The case for flexibility in the Pietersen saga

Sambit Bal in Cricinfo

Watching Test cricket live always makes me happy, and Lord's, where affection for Test cricket wafts through like a gentle fragrance, is always a treat. But though the cricket has been thoroughly absorbing, it has been hard to shake off a sense of sadness. The value of cricket diminishes when the best players are not on stage, and though England can win without Kevin Pietersen, cricket is undoubtedly poorer without him.

Poignantly, Jonny Bairstow, the man who took Pietersen's place in the team, provided the most compelling individual story of the match, passing a searing examination that tested not only his skills but also his character. As he battled though, fighting nerves, and a hostile reception from two of the quickest bowlers in the world, and his innings grew, what was on some people's minds became almost audible: Good riddance, KP.

Of course, it is never as simple as that. Life without Pietersen might be easier, but can it be better? Or can it even be as good? The last week was an extraordinary one for English cricket, but that is the question the administrators and selectors must ponder as they contemplate the future beyond this series. Pietersen polarises opinion, but there are no blacks and whites in this case: the challenge is to find the right shade of grey.

Unity and stability are two words that have been used a lot in the last few days to justify Pietersen's removal for the deciding Test of the series. The truth is that all success stories create their own buzzwords, and all buzzwords are somewhat exaggerated. England became the No. 1 Test team mainly because they managed to put together a bowling attack that was perfect in their conditions, and because their batsmen prospered not only at home but also in Australia.

Unity and stability weren't of much use when their technique fell to pieces on turners in the subcontinent, and it was only a masterly innings from Pietersen that helped them draw level against Sri Lanka. Every team must aspire to having a healthy dressing room, for it can create an environment for achieving and savouring success in, but skills are much the greater pre-requisite. Success can be achieved without unity and stability but rarely without skills. Occasionally a team might punch above its weight with perseverance and spirit, as New Zealand have sometimes done, but rarely does a team achieve sustained excellence, let alone greatness, with those qualities alone.

I had the opportunity to have a long chat with Michael Holding, who rarely equivocates, last week, and without going into details it can be recorded that the dressing rooms of the great West Indian teams of the '70s and 80's were far from being oases of harmony. "We did," Holding said, "what was needed to win Test matches." Everyone knows those were teams that burst with greatness.

"Australianism" became the catchphrase for success when Australian teams built their aura of invincibility, but behind their very public mateyness was a team of strong individuals who didn't pretend to be friends once they stepped off the field. Shane Warne was quick to sympathise with Pietersen because he lived through his differences with his team-mates - and much more publicly, with his coach.

As long as Australia's reign lasted, the Australian method continued to be regarded as the template for breeding and sustaining excellence. The Australian system was hailed for creating tough, battle-ready cricketers, and the egalitarianism of Australian society was credited for instilling in them confidence and a reluctance to defer to those who ought to have been regarded as superior. And for years, as England's cricket team wallowed in misery, the English system was condemned as wretched and outdated.

But back-to-back Ashes defeats prompted the now-famous Argus review, which found that not all was well with the system. In fact, some of the recommendations mirrored those of the Schofield report, commissioned by the England board in 2007.

The point is that success creates its own stories, and over-analysing success can give birth to theories that somewhat obscure the simplest truths. Of course, individuals should never be greater than the team, but by the same measure it should never be forgotten that individuals make the team. It is true that a great player alone cannot make a great team, but the bigger truth is that there has never been a great team without great players.

The trouble with great players is that they often happen to be difficult characters. Some are narcissists, with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and entitlement. They can be highly strung and intense. Their single-minded drive towards excellence can make them insular and selfish. Because the game comes easy to many of them, they may be truant at practice. And because the money tends to chase them, they may be led to believe that they deserve even more of it than they get. They can present as much of a challenge to their own team off the field as they do to their opponents on it.

Good teams find ways to manage them. It starts with the recognition that special players often need special care, even if that means bending the rules, for at their best they can provide something so powerful and so breathtaking that it can transcend the team. A lot has been said about Pietersen's ego, but it is the need for that ego that powers him: it drives him to impose himself on a situation rather than submit to it; it allows him create his own reality-distortion field to bludgeon a hundred when lesser players would have fought for mere survival.

