A report called Putting Rugby First and commissioned by an anonymous group claiming to have the interests of the sport at heart dropped on the desk recently.

Put together by supposedly independent analysts it is, for the most part, a document which contains little more than a series of statements of the obvious in outlining the difficulties facing a sport that has come from the very narrow base of the amateur era and is seeking to become globally popular.

However, it uses fairly sensationalist language to build up its part in seeking to make a drama out of what does not even begin to approach being a crisis situation. Claims that the International Rugby Board "enshrines parochialism" or that rugby union is "stuck in a ghetto" seem designed to do little other than be provocative.

Yet for someone who has spent most of the last 20 years focusing on rugby and all the issues that surround it, there is little in the report that is the least bit surprising or new.

The truth is that the IRB was something of a gentlemen's club until the sport went open and the attitude of its key officials was not so much protectionist as isolationist. It was less a case of fending off interest from elsewhere as being indifferent to the need to develop their sport.

That had begun to change with the introduction of a World Cup and the realisation that having only eight teams that were remotely competitive was hardly conducive to generating spectator and commercial interest. After the sport went open in the immediate wake of the third World Cup in 1995, the accelerator was pressed on that process and the IRB, while still dominated by those "foundation unions" has become much more inclusive and has looked much more at how to support the developing nations.

Where Putting Rugby First gets it badly wrong is in failing to recognise just how much has changed in the past 13 years and the extent to which the IRB, in spite of still being a bit musty in many ways, has taken a lead on that. In particular, the report is guilty of being very selective in many of its findings when trying to suggest that rugby is failing to broaden its appeal sufficiently quickly.

Among the sports with which it compares rugby unfavourably in terms of the measures being taken to achieve that is cricket.

Having been in Belfast last weekend to watch the ICC World Twenty20 qualifying competition, the parallels between the challenges facing the two are striking.

Where in rugby Scotland was one of the founding fathers, in cricketing terms Scotland is among the second/third tier of "associate" countries struggling to find a way forward. Just as in rugby, where we had the disgraceful business of players from the South Sea Islands being told by their English and French employers to retire' from Test rugby ahead of the 2003 World Cup so they could continue to play for clubs, so Scotland and Ireland found themselves battling to get some of their best players released by their English counties.

In both sports, there is a major debate to be had on priorities. On the one hand, it would seem obvious that the global bodies must concentrate their funding on the developing nations. Yet in both, there are also relatively few major revenue generators.

Failure to support the countries that contribute to driving their sport's respective economies could ultimately mean there is much less to invest in the developing nations in the longer term. In the meantime, what undermines the Putting Rugby First document is the way in which figures appear manipulated to show the sport in a bad light. The comparisons with cricket are the most ridiculous aspect of that.

While cricket remains a sport in which the top seven or eight countries are light years away from the rest in competitive terms, the progress made by rugby's minnows in both the seven and XV-a-side games in recent years has been remarkable.

Admittedly, more needs to be done to let Argentina consolidate a place among the world's top five and to allow the likes of Georgia, who so nearly beat Ireland at last year's World Cup, to become serious challengers to the leading European countries, but even in the past five years their progress has been astonishing.

Consider, too, the way Portugal and Kenya now fancy their chances against all-comers in international sevens tournaments, and the evidence is that the development work has proven effective.

That has been achieved in 13 years of professionalism, whereas cricket is only beginning to address these issues having been professional for a century and more.

Both sports are facing challenging times, but in stark contrast to the way those hiding behind anonymity are resorting to hype, what is required is courage to deal with complex issues.

Ahead of Monday's World Twenty20 qualifying tournament semi-final, an English colleague made a telling observation: "Scotland have a much more consistent team than the Netherlands, but the Dutch side has more players who can win a game."

The Scots subsequently started solidly, but the match-winner was Ryan Ten Doeschate, the brisk-bowling, hard-hitting Dutch all-rounder.

It was the first time I had watched Scotland's cricketers contest a knockout competition, yet it was all too familiar. In the key match, the body language was relatively passive.

Just as at the Rugby World Cup, where an industrious team was widely labelled too dull, or when our gutsy footballers came so close to qualifying for the European Championships, they simply lacked the flair needed to take their performance to another level.

For flair to emerge, two factors above all seem to be required: talent and confidence.

Identifying talent is a major challenge facing the country's various sporting institutions, but generating confidence is something we can all play a part in since it has a great deal to do with how people feel about themselves.

To have star quality, individuals need to feel like stars. That means being portrayed and treated as such, which is down to the profile they receive for their efforts and the number of people who turn out to watch them.

So, next time a Scottish footballer fails to take the responsibility to shoot from long range, or a Scottish rugby player throws a hesitant-looking intercept pass, or a Scottish cricketer tentatively prods at a ball that could have been spanked out of the ground, those rushing to condemn might give some thought to the environment we have all created that has failed to maximise their self-belief.