hi alan

Yes you are right that our climate is not always conducive to producing great cricketers.

Despite this though having been interested both as a player and a spectator for many years, I can remember other eras of success for England. These were mainly gauged by our performances against Australia - always our greatest rivals.

But more recently the emergence of first West Indies and then the twin spearhead of India & Pakistan and even more recently Sri Lanka, has somewhat changed the face of International Cricket.

Followers of New Zealand & South Africa please don't think I have ignored you, as we have always had very interesting series with you.

The emergence of India as World Number 1 is IMHO due to the temporary ( I hope ) failure by Australia to find a winning team.

The strange thing to me is that England are now poised to wrest the No 1 spot from India ( providing they keep up the performance level for the rest of this series.) but in terms of World class individuals we don't really have many that would make it in a real World representative team !!

Our current team is sure that - a team - Every man plays his part and it seems that they have the spirit and ability to up their game at crucial times and weather all kinds of storms. In this match Cook has failed again but others have filled in more than adequately. Tremlett was injured and up comes Bresnan with a match-winning contribution.

Strauss as captain comes in for a lot of press criticism. Only today I heard Geoff Boycott criticise Strauss's field placing when England had India at 140 odd for 8 and the match nearly won. He said that he should have more attacking fields for his bowlers !!! But Boycott is not one really to criticise England's captains; he was probably England's worst ever captain and Yorkshire's too for that matter. A great batsman no doubt but a captain ....no!!

Cheers

Mike