Last night the Australians once again won the cricket world cup for the third time in a row and once again England were not able to make the semi finals. So what is wrong with English cricket and why are we not able to reach the success levels of the Australian team?

Last nights game was memorable for many reasons, perhaps most notably the way in which the game finished in darkness. However it should be remembered for a fantastic innings by Adam Gilchrist. He managed to score an amazing 149 runs from just 104 balls and was a clear example of the Australian players being able to perform under pressure.

Pressure I believe is one of the things that prevents our players from achieving what their talent suggests they are capable of. This applies to most sports we England represent the nation, especially football. You look at the talent on the field and name for name England and the Australian team are not too far apart. We have the likes of Michael Vaughan - perhaps one of the most natural English batsmen of the last 10 years, Freddie Flintoff, a class bowler and can bat to, and then finally Kevin Pieterson a truly outstanding talent in the batting department. It is players like these that are unable to perform under pressure whereas the Australian players are. But why?

Not having really experienced the atmosphere around different sports in different countries I am not sure, however I expect that it is the weigh of expectation on the team that is the problem. Although as I have said we are comparable with Australia everyone knows that they are better than us. However the press and the general public are bitter and upset when we do not succeed in winning these trophies and this passes down to the players. Perhaps if we had more realistic expectations of our players they would feel less pressured and therefore they may perform better.

I have been watching county cricket this afternoon - the Friends Provident one day competition from Tanton in the West Country. Although I really enjoy watching county cricket it is clear that with watching the world cup for the last month the standards in the county game are a million miles away from the kind of standard internationals call for. No disrespect to the players out there but the world cup and international cricket is in a different league. Maybe this has something to do with the national sides lack of success?

With the Australian team they have about 20 - 25 players that are constantly competing for a place in the first eleven and anyone of them could come in and do well. For the first half of the tournament they were without Andrew Symonds and Shane Watson yet they still won every game. The England team are not like that. There is a clear 12 - 14 players that could play and other than that they are clearly a second string choice. Maybe this is due to the lack of a decent standard in county cricket?

I propose more foreign players to be playing in county cricket. In today’s game there was Justin Langer - class player and the captain of Somerset. Then there was Mushtaq Ahmed another great bowler in his time but no clearly past his best, and Ranna Naved, a current Pakistan international. That gives only three players for all the others to learn from. Take the premiership in football. There are dozens of world class players for all the English players to learn from. After all you learn the most from playing the best. So maybe the rule needs changing in cricket.

By no means is English cricket a lost cause. After all in proper cricket (?) - test matches - we are the second best in the world but we do need to do something in order to improve.

Today I watched the premiership game between Everton and Manchester United at Goodison Park and yet again there were examples of players diving in order to cheat the referee into a decision that was not fair. But today wasn’t the only game that this takes place in.

The modern game of football has changed dramatically since the late eighties and early nineties when I started watching football. 15 years ago players were more honest and there was a culture of wanting to stay on your feet as much as possible to show the opposition that you could not be pushed around easily. It was the hope that this would intimidate the opposition into thinking that you were not going to lie down without a fight.

How the game has changed in the modern day. Players now do all they can to win free kicks and cheat as much as possible and it seems that there are some more than other s that are partaking in what is effectively cheating. Take a look at some of the examples of diving from this YouTube video.

In today’s match the main culprit to me was Gabrielle Heinze, the Argentinian central defender for Manchester United. Everton had a young striker in attack (James Vaughan) and every time to striker touched Heinze he collapsed. It is not the fact that he goes to ground that really bothers me it is the way that it is done. He would fling his arms in the air, almost as though someone had shot him from the stands with a riffle. Clearly the aim was to con the referee into making an incorrect decision. On one of these instances it got Vaughan booked for a nothing tackle. Yes is was a foul but the dramatics brought about the booking.

The Portuguese players (Ronaldo et al.) are perhaps the worst culprits and this could not be seen more as in the world cup semi-final of 2006. They were diving all over the place and thankfully it didn’t work and they never progressed to the final.

