England's mixed decade

Simon Hughes, writing in the Daily Telegraph, recaps England's performance in the noughties, the highs and the lows, and concludes that the lack of quality players in the line-up as well as the domestic circuit would ensure that the team will muddle along the middle for some time to come.

England remain hampered by their inability to produce enough players of really high quality. The top dozen inhabit an exalted sphere which is hard to penetrate and has considerable power. The best players know they are more or less irreplaceable.

That will change only with the emergence of heroes who inspire the next generation. And, never mind all the spending on 'grass roots', that only happens through the oxygen of mass-audience television. Which means that England, in spite of Andrew Strauss's pragmatic approach, will probably remain middle-of-the-road for the time being. Or, as he succinctly put it after winning the Ashes this summer, "When we're good, we're good enough, and when we were bad, we were awful."