Tag: SPOTY

Congratulations England!

The England cricket team won the BBC award for Team of the Year and Andy Flower won coach of the year. I was rather hoping that Lancs would get the first award, given how no one expected us to win the title this year, but England are hardly undeserving. Although there were only eight Tests this year England won six of them and drew the other two. Whitewashing India was one of the highlights of the season. It is also only right that Andy Flower won Coach of the Year. So much of England’s success can be traced back to his leadership. England have lost only one series since he took over, the 0-1 defeat in the West Indies at the start of his reign. Since then England have won seven of out of eight series and drawn the other. Unfortunately neither Strauss nor Cook won Personality of the Year, but Mark Cavendish was hardly undeserving of the award.

My congratulations then to Andy Flower and the England cricket team. Hopefully next year will be even better.

SPOTY shortlist

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist has been announced and both Strauss and Cook are in the running for the award. I’m hoping one of them wins, of course. I’m leaning toward Cook, he had the better year on the field. (Though since it’s the sports personality award I fail to see how Graeme Swann, or at least Jimmy Anderson, doesn’t win every single year. It should at least go to someone with a Twitter account.) The full list is on the BBC website. It’s been noted that it is not a particularly diverse list, there are no women on it at all this year. There also aren’t any footballers or rugby players in the running, though that’s less surprising given the state of the national teams.

There is also an award for team of the year, which must surely either go to the England cricket team or to Lancashire. I’d give it to Lancs. We all knew England were good at the start of the year, if not that they were so good as to beat India 4-0. No one expected Lancashire to win the County Championship though; some even predicted we would be relegated! We had a team comprised almost entirely of homegrown talent, mostly very young and inexperienced. Lancashire were a team in that they were greater than the sum of their parts this year. To an extent this was also true of England, but the national side had the services of the second best fast bowler in the world a lot more often than the Red Rose. I think Lancashire are clearly the most deserving team.