	Good teams recognise that special players often need special care, even if that means bending the rules, for at their best they can provide something so powerful and so breathtaking that it can transcend the team

In his last five Tests he has twice done what none of his team-mates would have had the daring, imagination and skill to even attempt. His hundred in Colombo came on the back of a spirit-destroying run of defeats and allowed England to return from Sri Lanka with their dignity salvaged. And without his hundred at Headingley, England would perhaps have come to Lord's with nothing to play for apart from pride.

Of course the Pietersen issue is complex. From the beginning, his relationship with the England national team has been based on mutual, but uneasy, convenience. The team has tolerated him, the fans have accepted him grudgingly, and the media has been ambivalent. Though he has turned more matches for England than Andrew Flintoff - whose folk-hero status was earned through only a handful of performances - did, Pietersen has remained the outsider, the genuineness of his display of hyper-loyalty to the English always in doubt, his faults always scrutinised with extra rigour.

A full season of the IPL over Tests for England? What was he thinking?

No one has emerged with credit from the happenings of the last ten days. Pietersen has been petulant, and his bosses have come across as petty. Pietersen has felt let down by his employers for betraying his confidence, and Andrew Strauss has felt let down by the apparently derogatory text messages sent by Pietersen.

The media, a section of it at least, has played a curious role. On Sunday more details emerged about Pietersen's alleged text messages to the South African players, with a specific Afrikaner word becoming the subject of delighted dissection in the media box. When do private messages become worthy of publication? Perhaps when they serve public or national interest. In this case, it's hard to imagine what interest is served beyond the prurient.

Strauss, by all accounts a decent man with a calm disposition, has every right to be aggrieved. But imagine how many friends each of us would have lost and how many of our colleagues would have turned against us if every unkind word we uttered about them in moments of pique had reached their ears.

So as those charged with safeguarding the interest of English cricket ponder Pietersen's future in the national team, here's their case against him: He is greedy, not much of a team-man off the field, not liked much by his team-mates, has been indiscreet with his comments in public, perhaps doesn't like his captain much and been privately disrespectful of him, and has been seen drinking with the opposition. But is that enough to hang him?

Now let's examine the defence: There has never been any evidence of Pietersen giving anything less than his best on the field. He was crucified for not being able to resist the pull that brought him down at The Oval, but he played no differently at Headingley, where his innings was hailed as being among the best seen at the ground. He is not known to lead his young team-mates astray or to have plotted a rebellion in the ranks; and he has publicly apologised for some of his mistakes.

The whole squalid drama has produced no winners. And no conceivable good can emerge by dragging it further. Big players are often hard work and players don't need to be mates to fight for the common cause. We don't quite know what Stuart Broad, England's T20 captain thinks of Pietersen the man. But should that matter?

If Pietersen were never to play international cricket again, the loss would be greatest for the fans, to whom the administrators owe the biggest responsibility.

Why did Ecuador risk slighting UK, US, Sweden, over Assange?

by Narayan Lakshman in The Hindu

A 3am-standoff between British police and officials at the Ecuador embassy in Knightsbridge, London notwithstanding, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Patiño underscored his government’s firm view on the case of Julian Assange when he announced on Thursday, “The government of Ecuador, true to its tradition of protecting those who seek refuge in its territory or on the premises of diplomatic missions, has decided to grant diplomatic asylum to citizen Assange.”

The Minister’s remarks came in the face of an unprecedented – some would say brazen – raid by the police to allegedly arrest Mr. Assange from the embassy, where he sought refuge on June 19, and extradite him to Sweden was said to be planned. Mr. Assange is not only formally sought by authorities in Sweden in a pending case against him, but along with his organisation he is held responsible for publishing thousands of confidential cables of the U.S. State Department.

One unanswered question on most observers’ minds at this time was why Ecuador has decided to grant political asylum to Mr. Assange especially when doing so would risk jeopardising its ties with nations that it considers important allies and trading partners, including the U.S., the U.K.,Sweden and Australia.

