Prepare

Preparation is everyrthing. When Andy Flower was explaining the way England lost all three cricket tests against Pakistan he said the team had not been properly prepared. Flower is the team's coach, and peparation was his reponsibility, so in what way did they fall short>? When my wife heard him blame  poor preparation she was surprsed. These men had been playing cricket, she said, since they were first able to hold a bat and ball, and so had been playing the game for say 20 years, What better preparation could they have had? True enough: they were fit, young, well paid, and had reached a goal to which thousands of young men aspired. Did they suffer from a condition which holds back so many people in sport, business, and personal relationships, called confidence deficit?  Obviously financial reward, physicall fitness, youth, experience and even the personal support of a wife or partner is not enough to assure self-belief. Nor in the case of test cricketers or top footballers is the adulation of the masses. There can be no greater peparation  for any human endeavour than in the words of the man who wrote Philippians 4.13: 'I can do all things through him who gives me strength'. Who is he? Surely worth finding out.