The England cricket team was rocked today by allegations of Match Losing following their latest defeat to Australia in their current One Day International series. The claims come on the back of random scorecard testing, undertaken after every international fixture, which revealed most of the England team had alarmingly high levels of incompetence.
The accusations come as a huge blow to Andrew Strauss’s team and make a mockery of England’s much publicised campaign* to stamp out rampant and wanton awfulness following the 2006-07 Ashes series loss in Australia.
Andrew Strauss, one of the few England players to emerge unscathed from the testing procedure, was quick to defend his team. “We’ve come a long way from the 1990s when casual losing was commonplace in the England dressing room and out on the field. The lads are much more professional now. They know that excessive complacency leads to poor shot selection and, for the bowlers, an inability to get it up….er, pitch it up, rather. We don’t have a problem and we can give up losing whenever we like.”
England batsman Ravi Bopara also stated that he blames the Aussies for taking it all too seriously and asked “Why can’t they be more like us and just treat these games as a waste of time?”
England are not the only side currently under the spotlight however. The West Indies have been dogged with allegations of staggering levels of ineptitude for the last couple of years, but, uniquely, the charges have been leveled at the administrators and not the players. New Zealand are also having to answer to accusations of excessive levels of losing, particularly in Test cricket, but this forms part of a larger investigation that has been on-going since the late 1980s.
* England’s Campaign slogan: “Just say no!... to Giles”
The accusations come as a huge blow to Andrew Strauss’s team and make a mockery of England’s much publicised campaign* to stamp out rampant and wanton awfulness following the 2006-07 Ashes series loss in Australia.
Andrew Strauss, one of the few England players to emerge unscathed from the testing procedure, was quick to defend his team. “We’ve come a long way from the 1990s when casual losing was commonplace in the England dressing room and out on the field. The lads are much more professional now. They know that excessive complacency leads to poor shot selection and, for the bowlers, an inability to get it up….er, pitch it up, rather. We don’t have a problem and we can give up losing whenever we like.”
England batsman Ravi Bopara also stated that he blames the Aussies for taking it all too seriously and asked “Why can’t they be more like us and just treat these games as a waste of time?”
England are not the only side currently under the spotlight however. The West Indies have been dogged with allegations of staggering levels of ineptitude for the last couple of years, but, uniquely, the charges have been leveled at the administrators and not the players. New Zealand are also having to answer to accusations of excessive levels of losing, particularly in Test cricket, but this forms part of a larger investigation that has been on-going since the late 1980s.
* England’s Campaign slogan: “Just say no!... to Giles”
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