Footballers have got to take some responsibility for this and if they do not change the the game is going to change forever. Football will inevitably become a non-contact sport, which is was never meant to be. It also makes th referee’s job a lot harder and their job is hard enough as it is, what with all the video replays they must put up with proving them wrong.

Come on players are start playing the game like real men and not drama queens!

Well it seems at the moment that everyone is talking rubbish. Not general chit chat about the problem of what to do with our waste? Many local councils are suggesting that they are going to go a fortnightly collection for the waste and people aren’t happy.

Traditionally rubbish has been collected one a week on a designated day. This has mainly been done for health and safety reasons in that if you have waste left around it will attract the rats and foxes. However the proposals to go to once every two weeks for general waste have been met with much opposition.

Personally my rubbish is collected once every two weeks and I am happy with this. This is because what people forget is that the recycling boxes that we are given are collected once every other week as well. It seems that those councils that are going to a two week rubbish collection are also going to collect recycling.

I have started recycling my rubbish for environmental reasons and for what has been termed “responsible living” and this has meant that even after two week my rubbish bin is only about one third full. So why collect it every week?

So why recycle many have said. Landfill. When are simply running out of places to put our rubbish as often it is placed in landfill sites where the waste is buried underground. In under 10 years these landfill sites could be full and so where then do we put our waste? If more waste is recycled then this will mean that the landfill sites could last much longer. Collecting rubbish and recycling weekly doesn’t make both economical or environmental sense at all as it would put the council taxes up and also add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.People need to decide whether between the [supposed] of recycling their waste or the issue of paying extra for alternatives to landfill. I know which I would rather do as I already do it!

So what do you think? Does your council collect? Would you oppose fortnight collections including recycling?

I have been contributing recently to some blog posts on Simon’s blog - BEFOREiFORGT - about guns in America linked to the Virginia Tech shootings. There were some interesting comments made and I would like to put some thoughts down here about the issue.

Although there are laws about guns in America (and this differs between states) it is clear that the laws are not as they are in Europe and that they allow members of the public to own and carry guns.

I believe that there is no place for guns in the community and therefore the laws need changing. I don’t even think that the police should carry guns as this in many ways only encourages those that take on the police to do the same, bringing guns into society. Simon mentioned some of the things that he would like to change in terms of the laws. Surely we can make it more simple than that. Ban all guns, full stop for the general public.

There will be people out their that currently take part in the sport of shooting, that will say that this will loose a lot of revenue and they are right. However this could be solved by having ‘gun clubs’ where you go to shoot. All the guns used could be stored at the club under strict lock and key, perhaps even with airport like security to get in and out to prevent them being taken off the premises. This would allow the sport of shooting to place in a controlled safe environment that people could enjoy. After all the thrill and adrenalin kick of shooting a gun must be good (I have never has the chance to try this).

I think that this is the best thing as I cannot envisage a situation where a member of the public would need to own a gun for something other than hurting someone.

In these blog posts many have said that they need them to protect themselves. Well I think that my response to that is that it is the job of the police to protect the public and therefore it should be their responsibility. A lot of comments came up suggesting that if you were being burgled the gun could be used to defend themselves. Do these people think that killing someone because they are robbing you is right?

Guns cause death and injury and therefore when not in a safe controlled environment then they should not be used and certainly not be readily available to buy in shops!

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I Enjoy Firing Guns - BEFOREiFORGET

My journey to work is an extremely pleasant one. Driving down the A59 has some terrific scenery to admire and admire it I do. It is one of those runs that lucky for me is relatively stress free. However recently the tractor problem has reared its head again.

What is the tractor problem I hear you all asking? Well you could drive up and down the A59 (and no doubt endless others roads in the country) and meet a tractor. I don’t think that it is the meeting tractors that is the thing that really bugs me it is the fact that they are on the road and very inconvenient times.This morning I was stuck behind one for about 2 miles. They travel at about 30 mph rather than the usual average of around 50, and this causes a tremendous tail back. I reckon this tractor this morning must have caused about a 1 mile tail back of traffic holding people and causing general disruption and stress for all those drivers.

