I OFTEN mull what it means to be English. I long since reached the conclusion that if our nation has a defining personality characteristic it is repression.

Sex, drugs, queuing, standing in lifts, sitting on the Tube - we are born repressed and we allow ourselves to be repressed throughout our lives.

A good illustration of this was at the cricket this week.

For those of you who missed it, the biggest incident of the penultimate one-dayer between England and New Zealand was the run-out of Kiwi batsman Grant Elliott. As he scrambled to get back to his crease he collided with bowler Ryan Sidebottom and was left flailing helplessly out of his ground with the ball still live.

The England players promptly bundled the bails off and Elliott was run out.

Now, technically, this is against the spirit of the game. The umpires asked England captain Paul Collingwood whether he wanted the dismissal to stand, ie he could say: “Come back mate, you couldn’t help falling over, you’re not out.” But he told the umpires he was happy to let Elliott take the long walk back to the pavilion.

The New Zealanders were incensed and went on to pinch a tight game, winning by one wicket.

Upon victory and led by their skipper, they launched a tirade of foul-mouthed abuse at the England players and dressing room, bellowing expletives and generally behaving like animals.

Collingwood had subsequently decided that his decision to allow Elliott to be given out was probably the wrong thing to do and he was shown manfully striding into the NZ dressing room to say sorry and shake hands. Not one of them had the good grace to even acknowledge him.

He was later interviewed and apologised. He seemed almost ashamed of his decision.

Lots of things here, but the main one is very simple – Pakistani players would have sent Elliott packing. Indian players would. The Aussies certainly would. If Americans played cricket, they would have laughed at the notion that this legitimate wicket was somehow against the spirit of the game. These nations understand what it means to win and that you should do everything you should to achieve victory.

But somehow the English don’t understand this. The idea of playing in the right spirit being more important than winning anything has made us a nation of losers.

I was born in 1973. The Rugby World Cup aside, England have therefore won nothing of any note in my lifetime. The football team has won nothing, not even made it to a final of either of the big competitions. In cricket, between 1989 and 2005, the Australians kept hold of the Ashes (they regained them after what seemed like three weeks and still have them).

Wimbledon? You must be joking. The Olympics? Sir Steve Redgrave aside, you can count the number of significant gold medals we’ve won on the fingers of one hand.

In both rugby codes, apart from the aforementioned union world cup victory in 2003, the southern hemisphere sides have tanned our hides with monotonous ease.

Why? Because we don’t put the same emphasis on competition as the other major nations. We don’t take enough shame in defeat. We consider it uncool to push for victory at the expense of our sporting reputation or even our dignity.

What Collingwood should have said is: “We’ll do anything we can to win. That wicket was legitimate and if New Zealand don’t like it, then tough.” That would have looked nice and ruthless if we’d won. But – as ever, of course – we ended up losing.

As for the New Zealanders, I’ve seen plenty of football fans kicked out of grounds for far less than their communal, braying swear-in. Their studious skipper, Daniel Vettori, apologised afterwards for the conduct of his players but I don’t know why he bothered. They were at least being honest in their reactions.

As we go forward, especially when we’ve got the Olympics here and the hyperbole reaches fever pitch, we need to remember to lower our expectation levels.

We have a casual attitude to sporting success and we are a nation of losers.

It is as simple as that.