England go out in the group stages for the third time in five World Cups
Just read that. I've kind of forgotten past World Cups but that's a terrible record for a so called top nation. I thought we would have done better given that we've had some good teams in that time. Did the KP teams do better?
Sorry it was a silly term to use. I was referring to the era rather than the player specifically although I can't remember whether we were just good at Tests or one dayers too at the time. For some reason I have little memory of one day matches even though I've watched all the World Cups. I don't think I took them too seriously, treated them as a bit of fun rather than the actual sport of cricket. And it goes doubly for T20 where I'll enjoy watching the big hits and forget about the match completely within a week (had forgotten we'd won the T20 World Cup too!). That's why that statistic about England going out at the ODI group stage 3 times out of 5 took me by surprise as I'd assumed we'd done better than that.Not sure what you mean by KP teams, but his presence in the team has never been as talismanic as his fans think.
A much bigger loss has been the crafty spin of Graeme Swann, and the dull, steady, grafting batting of Jonathan Trott. When we had both of those guys at their best, we rarely had an unrecoverable collapse, and the opposition could rarely score freely in the middle overs.
The value of Paul Collingwood as an all-rounder was also immense, and was instrumental in leading England to take the Twenty20 world title (seems a long time ago). A decent death bowler like Jade Dernbach also used to help.
Not as big as if India or Australia missed out but you watch the ICC make some changes after the tournament...