Danny Cipriani and Ben Stokes are the man-children of UK sport – I worry for the men who will copy their behaviour

Danny Cipriani is 30 and Ben Stokes 27, but this pair of extremely talented sportsmen seem locked in the behavioural patterns of 12-year-olds. Their maturity and personal development seems to have stalled at an adolescent phase.

If either of them were serving in my local tandoori or stacking shelves in Tesco, like many less fortunate members of their generation, their late night drunken and bellicose escapades would probably have resulted with a formal warning from their line manager, or even the sack. But if you make it at the highest levels of British sport and you’re good-looking blokes, quite the opposite happens. You are seen as an asset, a headline generator and sponsor bait – in spite of the occasional misdemeanour.

Why are these man-children feted and spoilt, fawned over by fans and tolerated by the people running their professional sporting bodies? Because if you are a white, male, good looking and a talented member of a national team, then double standards apply.

Are there examples of members of England’s female football teams, athletic squads, hockey or cricket teams kicking and punching members of the public and assaulting police officers when completely drunk in the small hours of the morning? I think you can guess the answer, even though these teams are among the very best in the world. When women take on the responsibility of playing for their country and representing national values, they rise to the challenge brilliantly, and with dignity.

So why does a double standard apply when sportsmen step out of line? Are we so desperate to beat India in the third Test match this Saturday that selectors will pick Ben Stokes to play, even though he has yet to apologise for being involved in a fight last year? Stokes was acquitted of affray, even though the two gay men he claimed to have been defending were never called as witnesses, and at the start of the trial the prosecution tried to add the charge of assault (but were refused by the judge), which would have carried a bigger penalty.

Even more bizarre, Stokes’s teammate Alex Hales, who told police he wasn’t at the scene of the fight (when he was), managed to escape any kind of caution, and has returned to the England team. Their coach Trevor Bayliss is said to want Stokes to apologise publicly for his behaviour – he was clearly drunk and extremely aggressive outside a nightclub at 2am – but has said that the young man is returning to the England squad “for his own good”.

I realise that international cricket is a sport, not a school for deportment or even a place where social skills are regarded as core values – but it beggars belief that somehow Stokes has been through “an ordeal”. As a glimpse into his personal values, this is the person who cruelly belittled Katie Price’s severely disabled son Harvey on social media, although he subsequently deleted the post.

I despair if Ben Stokes is chosen to represent our country this weekend, because he symbolises the kind of boorish behaviour that many unskilled working class young white men think is absolutely fine, just par for a top night out. To his thousands of fans, he’s just “one of the lads”. Any apology from Stokes is worthless until he learns respect, consideration and social skills. How many professional footballers have we heard “apologising” after they have managed to wriggle out of charges of assault and even rape?

The same lack of maturity is true of the other man-child who turned up in court this week: rugby player Danny Cipriani, who thought it was OK to attack a female police officer following an altercation with a doorman outside a nightclub in Jersey in the middle of the night. The officer was bruised after she tried to handcuff Cipriani, and after a night in the cells he subsequently pleaded guilty to resisting arrest and common assault. He was ordered to pay £2,000 in fines and £250 in compensation to the officer concerned.

Danny Cipriani has regularly displayed the infantile behaviour which afflicts so many of our top sportsmen. He was dropped by England in 2008 after partying in a nightclub during the Six Nations tournament, having stolen a bottle of vodka from a hotel bar and ignored curfews. There are countless other examples of Cipriani’s “escapades”, but recently he was said to have reformed. A few weeks ago he was recalled to the England squad in June for their victory over South Africa.

Recently, Cipriani signed to a new club, Gloucester RFC, and was in Jersey for pre-season training. Once again, this silly man-child thought a nightclub was the best place to get to know his new teammates. In 2015 he was convicted for drink driving, while out on a victory celebration, after crashing his Mercedes into a taxi and injuring the driver.

Following this latest incident, sports writers and rugby officials have reacted predictably – one said Cipriani’s problem was that “he lacks a male influence”, that any talk of Cipriani’s career being over was “preposterous”, that he was “not perfect” but “the England head coach likes his men to be on the edge”. Meanwhile, the chief executive of Gloucester said Cipriani “will receive our full support” and he has not been dropped from the team.

The men running our national sports continue to collude to support these damaged young men, trapped in a permanent state of adolescence. Instead of sending them off to learn how to grow up, to acquire empathy and decent values, they get a slap on the wrist. The reason? We want our national squads to win, no matter what it costs in human terms. I worry about the other young men who idolise these dolts.