ICC World Cup

But Scotland aren't going through a lean 'period'. Lean is all they know; they've been in, is it three world cups now, and have not won a single game, even against another 'minnow'.

If Scotland were in the LVCC they would be slugging it out with Leics for the wooden spoon in div two.Their presence in the world cup is tokenistic, ludicrous and inappropriate.

As for UAE, they're a bunch of Pakistani exiles who are not much  better than Scotland.

Both are miles behind Ireland and Afghanistan, who deserve to be there as the eleventh and twelfth best teams in the world after the ten Test playing countries.

As for   "the cosy ICC troika plus their current chums and political allies", that's the most partronising description I've ever heard of high-calibre sides such as South Africa, world cup favourites NZ, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and even a much diminished West Indies!

England 30 short of par. Not enough intent in the middle. Surely Hales, Bopara, Jordan and Tredwell have to come in now with Ballance, Bell, Broad and Anderson making way.

Before the next World Cup Sri Lanka need to replace Dilshan, Sangakkara and Jayawardene which will be no easy task. I suspect Chandimal may keep wicket and that the top four maybe Thirimanne, Karunaratne, Chandimal (+) and Matthews but what about 5, 6 and 7? Kushal Silva, who can also keep wicket, Chamara Silva, who will be 38 himself in three years time and Vithange who hit Sussex for 52* off 24 balls with five sixes look the three best options. Priyanjan or Prasanna are an alternative to Chamara if they are looking for an all-rounder as opposed to a specialist batsman. Herath will be replaced by Mendis / Randiv / Senanayake. Malinga will be 35 which is quite old for an international seamer and so a replacement maybe needed for him too.

Blame the bowlers, blame the fielding, blame for England's failure seem to be being spread pretty wide, I wonder if they will ever work out who the culprits really are?

And yes, I know he's Irish but he chose to play for England, is being very well paid by England and he accepted the captaincy of England so he has to sing the National Anthem.

Nobody is arguing with your view that the troika may be a self-selected oligarchy.  But to imply that the particiption of the likes of NZ and SA at cricket's top table is based on them being  chums and political allies rather than on  cricketing strength is stirring rhetoric but insulting and demonstrably wrong!

As for Scotland, their strength will never  flow but will always ebb under the current set up in which they rely on a smattering of uncapped  journeymen from county second XIs  who had a Scottish grandmother.

What justification can there be for a team that are not even county first XI standard participating in cricket's most prestigious international tournament? All it does is give your self-serving oligarchy and client states a few easy wins to boost their stats, while dragging out the group stage of the tournament over seemingly interminable weeks as teams get six or seven days off between almost every match because there are a bloated 42 matches to get through.

When Sri Lanka tonked us 5-2 in the ODI series in Nov/Dec, we consoled ourselves that it wasn't a true reflection because we were lacking Anderson and Broad. Just two months later, we're contemplating dropping both of them.

That we're even discussing dropping Anderson shows how far England have sunk. Michael Vaughan said on Sky at the end of the match that if Anderson isn't swinging the ball there is no point in having him in the side. As he's not got any swing in four matches now, he's even more expendable than Bang-It-In Broad.

Not that Woakes and Finn are any better or that Jordan will make much difference, as he offers more of the same. Tredwell surely has to come in and it is worth re-examining whether Bopara can be resurrected as an all-rounder, adding some pace off the ball to the limited bowling options.

Then the call  will be 'we need a left-armer' and so Gurney will return next summer. Oh dear.

Meanwhile, who on earth devises the plan that says all the bowlers have to keep on banging it in half way down the pitch?

But it's not only the bowling. You could hear how the mechanical mindset of the England camp is all wrong in Morgan's stats-obssessed post-match interview. He twice mentioned that history showed 270 was a par score on the ground and so 310 was a "brilliant" score. It was pretty clear from the way England batted in the middle overs that their ambition was limited to targetting a score of between 270-300. But the best sides are now looking for 330 plus on good pitches.I think we all know if Sri Lanka had batted first they would have targetted 350 and almost certainly would  have got them.

Then Morgan said they'd be able to analyse what went wrong with the bowling "in a couple of days when we get the Hawkeye charts". This team has been coached to believe that they cannot do anything - or even think for themselves - without a chart and a stat bank to instruct them.

That seems to be the problem, that we are once again reacting rather than innovating, looking to a model against which to compare actual play rather than the mode of train, play, learn.

There is an astonishing claim on cricinfo tonight about Root's hapless press conference following the Sri Lanka defeat.

We know Doballs loves a bit of tabloid melodrama and regards subtlelty, nuance and under-statement as the enemy. But he has claimed tonight that Downton was originally due to take the press conference but was removed from the firing line at the last minute because he couldn't be trusted not to put his foot in it and so Root was effectively thrown like a lamb to the slaughter:-

"They no longer trust some of those in management to defuse situations - Paul Downton was originally pencilled in to take this press conference but every time Colin Graves speaks he undermines his executive team - and they hoped that, by producing one of the few men who has performed well in recent days, they might distract attention from the wretched performance of England's most senior cricketers in the field."

Unsurprisingly, young Root put in an embarrassingly gauche performance (it seems he complained  that it was unfair that England had to face Aus and NZ first rather than Scotland and Afghanistan) and needless to say  his remarks are already the butt of some ribald Aussie humour.

Bui if what Dodgy says is true about the circumstances,  I don't think it will be very long before Graves removes Downton Shabby, Moores and Whitaker - all of whom were Clarke appointees - and replaces them with the Headingley trio of Mark Arthur, Jason Gillespie and Martyn Moxon.

After all, historically it was always said that a strong Yorkshire means a strong England!!!