Sport

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Compromised by not compromising

‘In a relationship, when does the art of compromise become compromising?’ Thus spoke Carrie Bradshaw. Such knowledge suggests that I have passed her tipping point; my compromises have compromised me. But, then again, one can’t dissent from Robert Louis Stevenson’s view that ‘compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer’, especially when it comes to relationships. There are worse fates than having to do the washing-up occasionally to a backing of unwanted telly. Yesterday evening, I had hoped to watch highlights of England’s humiliation at the hands of the South African cricket team, but, alas, was forced to settle for Eastenders. Such is life. In fact, Eastenders wasn’t all that bad.

Monday

Martin Bright

Tennis and the rise of the ‘mediocracy’

The discussion of Britain’s latest tennis nearly man has turned inevitably to the culture of a sport which, in this country at least, remains laughably exclusive. Asked on the Today programme why we fail to produce consistent numbers of good tennis players the tennis evangelist and comedian Tony Hawks (who knows a thing or two about what is laughable) made a good suggestion about opening up our ridiculously expensive (and often empty) courts to the public. But the debate about tennis reveals a deeper malaise. In this country we are prepared to accept mediocrity because the last thing we would dare tamper with is the class system. There is a

Friday

Alex Massie

The enigma of Mark Ramprakash

A pearl richer than all his tribe who, alas, loved batting not wisely but all too well. If tragedy seems too strong a term for Mark Ramprakash’s career there remains ample room for sadness when one considers the fate of the best batsman England has produced since Gooch and Gower announced themselves more than 30 years ago. The answer to the eternal question ‘What might have been?’ is rarely less than melancholy but never sadder or more frustrating than when pondering Ramprakash’s fate. The outline of his story is familiar to all who’ve followed English cricket these past 20 years: the most gifted batsman of his generation couldn’t find a

Monday

Rod Liddle

England did not deserve to win

If England had won that penalty shoot out against Italy it would have been a travesty. The press has been very kind to the national team this morning, partly because — as we kept being told — ‘expectations were low’ and partly because everyone still likes (with some justification) Roy Hodgson. But from the middle of the first half onwards, England performed as poorly as I have ever seen them, and it wasn’t simply down to the might of the opposition. Indeed, the Italian defence is ponderous and porous, as we shall see when they play a team which dares, from time to time, to attack. England’s problems were partly

Sunday

David Blackburn

The politics of sport

Football dominates the newspapers this morning, with England due to begin their European Championship campaign tomorrow. But the issue of racism in Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Poland, is a major feature of the coverage, with some commentators suggesting that players should refuse to play if their teammates are subjected to abuse. Ruud Gullit, of sexy football fame, is the latest retired star to back unilateral walk-offs.  UEFA, the European football governing body, has already said that its on-pitch officials will book any player who leaves the field, which has outraged numerous players, including the frenetic Manchester City and Italy striker Mario Balotelli. I imagine that lawyers will also

Sunday

Alex Massie

The Circus Must Go On

I’ve also written a piece for Foreign Policy on the great Bahrain Grand Prix controversy: The irony is that a race designed to flatter and showcase the Bahraini regime has instead become a focal point for unrest, shining a light upon a repressive government whose actions would not receive nearly as much attention in the European and international press if Bahrain had not purchased the right to host motor racing’s traveling circus. That, however, is small comfort when set beside the moral iniquity of millionaires and billionaires fretting about tire temperatures and race set-ups while pretending that all is sunshine and sweetness. Meanwhile, the Bahraini regime continues to thwart all

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Car crash in the desert?

In 2004, when the Formula One circus first travelled to the Middle East for the inaugural Bahrain Grand Prix, there was little sign of the storm to come. The first event was hailed as a success — and not just for Michael Schumacher, who notched up his 73rd victory in the Sakhir desert. The FIA — the sport’s governing body — even declared it that year’s ‘Best Organised Grand Prix’. Few would have guessed then that, eight years later, so many would want to see the race cancelled. But when the calls came — first from Nabeel Rajab, the Vice President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, two days

Saturday

Ed Smith

All to play for | 4 February 2012

There was a time when sportsmen fretted about the morality of being paid to play. Now the question is whether you are taking money to win, or taking money to lose. Mervyn Westfield, the Essex fast bowler, was only 20 when he accepted £6,000 to bowl deliberately badly in a county match. Three Pakistani cricketers, of course, are in prison for the same offence. How quaint the old distinction between the amateur who plays for love and the pro who toils to make ends meet now appears. How did sport become so morally complicated? It was the Victorians, as Mihir Bose explores in The Spirit of the Game, who decided

Tuesday

Sunder Katwala

Let’s remember McDonald Bailey in 2012

McDonald Bailey was certainly among the most famous names in British sport when Britain last hosted the Olympics, in 1948. Yet today he has almost been forgotten. It’s not how it should have been. He should have been our Jesse Owens. Look at a photo of the British Olympic team of 1948 and Bailey stands out as the only black face in a monochrome sea. He was, you see, from Trinidad. He could have run for them in the Games had they decided earlier whether or not to send a team. But instead he took up the British offer, and became a crowd favourite and the face of British athletics

Saturday

Alan Judd

Bookends: The year of living dangerously

Most people who recall 1976 do so for its appallingly hot summer, when parks turned brown and roads melted. Some will also remember that the celebrity culture throve then as now and that none was more celebrated than James Hunt, Formula One world champion. He was even more celebrated than that most famous soap opera, the marriages of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor; Hunt, who had a natural gift for celebrity, contrived to yoke theirs to his by handing his wife to Burton, who divorced Taylor to marry her. The two men remained good friends. A few others will remember 1976 for the nature of Hunt’s triumph that year, his

