The Ashes, inequality and explanation

Why did England lose the Ashes? There's a parallel between this question and the question: why are some people richer than others? This is because both are subject to three levels of explanation.
1. Micro, or proximate. In the case of the Ashes, this level focuses on the precise, individual factors that caused England to lose: the Aussies were good, England were only lucky in 2005; Simon Jones and Michael Vaughan were injured; the selectors wrongly omitted Read and Panesar; the team were under-prepared for the first test, and so on.
In the case of inequality, this level focuses on differences in human capital, or in the compensating advantages or market failures that cause some jobs to be better paid than others.
2. Meso, or middling-level explanations. With the Ashes, this set asks questions about the structure of English cricket.  Should the side be selected by the coach, or  by a committee of experts in the county game? Are central contracts the best way of creating a team, or should England players play more county cricket?
With inequality, this level asks why there should be differences in human capital. Much of New Labour's (stated) policy has been addressed to this question - Blair's emphasis upon Sure Start, for example, or the aim of raising educational standards and increasing university graduates.
3. Macro explanations. In the case of cricket, these ask: what features of English society cause us to produce so few good cricketers? Is it the sale of playing fields, the under-payment and demotivation of teachers, the decline of social capital that means youngsters don't join cricket clubs, a bias against competitive sport, or what?
In the case of inequality, this level looks at the underlying power relations that generate inequality - the ability of firms to exploit workers; the inbuilt opportunities for rent-seeking at the top of hierarchies; the ideologies that underpin hierarchical employment structures and create a big demand for "talented" managers, and so on.
People who are relaxed about inequality seem to prefer to stick to micro level explanations, whilst radicals prefer level 3-type explanations.
Which raises my question. Does this "left" vs "right" preference between levels of explanations for economic inequality map into a similar preference for explanations of England's cricketing failure? If not, why not? And if so, what causes the difference in preferences?
And what counts as a proper explanation anyway?

Comments

[AntiCitizenOne]

Could it just be that the ECB is bad at it's job because it has a monopoly?

[dearieme]

Giles dropping one catch has something to do with it, perhaps. More generally: "the inbuilt opportunities for rent-seeking at the top of hierarchies" - you often allude to this. I guess that you must have written a big post on it in the past. Would you direct me to it, please?

P.S.: Merry Christmas.

[dsquared]

how about 4) non-explanations.

The UK actually produces a lot of very good cricketers per head of population - we'd never ever beat India otherwise. We also hold our own against every other cricketing nation and had our moments against Australia. We lose the Ashes because Australia is very good, not because England is bad.

Why is Australia very good? Because they started being good, more or less by chance, and the better you are, the easier it is to get even better.

[tom s.]

... in which case the question is "how come bad teams sometimes become good" and vice versa? It looked for some time in the '70s as if no one would ever beat the Windies, but look at them now.

So perhaps the correct (4) non-explanation is that it is all just noise. Someone has to win and it's a mistake to look too deeply for reasons.

Sports fans are always being fooled by randomness. Here in North America it is "hot hands" in basketball, hitting streaks in baseball - both of which have been shown to be purely statistical in nature. Why should the same thing not apply on a larger scale?

[Scoop]

Is there a chance the fact that Australia has invested millions of dollars in the physical, organisational and performance aspects of cricket over the last 20 years has been overlooked here?

[Katherine]

Wot Scoop said. Australia is mad for sport, in its schools, on its TV, the lot. More participation surely leads to a greater liklihood of digging out the greats.

[tom s.]

Randomness ramblings aside, I'd also have to vote for Scoop as the most likely answer. Follow the money.

[Colin Campbell]

Cricket is more central to Australian culture than in the UK. While the State Teams are not well supported, they are the training grounds for the national team, which is very well supported. While the tests are on you can follow it on television at the doctors office, your office, shops, schools, in the car. It is an obsession. That being said, one of the challenges in Australia is that there are only a very few kids who have a shot a reasonable money not least the big money of national contracts. They are generally losing much of their best talent to other sports, primarily Aussie Rules. That said, the cultural factors in favour of the success of cricket in Australia are cultural, which ensures financial support from major sponsors and the Australian Public.