Does size matter?

In. sport size is. a strange factor to consider. India a nation of well over a billion have just wiped out England, population 60 million. Quite right you might think but then in the recent past the West Indies have been triumphsnt at cricket and New Zealand are not bad.

In Rugby Scotland, Wales and Ireland have much smaller populations and yet produce competitive and sometimes victorious teams, if size mattered then England France and Italy would be the fighting it out for the top spot every year. Italy to be fair are still trying to get up to real international competitiveness, but they are getting better all the time, i think they will shock the 6 nations one year soon.

But surely logic would tell you that the bigger nations have far more talent because they have a far larger pool in which to find it. England are not helped by the fact that cricket, rowing, rugby, tennis and quite a few other sports are dominated by the privately educated, which means you have reduced your potential pool by 93%. But then France doesn’t have that issue and is not notably better than England all the time at rugby, while Wales seems to compete very well when it is drawing from a population of little more than a million.

In warfare you would assume the country with billions of soldiers would squash the opposition. True there are niche survivors but there are no niche superpowers.

In business it is much the same, there are car giants but no specialist car giants, Aston Martins are nice but rare, Fords are everywhere.

At least in sport the playing field is level, the rules the same however big or small you are. But even so it seems to me that small nations’ teams do disproportionally well.

So how is international sport different and is there a lesson for economics and business here?

Jonty’s Jottings

Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.

By Jonty Bloom Media