How important is winning? The answer to this - apparently spurious - question massively influences the success criteria of school sport. If winning is the most important thing, it has implications that are far reaching. It influences how the game is coached, refereed, team selection, substitution, as well as the attitudes of players, coaches and parents to the opposition, the referee, cheating and their respect for the game.

The tone and spirit of school sport has changed significantly in the last twenty years. And not for the better. In the absence of more compelling success criteria, the...

The National Curriculum mops up a range of games under the generic title "Striking and Fielding". In its search for simplification, it omits the other crucial component of these games - bowling. Once that is included within the definition, then one game separates itself from the others in the category. That game is Cricket.

Other games have in common a single factor: the batsman attempts to hit every ball delivered as far as possible. Every shot is an attacking shot and the aim of each batting attempt is to despatch the ball as far...

It's the end of the match day. It might be Wednesday afternoon or Saturday morning. Or any other time. The teams leave the field with contrasting body language which clearly divides the winners from the losers. Exchanging handshakes of varying levels of sincerity, they head towards the inevitable post mortem, to be conducted first by coaches, then by parents.

Nothing betrays the culture of sport in a school more clearly than the answers to the question, "How did you get on?" Where the answer is confined to numbers, it is clear what is valued;...