A host of possible justifications for the Ecuadorian action have been suggested, including notions that the country’s President, Rafael Correa, may be seeking to show himself a champion of free speech, or to embarrass the US, or to thrust himself onto the global stage as a fearless leader.

However as Mark Weisbrot of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research has argued, Mr.Correa “didn’t want this mess and it has been a lose-lose situation for him from the beginning,” given the escalation in tensions that he has suffered the US, UK and Sweden since Mr. Assange sought asylum at the embassy on June 19.

Mr. Weisbrot and others have pointed out that the U.S. is Ecuador's largest trading partner and has several times threatened to cut off trade preferences that support thousands of Ecuadorian jobs.

However what Ecuador’s own explanatory note on the decision to grant Mr. Assange asylum suggests is that Mr. Correa’s government made the decision based on a careful consideration of the facts in the case, including shortcomings in the procedures followed by the

prosecution regarding sexual assault charges that he faces in Sweden, and the balance of ethical considerations.

Of particular salience to Ecuador’s support for Mr. Assange is the fact that Mr. Assange’s legal team have on several occasions offered to provide Swedish authorities with access to Mr.Assange on the premises of Ecuador’s London embassy, in order for them to interrogate him and take formal statements for the case.

“This measure is perfect and legally possible. Sweden did not accept,” Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry noted, adding that the U.S. had similarly refused to clarify its position on the Assange case, “saying it is a bilateral matter between Ecuador and the United Kingdom.

Thus the facts that ultimately tilted Ecuador toward granting asylum to Mr. Assange included the consideration that “there is strong evidence of retaliation by the country or countries that produced the information disclosed by Mr. Assange, retaliation that may endanger their safety,integrity, and even his life.”

Ecuador's brave decision to provide asylum to Assange

This is what is called courage. This is the power of conviction. Even as the big bullies of global politics – US & UK – were trying to arm-twist Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, into submission, the South American leader showed how bold he was by giving asylum to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who has changed the nature of journalism and the way the governments do their business – their dirty business.
 
Correa is a man of conviction. He has battled Ecuador’s robber barons – always backed by the US -- and the right-wing media on his way to the country’s presidency.  He represents that generation of South America's left-wing leaders who decline to give in to American pressure and refuse to be treated as America’s backyard.
 
In his interview with Julian Assange on his show on Russia Today (RT) television channel a few months ago, Correa was clear about what he thought of Washington. When Julian Assange asked him what do “the Ecuadorean people think about the US and its involvement in Latin America and in Ecuador?” Correa said: “Evo Morales (the Bolivian president) says, the ‘only country that can be sure never to have a coup d’etat is the United States because it hasn’t got a U.S. Embassy’.” Spot on!
 
Then he spoke about how the Americans funded and controlled the police in Ecuador – and hence its economy and politics. After coming to power, Correa cut that money trail, and that led to some anger in police units. “I’d like to say that one of the reasons that led to police discontent was the fact that we cut all the funding the U.S. Embassy provided to the police. Before and even after we took office, we took a while to correct this. Before, there were whole all police units, key units, fully funded by the U.S. Embassy whose offices in command were chosen by the U.S. ambassador and paid by the U.S. And so we have increased considerably the police pay…”
 
The Julian Assange Show – one of the best shows on television ever – was an eye opener. Even after Assange walked into the Ecuadorean embassy and stopped doing the show, RT continued following the story, though the WikiLeaks founder almost vanished from the screens of BBC and CNN. I have been following the Assange’s asylum drama on RT for months and now it’s clear to me what the western governments are really afraid of. Speaking on the channel in an interview on Wednesday, Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple Computers with Steve Jobs in 1976, said, “As far as WikiLeaks, I wish I knew more about the whole case. On the surface it sounds to me like something that’s good. The whistleblower blew the truth. The people found out what they the people had paid for. And the government says, ‘No, no, no. The people should not know what the people had paid for.”
 
Another big revelation came from Kevin Zeese, who has been running a campaign for Bradley Manning, the US army private who presumably leaked all the cables to Assange and is now rotting in a US prison. Speaking on RT, Zeese said the US calls Assange a “high-tech terrorist” because the “US is scared by the information disseminated by Assange, as it reveals corruption at all levels of the US government.”
 
