England's World Cup chances

England have not won many World Cups. In fact, England have won as many World Cups as I have. Admittedly I have yet to reach the final of a World Cup, but the bottom line here is trophies, and at the moment we are all square, England and me, in the matter of World Cup silverware.

In any case, I couldn't really fit a World Cup on my tiny mantelpiece. But the ECB could. They have an secret dossier, stored on an Amstrad floppy disk, containing a plan, in the event of a World Cup miracle, to pack up the little brown urn in a cardboard box and put it into storage, in order to give over the whole of the Ashes display section of their museum to the triumphant England team's success. Sadly, judging by the history of the last 22 and a bit years, Operation Flying Pig will never be put into practice.

It is a sobering fact that the last time England got a sniff of winning the World Cup, Miley Cyrus had not even been born. She has grown up in a world when England not coming close to winning the World Cup has become the normal state of affairs. In fact, if you were to ask Miley Cyrus what it would be like to watch England in the final of the cricket World Cup, she would shrug, look at you blankly, and have her minders kick your ass.

For English cricketers, the World Cup cycle is more of a World Cup wheel of doom, spinning you from one humiliating, end of an era, where-do-we-go-from-here moment to another, via a cold, desolate void, littered with the wreckage of abandoned hopes.

But if there is one part of the World Cup schedule that an England cricketer can enjoy, it is probably this part we're in right now; that happy, blissful period that comes several weeks after your last one-day international humiliation but before the warm-up events for the World Cup commence, a time when the cold rain of reality has yet to fall upon your brow, and you are only required to talk about winning the World Cup, as opposed to actually having to win the World Cup.

So in recent days, a dapper Alastair Cook, wearing tasteful stubble and neatly pressed blazer, has been merrily chatting about the task ahead, as though winning the World Cup were no more challenging than digging out a garden pond or building an outhouse. Ian Bell has been at it too, resurrecting the spirit of the Charge of the Light Brigade, revealing that if they are going to lose, the English public would prefer to see them lose fearlessly.

But for the benefit of Miley Cyrus, and any English cricket supporters young enough to be vulnerable to this sort of nonsense, a little lesson from history might be instructive.

On my desk, I have a copy of Wisden Cricket Monthly. It is the April 1999 edition, a World Cup year, and the cover star is one Nick Knight, gazing a little too fondly into the camera, holding his bat aloft with a somewhat unconvincing grip. The main headline beneath this vision of cricketing excellence reads, "We Can Win It." There is no exclamation mark, presumably an oversight.

The reader, encouraged by this optimistic declaration, opens the magazine to learn more. After all, Nick is correct. Technically England can win it. As Sherlock Holmes would have put it, the fact that it is not impossible for England to win the World Cup means that England can win the World Cup. So what did Nick reckon of their chances in '99?

"We are definitely going to be the side to beat in the World Cup."

He was right. England were the side to beat in Group A. South Africa beat them, India beat them, and then they were eliminated.

And 15 and a half years later, somewhere in a Sky studio, you can be sure that an entirely unrepentant Nick Knight is staring earnestly into a camera, with that same Tony Blair smile, telling us that this time, this time, England will definitely win the World Cup.