Defeated England show united front for New Year's Eve celebrations

England players celebrate New Year's Eve together on Sydney's waterfront
England selector Miller awarded OBE after three Ashes wins
Big Bash League proves to be a hit with T20 fans
Strauss to stay Down Under once Ashes are finished and takes son out of school

Published: 19:32 EDT, 31 December 2013 | Updated: 19:32 EDT, 31 December 2013

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The England Test team, facing a repeat of the demoralising Ashes whitewash Down Under seven years ago, at least demonstrated more team unity on New Year’s Eve than the dysfunctional 2006-07 side.

All the squad and their partners attended the ECB function last night at the Flying Fish waterfront restaurant that offered a prime view of the Sydney Bridge fireworks.

This contrasts with the splits in the camp under Freddie Flintoff’s leadership when the captain went out on a boat with his testimonial committee chairman Paul Beck and took with him three other members of the squad in Jimmy Anderson, Steve Harmison and Geraint Jones plus agent Neil Fairbrother.

Sticking together: The England team celebrated New Year together in Sydney

More from Charles Sale for the Daily Mail...

Flintoff wrote in his autobiography: ‘The media made a big issue about us not celebrating the new year together as a team. Why would we want to do that? We’d hardly spent an evening together during the rest of the tour so why would New Year’s Eve be any different? I told the lads to do what they wanted.

‘I’d flown out everyone who had worked on my benefit committee the previous year and we had a great night on a boat in Sydney harbour. We watched the fireworks and just for a few hours it felt like I wasn’t on this tour from hell.’

The ECB claimed all the tour squad had been invited on to the Flintoff boat. Attendance at last night’s function at the same venue was optional but every player chose to go at some stage during the evening. The Aussies saw in the new year as a unit watching the fireworks from their hotel in the Sydney Rocks.

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One of the many boats in Sydney Harbour on New Year’s Eve three years ago during the last Ashes tour contained a number of cricket-loving tycoons and captains of industry, including David Ross, Sir Stuart Rose and Sir Victor Blank.

The chat concerned who, among them or their friends, could mount a much-needed challenge to Giles Clarke for the chairmanship of the England Cricket Board. None emerged and Clarke was re-elected unopposed for three more years in 2012.

The sports honours committee meet in October to determine the new year gongs, which helps explain why retiring England chief selector Geoff Miller was rewarded with an OBE for the three Ashes victories on his watch.

Certainly Miller would not have been recognised for how the selections in his last Ashes touring party have fared - especially with three giant fast bowlers having played one Test between them.

Gong: Geoff Miller has been awarded an OBE on the New Year Honours list

England look like they have already missed the big-money T20 boat despite inventing the format. There is likely to be room in the year for just two T20 competitions that will attract the world’s best players and Australia’s Big Bash has seemingly grabbed that second spot after the Indian Premier League.

Big sucess: England batsman Eoin Morgan is playing for the Thunder in the Big Bash League and it is proving a sucess

The weather, the presentation, free-to-air TV coverage, the use of large stadiums for big crowds and slick entertainment around the cricket — such as motorbike stunts and the chance for a viewer to win a six-figure sum if a celebrity on a platform in the crowd catches a big hit — have all helped the Big Bash establish itself in the cricket calendar while the ECB are still working on their T20 revamp.

Strauss in school shift

Andrew Strauss, former Ashes-winning England captain turned Sky pundit, is temporarily taking his eight-year-old son Sam out of Caldicott Preparatory School, whose former headmaster Peter Wright has been found guilty of indecent assaults on pupils between 1959 and 1970.

Strauss’s decision has nothing to do with his former school’s past, which emerged during Wright’s trial. Sam is being educated in Australia for one term as Strauss is staying Down Under until April having bought a house in Ballarat, Victoria where his wife Ruth comes from.

Staying Down Under: Former England captain Andrew Strauss is staying in Australia after the Ashes

The senior England players received up to £60,000 each in bonuses for their Ashes win last summer and the Aussies are on course to collect extra payments of around that figure also if they complete a 5-0 whitewash.