“There is an embarrassment to the US Empire, but no one has been killed by this. There has been no undermining of US national security,” said Kevin Zeese, emphasizing that what really worries the government is that the public sees what the US does on a “day-to-day basis.”
 
Zeese is not the only one exposing the truth behind Britain’s “veiled threats” to storm the Ecuadorean embassy in London and hand over Assange to Sweden. The British call it their “binding obligation.” But their intention is highly suspicious. According to David Swanson, an author and activist, it is likely that if Assange was extradited to Sweden he would handed over to the US where he will be tried for espionage, given “the unusualness of the extradition with no charges in place.”
 
The threat to Assange’s freedom is real. According to an email from US-based intelligence company, Stratfor, leaked in February, US prosecutors had already issued a secret indictment against Assange. “Not for Pub. — We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect,” Stratfor official Fred Burton wrote in a January 26, 2011, email obtained by hacktivist group Anonymous.
 
Now, the question is if Assange can get out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, get to the Heathrow and take a flight to Ecuador. It’s not easy. The British – in complete violation of international law – might arrest him the moment he steps out of the building. The Americans – in complete violation of international law – can scramble their fighter jets and force his plane to land in Guantanamo. They have already declared him a terrorist (That also makes terrorists of all journalists and newspapers who wrote and carried reports based on the leaked cables).
 
Taking out innocent people in the name of “war on terror” is America’s new business. Believe it or not, US President Barack Obama, the Nobel peace prize winner, personally has been signing death warrants for “terrorists”, who quite often turn out to be ordinary villagers, farmers, school children and women in the dusty valleys of Afghanistan. This is Dronophilia – killing people with a remote control, with a pilotless machine hovering over, with a missile that blows people to bits, and they don’t need to confirm if they got their ‘target’.
 
Ecuador has done the right thing by giving asylum to Assange. A small country has stood up to the big bullies of global politics even when the so-called giants of the new global order – India and China – have remained mute spectators to the whole drama. They have failed to speak for free speech, human rights and transparency in government affairs.  
 
Julian Assange exposed the crimes and dirty games the big powers play. So, they went after him. Now, Ecuador has given him shelter. They will for sure go after this small country now, for sure. This will be a good excuse to meddle into the internal affairs of South American again.
 
Ecuador has done a brave thing but now it needs to be careful. It needs to be very careful. The whole South American continent needs to be careful now… 

Being Oneself

The master of being himself

Andrew Strauss doesn't pose, shout, or try to shove all his players into one mould. Being his own man may just be his greatest virtue

Ed Smith

August 15, 2012

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	Strauss' innate confidence and talent for letting his team-mates be themselves has allowed England to grow up © Getty Images  Enlarge
Related Links Players/Officials: Andrew Strauss | Kevin Pietersen Series/Tournaments: South Africa tour of England Teams: England

Andrew Strauss plays his 100th Test for England tomorrow. I was an exact contemporary of Strauss - at school, university and in county cricket. Few predicted he would play 100 Tests. Indeed, Strauss himself would have laughed at the idea when he was starting out as a cricketer. Owais Shah, not Strauss, was the teenage Middlesex prodigy. Not that Strauss minded not being the centre of attention. Waiting for the right moment, biding his time - that is the hallmark of his distinguished career.

Some sportsmen declare their hand at the outset. Graeme Smith always said he wanted to captain South Africa when he was still a kid. Strauss, in contrast, is not someone to reveal his hand so lightly. Did he always have deep ambitions that were hidden by his self-effacing English reserve? Or did he only realise by increments - as he gradually worked his way through the field - that he could go so far, as a player and a captain? I've never been sure of the answer. Perhaps he isn't either.

In one crucial respect, Strauss has never changed. He has always had the social and psychological confidence to be himself. As a player, he has never puffed out his chest in phony displays of patriotic guts and determination. As a captain, he is more interested in calmness and balance than show-off field placings or macho arm-waving.

Being yourself is the most underrated virtue in sport, as we've learnt once again during the London Olympics. Some sports psychologists have argued that athletes could unlock hidden potential if they adopted the same uber-relaxed, super-confident pre-race routine as Usain Bolt.

