SWANNY'S WORLD OF SPORT: Moaning Morgan, England more chance than Lions of beating All Blacks, 19-year-old heroine
Every team will have a match-defining bad spell in a 50-over match so best to get it out of the way in a group match when there’s still time to recover.
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Hide AdBut, as good as England’s form has been in recent one-day series, it’s still fair to question their temperament in tournaments.
Will they ever have had a better chance to win an international event than the current one?
Playing Pakistan - the lowest ranked team in the competition - at home in a semi-final should have been the stuff of dreams and yet Eoin Morgan’s team blew it in miserable style.
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Hide AdMorgan’s risible attempt to blame the Cardiff pitch didn’t sit well either. His team were outplayed in all departments and received a deserved stuffing.
Perhaps England, and not Pakistan, are the flaky ones.
ENGLAND BETTER THAN LIONS
England under Eddie Jones would have more chance than the British Lions under Warren Gatland (above) of beating New Zealand away from home. Having Gatland in charge is like having Graham Taylor in charge of your football team. Primitive tactics based on stifling rather than creating. If Gatland believes he can stop the All Blacks from scoring 30 points a game he’s a fool. The Lions have to fight fire with fire to have any chance.
USA SPORT IS THE BEST
I spent a part of my recent holiday watching the NBA Basketball Finals and ice hockey’s Stanley Cup decider and started yearning for the top English games to be so relentlessly exciting. Baseball remains dull though.
HEROINE OF THE WEEK
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Hide AdWhile Rafa Nadal’s 10th French Open title was tediously predictable, the win of 19 year-old Jelena Ostapenko in the ladies singles competition was anything but. An unseeded winner of any men’s event is unthinkable. Indeed the biggest negative of this most watchable of sports is that only one of four men can ever win anything big.