Sport

What a year for a world in turmoil: crisis, riots, revolution and economic catastrophe. And that’s just Manchester City. Meanwhile, there’s the cheering news that next year’s even more calamitous financial armageddon will coincide with London hosting a fortnight’s sporting event costing, oh, £23 million an hour give or take some change. Ah yes, 2011 — we will miss you dearly. But after a canny trip to the bookies, some highly complex leveraging against future gains, and by cashing in the remnants of a pension, this column has secured a few bottles of Asti for the traditional end-of-year awards ceremony.

The great footballer Pat Nevin, as fluent, funny and intelligent an ex-player as you are likely to find, tells a wonderful story about using the word ‘equidistant’ to a referee when they were lining up a free kick. The players looked at him as if he was an alien and the referee nearly booked him for swearing. One of the reasons why, notwithstanding the manly virtues and short back and sides of Bobby Moore’s World Cup heroes, for pasty, middle-class fans like myself who grew up when a footballer with an O-level was regarded as a freak (so much so that they were all nicknamed Bamber by the newspapers), the arrival of a player like the wondrous Brazilian midfielder Socrates was heaven-sent.

Bracing times for those of us who are part of the winter fuel allowance generation — FAGs, as we like to call ourselves. At Haydock Park, the courageous Kauto Star thundered back into the national conscience with a spine-tingling win in the Betfair Chase. The 11-year-old is an equine superstar in the mould of Red Rum and Desert Orchid, and the sight of him showing his Gold Cup conquerors, Long Run and Sam Waley-Cohen, a clean pair of hindquarters can’t make Boxing Day at Kempton come soon enough. Kauto’s trainer Paul Nicholls was probably still enjoying a celebratory drink when 34-year-old Darren Lockyer, as Australian as a sweaty singlet, ended his rugby league career by captaining his country to victory over England at Elland Road.

Parental advisory: what follows contains asterisks that some may find upsetting. It is clear that Steve Williams, Tiger Woods’s former caddy, and John Terry, the hopefully soon-to-be-former captain of England, are not particularly nice men. In fact they are assholes, to use one of Williams’s favourite words. So when Williams was asked what he would do with his joke caddying award at a blokey evening in Shanghai recently he said he wanted to shove it up Woods’s ‘bl**k asshole’. Now, had he just said ‘asshole’, nobody would have given it a moment’s thought beyond observing that, my oh my, Steve Williams is just the sort of guy you want to bring home to Mum. The use of ‘bl**k’ sent his remarks into the stratosphere.

So the All Blacks deserved it, didn’t they? Yes, yes and thrice yes. But after a brilliant World Cup, and a superb final, the best and the lowest scoring in the tournament’s history, just a few thoughts. The All Blacks stretched the rules just this side of breaking point: one more high tackle or offside, and there would have been an almighty twang and the whole edifice of Eden Park would have been brought crashing down. The amount of tackling off the ball was extraordinary and the gap for the Kiwi try was created by the French jumper at the line-out being thrown out of the way. When Piri Weepu kicked the ball out for half-time, you could tell how rattled the All Blacks were. They are difficult to warm to once they resort to that low-risk, no-joy rugby of dubious legality.

Well, we’re all Welsh now. Love the country, been there loads of times, adore the Millennium Stadium, in fact I’m about as Welsh as it’s possible to be without actually being Welsh. And I will be up at 9.00 a.m. on Saturday, cheering the wonderful Wales team on. On the other hand, my mum was half French so God knows what will happen. This World Cup has been about as dazzling as you can get. To those harrumphing about the poor quality of the games against the tier two nations, just see what Tonga, conquerors of France, have to say about that. As for England, well let’s move swiftly on, though two surgically enhanced cheers for Danny Cipriani, who has had a superb World Cup. He hasn’t put a foot wrong after all.