I take the opposite view. The lesson of Usain Bolt (apart from the obvious one: be more talented than everyone else) is the profound value of being yourself. Watch again the few seconds before the 200 metre final, as the sprinters are introduced to the crowd. Bolt, of course, does his usual showman act - clowning and gesturing, looking at once intimidating and relaxed.

The revealing thing is that all the other sprinters awkwardly followed his example, trying to project the aura of Bolt without the underlying conviction. The American sprinter Wallace Spearmon stared into the camera lens as he shouted with bristling machismo, "My time, my time!" - all of which did nothing to persuade anyone that it was his time, but merely reinforced the truth that it was Bolt's.

Like Bolt, a very few lucky cricketers - such as Sir Vivian Richards or Ian Chappell - are naturally ultimate alpha males. The rest have to reach an accommodation with the fact that they are extremely good performers without being kings of the jungle. The most common mistake is to copy the wrong example - to try to be something you're not - like the sprinters who try to act like Bolt without being Bolt.

During the period of Australian supremacy, England teams wasted too much energy trying to behave like Australians, as though the skills would follow naturally from the style. But it doesn't work like that. Being yourself is always the best policy.

Strauss has been the master of being himself. Like Mark Taylor, he has never tried to hide the fact that he is a courteous, measured and controlled person. He has never got sucked into behaving like an alpha male show-off. That innate confidence has allowed the England team to grow up.

The most effective captains do not impose their own personality on the group; they encourage the team to develop its own authentic voice. Strauss celebrates diversity rather trying to shoehorn all players into one model. "I wouldn't want to captain a team in which everyone is like me," he has said. It gets to the heart of his captaincy.

And yet, for all his achievements, Strauss takes to the field in his 100th Test under undeniable pressure. He has just endured one of the most difficult spells of his captaincy. On the field, England have suffered a poor 2012 in Tests. Whatever happens at Lord's, they have failed to win a home series against a great rival.

Off the pitch, the estrangement of Kevin Pietersen from the England management (more on this in a moment) has been an uncomfortable circus for everyone involved. And it would be only human, for a player about to win his 100th cap, to regret that the Pietersen issue has dominated the lead-up to such an important Test.

	Strauss has been the master of being himself. Like Mark Taylor, he has never tried to hide the fact that he is a courteous, measured and controlled person

But paradoxically, when he looks back at his England career, Strauss may be grateful that he entered his 100th Test with so much riding on the result. Far from being an easy lap of honour, Strauss' 100th Test is exactly that - another test of character. And sport - as Strauss knows very well - is at its most rewarding when it is most challenging.

****

A fortnight ago I added a second, shorter item to my column to accommodate an instinct I had about Kevin Pietersen. It seemed to me, looking from the outside, that something big was about to happen. I had no evidence beyond a deep-seated hunch. Pietersen had been looking increasingly distant and hurt, and the England management seemed to be losing patience.

But I noticed years ago that Pietersen often plays at his scintillating best when he feels wronged. And he did just that once more. His 149 at Headingley was one of the great innings played for England in the modern era. When it is a case of "KP against the world", he is capable of almost anything.

Is there any way, I wonder, that Pietersen can access that strand of his personality - the resilient individualism and epic self-belief that defined his Headingley hundred - without actually orchestrating a situation where it really is "KP against the world"?

Can't he just imagine life is like that - that he has a giant score to settle with the world - while, in fact, behaving normally, just like everyone else?

I hope so. Because it seems a terrible curse if he must experience genuine turmoil to access his deepest talents.

Top tips for writing a strong female hero

Moira Young

The Costa award-winning author of Blood Red Road shares her top tips for creating fictional female heroes that live, breathe and fight on the page

• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 August 2012 11.15 BST

'Sacrifice is the hallmark of the best heroes': Moira Young, winner of the Costa children's book prize for Blood Red Road

The first female hero I ever met was six inches tall, lived inside our tiny black and white TV, and danced and sang her way along the yellow brick road with her friends. It was, of course, Dorothy in the movie of The Wizard of Oz. I was four years old. There it was, the hero's journey with its archetypal elements – the call to adventure, the road of trials with its allies and enemies, the ordeal, seizing the sword (in Dorothy's case, the broomstick of the Wicked Witch) and the hero's return – all to a catchy musical score. Little wonder that female heroes and the hero's journey sank deep into my psyche and that my first books star a strong teenage girl hero.

