Trading places

Timidity. Mental cowardice. Unconfidence. Complacency. Ineffable bloody uselessness. And much, much worse.

Innumerable words, dispassionate and rabid alike, have been, and will continue to be, expended trying to get to the root of the collective hard-drive failure currently afflicting England’s premier national sporting teams (and yes, I am willfully ignoring Fabio Capello’s collection of “Am I bovvered?” soccer entrepreneurs, whose lack of interest can easily be traced to the absence of a match fee). There is, however, another possible explanation for this conspicuous lack of competence on cricket and rugby fields alike: expectation.

In many respects, the past weekend was one of the most cockle-grilling in recent memory, a veritable Underdog Day Afternoon for small towns and Celts, have-nots and never-will-haves. Chelsea and Manchester United and their Russo-American squillions were humbled in the FA Cup by Dickie Bird’s beloved Barnsley and Horatio Nelson’s Portsmouth; Cardiff City flew the flag for Wales in the same competition by duffing up Premiership Middlesbrough. On the international front, Scotland relieved England of the Calcutta Cup and New Zealand beat England for only the eighth time in 89 Tests. That’s the wonder of sport, the importance of sport. In what other public arena could so many little guys defy the gulf in resources and put one over their purported betters? In what other public arena, better yet, could one weekend produce so much heartening evidence that money really can’t buy you love, much less consistent success?

As it was at Murrayfield, so it was in Hamilton. Brian Ashton’s rugger-buggers lost because they lacked the imagination, commitment, mental fibre and consistency of performance required to beat lil’ old Scotland. Much the same could be said of Michael Vaughan’ cricketers, but to stop there would be a dereliction of duty.

The wind and the rain of wintry Edinburgh gave the former an alibi of sorts, as did the inescapable fact that, in a game involving constant physical contact, the form book is more likely to take a battering. Without wishing to detract in any way from Daniel Vettori’s exemplary leadership and the manful contributions of Messrs Fleming, Mills, Martin, McCullum, Patel, Taylor and How, Vaughan and company were guilty of something much more culpable. With the limited exception of Ryan Sidebottom’s bowling and Alastair Cook’s catching, it was the timorousness of it all, exemplified by that pitiful scoring rate, that galled. Not a terribly clever impression to leave on the weekend when it was revealed – in the ECB’s latest sly attempt to defuse the threat of the IPL – that the nation’s cricketers are on better pay-and-bonus deals than their rugby and footie-playing counterparts, making them among the best-rewarded international teams on the planet.

That England’s Test team has plummeted from grace since the 2005 Ashes cannot be denied. Nor can it be disconnected from two principal factors. One is the loss, primarily through injury, of more than one-third of the victorious XI at Trent Bridge – Marcus Trescothick, Simon Jones, Ashley Giles and Andrew Flintoff, all of whom should now be in their prime. The other cause, I am increasingly convinced, has less to do with misfortune and rather more to do with the pronounced shift in national identity that has been taking place over the past 50 years.

Vaughan said before the first Test that he felt his players’ most palpable weakness lay in the unmuscularity of their mental strength. To admit to such a shortcoming, in a game played primarily in the mind, gave Vettori the equivalent of a 100-yard flying start in a one-lap race. But this fatal flaw demands further examination.

For the best part of a century, England teams, bar those facing Australian bowlers and New Zealand forwards, took the field expecting to win. All that mattered was the margin, and perhaps the style. The same applied to the non-metaphorical battlefield. The West Indies, in 1950, and Hungary, three years later, sowed the seeds of modesty and, eventually, inferiority. Yes, three decades later, the home team were still being booed off at Wembley for failing to give opponents the anticipated stuffing, but eventually lessons were learned, the new world order grasped, humility reluctantly embraced, especially after the Argentinians had the audacity to invade the Falklands. Throw in the end of Empire, a waning global influence and a general postwar decline and, by the end of the century, even the smallest hints of a revival (Britpop, Britart, Euro 96, a series of Olympic rowing golds, a surge in property prices, a PM with a social conscience) were being seized upon as signs of a vibrant and enduring renaissance.

Then, in quick succession, came the 2003 Rugby World Cup and the 2005 Ashes, a brace of nationalistic triumphs that did not so much reaffirm the old superiorities as underline the degree of change. In defying the odds, the sides coached and coaxed by Clive Woodward and Duncan Fletcher defined the mood of the new millennium. Hope, the common currency of most nations and sporting teams, had finally, definitively, replaced expectation The overdogs were now the underdogs. And we rather liked it that way.

Trouble was, money had complicated the equation. Woodward and Fletcher profited from the players’ wellbeing, their sense of being appreciated, whether by dint of central contracts or – in rugby’s case - merely belated professional status. And with these rewards, to a greater extent even than those triumphs, came renewed public expectation - even though a well-stocked bank account is never any guarantee of sporting success. And the boys, bless their expensive cotton socks, simply don’t know how to cope, either on the field or in the Treasury.

Those giddy, clearly unsustainable property prices, such a regrettably reliable barometer of the national health, have stopped climbing. Foreclosures are mounting, debts skyrocketing, the mood now uncertain and downbeat. Perspective and proportion are being eroded by “reality” TV and the primacy of celebrity. Insularity is growing. We’d far rather blame immigration than complacency. Flags of St George are now more visible than Union Jacks, but you’d never know England remains one of the most prosperous corners of the globe.

England, meanwhile, have not won the Six Nations title since 2003, nor won a testing Test series in convincing fashion since 2005 (but for Ovalgate/Hairgate, a weakened Pakistan might well have only narrowly lost the 2006 rubber). The only stirring rugby exploits came when they were least expected, namely in the knockout phase of last year’s World Cup. Similarly, England’s most memorable five-day win came in Mumbai two years ago, against all prognostications. By way of confirming the trend, the ODI side blooms when up against it (in Sri Lanka and Australia, against India) and flounders when fancied (in New Zealand).

All of which, of course, gives rise to optimism ahead of the Wellington Test. Only three times previously have England conjured a 1-0 deficit in a three-Test series into victory, and while nothing else about their showing last week suggests they are capable of reversing the tide, reassuming the mantle of underdog will suit them down to the ground. For the sake of Vaughan’s long and mostly admirable reign, but mostly for cricket’s visibility in England, they’d better make the most of it.

That neither The Guardian nor The Times saw fit to flag up the Hamilton debacle on the front of today’s sports sections spoke an unpalatable truth, one that the ECB, and in particular the new selectorial triumverate of Geoff Miller, Ashley Giles and James Whitaker, will do well to acknowledge. Memories are short. Humiliation might have made for terrific headline fodder in the 1980s but at least Botham, Gower and co had an excuse: the opposition had become professional, in status as well as outlook. Kerry Packer may not have levelled the field but he had reduced the unevenness. And besides, the counties held far more sway then, the domestic fixture list was far more liable to breed burnout and selectors were about as patient and measured as a poodle on speed.

In 2008, on those wages, with this sort of backroom support, there are no excuses.