Football

Forgive me if I don’t join the general ‘Make mine a treble’ hoo-ha about the future of Test cricket after the theatre of the final day of the Oval Test against India, as an injured Chris Woakes made his way to the crease. Why was Woakes ever allowed to bat? His shoulder was dislocated and he was clearly in agony. Of course he wanted to help his country but he should have been stopped by Ben Stokes or Baz McCullum. This was a game of cricket, not the search for the nuclear codes. We knew the last pair would have to run to try to keep Woakes off the strike.

You don’t have to look hard to find swaths of sports fans around the world who dislike England – England’s men’s teams that is. The women are a different matter. Now, surprise surprise, the Australians have come to the party. If they ever left. The trigger this time is Ben Stokes’s surly behaviour to the Indians at the end of the fourth Test when Washington Sundar and Ravi Jadeja chose to bat on to pick up their centuries, rather than march off for the draw that Stokes wanted. All that was left was sledging: ‘Fucking hell, Washi, get on with it,’ said Harry Brook, who never shuts up; ‘If you

The tub-thumping atmosphere in the Long Room at Lord’s was so raucous late on Monday afternoon as India and England fought out the tightest of Test matches that it made a Millwall home game against West Ham seem like the Albert Hall. So a great triumph for Test cricket, yes? Well, up to a point. While England and India were showcasing the five-day game at its most thrilling and competitive, in front of a sell-out crowd for the fifth day running, one of the sadder events in the history of Test cricket was unfolding in front of no one in Kingston, Jamaica, where the West Indies were being flattened by

If you can bear to turn away from the Fifa Club World Cup, take a moment to ponder cricket and work out how the Bazball top brass have ended up with a team that lacks a proper no. 3 and has a woefully limited pace attack. And that’s after stating that their sole aim was to build a side for the imminent series against India, and then the Ashes this winter. But first things first. The ripples from South Africa’s victory in the World Test Championship will be felt for some time. It was also an outstanding game, which contained a wonderful example of the (nearly) lost art of the

If that was sportswashing, let’s have more of it. The Champions League final, when Paris Saint-Germain vaporised Inter Milan, was a sublime game of football, mesmerising and beautiful in the PSG’s display of sustained excellence. But the win has also generated a fair bit of anguish from many commentators. The club, you see, is owned and financed to the hilt by Qatar. And Qatar has a fairly mixed record, it might be said, on human rights, the role of women, same-sex relationships and all that. Mind you, if sportswashing is meant to be the use of sport to improve a government’s image, it’s not working that well. We still talk

Without wanting to sound like a refugee from the 1950s, it was a shame that last week’s Cup Final was not the climax to the domestic season but sandwiched between a cluster of Premier League games – and kicked off at 4.30 p.m., which must have been unhelpful for those hoping to get a train back to Manchester. Palace wholly deserved to win: they defended brilliantly, broke like lightning and cunningly sabotaged any momentum a ponderous Manchester City might have been trying to develop by hurling themselves to the ground at the slightest opportunity. Never mind: the Palace fans were fantastic and kept Wembley afloat on a rich sea of

The UK now has a political class that seems to have lost all interest in sport It’s that time of the year again in football when the Championship sweeps all before it: it’s full of joy and life with packed houses, goals, drama and uncertain outcomes. It’s stacked with great names: Leeds, Burnley, Sunderland, Coventry, Blackburn, Norwich, Preston, Derby (take your pick). It’s where Coventry vs Middlesbrough on the last day of the season should be a big, big match. Leeds hammered six past Stoke on Monday, watched by nearly 37,000, and secured promotion to the Premiership, along with Prem regulars Burnley, who were watched by 21,486. Meanwhile, the great

Of the 73,738 benighted souls who pitched up at Old Trafford on Sunday for the Manchester derby – presumably even some, mostly City supporters, from Manchester – how many reckoned they’d got value for money? This was a dire game, devoid of energy, skill and flair. The most exciting thing was probably a low-key sit-in at the end to protest at United’s seat pricing. Even the term ‘derby’ was rubbish: as far as I could see, only one player of note – City’s Phil Foden – was Mancunian. Which is still more than the number of regular starting players from Merseyside in the recent Merseyside ‘derby’. The Premier League likes

If there is anything more pointless than signing a five-year contract to be Emma Raducanu’s coach, it is the effort to inject some excitement into England’s interminable qualification campaigns for major football tournaments. Everyone knows they will qualify, almost certainly as top of their group, which usually contains such giants as the Moon, Chad and Tierra del Fuego or, as now, Latvia, Albania, Andorra and Serbia. Good luck, Mr Tuchel, with learning much from those fixtures, though Serbia should be interesting. Sport needs jeopardy: there needs to be doubt about the outcome. Here there’s none. There are marginal debates: is Phil Foden too far out on the right? What will

The confused world of Duhan van der Merwe must seem more confused than usual after last weekend. The Scotland winger with an accent that sounds more Western Cape than Western Isles found himself crowned man of the match despite Scotland’s defeat by England at Twickenham, while at the same time being scapegoated as the man who lost the game and the Calcutta Cup for his adopted nation. Van der Merwe, who at 6ft 4in and nearly 17 stone could easily be mistaken for a lock forward, was roundly criticised for cutting away from the posts rather than towards them when he ran in the try right at the end of

I’ve just returned from Colombia, where I’ve been visiting my daughter. She’s doing a modern languages degree and has to spend her third year in a Spanish-speaking country either working or studying. Instead of opting for a university in Barcelona or Madrid, which would be the normal thing to do, she decided to get a job in Medellin. Can’t think where she gets that rebellious streak! So that’s why I’ve spent the past week in South America. Colombia is quite a long way to go for such a short trip. To get to Medellin, I flew via Madrid, which meant departing from Gatwick at 10 a.m. and arriving at about

Winter’s almost done and spring’s on the way. We can tell because the Six Nations is about to muscle into view – with the battle of the world’s best national anthems as Wales meet France at the Stade de France on Friday evening. This year’s tournament could be even better than last year’s, but we always say that – and if France live up to some of the rhapsodic predictions the whole thing could go flat as a wet weekend in Calais as Les Bleus romp to a runaway victory. Some pundits have been advising the other five nations to send out for white flags ready to run up the