BoyBrumby
Englishman
Why is it strange? Other countries manage it with fractions of the playing and financial resources we have.I'm not defending this particular result, I was just making a more general point. It's really strange to take a diagnostic tone when asking why your sporting teams don't achieve sustained excellence, despite being able to occasionally win World Cups and reach number one in the world rankings. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing to have high expectations. But the reasons why England lost in UAE are obvious; their batsmen weren't experienced enough in those conditions. The more interesting question is why the English feel the need to ask, "what's WRONG with our team!?" even when, in the wider scheme of things, they're doing really, really well.
I don't automatically expect England to win everything and I'm not an English chauvanist, but there does seem to be a pattern whereby England can climb to the summit but not breath the rarified air for very long.