1. Rebel Heart (Dustlands)
2. by Moira Young
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Those are my credentials. So here it is, my Cut-Out-And-Keep Guide to Knitting Your Own Female Hero.

1. Make the stakes high

Give your hero a pressing dilemma, an important problem to solve, an urgent need that must be met. This will kick off the action and drive her through the story. It's her quest. We need to identify with her and root for her, page after page, so it should be a universal concern: success, love, death, survival, freedom, revenge, justice. At the same time, we need the quest to be deeply personal to the hero. We won't give a toss if she risks all to save the kidnapped uncle of her next-door neighbour's best friend. We might if it's her twin brother.

Not all heroes accept the high-stakes challenge willingly. A reluctant hero is fine, but if the story is to engage, they have to commit to the adventure sooner rather than later. Dorothy is a reluctant hero. She backs off from adventure, but it grabs her anyway and flings her into Oz. She's just a farm girl from Kansas, ordinary like most of us. But her desire to get back home is so great that, with the help of her friends, she overcomes her fears, conquers every obstacle in her path, kills the witch and is hailed a hero.

Oh, and if you want to make the stakes for your hero even higher, ratchet up the tension by setting the clock ticking. Trigger the timer on the bomb, either literally or metaphorically.

2. Keep her at the centre of the action

Remember, her need to succeed in her quest is what's powering the story. She makes the decisions, for good or ill, that move the story on. I write in scenes. For each scene, I ask myself the same series of questions, including: Is the main character at the centre of the action? Is it from her point of view? If the answer is no, I rewrite it. If there's some reason she can't be at the centre and there's a danger of her being sidelined, I ensure that I don't lose her for more than five or six lines. If it isn't appropriate for her to speak or act, I give her an inner reaction or thought.

3. Put your hero in extremis

Have your plot choices push her to the edge and beyond. She needs to be tested and challenged, psychologically, emotionally and physically, over and over again as her story progresses. Her true heroic character – determined, resourceful, courageous and self-sacrificing – will be revealed by the choices she makes under pressure. Sacrifice is the hallmark of the best heroes. They're willing to give up something of value for the greater good, up to and including their own life.

4. Make her multi-layered

You want your readers to sympathise and identify with your hero. So, like a real person, she should be a complex personality. She needs to be an entire symphony, not just one note. Give her some interesting flaws: fears, weaknesses, internal contradictions and quirks. Set up conflicts in her character that will be impediments to her achieving her goal.

5. Look for real female heroes, past and present

A hero is someone we admire for their courage or outstanding achievements. They don't have to be warriors like Ripley, battling aliens in outer space, or my own character, Saba, fighting to save her brother in the future world of Blood Red Road. They're in your own family and community. Browse the biographies, autobiographies, newspapers and magazines at the library. Listen to the radio, watch the news. We live in a world where women and girls are heroes every day, in big ways and small ways. Write their stories down. You'll be inspired.

Moira Young is the author of the Dust Land trilogy, a dystopian series set in a post-apocalyptic world. The first in the trilogy, Blood Red Road, won the Costa children's book award. The second, Rebel Heart, picks up exactly where the Blood Red Road ended, with the colourful and opinionated main character, Saba, crossing a barren land, keeping her family safe from the Tonton and hoping to be reunited with Jack. The film rights for the series have been optioned by Ridley Scott's production company.

Olympics: the key to our success can rebuild Britain's economy

We need politicians who understand why we were so successful at the 2012 Games. Cameron and Osborne do not

• 
• • Will Hutton
  • The Observer, Sunday 12 August 2012

Chris Hoy's victory was the product of a finely tuned system of financial and technical support. Photograph: Tom Jenkins

Everyone has marvelled at the success of Team GB, but the best haul of medals in 104 years is no accident. It is the result of rejecting the world of public disengagement and laissez faire that delivered one paltry gold medal in Atlanta just 16 years ago. Instead, British sport embraced a new framework of sustained public investment and organised purpose, developing a new ecosystem to support individual sports with superb coaching at its heart. No stone was left unturned to achieve competitive excellence.