I know that they have every right to be on the road and they have paid their taxes etc. but I just think they could choose their times to use these roads with more care. How about a ban on slow moving vehicles (how you define these I am not sure!) between the hours of 0730 and 0900 and then again between the hours of 1630 and 1800. This would mean that in these rush hour periods they wouldn’t be holding up the traffic.

It is a particular problem on the A59 as there are many places that are difficult for cars to get past, so when you get a lorry traveling behind a tractor then it causes major hold ups. The lorry can’t get past and then neither can the cars behind it.

Maybe if I was a tractor driver then I would think differently but at this point of time I say get the tractors off the road!

Today was another one of those lazy Sunday’s where I never know what to do and basically end up feeling sorry for yourself all day long!

The wife was out and about doing various bits and bobs and that left me home alone. The weather was not much good as it couldn’t decide whether to rain or not and when it did it was rather weak.

I spent the day pottering around the house with very little to do. It is days like this when you think of all those little jobs around the house that need doing but you really cannot be bothered, and your energy levels fall further.

In fact today reminded me of that episode of One Foot in the Grave where Victor is just moping around the house all day in a similar mood to what I was in today. The whole episode is just Richard Wilson with no other characters involved. A different but equally excellent episode of classic comedy. Perhaps I should have watched something like this on the box in order to cheer me up a little.

I did watch the football - Aston Villa versus Portsmouth - and that game was about as interesting as the day itself. Very little quality football and chances were few and far between. There was no world cup cricket on and then thinking of this reminds me of England dismal performance against South Africa.

Anyway hopefully tomorrow will bring more of a cheery mood - work it is though!

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Lazy Sunday’s

Today I sat down with a coffee and popped on the TV and saw that there was a Top Gear all the best bits on. I never usually watch Top Gear. I don’t know why because it is really good. The bit that I was watching was a bit I had seen before and enjoyed so I thought that I would share this with you.

I have actually mentioned this to many friends before when talking about the program and it is funny because no one seems to have seen it and I don’t think that they believed me.

A while ago Jeremy Clarkson raced a diesel Jaguar around the famous Nurburgring racing track in Germany and he was set the challenge of driving round in under 10 minutes. He succeeded, just completing the lap in 9 minutes and 59 seconds. His mentor for the day set the challenge that she could beat that in a van, so in true Top Gear style they set the challenge up

The van they used of course had to be a Transit Van. They kept it commercial in that no modifications were made and they off they went with Richard Hammond in the passenger seat. Having gotten held up around the circuit because of other drivers (the track is open to the public) the time achieved was still a very impressive 10 minutes and 23 seconds. However it didn’t beat the record. This meant that it was time to rid the van of any excess weight including Richard Hammond himself. They are did the lap behind a dodge Viper in order to create some clean air.

Despite some absolutely unbelievable driving the lap still came in 10 seconds too slow at 10 minutes and 8 seconds. Jeremy’s record remained however to get some close in a Transit van I think was amazing. On the ragged edge all the way and I am sure that it would have been a real thrill to have a go.

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Top Gear Website
Race at the Nurburgring

Everybody is talking about YouTube and Google Video at the moment. I have never really had the chance to take a detailed look at the two sites (which are actually now owned by Google) until yesterday evening when I had a spare 30 minutes. I bookmarked loads of funny videos so I though that I would share some here.

YouTube is actually very young as far as websites go. In fact it started pretty much when I started to develop some websites. It began fully in November 2005 (less than 2 years ago) and it is a place on the web where viewers can upload their videos too for free in order to share them with friends and the world.

There are some very funny videos on there that have been made by various people. However it does worry me that there seems to be no copyright policy as there are allsorts of video clips on there that I am sure must be illegal. What is interesting though is the speed that the site has developed. In only two years everyone knows about it and it has sold to Google for a massive amount of money (if only my site could do the same - as if!).

The one that got me thinking was the one where the woman is split in half. Me and my wife spent about 10 minutes deciding how they must of done it. See if you can work it out.

