Cricket: Carnival over for England

By Richard Boock

EDINBURGH - The only thing worse than England's batting in this cricket World Cup has been the timing of the release of the tournament's official song.

Apart from the obvious embarrassment of being ejected from their own tournament at the group stage, the fact that the hosts managed to be eliminated the day before Dave Stewart's All Over the World was even released has not been lost on the British press.

The chorus, which the England cricketers might struggle to sing along with, goes something like this:

Everybody, everybody all over the world

Join the festival

Everybody, everybody all over the world

Life is a carnival.

Perhaps, if the organisers knew how England was going to perform, they could have simply dusted off that old Seekers' number The Carnival is Over.

Most of the British newspapers devoted articles to the failure on both their front and back pages, with the Daily Telegraph's Martin Johnson comparing England's reaction to pressure to a "freshly salted slug."

As well as widespread outrage over Australia's go-slow tactics against the West Indies at Manchester, the press have made much of the fact that while England - the home of cricket - have been eliminated, neighbours Scotland were still involved (or were last night, anyway).

The Independent branded England's campaign as "Lame," the Telegraph "Miserable," while the Guardian called it the "End of the World - as we know it."

The Times ran a story on their front page which was headlined "Super Six? We'd be lucky to make the Average Fourteen." Giles Coren wrote that "one doubts, to be frank, whether England would have outscored the opposition in a prep school Fathers v Sons match".

"Can it be long," he wrote, "before all that is left of our summer game is an annual five-test series against Scotland?"

England coach David Lloyd, whose contract expired yesterday, said he felt total disbelief that his team had not qualified for the Super Six, and laid the blame fairly and squarely at the feet of his batsmen.

"Our match against India and the one against South Africa followed a similar pattern, as have many others over the past 12 months or so, when we have cracked under pressure.

"In any team sport you have to rise to the challenge and recently we have failed to do this. We have been at the bottom for too long. We've faltered and stuttered as a batting side and I feel desperately sad for the players."

As the post mortems begin, Lloyd has already stepped down, and England captain Alec Stewart is coming under increasing pressure in retaining his place in the one-day side, as a batsman or as captain.

The Times' Christopher Martin-Jenkins wrote: "Failure to qualify for the second stage confirms England do not have enough players of world class".