Then I came across Jonathan Agnew’s article on the BBC website and it is the one closest to the mark. Whilst I do like Aggers’s radio commentary I often find his match reports full of benign platitudes. This was a pleasant surprise.

He quite rightly lays blame at the feet of both sets of players. He is, I think, excessively vindictive towards Australia, and I don’t agree that it solely stems from their side but there is a large dollop of truth thrown in with what he says about Australian cricket.

“Ricky Ponting’s men have trampled all over the spirit of cricket by offering the lame excuse that they are hard”, is a fair comment to a certain degree but they are certainly not alone.

The Australians maybe too aggressive sometimes, but likewise some of the Asian players and supporters can be tremendously precious.

Waugh and Border got it spot on when their assessment that cultural differences played a big part in these misunderstandings and the need for greater understanding between teams which is definately true.

National sport in the modern era however is about tribalism. Players and supporters will defend and support their team to the end, even in the face of contradictory evidence. It is the nature of the beast. A beast that ‘the spirit of cricket’ will forever struggle against.

Where Agnew got it completely correct however was in his defence of umpires:

“As I warned when Darrell Hair was seen off by the Pakistan Cricket Board 18 months ago, the way was opened for powerful cricket teams to dispose of officials when a decision is made they do not like. How dare the game be held to ransom in this way.

But the real fault lies with the players – and it is their behaviour, attitude and respect for the game and its traditions that need urgently to be addressed.

Umpires will always make mistakes – just as the players do (although you wouldn’t believe it sometimes) and undermining their confidence by removing their most senior colleague in this way is unbelievably foolish.

Cricket is truly at a crossroads.

Administered these days by businessmen who have no feel for, or genuine love and understanding of the game, cricket is played purely for money, ego and power for those who control it.

Goodness knows where it will end unless a stand is taken, and that action must be directed by all the countries at all of their players, and not the umpires”.

Well done Aggers.

The innings of Laxman and Tendulkar will live long in the memory. Likewise the centuries of Symonds, Hayden and Hussey. Bowlers fought hard to keep pace on a pitch which remained favourable to batting throughout, but those who stuck to their task got their rewards.

Unfortunately though, and they are becoming ever recurrent themes within cricket debating circles, umpires mistakes and player behaviour are the main topics of conversation following the test.

Steve Bucknor made two painfully poor calls against India, and the Australians are (yet again) being accused of sharp practice, and trying to influence the umpires decisions. The message boards and forums are inevitably awash with aggrieved Indian supporters.

Every cricketer knows that some days the decisions go your way and some days they don’t. Players are quick to point this out when decisions are in their favour, and those that go against live longer in the memory.

It is a truism that over 5 days, if a team has the desire and skill to match the opposition then 2 decisions should not decide an entire test match. I for one am becoming sick of supporters from all nations blaming umpiring decisions. Subsequent effigy burning, suggestions of racism and calls for the boycotting of some ICC elected umpires just takes to the game to levels of mass depravity which soils the name of cricket.

I am personally against excessive use of technology for many reasons. It undermines the men out in the middle, who it has been shown get the large majority of very tough decisions spot on. Also in an era where tests struggle to go to the fifth day very often, having every decision scrutinised would slow it down, but also paradoxically shorten games, as batsman find they get many decisions given against them, where previously they would have been given the benefit of the doubt. The batsman’s union will be up in arms when they see their averages dropping rapidly.

Unfortunately I think the game has reached a stage where idealism and sentimentality have to be laid to one side, and the door opened to technology, but only if everyone is 100% agreed with it’s reliability. If it is the only means that a touch of graciousness in victory and defeat can be restored then so be it.

As for sharp practice and honesty - that left sport when money arrived and winning became all important. India should be more aware of their effects than any other nation.

Australia do push the limits of laws to the limits, despite their holier-than-thou interview spiel, but every professional team in the world does at one point or another. If your the best side in the world, and your steamrolling all before you, people are just more likely to feel a heightened sense of aggrievment.

Whilst Sachin Tendulkar’s batting is based on the simplest of principles - balance, economy of movement, and a freakishly mathmatical eye - it is his hunger to take his greatness to unparalleled heights in service of his country and his billion disciples which sets him apart. Last year was his on-field nadir. Many others would have allowed the light to fizzle out, but anyone who doubted the little master’s hunger could have only stood humbled and in awe as Tendulkar reached his 39th test hundred, and reached for the Sydney skies above as though it was his first. An appreciative crowd, regardless of allegiance rose in deepest appreciation for this phlegmatic and altruistic cricketer.

