They had to fly out of Botswana into South Africa because they found our infrastructure wanting, in a serious way. What does this say about us as a nation? Action speaks louder than words, and what the New Zealand national team action tells us about ourselves is that this nation is not ready to play a meaningful role hosting big international sport. Our government has always shown that it was not seriously committed to developing our sport infrastructure to international standards.
The only way of doing so, of course, is to actually host a serious tournament. The most basic test of whether any nation is ready to host a serious tournament is to work out whether it is able to host a national team. In a way, Botswana, having failed to host one of the least demanding national teams such as New Zealand -if one should use the enthusiasm of fans as a yardstick - has declared itself not even near ready to host giants such as England.The New Zealand fiasco should serve as a lesson to our national leadership.
