Sport

Double jab, right, hook body, duck, right… Right, left, right, upper, four hooks… Ten straight punches… And ten more… Twenty roundhouse kicks… Now the other leg… When I tell people that I’ve started kickboxing, they tend to think they’ve misheard. It’s true I’m not who one might think of as a typical fighter. I’ve spent my life working with books and now along with the books I juggle three kids and a dog. The closest I usually get to fighting is when I drag my whippet away from a scuffle in the park, or get elbowed out of the way in the school bake-sale scrum. Although I always seem to

There may still be some poor benighted souls who regard the Springboks as the bane of rugby union. If you meet one, get ready to dispense a proper mauling. South Africa, for so long the Millwall of rugby, are playing an all-round game that is so breathtakingly attractive you have to love them. It may be hard for you, but tough. It would take a brave man to bet against them for the 2027 World Cup in Australia The scrum has always been irresistible, of course; relays of vast men who can shred opponents to bits: here’s hooker Malcolm Marx, accumulator of tries and the size of a terraced house

It would be tough for any country to lose 7-0 in a World Cup qualifier, but when the losing team is China, and the thrashing is at the hands of arch-rival Japan, it is deeply humiliating. The defeat was ‘shameful’, according to an editorial last week in the Global Times, a state-controlled tabloid, while the Shanghai-based Oriental Sports Daily called it ‘disastrous’, adding: ‘When the taste of bitterness reaches its extreme, all that is left is numbness.’ Some commentators called for the men’s team to be disbanded, bemoaning that a country of 1.4 billion people could not find 11 men capable of winning a match. While being awful on the

Readers concerned that the seemingly imperious march of Bazball across the cricket firmament has blotted out the more, er, traditional virtues of the game need fret no more. Matches in the ninth division of the Derbyshire League don’t normally make headlines from Australia to Qatar but a needle relegation tussle between Mickleover Third XI and Darley Abbey’s Fourth team was no ordinary game. Mickleover piled up a chunky 271-4 declared in a mere 35 overs, thanks largely to a teenager called Max Thompson who belted 186 from 128 balls, with a feast of fours and sixes. If you have to call up J.K. Rowling’s bespectacled wizard, you really are in

Time to come clean: I really like the Hundred. This is the sort of view that normally makes people look at you as if you had just professed an admiration for Gary Glitter. But come on, this is a crisp little short-form cricket tournament, played out at the height of summer to largely packed houses. What really is not to like? Cricket is one of the few sports that works in different formats, so it beats me why the Hundred arouses such venom. It has done wonders for the women’s game, it doesn’t take long and it is all televised – much of it on terrestrial TV. Crucially, it has

Would-be veep Tim Walz has opened Pandora’s box with his use of the W-word to characterise Donald Trump and his running mate (no sniggering at the back: this W is for ‘weird’). Because, let’s face it, a heck of a lot of politicians are way-out weird, aren’t they? It’s practically part of the job description. If we start calling them all out on it, the currency’s going to devalue fast. My thesaurus devotes nearly half a page to synonyms for weird. ‘Freaky. Wacko. Odd. Eccentric. Crazy. Off the wall. Out to lunch…’ Well, sure, that’s pretty much Trump to a T. He is uniquely odd, but those adjectives neatly summarise

You knew it was going to be a superb Olympics from the moment Celine Dion belted out an Edith Piaf classic from the Eiffel Tower. And nothing since has disappointed – not least commentator Mark Chapman having to say things like ‘She was late with her eskimo roll’ during the incomprehensible kayak cross. But amid such a banquet of sporting greatness, what to single out? This has been a fantastic Games for women. And remember that the founder of the Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, was opposed to the participation of female athletes, largely to preserve their dignity. Different times admittedly, but even so the 1500m became an event for women

It is agreed that the National Lottery revolutionised British athletics, pouring money into the training of athletes with potential, especially in expensive sports like rowing. In the ancient Olympics, only the equine events demanded serious financial outlay – in theory any male could run, jump, throw or fight – but though we hear of goatherds and ploughboys winning events, the games were still the playgrounds of the rich. The point is that reaching the highest level of any sport requires time, training and doctors, i.e. money. Further, sport, like education, requires leisure, and only the rich could afford that. But the rewards in terms of public fame and acclaim were

The Olympics have been creeping up on us through the forest of top-class sport this summer. But now they’re here, the third time the summer Games have been held in Paris. The first was in 1900, and reflect what a very different place the world was then. There were old favourites such as track and field athletics and cycling, but less probably croquet, firefighting and fishing and – one to scare the pants off the woke warriors of today – live pigeon shooting, making its one and only appearance at the five-ringed circus. Indeed an Olympic historian, reflecting on the fate of the luckless pigeons, said: ‘This disgusting event marked

I detected a degree of surprise among those people who were uncommonly cheered by Sir Keir Starmer’s election victory that England failed to beat Spain in the final of the European Championship. That wasn’t in the script. For those Labour supporters in the press and floating in the shallow trough of luvviedom, an England victory would have been the first thing to gild this brave new era of kindness, generosity of spirit and diversity. I would not begrudge Southgate a knighthood, given the state of the national game when he took over These were the sorts of qualities associated with the England manager Gareth Southgate, who needed no more encouragement to

Say what you like about Gary Lineker, and plenty do, but he’s a terrific presenter and when he’s not running it, Match of the Day dials down a notch. If he wants to bang on about the language of Suella Braverman and 1930s Germany, well it’s a free country – though elsewhere you might find his lachrymose response to the Gaza war somewhat tiresome. When Lineker decided to ramp up his cosy, own-brand T-shirt style by using his podcast to call the England team’s (admittedly lacklustre) performance against Denmark ‘shit’, doubtless the bevvied-up boyos at the Croydon fan zone would have downed a few more pints in appreciation. He might