If the cap fits… There can’t be many people who can wear a quartered and tasselled silver cricket cap without looking as if they’re searching for a Hackett window display to stand in. But New Zealand captain Richie McCaw managed it the other day in the sheeting rain at Auckland on the occasion of his 100th Test appearance in an All Black shirt. In lesser hands — or on lesser heads — the cap would have resembled an undersized miner’s hat crossed with the Wellesley House under-14s school colours, and would have guaranteed the wearer several weeks of relentless bullying. Sitting atop McCaw, it only reinforced the image of an iconic figure hewn out of some timeless cliff face.

John McEnroe, who knows a thing or two about this sort of thing, said it was one of the best shots he had ever seen. The man who played it said it was a gamble, and it clearly broke the spirit of the man who received it. It was Novak Djokovic’s return of serve at 15-40 down, when Roger Federer was serving for the match in the deciding set of their utterly compelling semi-final at Flushing Meadow. Clearly thinking he had nothing to lose, and moving into some zen state of relaxation, Djokovic launched himself at a hard, fast serve wide to his forehand and unleashed a bullet that just dipped, unplayable, inside the sideline. It was quite as sensational as Carla Bruni’s jeans in Woody Allen’s charming back-to-his-best latest, Midnight in Paris.

So the blink-and-you-miss-it summer break is over and football is back with an all-consuming vengeance. Despite the new season hardly having had time to clear its throat, it is already spewing headlines like a TV newsbar gone postal. And that is just in England. If anything can induce a breakdown among the north London chatterers, it is Arsenal being on the wrong end of an 8-2 scoreline at Old Trafford, and Manchester United’s wasn’t even the best performance of the day. That was the preserve of Manchester City, who popped down to the capital and put five past Tottenham. Fortunately that rout didn’t produce a riot, though Arsène Wenger will hope that something will divert attention from the unravelling of his vision.

If, as seems universally accepted, eggs is indeed eggs, then the only other certainty in an increasingly troubled world is that Alastair Cook will eviscerate every English batting record, apart possibly from the highest individual score. His technique, concentration and stamina are monumental; his ability to eliminate risk is awesome. Even Stuart Broad said he had to smile from the dressing room as he watched Cook elaborately leave a loose ball outside the off stump. He was on 290 at the time: dispiriting for bowlers, remarked Broad. You don’t say… The first time I became aware of Cook’s prodigious performances was in 2005 when he won the Cricket Writers’ Young Player of the Year award.

So how was it for you, The Most Extraordinary Test Match Ever? Keen readers may have noticed this column two weeks ago was in raptures over the extraordinary batting, keeping and leadership skills of the Indian captain, M.S. Dhoni. Well that went very well, didn’t it? Bad luck if you were left holding the fort in the August exodus, catching glimpses of scores on mobile phones and TV screens and asking yourself what on earth was Bell doing back at the crease? And does that really say England are on 500 for seven? And who’s that on 90 — Tim Bresnan?? Hard to do anything but stop and gawp.

Strange to be writing about sport when outside it feels like Salem, where vengeful witchfinders prowl the highways and byways of the media and political landscape looking for someone or something, anything, to burn; where screeching harpies of press and internet call for the closure of papers they don’t like; and where sanctimonious preachers declaim from their leader columns that the intolerant consensus of the left must rule.

Well, did you pick out 21-year-old Petra Kvitova for the women’s title at Wimbledon? Me neither, though it shouldn’t have been that hard. Well, did you pick out 21-year-old Petra Kvitova for the women’s title at Wimbledon? Me neither, though it shouldn’t have been that hard. She’s the world number seven, was a quarter-finalist at the Australian Open, and lost in the fourth round of the French to the eventual winner, Li Na. She was also a semi-finalist at Wimbledon last year. We have been so used to watching blank-eyed as a Williams sister grinds it out that the exceptional quality of the current women’s game has been easy to overlook.

