I thought we might see what things we are not impressed with from our own team (national or otherwise), you are not allowed to criticise anyone's choices unless they are supporting the same country as you
Am I allowed to do South Africa? England has too many for me to avoid being forced to prioritise.
1) the most obvious one being the Apartheid past. This, of course, was not something of the design of the cricket fraturnity, but had a massive impact, and of course there were cases where those in cricket administration acted in ascending manner. Not only did the system damage the country's prospects by weakening the potential pool of players for 20 years, not to mention the potential opposition, not only did it get them kicked-out for 20 years, thus depriving many of the greatest cricketers produced by the country of any international careers of note, but its effects are still being felt - massively - as of this post, as much inequality remains and steps are taken to reverse discriminate in a manner deemed neccessary by those in charge. Even when no discrimination is present, the suspicion of it retains the potential to do great damage. Whether South African history with no (out-of-the-ordinary) discrimination would ever have been possible is highly questionable and many know far more about it than me. But had it been, and had it happened, cricket in the country would have been inestimably stronger and the game's history there inestimably more esteemed in so many ways.
2) the fact that so many of the best players get perceived outside the country as ****s of various kind. Much of this, of course, is the fault of those doing the perception, but not all, and it's a problem that probably affects South Africa more than any other cricketing country.
3) the fact that so many "big" moments, in ODIs at least, have produced failure. Now, so have many "not so big" moments, of course, but to go out of the home World Cup in the 1st round, the previous one on a ****-up that should simply never happen regardless of anything, the one before that at the first serious hurdle, and the one before that on an unfortunate happening which the team were far from sans-blame for, is deeply depressing. Especially as in every tournament in the 1990s the South Africans could easily have been the best team in the tourney.
4) Peter Heine. Fine, fine bowler, shameful for on-field antics.
5) finding ways to lose Test series to Australia, badly, in which they should be being damn competetive at least. Mostly involving usually brilliant catching going to gutteral standards.
6) Wessel Johannes Cronje. Brilliant captain for a long time, match-fixer on probably no more than a handful of occasions, but unforgiveable occasions. And the way he ensnared the likes of Herschelle Gibbs was appalling.