Saturday

Eric Weinberger

Lake Michigan days

It is probably hard to enjoy this new big novel from America without some understanding of the shortstop’s position on the baseball field. But that is easily remedied, thanks to YouTube, where searching for ‘shortstop, fielding’ arouses multiple videos that compete for attention, with stars of the game in their infield position between second and third base, taking ground balls hit at, near, or even away from them, scooping them up, throwing to first base for the out: something the shortstop does six or more times in a game. Besides the catcher, who largely stays put, it is the most demanding field position in baseball, and if you’re going to

Saturday

Michael Henderson

The great game

Some of the best writing about sport in recent years has been done by journalists who tend their soil, so to speak, in another parish. Peter Oborne’s biography of the Cape Town-born England cricketer Basil D’Oliveira was a deserved prize-winner, and another political scribe, Leo McKinstry, has done justice to Geoffrey Boycott, the Charlton brothers and Sir Alf Ramsey. Now he has turned his attention to a batsman whose career, measured in statistics, goes a long way to justifying the subtitle of this latest book, ‘England’s Greatest Cricketer’. Born in a modest Cambridge home, admired by all who played with him for his decency as well as his skill at

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Does the trouble at FIFA really matter?

The news that the votes which ended up with Russia and Qatar winning the rights to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups might not have been model, clean elections is about as surprising as the news that the faeces discovered in the woods are believed to be of ursine origin. In the Independent today, Dominic Lawson cuts through the seemingly continuous media coverage of the matter to the question of whether it actually matters: “More to the point, given that there are no objective economic benefits to the nations holding such competitions (whatever the kudos to local political dignitaries such as Boris Johnson) shouldn’t we as taxpayers feel grateful

Sunday

David Blackburn

Developments in the Middle East are beginning to affect Europe

After yesterday’s spontaneous clean-up operation on the streets of Cairo, protestors gathered at Freedom Square today to maintain the revolution’s momentum. There have been minor developments, with the army and its interim civilian administration dissolving President Mubarak’s gerrymandered parliament, preparing the way for an election in the future. The timetable for that election remains a mystery – something about which the international community, led by President Obama and assorted European leaders, is questioning without yet expressing concern. Both Britain and the United States, together with the European Union have again reiterated their support for democracy in Egypt, whilst maintaining that the Egyptian military’s conduct has been exemplary so far. Meanwhile, protests and

Monday

David Blackburn

Sexism is a red-herring; it’s family that matters

I’m afraid that women have been faking it, having us men on. You see they understand the offside rule and always have done. How could they not? It’s so simple that even a brace of abject football pundits know that an actively involved player is offside when he is closer to the opponent’s goal line than both the ball and the second-to-last defender, but only if he is in his opponent’s half of the pitch. Messrs Keys and Gray may not be too sharp on interpretation – unlike the ‘young lady’ (£) they berated – but they’re smoking hot on the theory. So do me a favour love and drop

Saturday

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Tweaking the Formula

The annual Ferrari junket to Madonna di Campiglio in the Italian Alps last week is, understandably, regarded by motor-racing journalists as the king of freebies. Expect a whole slew of sports stories about the new Formula One season, which roars off in a few weeks in Bahrain. But, in truth, 2011 has a fair bit to live up to. There was an excellent narrative last year as the championship battle went to the wire in Abu Dhabi with four drivers still in the hunt. The season might have been a thriller but it was still very apparent that modern grand prix racing cars aren’t very good at their core purpose:

Saturday

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Does anyone care about the cricket world cup?

It seems churlish to be having a bitch just when two enthralling Test series are being played out in Australia and South Africa. And how enthralling they are too, by the way, the SA-India series being if anything even better than the Ashes. The sight of South African bowlers really having a go at Indian batsmen is the most pulsating drama in world cricket. And as for the Ashes, wasn’t England’s 517-1 declared one of the most astounding stats from last year? And that was scored not in Chittagong or Bulawayo, but in Brisbane against the Aussies. It’s a score that properly belongs in a battered Wisden from the 1930s.

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: Cricketing over Christmas

How do cricket players get on with touring abroad over Christmas? Mike Atherton, the former England captain, penned an article on the matter for our Christmas issue in 2004. With England currently taking it to the Aussies in Melbourne, I thought it would be a good time to excavate it from the archives:  Some like it hot, Michael Atherton, The Spectator, 18 December 2004 ‘It is no more a place for them than a trench on the Somme’ was the withering verdict of John Woodcock, the Times’s cricket correspondent, on the presence of wives on an England tour three decades ago. Woodcock, it must be said, was and is single,

Saturday

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: The prizes they’re all waiting for

It’s time for the traditional, much-coveted Spectator Sports Awards, and this year your judges have been busier than Mitchell Johnson’s tattooist as we look back over a memorable 12 months. It’s time for the traditional, much-coveted Spectator Sports Awards, and this year your judges have been busier than Mitchell Johnson’s tattooist as we look back over a memorable 12 months. This has been a year of real achievement: the resurgence of English rugby and, spectacularly, the English cricket team; the continual brilliance of sports stars such as the All Blacks’ Danny Carter and India’s Sachin Tendulkar; the calm courage of Gareth Thomas in deciding to come out; Blackpool living the

Friday

Peter Hoskin

From the Archives: 1966 and all that

Yesterday, Coffee House recommended that disappointed English football fans take solace, as always, in memories of 1966. To that end, here’s The Spectator’s review of England’s World Cup victory at the time. These were clearly more innocent times, as evidenced by the closing observation: “whether we win or not is not a matter for negotiation between heads of states or men in striped pants.” Their cup runneth over, D.N. Chester, The Spectator, 5 August 1966 Let it be for ever recorded. At 5.15 pm on Saturday July 30 1966, the Swiss referee blew his whistle and England had won the World Cup for the first time, having just beaten West