Andy Flower 1, Fabio Capello 0
England's exit from the football World Cup has coincided with their cricket side's unprecedented rise across all three formats
Nitin Sundar
25-Feb-2013
England's exit from the football World Cup has coincided with their cricket side's unprecedented rise across all three formats. In Times Online, Richard Hobson reasons that a predilection towards club culture has cost the country's football set-up dearly, and contrasts it with the way Andy Flower has ensured the opposite with the cricketing framework.
The significant, blindingly obvious difference is that in cricket the England side is paramount. Increasingly the county game revolves around Andy Flower, the team director, like the planets orbit the sun. The opposite happens in football, where clubs are serious, multi-million pounds businesses and take priority over the national team. Supporters have their allegiances too. Even those who fork out hundreds of pounds to follow England abroad weave the name of their club team into the red and white flag.
Nitin Sundar is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo