ENGLAND CRASH AND BURN

The English cricket team, which somehow crept into the quarter-final stage of their World Cup, finally met its Waterloo yesterday when they were thoroughly trounced by the Sri Lankans. Of course, the British media reports that England's players were tired and jaded after a long hard winter, as if no other team plays the same amount of cricket throughout the year, but the truth is that England are simply not good enough.

Yesterday's abysmal performance, in which the Sri Lankans reached a target of 230 without losing a wicket and with more than 10 overs to spare must go down as one of the poorest ever by an England team. Not only did their batsmen fail to put up any sort of defensible total. scoring steadily rather than quickly, but their bowlers proved wholly ineffective, allowing both Sri Lankan openers to reach 3 figures. England's involvement in this pointless tournament is, thankfully, over, but where it leaves English cricket is an open question.

Following their victory in the Ashes series, England were lauded as being well on their way to being the best in the world, but subsequent disastrous displays against the Australians in the one day series, and defeats against Ireland and Bangladesh in the World Cup, should have brought everyone down to earth. England are a mediocre side made up of players who play very little cricket outside of the international arena; they gain little consistency from regular play and are constantly adjusting to different formats of the game, as well as different climates and conditions.

Sadly, and in common with reports of all our main sporting icons, the media continues to write in glowing terms and to excuse their failings in any and every way, when they should be spitting feathers. This team has been utterly humiliated and the players should be ashamed of their performance; half of them should probably be sacked. Instead, they will no doubt return home to represent us AGAIN this summer, largely because there are few alternatives to the existing bunch of cowboys. The visitors this year are Sri Lanka and India; can we expect a reversal of fortune or would that just be pi**ing in the wind ?