Sir Clive Woodward

Sir Clive Woodward, the former England rugby union coach and manager, and now working with the British Olympic Association, is famed for taking ideas from the business world and seeking to apply them to sport. Some of them seem utterly counterintuitive at first, such as his assertion that after a loss the team should go out and get drunk, but after a win, the team should have an 8am meeting. But after a pause for thought, maybe they’re not so mad after all. What is worth analysing more: why something worked, or why it didn’t? A scientist may say both, but I know I would enjoy reviewing tape of a win more than tape of a loss, and I concentrate better when I’m having fun. So maybe Sir Clive’s not such a mad hatter after all.

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Close, but no cigar.

The anger of Sky’s commentary team following the drawn fifth test at Port-of-Spain was something to behold. Andrew Strauss, who, like every England cricket and rugby captain of the last five years (or so it seems), managed to talk about “taking the positives” from an abject failure, was the target of much of their ire; his ill-timed declarations in Antigua and Trinidad apparently his most heinous crimes.

There is no doubt that the test series in the West Indies has been an enormous disappointment from England’s point of view. Knowledgable cricket afficionados around the world confidently predicted a comfortable series win for England, dismissing the horror of the Stanford 20/20 as an ill-judged freak show. A 2-0 or 3-0 win would have been nothing more than “job done”.

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