Sport

Forty years ago the football transfer market went crazy: the British record was broken four times in 1979, more than in any other year before or since. A lot of this was down to Malcolm Allison at Manchester City, who shelled out a record amount for a teenager (£250,000 for Steve MacKenzie, an apprentice at Palace) and £1.45 million to bring Steve Daley from Wolves. That was later, unkindly but not inaccurately, described as ‘the biggest waste of money in football history’. Allison continued to spend money like a drunk in a bar; something the club never recovered from until it became part of the sovereign wealth portfolio of one

Something very odd happened on the Today programme the other morning. Amid the mountains of bombast that usually fill the Radio 4 airwaves at that time came the calm, modulated tones of a man speaking with great humour, wit and modesty of an extraordinary achievement. It was Sir Robin Knox–Johnston, on the eve of his 80th birthday, marking the anniversary of his greatest triumph. Almost exactly 50 years ago today he sailed his battered 32ft ketch Suhaili into Falmouth harbour — and history. He had become the first person to sail single-handed around the world without stopping. When Suhaili had slipped out of Falmouth in June the previous year it

It can’t be a coincidence that two of the coolest sportsmen on the planet are from the same place, Jamaica. Must be something in the air. Chris Gayle and Usain Bolt have both redefined excellence in their fields. And Gayle’s impending departure from cricket, like Bolt’s from athletics, will have the effect, sadly, of making sport more monochrome, though diehard traditionalists world over will doubtless be glad to see the back of him. Ten years ago, Gayle (aka Universe Boss) said he wouldn’t be ‘so sad if Test cricket died out’. In the intervening decade he has striven spectacularly to promote the action-packed delights of the limited-overs game, rarely more

Congratulations to Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood for sweeping all before them in the Connecticut girls’ high school track races last week. Yes, of course they are men. There were some anguished complaints from the various girls these two speedy lads defeated, but these were of course brushed aside in a country where women’s sporting events may one day soon consist entirely of men. Already a Democratic party representative, Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), is insisting that the US powerlifting tournaments allow transgender women to compete, so that people who look very much like Geoff Capes, and have the same chromosomes as Geoff Capes, and the same bone structure and musculature, can

No-one ever bought shares in Alastair Cook because they were sexy. No man has made so many runs with so little flash. But no Englishman has made as many as 12,472 runs in test cricket either. If the quantity of test cricket played these days helped Cook build his own mountain of runs, it remains the case that no-one, from any other country, has ever made as many test runs while carrying the burden of opening the innings. The opener is a breed apart. Few people want to open; not all those charged with doing so enjoy it. The position requires a very particular set of skills. There is never

If we were to discover Jose Mourinho lately fantasised during press conferences about mowing down the assembled hacks in a hail of semi-automatic gunfire while yelling at the top of his voice “SAY HELLO TO MY LEETLE FRIEND”, I think, on the whole, we’d understand. His rise, like that of the similarly arriviste Tony Montana in Scarface, has been both meteoric and, in its own way, violent, but now the white hot charisma that defined and propelled it seems very obviously to have burnt itself out. It must be hard on him. Mourinho’s arrival on the global consciousness in a shimmering aura of Latin arrogance back in 2004, all Hollywood

Blame it on a marketing survey. In 2001, the England and Wales Cricket Board commissioned the biggest piece of market research in the game’s history. They were told cricket was ‘socially inaccessible’, and that there existed a vast swath of ‘cricket tolerators’ — those who didn’t hate the game yet didn’t attend matches. So the ECB decided to take cricket to them. Twenty20, which could be crammed in after work on a midsummer’s evening, was created in the summer of 2003. The new game followed a traditional path: born in England, but perfected abroad. After India overcame its initial opposition, the country inexorably became the home of T20. A decade

Which would you least like to see coming towards you? An Uber driverless car, Ant McPartlin in his black Mini after a long lunch, or a Johnny Sexton up and under? Sexton is a rugby genius: two of his kicks won Ireland the VI Nations Grand Slam at the weekend (as predicted by this column, we should modestly note). The first was the miraculous drop goal from as far away as the Gare du Nord which beat France in the final seconds in Paris; and the second was the milli-metre-perfect kick to the England line which led to the first try. England never recovered. Sexton’s penalty, incidentally, came after Owen

Who doesn’t love the Murray family? Andy, a unique sporting hero; Judy, a magnificent coach and the best tennis mum. And, er, Jamie? Fine doubles player of course. But he’s now gone way off piste calling for vastly more prize money for doubles players, adding: ‘There’s a lot of excitement around the doubles game.’ Are you sure, Jamie? There is no excitement about doubles tennis apart from during the Captain’s Plate at the local club. Doubles is a sideshow at tournaments, rarely shown on TV apart from by the BBC, who have 2,000 Wimbledon hours to fill. There’s not a sane sports fan in the world who could name the