Is english sport in crisis?

I'm not sure I'm over egging this either. If it wasn't for the reliable Italians England would have ended up with the wooden spoon in the six nations. This isn't a bunch of part timers, England have the biggest pool of talent, best coaching system, best paid players.

Football isn't any better. We have 4 friendlies leading up to the world cup. Southgate doesn't know who is back 3 are and there's a chance our goal keeper might be Nick pope who only made his premier league debut this season. I don't expect us to get out the group stages, but if be staggered if we won a knockout game.

Obviously english cricket out does them all with being bowled out this morning for 58 (after being 27 for 9 at one point that's an achievement.) in 20 overs. This isn't port of Spain by Ambrose et al in their pomp. No, it was fast medium on a Flatish pitch in new Zealand with a bit of lateral movement. To be honest given the fact England lost 14 wickets in one day in one of the two warm up matches the writing was on the wall. Tours need to be organised much much better. I'd say bring in a load of kids from the Lions tour but they've just been taken to the cleaners in the West Indies.

Coaching? Management? Not enough talent? Or just bad luck and a perfect storm of **** ups? What can be done about it?

The cricket team are badly organised, as you've pointed out elsewhere. Not many warm up games and they seem to be on a permanent treadmill of games with little time to rest. The IPL and the growth of 20 / 20 has detracted from the county and test games.

Football, it's difficult for young lads to break through with the amount of foreign players in the PL and let's be honest, we haven't been a force in world football for years. Other countries just produce better national teams.

Maybe money has something to do with it too, in football. A lot of our footballers have a lot more money than brains and sometimes (Gascoigne and many others) it's a bad combination.

Just when we thought that our cricket team were a shambles, up pop Australia to outshamble us. Fighting with opponents, whinging about insults from the crowd and the most hilarious ball tampering incident ever.

I used to hide my cigs in my pants when I was a kid. I never expected to see a professional sportsman using the same tactic to avoid being caught cheating.

And they are being outclassed by South Africa.

Just when we thought that our cricket team were a shambles, up pop Australia to outshamble us. Fighting with opponents, whinging about insults from the crowd and the most hilarious ball tampering incident ever.

 

I used to hide my cigs in my pants when I was a kid. I never expected to see a professional sportsman using the same tactic to avoid being caught cheating.

 

 

And they are being outclassed by South Africa.

I did let out a huge guffaw when I read about Lehman whinging about the Aussies getting personal abuse from the crowds.

I now need a new irony metre.

South Africa are a decent side and the Aussies aren't as good as we made them out to be. We're just awful at test cricket at the moment.

...........................................

I did let out a huge guffaw when I read about Lehman whinging about the Aussies getting personal abuse from the crowds.

 

I now need a new irony metre.

 

South Africa are a decent side and the Aussies aren't as good as we made them out to be. We're just awful at test cricket at the moment.

I agree to an extent. We did make South Africa look very ordinary over here last summer though. I think that cricket has a problem in that home advantage is too much of a factor.

Anyway, sandpaperdownthepantsgate made my weekend:D