I struggle to recall such changing fortunes as those experienced by the English cricket team in the last six months. They entered last years' home Ashes series against Australia as strong favourites. They duly won the five match series 3-0 although that scoreline was very flattering to them.
They have just completed about as pathetic a display as I can remember in losing the return series 5-0 down under. How do the fortunes of a team or country or organisation plummet so rapidly?
Any contest is decided by the relative merits and detriments of the two sides competing. Australia won this series hands down for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they had the greater fire power. In Mitchell Johnson they had a bowler capable of bowling at 95 miles per hour. England did not. Worse still, they did not have a single batsman capable of playing bowling of that speed. The scoreline didn't lie. Australia didn't need a batsman capable of playing such speed because England didn't have a bowler capable of bowling that fast. In a nutshell, that is how this contest was decided. There were other reasons of course.
As with the present Manchester United football team, there comes a time when winning becomes a habit. There also comes a time when winning is taken for granted and falls victim to complacency. It is therefore less to do with player salaries and more to do with player attitudes. As with the present predicament of the Manchester United football team, the current England cricket team made the mistake of believing their own hype. They have now paid the price. The most telling statistic for me was that their sole century came courtesy of the debutant Ben Stokes batting at number six. Stokes alone averaged over 30. If you take away the highest knock of Cook, Pieterson and Bell, neither would have averaged 20. Given that they each had top scores slightly north of 70, that is an appalling return from 10 completed innings.
Of the England bowlers, only Broad emerged with any credit. The rest were abysmal and carried all the threat of a cuddly toy. The England wicket keeper had a nightmare while the 36 year old Australian equivalent scored nigh on 500 runs averaging over 60. No comparison. The ageing English opening batsman Carberry scored a paltry 281 runs from 10 completed innings compared to the 36 year old Australian Chris Rogers who returned 463 runs with a crucial century. Going down the list of the two sides, there really is no comparison. Australia wanted it more and had a point to prove with a game plan to match. England had become complacent as evidenced by their obvious lack of a game plan.
This happens in all walks of life and we are all guilty at various times. When the UK economy was enjoying it's years of growth under Labour, they became complacent and took their eye off the ball. Since the crash, we have all been paying the price. That is the legacy of complacency. I read some political commentators writing as though the Coalition had a genuine choice to carry on borrowing their way out of trouble in the way their predecessors had. That is plain wrong. They had no such choice and it is frankly deceitful to suggest otherwise. If there were any doubt about this, they only had to look at Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal or Italy. As I write, France have refused to curb their borrowing despite several warnings to the contrary. Watch this space.
Our health service continues to attract a great deal of criticism for poor spending decisions and a poor record of clinical care. What we need to ask ourselves is how this situation arose in the first place? Complacency had set in and the the key decision makers within the NHS had taken their eye off the ball. It was interesting to read the suggestion of Owen Patterson last week. Echoing the points I made in a piece last year, he questioned the wisdom of ring fencing spending on the health budget. I agree with him wholeheartedly. Only when the decision makers realise that their resources are finite will they begin to approach their spending with more responsibility. With greater responsibility comes greater accountability. This results in better outcomes for patients and reduces the capacity for wasting valuable resources. Guaranteeing anyone an income will render them complacent sooner or later and the NHS is no different. Granted, their challenges are considerable as an ageing population continues to exert it's considerable toll on front line services. Proposals to charge patients for presenting to Casualty departments would be a grave error. This would result in penalising those least able to pay and compromise their health outcomes in the process. No, either the NHS stayas free at the point of access or we privatise it. It is either one thing or the other. We can't have it both ways. Penalising people for wasting time would be equally futile. Educating them how not to would be infinitely more sensible. Like the Australian cricket team, they would be better equipped and the NHS would be the winner. At the moment the contest has become one of almost insane firefighting akin to the English batsmen faced with the pace of Mitchell Johnson. I think the time has come to restore some parity to the contest between health provider and health service consumer. To achieve this, we must wave farewell to the days of complacency on both sides.(http://betweendenbighandkeele.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-dangers-of-ring-fencing.html),
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