The lesson is simple. If we could do the same for economy and society, rejecting the principles that have made us economic also-rans and which the coalition has put at the centre of its economic policy, Britain could be at the top of the economic league table within 20 years.

The turnaround began in the run-up to Sydney in 2000 as the first substantial proceeds from the lottery began to flow into sport. There was investment in infrastructure – tracks, swimming pools, velodromes – but crucially also in the structures supporting individual sportsmen and women. There were funds for world-class coaches, such as Jim Saltonstall in sailing and Dave Brailsford in cycling, and for nutritionists and sports psychologists. Also for science and technology where appropriate, ensuring we had the best bikes and boats.

Crucially, the money was not distributed through one statist institution pursuing a centrally determined strategy, but through the varying intermediate bodies, from theRoyal Yachting Association to British Cycling. They knew their sport well, could direct the spending where it was most needed, but still had to show – through results – that they deserved the cash. Last but not least was a ruthless approach to picking potential winners and grooming them for success in a world of intensely global competition, all dramatised by the reality that Britain would host the Olympics.

Everything was underpinned not by a raucous jingoism but by a determined pride in what our country now is and to show that we can be the best, a patriotism that allows us to be open to the cream of the world but also to use it for our own purposes. The alchemy is, as we have seen, extraordinarily powerful.

Not only do we need to sustain these principles so they become structurally and culturally embedded for continuing Olympic success, but they should also be applied elsewhere. The problem is that they are born of an ideological hybrid that wrong-foots our political class. They are mostly rooted in liberal social democratic values that understand the importance of public investment, public organisation and institution-building. But they also involve an unashamed recognition that in the end individual application, resolve and will to win are indispensable.

David Cameron and London mayor Boris Johnson are happy to celebrate the element that is rooted in competition, elitism and individual effort. But they flounder the instant the conversation moves to the role of public investment and the necessity of understanding and sustaining our unique sport ecosystem, just as nearly every Labour politician flounders the other way round.

The number of British politicians who understand this hybridity – and will argue for it – is tiny. Michael Heseltine always has and Peter Mandelson finally got there in the dying days of the New Labour government, a government that should have been all about such hybridity but was racked by the desire to show its "business friendliness" and warmth to the City.

In today's government, only Vince Cable consistently argues for it and is thus nicknamed the "anti-business" secretary by many on the right whose understanding of what drives success in modern economies and societies is close to zero. The big point is that success depends on recognising that both elements count.

So what to do economically? The first part of the alchemy is for the state to trigger substantial public investment in everything that supports enterprise – communications, science, knowledge generation and transfer, housing and education. And to do so with purpose and consistency. It should be running at least £30bn a year higher than the Treasury currently spends, financed either by taxation or borrowing, depending on the particular economic conjuncture. Currently, it should be financed by borrowing at the lowest interest rates for 300 years. A plan B should begin immediately with such an ambition.

But that is only the start. The next step is to reproduce sector by sector the kind of ecosystem that sport has developed. There needs to be specialist knowledge, commitment, long-term finance and coaching for business and a new web of intermediate institutions that can do for companies in life sciences, robotics and new materials what the RYA, British Gymnastics and British Cycling have done for sportsmen and women. For example, the fledgling network of "catapults" designed to transfer technology into varying sectors must become centres of open innovation, coaching and support and scaled up quickly so they can reproduce the Olympic effect for business.

But for any of that to work, engaged owners have to be committed to their companies over time and banks need to behave more as business coaches – not sellers of credit and of useless financial products. They need to become organisations that attempt to co-grow the companies in an active partnership, not organisations that opt for money-laundering, Libor manipulation or mis-selling. This will demand a wholesale recasting of Britain's system of business ownership and finance, informed by the same pride and ambition for Britain as our athletes and Olympic crowds have shown.

