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I wish we would stop beating ourselves up over how small we are. It's most visible right now about the cricket, though football fans are moaning that their sport is in an embarrassing nosedive too.

But for heaven's sake, how good do you think we are supposed to be?

We have a population of 68,500 and if you eliminate the non-Bermudians, we are down to something like 48,000 potential Bermuda team players.

Eliminate women (on the grounds that they don't play on our national male football and cricket teams) and we're down to 24,000 or so. Eliminate those who are too young or way too old, you get the numbers down to maybe 8,000 if you're lucky.

Then you need to factor in Bermuda's enthusiasm for all kinds of sports, unlike some countries that restrict themselves to one or two.

That tiny group of 8,000 potential cricketers is decimated by those who are lured away by other sports, leaving them no time for cricket, or too little time to excel at it.

Subtract 400 rugby players, let's say, and 1,170 football players, 500 basketball players, 800 sailors, 1,000 softball and baseball players, 400 serious swimmers, 200 squash players, 415 golfers, 800 tennis players, 100 motocross racers, 120 bowlers, 290 in track, field and road-running, and triathlon and 117 equestrians.

Then there's 1,688 lost to the assorted charms of archery, roller hockey, kite-boarding and windsurfing, frisbee, field hockey, boxers, scuba diving, lobster diving, spear fishing, billiards, darts, line fishing, kayaking and rowing, gymnastics, powerboat racing, cycling, volleyball, karate and netball.

That leaves just ... well, zero people left to devote their energy to cricket.

And that's even before you start subtracting all those who just want to sit around and play video games all day, or the 266 people in their prime cricket-playing years who are locked up in prison.

Those who lament the "good old days" should remember that there weren't all these temptations back then (except prison, of course).

And we didn't have such a booming economy, with so many young Bermudians chained to high-track careers. We didn't have such expensive housing, forcing so many people to work instead of play.

And it was a lot easier, back then, for a family man to commit himself to his sport, knowing the children would be looked after, dinner would be waiting, and his kit would be cleaned and folded for the next night too.

These changes put more potential sportsmen on the sidelines.

Throwing money at the problem

Governments, or rich American cricket aficionados like Allen Stanford, can hurl any number of millions of dollars at the sport. But it won't change the fundamental, debilitating problem, which is a simple lack of numbers.

They'd help cricket more if they undermined, or outright banned, some of those other sports that are distracting our young people,

Of course, we're not supposed to do stuff like that in a democracy. All we can do is what Premier Brown and his cabinet have already done, which is shovel a lot of money at the sport, and then haul in its top executives for a ticking off (or maybe it was a pep talk) when our teams fail to perform to our hyper-inflated expectations.

The Royal Gazette this week called it our "cricketing nightmare", and referred sarcastically to our Under-19 team's drubbing at the hands of "that cricketing superpower...Nepal!"

That comment implies that Bermuda is somehow mightier - or ought to be - a mightier kind of place than Nepal.

And we are, in many areas.

But even obscure little Nepal has a population of 28 million. Cricket is one of its more popular team sports, and in recent years its teams have defeated the likes of Pakistan, Bangladesh, New Zealand and South Africa in U-19 World Cup games.

Of course it is good to think we are bigger than we are. It gives us the kind of self-confidence we need to become better than we are.

And for a long time we've been a little island with a big name - well known around the world in ways that would boggle the minds of obscure hamlets with the same kind of population.

We have the money of a big country, and many of the trappings and luxuries of a teeming metropolis.

So it's easy to be think we've failed when some other country's football or cricket team leaves us face-down in the mud.

But I don't want to be like those other guys. I'd rather be in Bermuda than England or Australia or Jamaica or Pakistan or Bangladesh or India or Canada or even beautiful, cricket-happy Nepal.

A big part of what makes Bermuda wonderful - and what makes it work so well, most of the time - is its tiny little size.

We have enough people to put together some amazingly good teams, sometimes.

The victories are especially sweet when they are won against much bigger nations, with hundreds of thousands or even millions to draw on for their cricket and football teams.

That's part of the challenge, the fun and the glory of being from a small place.

But when we stumble, we should not despair.

We should remind ourselves, when confronted with the teeming bat-wielding millions from cricketing nations around the globe, that we only have 65,000 people.

And most of them are busy doing other things.[[In-content Ad]]

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