Editorial: Drinking Black Caps made wrong call

It's not what we're drinking - it's how we're drinking. Or, if you happen to be a prominent sportsperson, it's the fact you're drinking at all.

There was huge public reaction to the revelation Jesse Ryder and Doug Bracewell had been dropped from the New Zealand team for today's one-day international because they'd broken team protocols by drinking while recovering from injury.

Many Kiwi blokes and blokesses had a hard time comprehending the fact someone could be punished for the simple act of enjoying a drink.

Others, sick of watching our top athletes partying after a loss, fiddling while Rome burns, saw this as the last straw and said Ryder, who has had booze issues before, should be dropped altogether.

It was likely this disgust that led two Rotorua men to have a crack at Ryder and Bracewell when they saw them in a Napier bar after Wednesday's loss to South Africa - kicking off the whole controversy.

The men told The Daily Post there were several patrons in the bar that night asking the cricketers the same question: Should you be out drinking after such a poor performance?

It seems the nature of celebrity is such that people will just bowl on up to you as if they know you.

No surprises there - being a public figure the public will often figure they own you, or at least the right to talk to you like they do own you.

The rights or wrongs of that assumption aside, let's not lose sight of the reason Ryder and Bracewell were dropped - they ignored team protocols. Those protocols are in place to ensure peak performance from a national sports side whose triumphs and defeats are celebrated and mourned respectively by fans nationwide.

That a couple of Rotorua men's actions helped bring the rulebreaking to cricket officials' attention is neither here nor there.

Should Ryder and Bracewell have demonstrated thicker skin and ignored the comments?

Even professional sportsmen are human and every human has his or her breaking point. Ryder's may come a bit quicker than others.

Professional sportspeople know that with popularity and fame come extremely high expectations and responsibilities and like it or not, the public expects them to be good role models.

The heckling, it seems, comes with the territory and if they can't learn to handle it and walk away, perhaps they should steer clear of a crowded bar following a loss (especially when booze is supposedly off the menu).