If, as is often said of Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United, a good side is one which manages to avoid defeat while not playing to its full potential, then England's 1-1 Test series draw in South Africa should be considered a success.
Soundly beaten in Johannesburg and forced to cling on for dear life in Centurion and Cape Town, future statisticians will pore over the series averages with wonder.
While five of South Africa's batsmen averaged between 39 and 61, four of England's averaged in the twenties. And while England's top wicket-taker Graeme Swann took 21 scalps at 31.38, five Proteas bowlers took their wickets more cheaply.
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Boxers don't take kindly to being given advice by non-boxers. Non-boxers, according to boxers, know nothing of boxing. And most of the time they're right.
When it comes to retirement, boxers are particularly sensitive to counselling from outside their tribe. "Everyone's become an expert about me," said Ricky Hatton after his devastating defeat to Manny Pacquiao in May, "but it's my decision." Yet when it comes to retirement, boxers so often get it wrong.
"A fighter knows when to quit," Chris Eubank told BBC Sport last year, wilfully ignoring the stacks of evidence to the contrary. Joe Louis didn't know when to quit. Muhammad Ali didn't know when to quit. Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Julio Cesar Chavez, Evander Holyfield - none of them knew when to quit.
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While 2009 will largely be remembered in British boxing circles as the year Joe Calzaghe hung them up and Ricky Hatton was smashed to smithereens by Manny Pacquiao, it was also a year of rebirth for the sport in this country.
Calzaghe's retirement in February left Carl Froch as Britain's only world champion, down from a peak of seven in 2007, but green shoots soon forced their way through what some doom-mongers were claiming was infertile soil.
In April, Froch mounted one of the great comebacks to beat Jermain Taylor, and while his first fight in the innovative super-middleweight Super Six tournament was a stinker, he lived to fight another day.
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Hello. I have been working for the BBC for more than a decade now and cover almost all sports. It would be good to hear from you - just don't be nasty or my mum might get upset.
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