The essence of any sporting great cannot be understood unless the journey to greatness is qualified. Sachin was marked for greatness, but talent alone doesn’t fulfill destiny. It is not just the statistics which make Tendulkar the legend.

As a young man he allowed his timing and keen attacking spirit to dominate the world’s best bowling attacks, and thus he became known as the ‘Master Blaster’. But no matter how good a batsman, bowlers will always evolve to cut them down to human proportions. Look no further than Bradman and ‘bodyline’.

Where Tendulkar has succeded above all others of his era is to counter-evolve and change his game. During his 241 at the SCG in 2001, he decided to remove the cover drive from his game having been prone to edging outside his off stump. Some saw this as an indication of weakness and decline, but just as Steve Waugh’s refusal to hook and the pull had done in the twighlight of his career, it brought immediate success.

He is no longer the ‘Master Blaster’. That was the younger man. He is now the ‘Master Craftsman’. His innings in Sydney was chanceless and he never appeared in trouble. He was happy to let partners dominate the bowling, never putting his own wicket in danger. It was an innings of touch with touches of aggression which were measured against the situation. Everyone in the ground was sure immediately ; they had witnessed something special.

His ability to out think Ponting and his cohorts was experience, but to score as heavily as he has is hunger, and ability to recognise when when and how to stay one step ahead of the rest.

As long as Sachin Tendulkar craves more, he will find a way, because thats what sets greatness above the rest.

But is it really any surprise? Well no not really. This was always a tougher grouper than so called experts/rent-a-quotes would have you believe. Not quite on the level Scotland had to deal with but certainly tougher in terms of strength in depth than anything Eriksson had to deal with before. But this is not an anti-Eriksson rant, far from it.

I had been one of the earliest detractors of Eriksson’s reign of England. He was a man who’d had a decent record in club management in Sweden and Portugal and yet had managed to win Serie A just once on the back of a crippling amount of Lazio money and with some help from big bottlers Inter Milan throwing the title away on the last day of the season.

I thought Eriksson’s best England performance was a friendly v Mexico when for once the football was properly flowing between Scholes, Gerrard, Beckham, Fowler and Owen. I thought the Germany 5-1 victory was wildly overrated and just the perfect deployment of the sit back, ride some luck and hit on the break with fast forwards. People loved Eriksson at the time of 2002 qualification. He’d got England back from a poor start in the group. I wasn’t so enamoured, particularly with his tactical showings and also his love of ‘star’ players.

Obviously as we now know that was the peak of things. Slowly the nation fell out of love with the Swede, but as I often do, I look against the grain of ‘popular’ opinion. And what I found was that I had been wrong all along. I, much to my remorse and embarrassment, had been swept along a bit into believing the England players were better than they actually are. That it was Eriksson that was to blame for England’s insipid, boring, safe first, long ball, no importance placed on possession, football. I’d always known that even when England played Georgia or Serbia that those nations looked far more comfortable with the ball at their feet but I felt Eriksson only accentuated these traits.

Again, how wrong I was.

Towards the end of his England reign I began to realise that this wasn’t a shortcoming in his abilities as a tactician nor his care for the job (though he did still love his ‘special players) but that he’d realised the only way to get maximum success from the England team was to play in a rigid, defence first, direct manner. He knew the players were over-hyped. He knew the players were limited in their tactical knowledge, adaptability and brains. And I began thinking that getting England to three successive quarter finals was a real success.

Of course the tabloid and much of the broadsheet press just couldn’t take the fact that this so called ‘golden generation’ was precisely not. If anything it was fake diamond earrings. The broken glass generation if you will. The Elizabeth Duke generation.

And yet still, here we are again, only this time the disappointment is England haven’t qualified for a major tournament, not knocked out of the world cup. Whose to blame? McClaren and the EU they’ll probably say. Those nasty Europeans imposing all these foreign players on our Premiership.

It isn’t. It’s over-hyped, overpaid players and continuing poor football education from young which generates impact players of great physical nature but with little ability to properly think about the game. And of course the awful fawning media who feed this problem.

