Readers of the Daily Mail have my deepest sympathies, I bought a copy to read in the car yesterday as broadsheets obscure my view and make it difficult to turn corners. I don't know how often Jeff Powell is allowed to unleash his pisspoor driveling upon the Mail's readership, but someone ought to stop him strait away. Powell seems to deplore the fact that cricket fans don't suffer from the worst of footballs moron excesses. He claims that Zimbabwe is "less dangerous to visit than the United States or Britain at this hour of international terrorism," a foolish claim indeed. African nations are a lot less safe than their Western counterparts, mostly their anti-terrorist forces are years behind those of the UK and USA in areas of training, equipment and funding. The recent hotel bombing in Kenya showed just how vulnerable foreign nationals can be staying in these countries, and that's before they have had a direct threat leveled at them, as happened to the England team. He also seems upset that we didn't vilify the players on their return, but why should we ? Everyone knew it would be difficult to qualify once we had forfeited the Zimbabwe match, the groundswell of opinion is that day-night games are a lottery, on an equal footing we probably would not have beaten Pakistan so comprehensively, nor lost so heavily to India. When we had a level playing field we beat the smaller nations (and were not the only 'big' nation to struggle against supposed 'make weight' teams) and we played a fantastic match against Australia. It should be remembered that England are the only country to have got anywhere near beating the Ozzies for a year. "Our cricket is a shambles and no-one gives a hoot", Jeff Powells headline reads, well Jeff, real cricket fans do care, it's band wagon jumping, England bashing oiks like yourself that don't.