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Nasser Hussain's Cricket World Cup shame

England cricket captain Nasser Hussain is on his way home today from the World Cup being held in southern Africa. Hussain tested positive for positivity in routine ICC screening and now faces a two-year ban from international cricket.

Positivity was recently banned from sport because it is thought to be used as a "masking agent" for more serious forces such as reality, lack of talent or application and sanity. It was first employed in the 1930s in boxing (where its use is still legal), when Joe Louis announced before a fight that he was going "to mash his [his opponent's] face to smithereens. I cannot lose". He didn't, but remains one of the lucky few to have survived positivity's ravaging effects.

The most high-profile sufferers from positivity are the Scottish football team. Despite releasing scores of novelty positive singles about winning the World Cup they have consistently maintained their record of never having got past the first round in any tournament.

Comments such as "we're going to win the Ashes" and "the team spirit is tremendous" have raised suspicions before about rampant positivity in the England camp, a case furthered by humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat in their recent tour of Australia. Whereas the Australians' apparent postivity was seen to be merely realism, England have been under the scrutiny of medical bodies for some time now. Then came a most extraordinary display of reckless bravado that could only have been fuelled by a positive attitude: Hussain's assertion that "we can win the World Cup". The game was up for him.

The sport's chief medical officer was sympathetic towards the soon-to-be-ex-captain-of-the-England-cricket-team. "We have a rehabilitation programme in place for cases like this. For Nasser this will involve repeating realistic and sometimes even negative phrases over and over again until he starts to believe them. Phrases like 'we'll be lucky if we avoid a whitewash', 'we might win a game when the series is lost', 'I'll be happy if we get to 100 in the first innings' and 'let's be honest we're fuc*king shi*te'. Only then can he get on the road to recovery."

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