Sporting success is ruining our underdog image

England’s nerve-shredding victory in the Cricket World Cup at the weekend was a major achievement in itself.

But the win has also had the unlikely effect of turning England into the most complete sporting nation on the globe, the only one to have lifted the World Cups in football, rugby and cricket. Admittedly we’re one of only a few countries to try really hard at all three sports.

For example the traditionally strong footballing nations like Germany, Brazil, France and Italy who have won World Cups considerably more often than us in the past 50 years - have made very little effort to achieve anything on the cricket field, probably regarding it as quaint little pursuit for the UK and its former colonies.

The fact is this success rather demolishes our - sometimes gleeful self-image as a nation of plucky sporting failures.

To nations of genuine sporting failure, plucky or otherwise, we must sound really ungrateful and entitled. Especially as our recent showings in the Olympic medal tables have made us look very much like East Germany in the 1970s. Our demands for sporting success often make us sound more like a totalitarian state than a liberal democracy.

Perhaps it’s down to the cliché that we like nothing better than having a good moan and under-achieving sports stars - especially when they’re also

‘overpaid’ - are an easy target. Of course, we’ve had plenty to moan about over the decades but no one can deny it’s come good in the end.

People often use our success in the Olympics or at sports such as cricket and rugby as a stick with which to beat our footballers, who haven’t won a World Cup in several generations. They are also unfairly maligned for their standards of behaviour, even though cricketers, rugby players and Olympians are equally prone to stepping out of line.

So, instead of whining about their salaries and inability to win a major trophy, we should really be thanking these players for their lack of success. It allows us to do our patriotic duty of complaining, as well as giving countless armchair pundits plenty to chew over.

Winning still sits uneasily with us and were England ever to win the football World Cup, many people would be utterly bereft.