Celebrating An English Victory

England has finally won, after many many years, a World Tournament for Cricket. Yes, a proper one, the World Twenty-Twenty Title, beating the all-cylinders charging Australia. However, winning is only part of the whole celebration; England looked unstoppable after the few initial hitches, and the team contained so many young, exciting talents.



It may be naive to expect a contagion of success, but one must hope: England can sure win the Football World Cup in South Africa in a couple of months. That will be really really big! We have a great team, which combines the best footballers from the best domestic league in the world. So, why not expect a rerun of 1966, when England won the football cup last time, and never played a final since.



That's not far fetched by any standard. English sport is currently going through a sort of renaissance. For next few years, Burton/Hamilton duo will always have a running chance of lapping up F1 title between them. And, if Andy Murray, though he is very Scottish, surely will make a Wimbledon one day, why not make it this year? And, all this can lead to an One-day Cricket World Cup title next year, which, with the current crop of Cricketers, England will be a favourite to win.



So, pop the champagne, a small one, will you? Reserve the vintages for days to come, when we will have more celebrations. We are entering an exciting age of sports, when we shall go beyond fair play trophies and stop being good losers. It will be a time when we shall win. Earlier, I said, Britain is feeling bleak; tonight, we may have turned a corner.



One parting thought, though. It always helps to think about the reasons for success when we are successful. What makes England great? The cricket team provides an insight. Look at the exciting new talents like Pieterson, Kieswetter and Lumb, who between them have won us the World Cup. What makes the Premier League exciting and pushes up the standards of people like Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole, are the people like Didier Drogba, Carlos Tevez and the army of the best and the brightest footballers from Africa and elsewhere in the world that comes to play.



This is not strange or exceptional, this is just how it works. So, when celebrating England and the English victory and an all-England future of this year's sport, we should also celebrate the English spirit: The open, welcoming, tolerant society, which invites and nurtures talents from all over the world. Upbeat and finally on a winning run, let us not succumb anymore to the xenophobic talk that all the migrants are taking this country to dogs.

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