Cricket

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

And so to a cloudy, chilly Adelaide, more like London in October than Australia in the early days of high summer, for one of the most thrilling Ashes Tests of modern times. Now the key moments in the fate of these Ashes are becoming very clear. Forget Joe Root putting Australia in, or Steve Smith’s unimaginative reluctance to give his bowlers more work and enforce the follow-on on the third day under the lights. Forget that rousing final session for England as the pink ball seamed and darted and hooped as if it were on crystal meth, and the Aussies were reduced to 53 for four. Forget even that extraordinary

So the Ashes has finally got over the line, and not a minute too soon. At the time of writing we don’t know what happened in the first day but it’s a fair bet that it hasn’t turned out well for England — they haven’t won in Brisbane since 1986. Steve Harmison’s first-ball delivery to second slip heralded the 2006-07 whitewash and Mitchell Johnson’s merciless spells on the second day set up another 5-0 Ashes wipeout in 2013-14, as well as ending the careers of a few England players. Which is what Nathan Lyon wants this time too, but you can’t get that worked up about Aussie trash talk, especially

So West Ham took the least surprising option and sent for David Moyes. Same old same old. I have a feeling that if Theresa May fell on her, or anyone else’s, sword, we’d send for David Moyes and that familiar figure would be shuffling up Downing Street with his wrinkly-eyed grin, proclaiming outside No. 10: ‘We’re in a relegation battle here.’ He wouldn’t be wrong either. Looking at West Ham’s lacklustre performances, with players sometimes putting on a bit of a reluctant jog in vague pursuit of opponents sprinting past, it’s easy to imagine them in the dressing room with a fag and some of owner David Sullivan’s old top-shelf

Rugby’s autumn internationals are almost upon us and dark thoughts hover over lovers of the sport. One day soon a professional rugby player will die playing the game. The players are fitter, bigger, stronger, faster and too powerful and it is no longer a 15-man game. It is a 23-man game: more than half the team gets replaced so the intensity and impact never subsides. Rule changes around the breakdown to encourage attack have had the opposite effect, meaning that defences line up across the pitch, no space is created and every game is 80 minutes of unsustainable collisions. Seasons go on longer, players get no rest and they keep