Former Australian cricket captains Michael Clarke and Steve Waugh have dismissed the idea of team curfews, with the latter quickly abandoning the only one he ever imposed.
England's director of cricket Andrew Strauss has slapped a midnight curfew on his players for the rest of the tour after wicketkeeper-batsman Jonny Bairstow''s headbutt of Australian opener Cameron Bancroft, in Perth.
Clarke, Waugh and former England batsman Kevin Pietersen all believe players should be accountable for their actions, rather than subjected to a curfew
"They are fully professional and if they mess up it's their career they're wrecking," Waugh said before a charity event at Sydney's Hyatt Regency hotel on Thursday
"They've got to be responsible, they are not kids."
The only time under Waugh's watch a curfew was imposed was at the 1999 World Cup.
"We had just come off the tour of the West Indies and I just thought we'd lost our way a bit with celebrations and maybe not preparing for the game properly," Waugh said.
'We put the curfew in for the first couple of games of the World Cup.
"We played terribly and Tom Moody come up and said, 'I don't think it's working.'
I said, 'I think your right,' so we changed it and went on to win the World Cup after that."
Clarke said he made sure there was never a curfew during his tenure.
"The less that was compulsory, the better," Clarke said.
"If your a grown man or a grown woman playing sport at the highest level, you make your own decisions.
"You live by the sword, you die by the sword."
Pietersen, who played under Strauss in England's triumphant 2009-10 Ashes campaign in Australia, said curfews were overrated.
"If you are a professional and if I was the coach, I wouldn't give any curfew to anybody because it's your career," he said.
"If you're going to cock it up and make a hash of your career, it's your problem, you will get found out.
"If you want to go and mess about in a bar now in the middle of a Test match, every single person I judge as a journalist with a mobile phone.
"So you're going to get caught, so what's the point in doing it? I think curfews are overrated and schoolboy-like."
