SPECTATOR SPORT
Simply the worst
Simon Barnes
WHEN I worked on the Dorking Advertiser, the phrase 'and that's official' was banned, as in 'Dorking is the dirtiest town in Britain — and that's official.' My mind flew back to Dorking last weekend because England is the worst Test-match country in the world — and that's official.
Or semi-official, anyway. The Wisden Test-match rankings put England at the bottom of the table after defeat in the series against mighty New Zealand. Eng- land are worse than Sri Lanka, worse than Zimbabwe, worse than anybody.
This is the first time it has happened, not Just because the Wisden table began only comparatively recently but because Eng- land's place among the top cricket nations has been an established fact since time and cricket began. No notional Wisden table of past years would have placed England any- where near the bottom.
In 1979 England would have been at the top and the team has had other successes in the past 20 years: there was the 1981 Both- am Unchained series, the 1985 summer of the marmelised Australians; even, last sum- mer, a series win against South Africa. But despite such pleasant moments, the trend has been irresistibly downward: that last series win was followed by a heavy defeat in a Test against Sri Lanka, a win- ter of woe in Australia, and then by a fail- ure to progress beyond the group stages in the World Cup that was played in this country.
And now this. English cricket has been passing through a crisis-what-crisis? period for a decade and a half and has had new brooms, facelifts, official inquiries, special committees and any number of new Both- arns. It has all come to nought.
There have been plenty of decent crick- eters, and a few rather good ones. It is not the fault of the cricketers or the on-field leadership: the best players have all had a go at it, there is no one else to do the job. Neither is it the fault of the management which has been changed many times, and always with the same result. It is not even the fault of instability. Michael Atherton led the team more often than any other English captain, and Eng- land did little better with him than they did when they had four captains in one summer.
Perhaps all these defeats can be laid at the door of defeat itself. Defeat in sport can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. New blood has been brought into the side, but still the culture of defeatism flourishes, an ancient culture handed down from warrior to war- rior not by word of mouth, but by expres- sion, body language, and — behind a façade of positive thinking and aggression — resig- nation to the terrible whims of fate.
I once played in a cricket match in which, needing ten runs in ten overs with four wickets in hand, our captain managed to run out four batsmen in a single over. This, in a farcical village-green way, is a vicious skit on the way England behave in adversity (and they are always in adversity). It is fear of victory, fear of failure, fear of fear.
It is the batting collapse that has done for them: the traditional bright start followed by the domino effect, the lemming-like plunge into the abyss. The reason England keep losing is simplicity itself. It is because they keep losing. Find a cure for that.
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