Ron,

I think Jim here has posed my question much better than I did. I just find it curious that there's this different attitude between us about something so trivial. Perhaps it's just being brought up on football (soccer) and cricket that draws seem such a natural outcome for a game.

When you say football and soccer have ties is this at the end of normal time or after one or more periods of overtime?

Jim, it's true what you say about playing for a draw in cricket (and to a lesser extent other time) but the team that can salvage a draw from the jaws of defeat experiences it as a 'victory' of some kind and the other team as a defeat. Imagine in Baseball if a team comes from 0-12 to 12-12 and then loses in the 10th inning - they'd be heart broken to have come back and then loose whereas in the cricket they would have got some reward for getting into a tieing situation.

Perhaps it comes down to the UK favouring the underdog and the US favouring the victor?