England are out. So?

Since the phone-hacking scandal, there has been a marked change in the content of English newspapers. Their pages are now generally given over to news and opinion, rather than scandal, titillation and gossip, and as a consequence, are barely worth reading.

News is boring enough, but opinion is far worse. Along with red trousers, a chocolate teapot and a box set of the TV series How I Met Your Mother, an opinion is one of the most worthless things a human being can possess.

We think we admire those who speak their mind and who have opinions, but in reality, these people are often unbearable. In my experience, a person's capacity to be annoying is in direct proportion to the number of opinions they have, and the strength of their opinion on any particular subject is in inverse proportion to their expertise.

Newspapers these days are full of people lecturing us on subjects in which they are entirely unqualified: columnists telling us what they think about global warming, celebrities explaining what's wrong with democracy, cricket journalists discussing Ian Bell's batting technique.

Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I happened to be feeling extremely bored whilst standing near the newspaper display and so I bought a copy of the Daily Snarl to read on the bus. It was very informative.

I learned that researchers at the Canadian Insitute of Ursine Behaviour have made public the findings of an ten-year investigation into the question of defecation in deciduous woodland. I read with interest the news from the Vatican that the Pope, in order to forestall further speculation, has confirmed that he is not a Buddhist. I discovered that scientists at the CERN Laboratory have predicted that Sunday will follow Saturday. And I read that England are out of the World Cup.

You would think, given the frequency with which it occurs, an English cricket failure would by now have lost its capacity to amuse. We all enjoy a bit of slapstick, but when you've seen the same man trip over the same banana skin one hundred times in a row, surely it would eventually cease being amusing, even if you hate the man.

Yet it seems not. Often we delight in the sporting misfortunes of teams that have been dominant; an extension of the natural human instinct to cheer for the underdog. But in the case of England, it makes no difference if they go into a tournament as favourites or rank outsiders, their demise is always entertaining.

I'm not sure why this should be. Perhaps we still see English cricket teams as representatives of Empire. Perhaps it is just the thought of the Barmy Army crying through their face paint that cheers people up. But England no longer has an empire and it would be unfair to call the Barmy Army bad losers, indeed, given their team's record they could hardly afford the emotional toll of being bad losers.

But whatever the reason, there is clearly something about an Englishman looking sad in a blue polyester vest that lightens the soul.

Yet not all of us have been amused. To English cricket journalists, England's utterly predictable early exit from the World Cup is VERY SERIOUS INDEED. Instead of revelling in the skill that Bangladesh showed, the entertainment they gave us, the endeavour with which they played, and the happiness they showed at reaching the quarter-finals, our hacks have generally adopted sulky faces and sombre language.

Amidst all the dreary blame-flinging, one refrain has been recurrent. That the current English set-up is too managerial, too restrictive of freedom and expression, too robotic and dull. But where is the joie de vivre amongst the journalistic fraternity? They talk about an England defeat as though it were a recession or a war. Where is the fun? Where is the delight in the play of the written word? Where are the inspirational paragraphs evoking the pleasure of watching a ball game played well? Where is the joy?

Instead we get column after column of wittering about performance reviews, Kevin Pietersen, training schedules, administrative reformation, Kevin Pietersen, county cricket schedules, limited-overs formats and Kevin Pietersen.

Cheer up hacks, England haven't lost a war. Nobody died, which, considering the content of most news these days, is a bonus. They lost a game of cricket. It doesn't matter in the slightest. Maybe the chaps at the ECB aren't the only ones who need to lighten up.