As for the lighting the farts, I think that is something that we have all done in the past. However that fart did seem some what ’staged’. Maybe he had a canister of methane in his shorts - who knows?

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YouTube.com
Google Video
Mark Wilkinson Video

A while ago on my old blogger blog I wrote about using Technology is Sport and I thought that it was about time we revisited the subject.

It is a debate that has gone on and one and is discussed in many a pub across the length of this island. Should we use technology to assist in making decisions in sport, most notably football?

In some sports technology is already used to a certain degree. Cricket for example have the use of the third umpire. The third umpire can be used mainly for two things. The first being run outs to check whether the batsman has made it into the crease or not before the bails are removed and the second is to check to see if catches have carried or not. The use of technology for these decisions has meant a fairer game and players and fans I think appreciate this. For most run outs now the umpires refer the decision to the third umpire in order to get the right decision.

There are sports however where technology has never been used. I suppose the greatest example of this is football. There have been talks about using equipment to decide whether the ball has crossed the goal line when decisions are difficult and also maybe for using technology and video evidence in judging whether players are offside or not. To date nothing has taken place.

It seems that there is hardly a weekend of sport that goes by without there being an outcry by one set of fans about how their team has been hard done by due to a bad decision. What I think we need to think about is how did the fans know that it is a bad decision? The answer - technology. They will have watched numerous replays at various angles and speeds in order to judge the decision, replays which the officials don’t have. People say that officials are worse at making decisions these days than in the past. That to me is rubbish, it is the fact that technology has allowed the public to identify these mistakes is what has changed. Referees will have made the same mistakes years ago but we never knew.

So should we introduce these technologies that the viewing public can see into the officiating of the sports? Well yes and no in my opinion. There are some sports that it works well in. Cricket is one of them and it works for two main reasons. Firstly the ‘action’ area is small and 95% of the time the technology gives a definite verdict as isn’t disputed. The other reason is that the game of cricket doesn’t suffer from the slight delays that using the technology inevitably leads to.

On the other faster paced sports that use a larger ‘action’ area wouldn’t benefit from this technology. In football there is many a time when even with a slow motion, multi-angle replay a firm decision cannot be reached. Therefore why use the technology at all? In my opinion the fans should just give the officials a bit of the benefit of the doubt because they cannot see the replays the public see. I suppose the only other option is to stop the media in the sports showing these replays - not going to happen as this is part of the selling point of the media companies. Take Sky Sports for example. They sell their football package with all the interactivity that allows these multi-angle cameras to work. Take that away and you would remove some of the viewing experience.

Lets just realise that it works in some sports but not in others and that we need [as the public] to reduce the pressure on the officials so that they can make the best decisions without the need for technical help.

It is official that Tesco are now making a profit each year in excess of £2.5 billion. The problem (to many) is that they are now monopolising the market and therefore putting smaller businesses out of business. Is this right and why is it happening?

Tesco are the UKs largest supermarket chain and it is said that for every £7 spent on groceries in the UK £1 of that is spent in Tesco. They have a share of the market the size of Sainsbury’s and Asda put together. However many people have been complaining that the larger that Tesco becomes then the more small business (often called the High Street Shops) will be put out of business. This is because the buying power of Tesco is becoming greater and greater due to the profits they make.

I have mixed opinions about this. First off I quite like Tesco as a supermarket to do my shopping in. The stores are always clean, the goods that they sell are on the whole good quality, the staff are usually excellent and the prices for the goods are excellent value for money. Also I think that there TV adverts are spot on and really well thought out.

On the other hand I do think it is a great shame that the local high street stores that are going to be out of business. After the all Tesco’s grass roots come from that background as they started out as a small local shop in London themselves.

What frustrates me is that people are going on and on about this all the time saying that it is a scandal that this supermarket are making all this profit and that the local businesses are being put out of business. However the reason why this supermarket are making all the profit are because people (the very people that are complaining no doubt) are shopping in Tesco. I bet 80% of the people that are reading this post now have at some point shopped in Tesco or more likely they shop there regularly. Therefore don’t complain!