What is it that defines the greatest sporting spectacles? Is it competition or coronation? It made you gasp as Frankel laid waste the field to win the 2000 Guineas by a mile, but watching Mickael Barzalona drive Pour Moi from last to first in the Derby and take Carlton House in the last stride of the race could make a strong man weep. What was the greater Wimbledon final — the epic between Federer and Nadal in 2008, or a massacre such as when John McEnroe destroyed the Kiwi Chris Lewis in the early 80s? Well, I know which I’d prefer to watch.

A friend who used to play international sport as a professional tells me he is enjoying his game infinitely more, and playing it better than ever, now he isn’t getting paid for it. A friend who used to play international sport as a professional tells me he is enjoying his game infinitely more, and playing it better than ever, now he isn’t getting paid for it. And the reason is he’s relaxed; the anxiety is gone. I wonder how much better sportsmen would perform if they could conquer their fear and anxiety about failure, if they had the psychological discipline to relax and express their skill rather than conspicuously trying their guts out? Look at Barcelona. For all their mesmerising gifts, their most precious quality is their nerve.

Fans of Robert Parker’s indispensable Spenser series of thrillers will be familiar with the character of Hawk. Fans of Robert Parker’s indispensable Spenser series of thrillers will be familiar with the character of Hawk. Big, bald, black, and always in shades, he is Spenser’s enforcer, an avenging angel of ineffable hardness. Now look at the wide angle shots of President Obama’s touring entourage and you will see Hawk made real in the shape of Reggie Love, the President’s go-to guy for a range of product from painkillers to iPod tunes to the best cheese for a burger. Love was a first-rate college basketball player who wanted to play pro football with Green Bay but didn’t quite make the grade. So — well, why not?

Anyone concerned that their tear ducts might not be in working order should take a look at the 2009 Sports Personality of the Year show, when Severiano Ballesteros was given a lifetime achievement award. The gong is presented to Seve at his home in Spain by his friend (and the other half of surely the greatest ever Ryder Cup pairing) José Maria Olazábal. After a while, Olazabal cracks up in tears and can’t go on. So Seve — poor, dying, cancer-ridden Seve — consoles him, squeezing his knee and with a smile, saying, ‘You’re doing OK. You’re still swinging the club well too…’ What a man. If you’re old enough to remember when Slazenger was cool, chances are you have a favourite Seve memory.

There are few things in life more pleasing than giving one’s friends a good kicking, but I’m afraid sometimes only an ovation will do. There are few things in life more pleasing than giving one’s friends a good kicking, but I’m afraid sometimes only an ovation will do. And this is one of them. My old chum and colleague Amol Rajan has just come up with an enchanting new book about spin bowling, Twirlymen (Yellow Jersey), and an absolute snip it is too at fifteen quid. It was my dad who first introduced me to the joys of spin. He bowled good off-breaks at minor county level for 40-odd years before my mother put her foot down. He learnt to bowl in the 1920s in the garden of my grandparents’ terraced house in Long Eaton.

There are few better feelings than the sporting mood swing that takes place at this time of year. The clocks go forward and leave behind frozen pitches, abandoned race meetings and the set menu of men chasing balls of varying shapes in fixtures of no relevance. Now is when things start to matter. Defeat at rugby or football can be season-defining, a knockout blow, a pack-up-and-go-home moment. That’s real sport, the kind that matters because the hurt from losing takes time to heal. There is no denying the appeal of the sharp end of the Champions League and Heineken Cup, but beyond lies a sporting summer of wonderful variety.

There was an advert recently on Italian TV when four vast but genial blokes filled the screen extolling the virtues of an unspecified product, before the camera pulled back to reveal they were all Italian rugby forwards and squeezed shoulder to shoulder inside a minute Fiat. The ad was pleasing for a number of reasons, not least the sight of half a ton of grinning humanity crammed into a tiny space. But I particularly liked it because it seemed to show that Italian rugby was becoming part of mainstream Italian culture, like football, food and Fellini. Like anyone with a modicum of humanity, I am continually wrestling with the eternal conundrum of whether Italy or the game of rugby has contributed more to civilisation.