GUS LOGIE may have had a good idea how England coach Duncan Fletcher felt earlier this week as he watched his side toss away the Ashes.

The mental meltdown Fletcher witnessed from his players as they crumbled on the final day of an Adelaide Test they might have won, and most certainly should have at least drawn, wasn’t too far removed from the frustrations Bermuda coach Logie had to endure throughout five weeks of African cricket.

At this stage, that’s about as far as any comparisons between the England and Bermuda teams can be stretched — we’ll get a real chance to compare when they come face to face in the first of the World Cup warm-up games in less than three months’ time!

But there’s no doubt that in cricket, as with so many other sports, talent only gets you so far.

Without discipline, mental toughness and a stranglehold on the game’s basics, you’re not going to win matches.

And that’s a lesson, more than any other, Bermuda’s cricketers will have likely learned on their latest adventure on the world stage.

Man for man, it might be argued, Bermuda were as good as any of the teams from Kenya, Holland and Canada whom they came up against during their travels through East and South Africa.

But the record shows they won just match — one of little significance against Holland at the end of the tour by which time the Dutch had already wrapped up the ICC Tri-Series.

Prior to that victory, they’d lost six ODIs in a row and drawn two four-day Intercontinental Cup games.

And if you listen to Logie, ICC High Performance Manager Richard Done — a man who knows a thing or two about the game having formerly been employed as head coach at the Australian Cricket Academy — or any others who watched Bermuda’s performances, they’ll tell you the majority of those games weren’t lost because of a lack of skill.

They were lost through lack of application — a failure to make the right decisions at the right time.

Of course, it’s easy to make those observations from the air-conditioned comfort of the pavilion or the press room while the players themselves are getting their brains fried under a broiling African sun.

Making decisions under pressure is never easy, and even more difficult in the relentless, sticky heat in which they waged battle.

But in the modern game, only the fittest survive — both mentally and physically. And on both counts Bermuda came up short.

The good news, though, is that between now and the World Cup there’s still time for change.

Bermuda showed in that final game against Holland what can be achieved when all of the players are on the same page, working for each other, feeding off the next man’s enthusiasm, and concentrating on the job at hand.

When the mindset’s right, following the disciplines which Logie repeatedly stresses as they key to success, might come a lot easier. It’s a matter of finding that mental strength on a more consistent basis.

Reaching the physical fitness required, now that’s another story.

The coach, in a harsh but brutally honest assessment, labelled his players the “slowest in the competition.”

And that’s an area where there simply has to be rapid and significant improvement if they’re to keep pace with some of their fellow ICC Associate nations.

To be fair, Canada’s players aren’t about to win too many 100 metre dashes either.

Fortunately for Bermuda, their last memory of this most recent tour will be of an emphatic win over the Dutch which will allow them to travel back to Kenya for the World Cricket League in January with renewed enthusiasm and renewed confidence.

But between now and then, they’ll need not to reflect on that game alone but on the six previous ODI drubbings, on the poor decisions which contributed to those defeats and on the reality of what it takes to succeed as professional sportsmen.

If the lessons of Africa aren’t learned, the road to the World Cup will remain as rocky as ever.

— ADRIAN ROBSON