Ashes partying lasts longer than an Australian innings When you have won your first Ashes series in Australia for 24 years, a whole lot of whoopee is what’s expected. Obligatory even. And England’s triumphant team in Sydney did not disappoint.

Ashes partying lasts longer than an
Australian innings When you have won your first Ashes series in
Australia for 24 years, a whole lot of whoopee is what’s expected.
Obligatory even. And England’s triumphant team in Sydney did not
disappoint
But after five hours of frolics, fun and quality quaffing, most
sportsmen, you might think, would welcome a spot of shut eye before a
bone-jolting 177-mile bus ride to Canberra for a friendly tomorrow.

Not so sporting stalwarts Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood. With
England’s reputation restored in fine style on the cricket pitch, the
duo decided that their countrymen’s stamina needed proving in the
swimming pool.

So while most of their team-mates stumbled off to bed in their plush,
five-star hotel after dinner at the Flying Fish restaurant and an
evening of merrymaking, the pair decided 5am was much too early to call
it a night after their historic victory in the Fifth Test.

And what a party it was. Along with some friends, they hired several
£1,000 private beach-style huts or cabanas at The Pool Club, the city’s
most exclusive – and notorious – party venue, located on top of the
luxurious Ivy nightclub.

Known locally as ''babes and bikinis’’, the club features an outdoor
deck area, complete with a huge pool, cocktail waitresses and a host of
visiting Hollywood stars.
Rapper Tinie Tempah, who comes from Plumstead in London, was so
delighted to see his cricketing heroes that he insisted on posing for a
photograph of himself arm in arm with Pietersen, who instantly posted it
on Twitter with the caption: “Partying with Tinie.....Madness.”

“There were a whole bunch of them partying hard,” said one staff member.
“They had a great time in the pool and they were ordering round after
round. They had all brought their swimming trunks. They couldn’t wait to
get in. The pool is always packed and the bikini-clad hostesses make
ordering drinks a real delight.”

“They ordered quite a lot of cocktails,” one partygoer said. “But then
they are entitled to be triumphant. We Australians had to hand it to
them. They thrashed us. We even had Russell Crowe congratulating them on
Twitter. He wrote: 'Congratulations to the England team. Dominant
showing. Deserving victors. Australian Cricket has a mountain to
climb’.”

While Pietersen and Collingwood were letting their hair down at The Pool
Club, which charges £100 for a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne (and
will even sell you a pair of swimming trunks for £65), team-mate Graeme
Swann was on his own spending spree on the other side of the city.

Swann, too, had decided the night was too young to end and he had headed
to a casino. But while luck might have been on his side on the pitch,
it deserted him when the chips were down. Swann didn’t appear to mind.
“I seem to remember losing all my money magnificently quickly playing
cards in the casino last night,” he boasted on Twitter the next day.

However, in the cold light of day he did seem to be counting the cost.
“I think the moral of the tale is that when you get back to your hotel
at 5am and you are steaming GO TO BED,” he wrote.

But despite partying late into the night, all seemed determined there
would be no repetition of the infamous moment, during England’s last
triumph in Australia in the 1986 – 1987 series, when Ian Botham and
Allan Lamb threw Elton John fully clothed into a jacuzzi.

The morning after, as the team boarded the coach, several were wearing
dark glasses, most were pale and several had baseball caps shielding
them from scrutiny.

Desperate to avoid a “Freddie Flintoff moment” – when the all-rounder
was photographed almost falling down the steps of his hotel in 2005 –
the team asked camera crews to avoid close-ups.

By now even Pietersen was feeling the effects of his night out. “275kms
to Canberra and NO toilet on the bus ... Hmmm!! No sick bags either....
Not sure I’m going to be popular on this journey,” he wrote.
.