England Cricket / Ralph Ellis / 06 November 2008 / Leave a comment

If you followed Ralph Ellis' tip to lay England when they were odds on to win the Stanford Series then you've made more out of it than KP and co. But how England will react to missing out on the millions in their series against India...

They say you don't miss what you never had. And that's great in principle. If you play the lottery then every week you give yourself a moment or two to think about what you'd do with a couple of million quid. But come Monday morning when you've checked the ticket and there's only two numbers it's not that hard to go back to work.

But what if what you nearly had was a million dollars? And it all depended on one game. And you lost it. How gutted would you be then? And how hard would work seem on Monday morning?

That's the challenge facing England's cricketers as they arrive in Mumbai today with a Test series and One Day series ahead of them and the Stanford "Super Series" in the past. For the last couple of months of the season all we heard about was the bonanza on offer to Kevin Pietersen and his boys and how they were about to become seriously rich. In the event they played like drains and missed out on the money.

All the fuss about the Stanford shenanigans ignored the fact that the leading Test players are already pretty well off anyway. And those on the edge are not so badly paid either. So how they react to what has happened will be a very individual thing. For us - well if you followed my tip to lay England for the Stanford game a week or so before they went to the West Indies - when they were odds on - you've made far more out of it than the England players have!

One of the beauties of sport is it teaches you how to deal with losing and winning. And as off-spinner Graeme Swann reveals today that process began for the England cricketers within a few minutes of their ten-wicket drubbing in Antigua.

"There was a lot of mickey-taking on the bus back from the ground," he tells this morning's Daily Mail. "Paul Collingwood came out with: 'Don't worry lads, at least we reached the final.' And I made sure I rang my sponsors to check if I was still getting my £100 fee from them for playing in the game! You might as well have a laugh about it otherwise you sit there thinking: 'Oh my God, what just happened?

"We didn't lose anything. It wasn't like we went down the bookies and put a hundred grand on to win a million. If that was the case we'd have been gutted."

All that suggests that the uplift in team spirit begun when Pietersen took charge has not been too seriously damaged by the Antiguan adventure. And if the team can get their focus properly back to cricket then they could yet have a tour in India that could surprise a few people.

The Indians are now as short as [1.52] to win the One Day series, and [2.04] to win the Test series. Both of those are worth laying because while their performances against Australia prove how strong they are on home soil, England are more than capable of competing at both forms of the game. As well as the rapidly improving Swann they have the match winning genius of Monty Panesar to come in to the fray on wickets that will always take turn.

Five things you might not know about Graeme Swann

1. Born in Northampton in 1979, he scored a first class century in his debut season for Northants at the age of 21

2. Elder brother Alec is also a cricketer - he's played for Lancashire and Northants

3. He was picked for England's winter tour to South Africa in 1999, but got into trouble for 'exuberant behaviour' off the field

4. He moved to Nottinghamshire in 2005 and won the County Championship in his first season

5. He plays guitar in a band called Dr Comfort and the Lurid Revelations. They do covers of U2, Aerosmith and Primal Scream