Sport

As Spectator readers will surely be aware, many of the stories we read in the papers nowadays are there not because they’re important, entertaining, moving or amusing, but because they’re the kind – about weight loss, true crime, celebrity and so on – that get the most ‘clicks’ from online readers. And clicks mean advertising. It’s the same in sport reporting: football is endlessly popular even when it’s quite dreary (and I mean you, ‘international break’); athletics much less so. Just doesn’t get the clicks, you see, even when it’s the most thrilling spectacle around – like the World Ultimate Championship in Budapest at the weekend.

Bad education Sir: Lara Brown (‘Class warfare’, 1 August) lays bare the baleful consequences – intended and unintended – of Labour’s vandalistic attack on private schools. It borders on the insane for a government to seek to destroy a sector which is a world leader. An administration genuinely committed to economic growth would champion industries where the country retains comparative advantage. Consumed by an outmoded class ideology, and seemingly unconcerned about the effects of its policies on the educational prospects for many young people, Labour seems determined to do the opposite.

You might remember that I mentioned His Excellency Mansoor Abulhoul, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the UK, a couple of weeks ago. I was so blown away by his assessment of horse racing in this country, and the potential it has to build lucrative and cultural relationships around the world, that I gallivanted up to London to drop in on him at the UAE embassy. I was in bad shape. Prior to my visit, I had a gazillion red blood cells injected into a torn tendon in my elbow. OMG. I’ve never been stabbed but I think I now have a pretty good idea what it must feel like. The slightest movement was sending excruciating pains up my arm, causing me to screw my face up and make noises like ‘yaieeeee’.

There was always something of John Cleese’s Sir Lancelot about Ben Stokes, ever eager for a flamboyant rescue mission in his own particular, as Lancelot puts it, idiom. Leave no chandelier unswung, no buckle unswashed. He would charge in, gung-holier than thou, and work out the damage later. ‘When I’m in this idiom, I sort of get carried away,’ Lancelot apologises after massacring all the guests at a wedding.  At times, it was glorious. But often, increasingly so in the second half of his England captaincy, ghastly. ‘Incredible highs and pretty low lows’ was Stokes’s own assessment – and we will always be grateful for the highs. But as England rebuild, they need to consider the manner of those lows and how many were self-inflicted.

Whisper it if you must, but it looks as if Gianni (‘Today I feel gay…’) Infantino might have got it right with Fifa’s jumbo-busting World Cup, all 48 teams, 104 games and 39 days of it. Just look at some of the results: forget the Norwegians ‘Viking row’, Messi’s relentless brilliance, magnificent Mbappé, even wise Emma Hayes and her kitchen chalkboard. Look at tiny Cape Verde. With a population of 530,000, about the size of Bristol, it’s one-fifth the size of Jamaica, half that of Mauritius and one-third less than Gran Canaria. But they have been handling football’s aristocrats with the fervour of a French revolutionary execution party.

Cricketers Have Beer, Shock: well, who knew! This wretched incident in some joint in Chelsea involving Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson in a dust-up with some extremely large young Saracens rugby players is hardly world war three, but its ramifications are sending shudders through the cricket establishment. At the time of writing the full details are not entirely clear, though it seems that an England Cricket Board (ECB) security guard might have been accidentally thumped before a full-blown ruckus ensued. Nothing good ever happens after midnight – a sentiment readers will doubtless be familiar with Whether a well-known and widely admired 35-year-old international sportsman should have been out in a nightclub in the early hours of Monday morning is for others to judge.

Looking forward to the World Cup? I do hope so. You can complain and say that a gargantuan tournament without Italy but with Cape Verde isn’t really worth bothering with. But Italy have been rubbish for years and it’s no bad thing when establishment sides get a good kicking (yes West Ham, we’re looking at you). And dear old volcanic Cape Verde, bless it, is in a group with Spain (shorn of any Real Madrid players), Saudi Arabia and Uruguay. I would love to see any of those games. And England manager Thomas Tuchel has played a blinder. But goodness, he was blessed with options. Take a look at this team: Nick Pope; Lewis Hall, Harry Maguire, Levi Colwill, Trent Alexander-Arnold; Morgan Gibbs-White, Cole Palmer, Adam Wharton; Phil Foden, Jarrod Bowen, Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

As all but the most tribal fruitcases would agree, Arsenal’s Declan Rice is an island of decency in the rather foetid river that is modern football. But even he seemed to be performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on a West Ham forward in the grapple-fest that was the epic 95th-minute corner last weekend. Like everyone else, Rice joined the all-in wrestling, bullying, grabbing, judo throw-downs and fouling that have disfigured so many of the corners we have seen this season and made these moments such a dreadful spectacle. As at an orgy, it is hard to see who is doing what to whom. After an eternity, the referee judged that West Ham’s Pedro had his arm across the Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya’s throat and disallowed the West Ham equaliser. Should the goal have stood?

Yes, of course, one sometimes yearns for the old days. The friend who, appearing in court on a charge of racial hatred for having shouted ‘Pikeys!’ at some Gillingham fans, was able to produce a shirt bought in the Gillingham club shop which bore the slogan ‘Pure Pikey’. Case dismissed. And then the case that was not dismissed – another friend, his face contorted with outrage and disbelief, found guilty of violent and abusive language towards the manager of an opposing team. ‘What sort of game has this become, Rod, when you can get done for calling Russell Slade a fat c**t?’ It is hard to say even from my antediluvian standpoint, that things haven’t got better A salient question.