SO where to start?

What follows in this column most likely has already been said.

The outrage, anger - and yes, laughter - prompted by our sporting exploits overseas and here at home over the past few weeks is unprecedented.

The excuses cited for the appalling performances by an assortment of national football and cricket teams, detailed in last week's Forum, keep coming.

Never before has this newspaper received so many letters addressed to the sports desk expressing where we've gone wrong and how the problems can be fixed. Sports personalities both past and present have been lining up for interviews in order to have their say (unfortunately the newly-appointed Sports Minister wasn't one of them).

Had space permitted, we could have filled page after page over the past week by reaction to the national football team's failure to beat Cayman Islands and subsequent defeats by the visiting New England Revolution, the pitiful show at the Stanford 20/20 where our boys set a new tournament record for the worst beating recorded in that event, the failure of the Under-19 cricketers to be vaguely competitive at the Youth World Cup until yesterday's much-improved performance against Ireland and, perhaps worst of all, the unbelievable statistics posted by our national women's cricket team.

Now nobody believed the ladies had a cat in hell's chance of winning a match at the Women's World Cup, coming as they did from a country which doesn't even have a domestic league, but one has to wonder whether any of them had even seen a cricket bat or ball before.

A total of 13 in their first match including 10 extras. Conceding 94 extras of their own, incuding 81 wides in their second game - sufficient for opponents Netherlands to win the match without any of their batsmen needing to score a single run!

OK, it made amusing copy. Not just here, but around the world.

But sadly, it's no laughing matter.

In these days when the Internet rules, news of such humiliating performances spreads fast.

Respected websites such as Cricinfo and that run by the ICC, have been keeping cricket fans around the world abreast on a daily basis of how Bermuda - that same country where an incredible $11 million was invested in the sport by Government after they qualified for last year's World Cup - continues to disgrace itself on the international stage.

Newspapers in the UK, the Caribbean, Australia and South Africa have taken every opportunity "to take the mickey".

There was a time when Bermudians travelled abroad, having first explained the 'Triangle' doesn't actually exist, would be asked by strangers the whereabouts of Clyde Best, Shaun Goater or even Dwayne Leverock, whose appearance at last year's World Cup became one of the biggest stories of the competition, second only to the mysterious death of Bob Woolmer.

Now, thanks to events over the past few weeks, Bermuda cricket has been the talking point for a completely different reason.

Trinidad columnist Fazeer Mohammed suggested to his readers if they wanted to see the world, there was no better way than to move to Bermuda and pick up a cricket bat.

Given the make-up of Bermuda's team at the recent Stanford 20/20 tournament, he wasn't too far off the mark.

Writers here on the Island haven't missed the chance to address cricket's misery, some ridiculing the players and the administration, others offering their own solution on how the sport can emerge from the doldrums.

Lawrence Trott in his Mid-Ocean News column last week might have hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that since qualifying for the World Cup almost three years ago, the Bermuda Cricket Board have, for a variety of reasons, never been able to put together a settled senior national team.

We still haven't found two batsmen capable of opening the innings, despite a number of experiments, and we have a bowling attack that wouldn't trouble most schoolboy teams.

As for the excuses, political commentator Tommy Vesey, writing in The Sun, turned his attention to the current sporting debate and tried to blame the crisis on the fact that as a small island of 21-square miles in the middle of nowhere, that we expect too much of our athletes.

Nonsense!

Our size should often work to our advantage.

Where else in the world can sportsmen and sportswomen with average ability get the opportunities that are offered right here.

Our footballers, cricketers, sailors, athletes, tennis players, swimmers and many others regularly get the chance to travel the globe to compete against the very best and gain invaluable experience. If they're really good, they get to enrol in overseas academies.

In larger nations, enormously talented athletes never get the opportunity to represent their county or state, let alone their country.

So who's to blame for cricket's troubles. Certainly not just BCB president Reggie Pearman who's been involved with the sport for his entire life, through good times and bad. He has to shoulder some of the responsibility but he's been let down by so many around him, not least the players.

In many ways what we're seeing in cricket is simply reflective of what we're seeing in current society.

If there's a bright side to this entire issue, it's that Premier Ewart Brown has already met with Pearman and has also called for a meeting with former all-rounder Saleem Mukuddem, one of the BCB's fiercest critics. At least Government seems to realise that cricket's problems are also their problems.

The bottom line, however, is that sadly here in Bermuda some of our best players just aren't hungry enough. They want everything on a plate.

And if a drug test is a pre-requisite for travelling abroad, forget it.

That, of course, doesn't apply to everyone. That's why we're able to produce so many individuals who make their mark on the world stage.

But until we find 11 players with the same mindset, the same passion, the same work ethic, the same enthusiasm . . . then we're fighting a losing battle.

- ADRIAN ROBSON