russell, England’s eccentric wicket-keeper throughout the mid-1990s, was often heard to snarl, ‘Wouldn’t take your missus to the office, would you?’

Even cricket, though, moves with the times.