England’s embattled Ashes tour took a nosedive on Saturday after Ben Duckett was ejected from the weekend’s tour match in Perth and the Lions batsman left facing disciplinary action for pouring a drink over Jimmy Anderson in a bar.

Trevor Bayliss, the head coach, was left fuming by this latest alcohol-related episode and is ready to end certain international careers, not least since it comes with the Test side 2-0 down in their Ashes defence, a campaign already in the spotlight following the Ben Stokes incident and Jonny Bairstow’s bizarre “head-butt” on the first night of the tour.

Duckett’s decision to tip his drink over Anderson – said to be a case of high jinks and quickly snuffed out by the team’s security staff present – took place in the same Avenue bar in Claremont as Bairstow’s error of judgment, coming in the early hours of Friday morning, the first night that the squad’s midnight curfew was relaxed.

England’s problem this Ashes may be drinking unwisely rather than too much Read more

“It’s trivial, but in the current climate not acceptable,” said Bayliss. “Everyone has been warned that even small things can be blown out of all proportion. They can’t keep making the same mistakes.

“The ECB have also been quite strict with the boys with their message. Most of the guys are fine but somewhere along the line some of them have to pull their heads in.”

Bayliss is now understood to be considering dropping two or three players at the end of the tour, regardless of it weakening the team, in an attempt to reassert his authority. Talk of a drinking culture continues to be rebuffed, with the message being that it is a case of a small core of troublemakers souring an otherwise responsible setup.

Andrew Strauss, the team director, is currently back in the UK but will doubtless share Bayliss’s anger. Bayliss spent time on Saturday liaising directly with Tom Harrison, chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, while the team, captained by Moeen Ali, were playing their two-day match against a Cricket Australia XI in Perth.

While Moeen made 24, Gary Ballance scored only one and Chris Foakes two, but the Lions Keaton Jennings (80) and Tom Curran (77*) helped the tourists make 314 for nine. Curran then dismissed Josh Philippe for 18 as the home side reached 62 for one.

Duckett was due to be one of the Lions called into the XI while the senior players are resting between Ashes fixtures. After being replaced in the side by Joe Clarke, he now faces the prospect of being sent home, with his internal disciplinary case handed over to Andy Flower, the Lions head coach.

The incident in question came after Joe Root’s squad had arrived in Perth on Thursday following their defeat in the second Test at Adelaide. That evening management and players held a quiz night, after which 10 of the latter and a number of Lions cricketers – the reserves who are training in Australia – went out for more drinks.

What followed at the Avenue bar did not involve any members of the public and police were not called. Though on the receiving end of Duckett’s drink, Anderson is not thought to be in any trouble himself and had such an incident occurred on a previous tour, it may well have been kept as an internal matter. rather than made so public.

However, the England management had already been burned by Bairstow’s curious “head-butt” on Australia’s Cameron Bancroft on the first night of the tour. That did not come to their attention until four weeks after the event, with the story dominating the end of Gabba Test despite all parties later agreeing it was merely playfulness and not malicious.

Strauss, speaking at the end of that 10-wicket defeat, said: “I think the players needs to be smarter. That’s the reality, they are adults, intelligent adults, and at times they are not using that intelligence in the right way.”

It had touched the rawest of nerves in English cricket, however, given the squad had already travelled out to Australia without its suspended vice-captain, Stokes, following his arrest in Bristol on 25 September. Strauss and the coaching staff then moved to impose a midnight curfew, only to loosen it upon arrival in Perth and then see it backfire immediately.