There isn’t one World Class player in the England team. There are a lot of good impact players who come and go during a match but none who can properly dominate and run things the way Riquelme did for Argentina at the weekend despite not breaking out into sweat. Or the way Elano does for Brazil and now Man City. Interestingly with regards to Elano and the ever decreasing quality of the broadsheet media in particular; Henry Winter the Telegraph’s chief football correspondent was asked on Soccer Supplement (Sunday’s on Sky Sports) about the comments Eriksson had made after Man City had taken apart a largely British West Ham team on the first day of the season. The City manager had fielded a team containing quite a few new summer foreign purchases and was asked the typical idiot English sports journalist question as to why he hadn’t got his England team’s to play with the same style, swagger and controlling dominance that revolved around Elano controlling things in the hole. His quick response was that ‘England didn’t have an Elano!’

Before he even opened his mouth I knew what Winter was going to say. So predictable this pathetic blindness and bizarre ignorance that once respected pundits like even Alan Hansen has to this generation of players. Incidentally, after the Russia v England game Hansen was saying how magnificently all the England players had done, all of them, Cambell, Lescott etc…

What? Lescott looked totally out of his depth and England played the tried and trusted ball forward as quick as possible routine that never wins anything internationally. Because England were not able to close out the game and put their foot on the ball Russia were able to get a head of steam.

Anyway, back to Winter, he could hardly get his words out and his face was one of utter contempt. To paraphrase, he said ‘Absolute rubbish - what about Wayne Rooney?…’ and that’s all I needed to hear, perfectly summing up everything to do with the current state of the English game. England’s most hyped player who is a great impact player, often against inferior opposition, was being compared to the Brazilian who marshals a game and whose skill sets are almost complete opposites of Rooney’s as two attackers can be. And yet here was a so called football expert suggesting Rooney could play like a Bergkamp or Riquelme. Not only are English players stupid when it comes to analysing footballers but so are many of the commentators of the game. Celebrity and fawning over the star players rule. Don’t criticise because you might not win the deal to co-write one of the players bore-fest autobiographies!

English football probably needs a wake up call. Because a lot of the England squad look good next to their foreign club counter-parts and because a lot of them look good on highlight reels it is assume they are all World Class internationals. They aren’t and they haven’t proven it. And yet we keep getting scapegoats left and right but anywhere other than the fact that the players, actually, aren’t very good.

If anyone can achieve this it’s the mercurial Pakistan cricket team. Unbelievaly fantastic on some days to painfully awful on others, they have the ability to score at the required 3.8 runs per over.

Surely with such a record on the stage is set for one man: Inzmam Ul-Haq. Playing in his last game for his country, and requiring 6 runs to go past Javed Miandad’s national run scoring record, there could be no more fitting an end for a cricketer loved at home, and respected world-wide.

Inzamam of course would want to finish in such away, but as a service to his country, and without the fanfare, for Inzy is the reluctant entertainer.

A batsman who’s calmness and serenity is that of a man who could be taking the dog for a walk, not easing the ball through the covers to the raptures of a nation.

Whilst it is hard to deny his commitment to Pakistan cricket, he never gave the appearance of trying that hard either. Neither could the timing of his retirement be seen as selfish, given that the golden 10,000 mark is well within his grasp.

What ever happens tomorrow though, Inzamam will be missed. From his powerfully subtle stroke-play, to his comical running between the wickets and who will never forget that laconic trudge back to the pavillion.

Like the reluctant heir to a throne, Inzamam was born to be the empirical entertainer of Pakistan cricket, and tomorrow could bring the curtain down in fitting style.

As they desperately grope around in the gloom cast over the national psyche for answers it is understandable that they look for someone to blame. Like losing a loved one to tragic circumstances, sinews stripped bare to the raw emotions bring out a primeval desire for retribution.

Sport appeals to our most elementary emotional mechanisms - tribalism, instinct, aggression and passion. Rugby has always prided itself on keeping this on the pitch, but now like a pride of lionesses, factions of the New Zealand support are hunting referee Wayne Barnes, who missed a forward pass during a decisive try-scoring move by France.

It must be emphasised that the players themselves have been nothing but graceful in defeat, and have not looked for excuses, but it is maybe a sign of the shallow times we live in that an idiot has felt it necessary to issue a death threat to Barnes.

Has modern society sunk so low that a game is more important to some people than the life of another human being? Are we ready to go and live in the forests again and defend our tree huts with sharpened coconuts? Well maybe, as long as we still have our TV sets to watch the sport and ‘the Mrs’ can watch the latest series of Lost.

Rugby is considered to be a barbarians game played and watched by gentlemen. These events have a cast a serious shadow over our perceptions of this bastion of sport. It has already fouled the game of football. Please can we save the game of rugby before that too descends into a neanderthal’s escape from a miserable existence.