There then has to be a commitment to management and performance – a world where achievement is genuinely rewarded and poor performance penalised. The principles are common sense. Wherever applied – from Team GB to the success of the German car industry or American IT industry – they work. Mr Osborne assures us of his complete focus on growth and jobs even as the UK economy remains locked in depression and an escalating balance of payments crisis. But such focus is meaningless unless informed by an understanding of what to do and a determination to do it.

Osborne and Cameron believe in the same ideas – public disengagement, free markets and laissez faire – that brought Olympic failure. Either they change or political leaders who do understand what to do must take their place. Britain could so easily be a world success. But first it has to find politicians who understand the necessity of hybridity. They are not Osborne and Cameron.

The Waste Management Crisis in Kerala

by Mohamed Nazeer in The Hindu

There is hardly any informed person in Kerala who does not have an opinion about waste being generated in the process of urbanisation, but nobody knows how exactly to manage it.

There is a serious crisis in urban waste management that has manifested itself in the form of deadlocked garbage disposal plans in some municipalities and Corporations in the State. It highlights the gap between accepted standards in solid waste management and their achievement.

Caught in the struggle are the civic bodies, the people and the government. The impasse in garbage disposal and treatment is acutely felt in the Corporations of Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Kozhikode, Thrissur and Kollam, and the municipalities of Kannur and Thalassery.

With an urban population share of nearly 48 per cent, Kerala comes close to the global rate. The hotspots of garbage management crisis in the State are a reflection of the collective failure to devise an appropriate strategy and technology. The crisis has turned local panchayats against municipalities and Corporations on the one hand and the civic bodies against the government on the other.

Transportation of waste to the landfills triggers protests by local residents, who raise the issue of their right to live in a clean environment. The waste disposal systems of the civic bodies are naturally left in a mess, with mounds of rotting garbage in parts of towns and cities.

The no-holds-barred battle between the Vilappil panchayat and the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation over a solid waste treatment plant set up there continues with no solution in sight. Even a decade after the plant started functioning, the Corporation is unable to put in place a leachate treatment plant. In spite of favourable High Court pronouncements, the district administration had to abandon two attempts to bring the plant-related equipment and clay to the Vilappil plant in the face of local protests.

C.P. John, member, Kerala State Planning Board, says if the Vilappilsala plant set up with private participation for processing biodegradable waste into manure had not failed because of a dispute over the pricing of the manure, it would have been a perfect model for solid waste management for the entire State. Much of the urban garbage woes in the State, he says, expose the absence of proper urban space planning. Such planning would have come about if urbanisation had occurred as part of industrialisation. But it is the service sector that accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the State’s economy, he says, and some of the service sector activities are waste-generating.

The Kochi Corporation, which faced the wrath of the people at the Vadavukode, Puthenkurishu and Kunnathunadu panchayats protesting against the Brahmapuram garbage treatment plant, appears to have learnt the lessons from Vilappilsala.

The Corporation has engaged a private agency for clearing the garbage that has piled up at its plant site.

The agency can also take the manure produced. As the government is in the process of identifying an agency for a new plant at Brahmapuram, the Corporation is planning to have a tie-up with a Pune-based private firm to set up a plant for treating plastic waste.

The previous Left Democratic Front government issued an order on implementation of Lalur Model Project for Solid Waste Management (LAMPS), a decentralised initiative, but the Thrissur Corporation has not implemented it. Garbage removal in the city has been hit for seven months because of protests by Lalur residents. The situation is no different in Kollam as the Corporation’s modernised garbage treatment plant at Kureepuzha is unable to become operational in the face of protest by residents against the erection of a leachate plant. Six biogas plants set up by the Corporation have mitigated the garbage problem.

The dumping ground of the Kozhikode Corporation at Njeliyambra, located previously in the Nallalam-Cheruvannur grama panchayat, (now merged with the Corporation), has also drawn protests. The demand is for the corporation to upgrade the garbage treatment plant, construct a leachate collection unit and get a new landfill site. Waste disposal of the Kannur and Thalassery municipalities has been hit for months owing to protests by residents living in the vicinity of landfills at Chelora and Pettippalam respectively.

The waste management crisis in the State has already emerged as its single major development issue.