Dear Editor, What on earth do our sportsmen and women need to do to please Mr Wathen of Salford Priors? Over the past year through your Letters pages he has been highly critical of most of our major sports and for a second time our national cricket team has been derided by Mr Wathen.

His latest observations concern the Ashes win at Lord’s this week.

He claims the umpiring standard was a poor. I disagree, I doubt Mr Wathen has ever umpired a cricket match if he had he would have known that sitting at home watching the television replays of incidents is so much easier than the real thing.

He refers to the Flintoff “no ball”. Flintoff’s foot, as seen by television slow motion replays shows his foot was about an inch over the crease but the umpire has only a spilt second to make a decision.

Sometimes they get it wrong most times they get it right.

In all sports where the stakes are high and are fought out in the glare of television cameras our sporting heroes rightly show their elation – “immature celebrations” whines Mr Wathen, Flintoff’s celebrations were instinctual and who can blame him, just Mr Wathen perhaps.

Finally in which world does Mr Wathen live when he talks of congratulating the Australians teams sportsmanship and being an example of good sporting behaviour? This is the team that invented “sledging”.

It’s been widely reported that their current captain Ricky Ponting has been fined more than 20 times for his team’s persistent time wasting and breaches of the ICC Code of Conduct. Mr Wathen must have missed the incidents at Cardiff where the Australian team were claiming catches that were clearly not and affirmed by the umpires decisions.

The outcome of a survey held in 2008 showed 79% of Australians polled felt their national team led by Ponting did not play “within the spirit of the game”. I could give many more examples for Mr Wathen to reflect on.

We need to accept that our sportsmen and women are not always going to make the correct decisions in moments of high tension but that’s what makes watching them perform so intriguing.

Times have changed in the world of sport. Some for the better and some things for the worse and Mr Wathen needs to accept this or just turn his television off.

Alan Last, Kings Norton