Whilst the blame culture so prevalent in modern society is ultimately responsible for this, it is time the IRB took lengthy steps to defend referees through improvement and unification of the guidelines within which they work.

Rugby verges on the impossible to officiate. The man in charge, must not only keep up with the ever increasing pace of the modern game, but have eyes in the back of his head in order to referee the breakdown and the off-side laws at the same time.

Barnes’s crime was to miss a forward pass. It is completely understandable unless he is expected to keep up with a French back-line in full flow, moving the ball at pace. Referees will always miss forward passes unless they are given assistance.

According to Peter Thorborn, the coach of the United States however, touch judges had been instructed not to help the central officials with decisions regarding anything other than touch, foul play and kicks at the goal. They would not be able to interfere on issues of forward passes, offside and crooked line-out throws.

By leaving the main officials unfairly accountable the IRB are hanging them out to dry. If this is the case the game will eventually be refereed from the stands and no true rugby fan wants that.

The other issue which needs to be clarified is the interpretation of the breakdown. Supporters and players alike from the northern hemisphere are constantly frustrated by southern hemisphere referees’ interpretation of the laws at the ruck, and vice versa.

It is high time the IRB made it crystal clear to referees how it is to be refereed and monitor games to make sure there is consistency from hemisphere to hemisphere, and country to country. If they fail in this task then supporters will continue to be frustrated and dismayed, with only a solitary official to vent their anger at.

Ultimately though, has winning, glory and money become more important than the sharing and camaraderie of a game, or will rugby be left for the people, played and adjudicated by people?

England fast bowler Bob Willis has today claimed that players like Ramprakash and Graeme Hick (along with Kolpak and ‘naturalised’ players) are ‘clogging’ up county cricket and the progression of young English talent, as they are never going to play for England again.

Whilst I cannot fail to begrudgingly agree with Willis on the Kolpak issue, the suggestion that servants to the English game, especially of the county circuit is nothing short of an insult to the system itself, especially when every county would chew your arm off to have the services of these two players such is their form with the bat.

And why shouldn’t Ramprakash be considered for England this winter and onto the 2009 attempt to reclaim the Ashes.

He has topped the runs and the averages for the past two seasons, and whilst he may not have have succeeded the first time around in test cricket, who is to say that given a second chance Ramprakash would fail again. As long as his form continues, he is worthy of a place. Even Owais Shah the heir apparent to the England batting line-up would be unable to argue with Ramprakash’s recent record.

If Ramprakash had been offered the same patience and help that many current England players have been afforded, the story could have been very different. Instead he was inducted into a paranoid and selfish England dressing room aged 21, and left to fend for himself. Team spirit was unheard of back then.

An ideal comparison is Ian Bell, not just as a comparison of style but the parallels of their infuriating mix of mental intensity and frailty. In Ramprakash it was identified as his weakness and he was dropped, selected and re-picked relentlessly, which can have only damaged his psyche further. Bell however has been given an extended run and backing from the entire England set-up even when he had a miserable Ashes in 2005. It now looks as though England are beginning to reap the rewards for their faith.

With Strauss so painfully out of form, and Flintoff injured why not give a man deserving of a second chance, a run in the side with a view to the next Ashes. If he has a bad winter we know it was not to be. If he plays a major part in reclaiming the Ashes his talent will have been at least partially fulfilled.

Is the bubble about to burst both on and off the pitch? As Northern Rock, bank and major contributor to sport in the North East felt the credit pinch, Gordon Brown’s assertion that the days of ‘boom or bust’ were a thing of the past seemed as realistic as England’s chance of winning the Rugby World Cup.

Oh how the mighty have fallen! British rugby is a perfect illustration of the sporting decline on this sceptred Isle.

Having been on top of the world, following England’s victory at the 2003 World Cup the house of cards has encountered the strong winds of change.

The clubs prosper with healthy crowds and seemingly deeper pockets to spend on players, but this has become nothing more than a fragile facade propped up by globalisation.

The massive influx of foreign talent into British sport, and our unquenchable thirst for entertainment, rather than participation has left a great chasm of talent to take onto the world stage. Britain has become like the Roman Empire, holding great games at huge colosseums packed with talent from around the globe but ‘beware the Ides of March’.

If the British press are to be believed, the England football team are suddenly cured of their incompetence having beaten Israel and Russia consecutively. Given the comparative strengths of the opposition’s national leagues though this should never have been in question.

