Cricket
Ashes 'no excuse' for CWC flop
2010-07-08 08:05
England - England captain Andrew Strauss has insisted blaming a poor performance at next year's Cricket World Cup in Asia on the preceding Ashes tour of Australia won't wash as an excuse for failure.
No England team has ever won the World Cup, cricket's premier one-day trophy and many pundits believe they are unlikely to break their duck so long as they continue to head to the tournament on the back of an Ashes tour of Australia, where they haven't won a Test series since 1986/87.
But Australia have won the last three World Cups, all after Ashes series albeit they were home campaigns for the Aussies.
Strauss, speaking to reporters at Trent Bridge here on Wednesday, where the first one-day international between England and Bangladesh takes place on Thursday, said moaning about the fixture schedule was a waste of time
"It is what it is and it didn't stop Australia winning the last World Cup," Strauss said.
"There's no reason why you can't go from a busy Ashes series and then win the World Cup.
"What you want in that Ashes series is for you to win and be full of confidence and have that under your belt before you go to the World Cup; that would be the perfect way to go in to a World Cup."
England have been on the losing side in three World Cup finals, being well beaten by the West Indies at Lord's in 1979 and Pakistan at Melbourne in 1992.
The closest they came to winning the World Cup was on the back of their last succesful Ashes tour, when an England team captained by Strauss's Middlesex predecessor Mike Gatting lost to Australia by seven runs in the 1987 final in Calcutta.