Not a bad week all round. We won the cup after a thrilling game in the final of the Blackburn Combination Birtwistle Cup and England beat the Aussies at cricket.

Whilst I was never one for glory, on this occasion I must say it was quite remarkable as we only had three players last September.

As for the cricket I was a little disheartened at how little press coverage the England cricketers got for winning the Twenty20 final.

Any other country would have given them a homecoming they would have remembered.

Maybe as a nation we actually like it when we lose and then find heroes in every single one of those losers.

When we win we don’t know what to do.

Losing – well, we are experts at that.

Hey, I should know I was supporting the Pakistanis!

In the coming month we will again play out the whole drama that is the football World Cup.

The nation is already prepared for the dreaded penalties and then the recriminations will begin.

Even by writing this I am adding to everyone’s subconscious fear that things will go horribly wrong and our team will come home as grade one losers.

Maybe it is time we changed that attitude once and for all and give credit where credit is due and stop moaning all the time about how bad we are and start celebrating how good we are.

Still with cricket, it seems playing cricket can help boost a child’s grades in the classroom.

That is according to new research which says competitive sports improve pupils’ discipline, motivation and confidence.

Two thirds of parents believe that sports like cricket can help a child’s academic results.

Now, I’ve played a lot of cricket in my life but I have to say it did not make me a better person.

In fact it made a very vengeful and frustrated man.

I hated the fact that I was always put in at number six to rescue the team and then disappointed when, having bigged myself up, I was a complete and utter let down.

Well, not all the time – sometimes I was magnificent.

But only sometimes.

I hated fielding at third man when the guy at ‘point’ couldn’t bend over never mind sprint.

And finally I hated how the people with the full white kit and best bats always talked a good game but were absolutely useless to the rest of the team.

So much for team spirit.