That was the World Cup that was

Well, England's World Cup is over, and a pretty chastening experience it's been. They scraped past Papua New Guinea in the first game -- fair enough, adjusting to climate etc. They were crushed by Australia in the second game -- fair enough, Australia are the heavy favourites. Then they were beaten convincingly by New Zealand in the third game -- oh dear. And then they were beaten by New Zealand again, not quite as convincingly but still quite so, in the semi-final. This is the same New Zealand who England beat 3-0 just last year, when Tony Smith's arrival as coach was greeted with hosannas. Every game was marred with English handling and positional errors, and some of our alleged major talents (Sinfield, Price) didn't perform at all, while others (Senior, Morley, even Wellens) seem now past their best, without the same quality of young players coming through. In general you would have backed this England team to lose to any of the strong Super League teams, which is a bit of an indictment of the quantity of foreigners in our club rugby. Gardner's been brilliant for St Helens outside Gidley: Burrow and McGuire have created wonderful tries for Donald at Leeds. But surrounded just by Englishmen, the effect is not at all the same.

Rugby League is in danger of becoming a joke sport at international level, if it isn't already. The World Cup was delayed for four years to give England and NZ a chance to catch up, then rigged as heavily as possible to try and make it into a contest, but it failed -- Australia have still waltzed through without breaking a sweat. We can only hope that NZ somehow manage to give them a game in Saturday's final: but realistically, a scoreline of 40-6 or something like that is probably par.

2-0

Well, India have just taken the second one-day international (of seven), but England put up a much better show this time. They were still outclassed, but not ludicrously so. It would be fair I think to say that Yuvraj made the difference between the two sides -- his second consecutive quick-time century, and also 4-28 with the ball. And that with a bad back. What a player!

This game took place in Indore, where (most of) my family live. The stadium is even named after one of my distant relatives. Glad to see the crowd got a good game to watch. I think though of my late cousin Baba, who was a big cricket fan (which is another way of saying, he was Indian). He actually suffered his fatal heart attack while watching the recent second Ind-Aus test on TV, and would certainly have been at today's game.