It’s no secret that U.S. sports have designs on world domination. Basketball has already had some relative success, with a world championship having been played since 1950. The NFL has recently played in-season games outside its borders in an attempt to broaden its fan-base, and I’m sure baseball would love to inject a bit more world into the “World Series.”

Apart from the simple boost to national pride of your pastime gaining serious respect and recognition abroad, there are a lot of good reasons to want this. It can bring huge investment to the game both in terms of money and the raw talent of young foreign athletes. There might be arguments against the destabilizing effect of massive injections of cash into European soccer, but few fans will bemoan their clubs’ acquisition of Latin American skills.

However, before you dive headfirst into all of this, be careful what you wish for.

Last week the England cricket team arrived in Australia to defend the Ashes, which for fans of the two teams is the most important international series in the world game. The strange name of this tournament dates back to a satirical obituary bemoaning the death of English cricket when it first lost a game on home soil to Australia in 1882, and keeping that theme going, the trophy they will be fighting over is a tiny urn, just six inches high, that reputedly contains the ashes of a cricket bail (the small piece of wood that sits atop the stumps).

There is, quite predictably, much more at stake then simply sporting honors between two sides that represent a former colony and its former colonial power. For Australia, it represents a chance of revenge for all the wrongs committed in the past, while for England, it offers some glimmer of reliving its former colonial glory.

Despite its much smaller population, though, Australia has more than held its own in the history of the Ashes. It holds a narrow 31-29 lead over England, recently held the trophy for a 16-year streak (ending in 2003) and hasn’t lost on home soil since the late 1980s. Even if has appeared wobbly in the last few months, it is also easily the class act in world cricket, holding a winning record against every other Test nation (which are basically the best countries in cricket) and having won the World Cup four times (including the last three straight).

Cricket seems the quintessential English game. Its modern form dates back far longer than soccer (16th century compared to 19th century) and, at least to the English, sparks memories, real or imagined, of sleepy summer days in country villages.

But that’s not really true any more. Cricket is no longer an English game. The most dominant national team is Australia, the best Test side is India. The biggest and brightest league is the Indian Premier League, and India and Pakistan account for over a billion fans. Given recent political rivalry and even war, games between those two countries have far more riding on them than the Ashes.

If U.S. sports ever manage to repeat the export success of their British counterparts they will almost certainly do so at the same cost. American football will no longer be “American.”

The NBA could find itself no longer the premier league in world basketball, with the most talented American players instead moving perhaps to play in Eastern Europe. The Commissioner’s Trophy, awarded to the winner of the World Series, might find a home away from American shores for many seasons at a time. And if the NFL succeeded in setting up franchises overseas, the American national anthem, a centerpiece of American sporting tradition, would surely not be heard before games played abroad.

As someone from a small island whose sports have managed to make that leap from domestic to global standing, I don’t want to make it seem like this is a bad thing. That soccer, cricket, rugby and many more British pastimes are now games of worldwide significance is a pretty awesome thing.

But sometimes it’s tough, too. England hasn’t even come close to winning or hosting the soccer World Cup for far longer than I’ve been alive. Our national sports teams are known more for consistent failure and underachievement than success in games we literally wrote the rulebooks for.

So if you chase your global ambitions and show us how to win, don’t be too surprised or upset when we take the prize from you.