Why England and New Zealand are bit players on the world cricketing stage

I just feel that you went over too much when talking about NZ cricket. Even though they perform average(according to you), they are a good team as a unit. You do not have great players in the side however they jel together and make it a good spirited team. You dont have players like Gary Kirsten calibre in NZ but they are given importance only for their team play and fighting attitude.

Hmm - Kiwis are ignorant egomaniacs? I don't know Mr Smith from Adam, but if he were to look in a mirror, I suspect he might see his own reflection. The New Zealand cricket team rarely performs outstandingly or consistently, but generally they are determined scrappers, and perform well as a team, and achieve remarkably well, especially considering the tiny pool of players. As for the cheap, snide remarks about Sir Richard Hadlee, they are simply ignorant. He was one of the finest all-rounders of his era, a determined and intelligent performer, the first Test player to achieve 400 wickets, and an exemplar of accuracy and persistence. Personally, I don't hold with knighthoods and other gongs, but if anyone deserved an honour, Richard Hadlee did. In conclusion, I thought the whole tenor of the article was ill-informed. The New Zealand cricket team plays cricket in a competitive and sporting manner, and I seem to recall that they have beaten the South Africans on occasions in the World Cup contests, and out-performed them in getting further in such tournaments than their southern hemisphere cousins. But ,hey, who's counting, Mr Smith? At the end of the day, it's a game, and nobody's dead. Lighten up.

From what I can see, the most notable thing about the English team, is that it doesn't seem to function as a TEAM terribly well. This seems to be because of strange (to me as an Australian) English cultural thinking as far as I can tell. I've been reading cricket books and internet articles written from the Australian pov and the English pov and the most note-worthy contrast is that the English cultural focus is on individual heroics and individual careers whereas Australian books tend to be peppered with (presumably cliched) phrases like "..the word "I" has no place in a Cricket Team". This oddity in the English team struck me even before starting to really watch cricket. It was plastered all over the front pages of our news papers during that last awful English Ashes tour - where Flintoff was obviously completely and utterly unsupported by his team or by his management. Reading into Cricket (approx 80% of the non fiction sections of Australian public libraries comprise the latest and best books on Cricket) over the last 5 months, I have learned about English County Cricket, which is where, historically and psychologically, English players seem to reserve their identity and loyalty. I'd say one of the reasons England and NZ "are bit players" is because Cricket is not so core to either countries' national identity, as it is to Australian (and perhaps Indian) identity. Poms seem to retain a dim notion that the order of things is that Poms are naturally better than Australians (and everybody else) at everything, without the need to deploy the same resources as everyone else does.. Ehem. So everyone else beats them at everything most of the time... I was stunned to learn that a bundle of colonies from the Southern Hemisphere fielded a team called "Australia" for DECADES against "England" BEFORE we became a Nation and sent swathes of our male population to die in other peoples' wars (the ANZAC tradition - another major part of Australian identity). When the Proteas come out to Australia, I really really hope they play really really well. And if they win games I want it to be because they outplay Australia on the field, without any off-field (or on-field) vileness.

I must admit to being very flattered that you don't consider England to be a minnow. I suppose it's kind of nice that, no matter how poorly we play in any sport, we'll always be the game you lot, the Aussies, the Indians, Pakistanis, Kiwis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and West Indians really care about. I bet it really winds the Aussies up that other test sides and their fans care more about the result against a team light years behind them, than the result against them! HA!