The money available to invest in young players should be producing a great torrent of British talent. Instead the academies are a finishing school for the rest of the world.

Cricket likewise is suffering. Sky money has rejuvenated the county game with thoughtful development and innovation. Yet the domestic game is awash with foreign players, either as official overseas or Kolpak players.

England’s best batsman is a South African, and whilst that is not necessarily a bad thing, why is the British system not developing it’s own players of this calibre?

The ECB must be applauded for restricting the number of foreign players for next season, but until they find a way to close the Kolpak loop-hole, not much will change.

Glamorgan tried to take the moral high ground and employed only one overseas for 2007, with no Kolpak players. Whilst it has allowed talents like fast bowler James Harris to come through, it also meant Glamorgan sunk to the bottom of Division 2.

We are becoming a sedentary nation, happy to be entertained by others. The Premier League has become the International billionaires’ playground, and the masses are happy to line their pockets further, as clubs become more important than the good of the national collective.

Only 40% of players in the Premier League are eligible to play for British teams, and Rugby’s Guinness Premiership is about to become awash with southern hemisphere players seeking a fat pay cheque before retirement.

We must decide whether we want to be participants or watchers of sport. At the moment the pound signs continue to blur the reality of the situation.

It is argued that the foreign talent raises the standard and this argument has great merit, but where are the next generation of British hero’s going to come from.

Will Britain’s children grow happy to pay to watch the rest of the World, and what happens when (not if) the money dries up?

We were in fact playing sport, or in Jonnos case, lying in hospital recovering from sport. This only accounts for the British wing of the team however. If anyone in New Zealand knows where Fergie is, tell him the English Football team are missing their most generous critic.

When I think of the in-form teams at this year’s World Cup I glance at the England squad list & can only see a couple of team players in that whole list. NZ’s Jacob Oram was prepared to amputate part of a broken finger to play the tournament & I would hazard I guess that little ol’ Muddy Panesar would forgo his quarter century birthday for his abortive English team to make the semi-finals. Another is Paul Collingwood, probably one of my favourite players outside of The Long White Cloud, who seems to be the only adhesive in a team of over hyped, toffee nosed, public schooled w*****s.

Kevin… why was he celebrating his recent hundred against the Aussies like he had won his team the World Cup on the last ball of the game with one wicket to spare? Um hello, you were pedestrian like & England posted a measly score in the mid 200’s. Australia waltzed, with or without Matilda, to the target with seven wickets in hand. In hindsight, would Pietersen have changed his celebration from “oh my god I just witnessed the birth of my first child” to a humble bat in the air then head down & bum up “I’ve got a more important job to do”… I don’t think so.

Your lovely jubilant keeper of wickets, Mr Nixon. So much energy, so much chatter, so old & so much advice for his other more internationally experienced teammates. He always seems to have something to say to the batsman, bowler, captain, vice-captain, fielders or just any drunk bloke in the pub who will listen. Now it’s hard enough for myself to understand Fergie with his thick (not clever) northern accent but Paul Nixon with a mouth guard! He sounds like a mish mash of Jamie Peacock & Fletcher Christian. Surely he must have been born in Cockermouth but unlike William Wordsworth, Nixon’s words are worth nothing more than an unabbreviated addition to the damp tropical weather as he continues to project his spit all over the Caribbean.

I made a promise not to write about Rugby Union but there is a definite similarity between the English Cricket team & Graeme Henry’s British Lions Team. Two teams who enjoy the off field antics more than what they’re actually being paid to do. Henry struggled to connect with a team of full of self-proclaimed superstars who wanted to sightsee rather than train. There was an English coach I can just remember… Sir Clive Woodsomething? Won the Rugby World Cup but got crushed when in charge of the Lions, still, he was so great that he decided to mentor footballers. After a mass exodus of personnel at Southampton Football Club & a realisation that footballers are even harder to bring together as a team, he was then let go & is now employed as the new director of elite performance for the British Olympic Association… probably to work with individual athletes.

So, the Ashes are long forgotten, the England Football Team is nearly a curse word & the Rugby World Cup nothing but a door stop. Why can a cricket team with so much promise continue to come up with such hopeless minowesque performances? Something has to change, the players need to realise that there are other people that want their jobs & they are willing to work longer & harder for them. Being the best batsman in the world cannot bring the same satisfaction as being the best team in the world… but if it does, then you should stick to playing with yourself.