Daniel Cherny - Codesports Chief Cricket Writer (09.06.2026)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
So you're saying with Hilton Honors, I can use points for a free night stay anywhere?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
Anywhere.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:06)
What about fancy places like the Canopy in Paris? Yeah, Hilton Honors, baby. Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad and Tulum?

**Daniel Cherny** (0:13)
Hilton Honors, baby.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:15)
What about the five-star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you gonna do this for all 9,000 properties?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:22)
When you want points that can take you anywhere, anytime, it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:29)
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**Mark Duffield** (0:55)
Welcome back to the SENWH studio out here at Uptis Stadium on this Tuesday morning in Perth. We're here thanks to Beaumont Homes award-winning design built to be loved forever. It is time to talk to Daniel Cherny, who of course is the senior cricket writer with Codesports. He's also a devastated St Kilda supporter and an amused observer of the goings on in English cricket. And we'll chat to him about all of those things while we've got him on the line. Daniel, welcome.

**Daniel Cherny** (1:25)
Duffield, you've come to that well, thank you.

**Mark Duffield** (1:28)
Mate, let's start with the POMs because they are the gift that keeps giving. So Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson are out when they're not supposed to be. Then a rugby player apparently picks a fight with them, not the other way around. He punches a security guard who's with the ECB, who's out with them, which I presume is following the rule that if they're out when they shouldn't be, make sure they don't get into any more trouble than they otherwise might.
And as a result, Ben Stokes' captaincy is hanging by a thread. What do you have to add to this?

**Daniel Cherny** (2:05)
I suppose it's compounding mistakes. I mean, I think for mine, well, clearly we are still waiting for a lot of the facts to come through here and the ECB is investigating.
We haven't learned everything as part of this process. But, I mean, when you step back and think of all that's gone on in English cricket, particularly over the summer and the shambles of the Ashes Tour, the episode with Harry Brook in New Zealand before the Ashes Tour, which was covered up as the vice captain who managed to survive that and who notionally would be the man to take Ben Stokes' place, which is the most absurd part about this, if Stokes loses his position, I think ultimately is that if you just keep tapering over cracks and let people get away with this sort of behaviour, nothing changes. The old thing about the standard you walk by is the standard you accept. And it's very hard now to make, reach a conclusion, anything other than English cricket has at A level, a big problem with drinking, with curfew, with discipline, an inability to tie the line, a disrespect for rules and authority, and that they just don't really take it seriously. And, you know, I think, take them at their word, the rugby player was the groupster, and you know, you can be unlucky in the situation, but it's also the situation in which you leave yourself in and you're out past whatever time breaching curfew.
I think that Brennan McCullum had been on the record with the ECB's own media team in the lead up to this series against New Zealand, in which he had been lucky to survive for, and had said that, had gone on the record saying nothing good happens after midnight, and yet here we are. And it's a real shame for England because, you know, they won the first test. It should have been a chance for them to try to build on the back of the ashes, have a good home summer, you know, restore some credibility. And that has all started quite nicely. There's some new faces in the team, and yet it just didn't work out.

**Mark Duffield** (4:10)
No, it never does in a nightclub after midnight, I don't think. I think that, I think Brendan had it right. Nothing good happens in nightclubs after midnight. Nothing much good happens to the Aussies either, the one day team, when they get on a turning pitch on the subcontinent. They were pretty underwhelming in the three match series against Pakistan.