Cricket

At the same time as England’s rugby union players delivered a magnificent hearts-of-oak performance to humble a very good Irish side in Dublin, England’s cricketers were giving a very passable impression of what happens to a pile of balsa wood when stamped on by an elephant. What happens next — especially looking ahead to the rugby and cricket World Cups later this year — is fascinating. The remaining Six Nations matches will show us whether Eddie Jones’s England, with the formidable help of the returning Vunipola brothers and Manu Tuilagi, will go to Japan at the end of the year as a supreme force. I think they will. As my Kiwi friend Angus said: ‘If they play like that, England will beat the All Blacks.

Marvellous team, the All Blacks, of course. But they certainly know how to waste some time. Here are some things you may want to do when the New Zealand forwards are making their way to a line-out with a one-point lead and the clock running down: change your energy supplier, clear those clogged winter gutters or, for the more adventurous, nip out to Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire and do a quarter of a mile in a drag-racing car. Either way, those mighty Kiwi forwards won’t have moved far. Much to the annoyance of some big footballing beasts like Bayern Munich, Manchester City appear to have been channelling away millions of pounds in funding from owner Sheikh Mansour so as to beat the Financial Fair Play rules.

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 a hiding place. You bat, as Mike Atherton observed when Cook announced his retirement, when the bowlers are at their freshest and the ball at its hardest.

I first became aware of Alastair Cook in the Ashes summer of 2005 when he was named the Young Cricketer of the Year by the cricket writers’ association following some epic performances in the county game, not least taking a double hundred off the touring Australians. The assembled brains on our table, including Mike Brearley, agreed that the boy would go far. And how… The greatest of current English players, Cook — happily married and impeccably polite — set a perfect example. There were no nightclub brawls, no pedalos, not even any light aircraft. Blessed with incredible stamina and single-mindedness, he knew what worked and kept at it.

I had never heard of Sam Curran when I took my seat at Edgbaston a couple of weeks ago. Four hours later I was joining in a standing ovation. Single-handedly, he had made my trip to Birmingham worthwhile. Without him, I would have been on my way home soon after lunch. Yet with England facing almost certain defeat, and with one batsman after another falling to feeble or misguided shots, he dug in, then stroked his way to 63 runs off 65 balls to give England a chance of victory which they seized the following day.   Curran’s reward for that innings (as well as his five wickets in the match) is to be dropped for the third test at Trent Bridge, starting tomorrow.

Here’s a question: name some famous Belgians. Well there’s Kevin De Bruyne, Vincent Kompany, and Eden Hazard. And if that’s not enough, there’s Romelu Lukaku and Dries Mertens; not forgetting Toby Alderweireld and Thomas Vermaelen. Or Mousa Dembele, Thibaut Courtois, and Marouane Fellaini. If all goes well England will still be in with a chance of making the last 16 of the World Cup when they meet the mighty Belgians — not a line you see very often — in their final group match in exactly two weeks’ time. England have, arguably, only one star of similar status: Harry Kane. But I’m less convinced than I was a few weeks ago that England are bound to lose this match in Kaliningrad.

I must have missed the memo when it became compulsory for major football matches to operate as a marketing opportunity for the game’s marquee players, but that was what we got at Kiev after Liverpool were outmuscled and outplayed by a flinty-eyed Real Madrid. After Ronaldo announced that his time at Madrid was in the past, then our very own Gareth Bale, he of the annoying man-bun and sublime skills, in a rather graceless piece of scene-stealing, decided to ask for a transfer. Live on TV. Well, you do the math. He is on £300,000 a week (or £600,000 depending on who you trust), but assuming someone somewhere has to come up with a lot of loot. In a timely coincidence, Bale’s remarks come just as an excellent book is published by my friend Jon Henderson.

‘Ah, the old man injury!’ That’s what people said when I busted my calf a couple of years ago. At the time I laughed it off because in more than 20 years I’d never suffered any serious injuries, aside from my knee in 2012/13. No back problems or proper muscle tears. I was having a great time on the T20 circuit, playing to 84,000 spectators in Melbourne. Then, last year, I tore my calf again playing for Surrey. At that point I started to worry that it was going to happen all the time. When you sign these T20 contracts the last thing you want is to have to leave after a couple of games. I lost interest very quickly and decided that once I’d fulfilled my obligations over the winter, that was that. I didn’t want to make a big song and dance about retirement.

When the much-admired (and very tall) literary agent Gillon Aitken died in October 2016, he left most of his estate in a charitable trust to be named after his daughter Charlotte, who had, very sadly, predeceased him. Quite soon, the trust will start its work, which is to ‘educate the public in the appreciation of literature’, including poetry and drama, by whatever means seem appropriate — to include prizes, grants, scholarships, the funding of retreats, courses and so on. As one of the trustees, my job is to find the best ways to fulfil Gillon’s wishes. The slate is blank.

The only thing, as a modern-day Macauley might observe, more ridiculous than the British public in one of their periodic fits of morality is the Australian public acting in just such a fashion. To which we might also add that the spectacle of Australia melting itself in an orgy of cant and humbug cannot avoid being hilarious.  Thus far, the ball-tampering scandal rocking Australian cricket has resulted in the dismissal of Steve Smith, the country’s captain, David Warner, his deputy, Cameron Bancroft, the latest Australian opening batsman, and Darren Lehmann, the team’s coach. Given how high this goes, there’s an argument for James Sutherland, the chief executive of Cricket Australia, falling on his stumps too. But why stop there?

As dreams of winning the Ashes became, well, the only word is ash, for 4-0 is not a number even I would minimise, there is a place — a restaurant actually — where you can hold the Ashes in your hands. Calm down. What, as I imagine myself telling Chris Grayling all the time, would your cardiologist say? They may not be the real Ashes — the person looking after them was vague, like a parent telling a child that Father Christmas would probably come down the chimney on Christmas Eve, they couldn’t really say, but it’s quite likely. This restaurant is the Long Room at Lord’s Cricket Ground, the home of Maryle-bone Cricket Club. I don’t have a sport — just arguing — but if I make mistakes, please write in like angry birds.