The news that  England's one-day cricket captain, Paul Collingwood, has been fined for visiting a lap dancing club on Saturday night will come as no surprise to those who watched him in action against South Africa the following day. One assumes he scored more in the club than he did at the crease, where he was dismissed for a duck at slip.

The ECB levelled a £1,000 on the Durham all-rounder, but in my view this is a pathetic slap on the wrist.  Collingwood should have been stripped of the captaincy and sent home to bowl as many lap-dancing maidens over as he wants. And his piddly little excuse did nothing to quell the anger of England cricket fans: "I was taken to an inappropriate bar, realised that and got out of there," Collingwood told reporters.

We've been down this road before with Fredalo Flintoff, who got so tanked up during a night of frolics at the World Cup in the Caribbean that he found himself chest-deep in the sea at four in the morning 36 hours before a match. And we certainly don't need reminding of Ian Botham's propensity to mix business with pleasure.

'I wonder why it is that the cricketing greats of yesteryear knew how to enjoy a couple of drinks after play and then go home or back to a hotel'

But herein lies the issue. Botham, for all his off-field antics, could always get up the next day and perform on the field, often to rousing success. Collingwood and the rest of the cricket jokes that make up the current squad cannot afford the luxury of nights out, and certainly not in strip clubs.

Don't these morons realise that thousands of England fans spend a great deal of money following the team around the world, and that millions are watching and listening to every ball at home? What kind of team management allows players to go AWOL at midnight, gaping at naked women? And surprise, surprise, the team then loses two games they should have won and has one foot on the plane back home.

As an England fan who has endured the roller coaster of 2005 Ashes 2006-7 and World Cup debacle, I'm sick and tired of this kind of behaviour. Instead of looking at the long legs of the lap dancers, Collingwood should have been thinking of where to put long leg in the crucial game against New Zealand on Tuesday. Instead of his eyes popping out of his head enjoying the strip, his mind should have been focused on the strip his batsmen were due to play New Zealand on. But no, the lads' culture prevails even when the hopes of a sports-mad nation are dependant on the team performing to their maximum capacity.