Sport

If you can remember Pink ’Un newspapers and the days when FA Cup shocks really were shocks, then God bless you, you’ve got a few miles on the clock. Pink ’Uns (occasionally Green ’Uns, as in Sheffield and Bristol) were Saturday evening regional newspapers carrying results and reports of Football League matches that, in a miracle of newspaper production, mesmerising to behold, were on sale on the streets while spectators were still leaving the grounds after the final whistle. All closed now of course, along with the demise of the Saturday 3 p.m. kick-off. Who needs papers anyway when football fans can discover the state of play in matches at

So what was the best bit of this dispiriting Ashes series? Lucky you if you’ve found one, but for me – at the time of writing, before Jacob Bethell was belatedly allowed to unfurl his brilliance – it was the moving homage to the heroes of the Bondi massacre at the start of the Sydney Test. It was flawlessly executed, unlike a great deal of the cricket: a group of first responders, including paramedics, lifeguards, police and Ahmed al-Ahmed, the shopkeeper who disarmed one of the terrorists, were given a guard of honour as applause and cheers flooded the ground. If it didn’t bring a tear to the eye, check

There’s tetchy, and then there’s Ben Stokes ‘tetchy’ – pulling out his mic and stomping off cursing, or so I’m told, after Jonathan Agnew asked a disobliging question. Admittedly it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Stokes, an inspirational leader on the pitch who had just seen his team skewered in two days in Perth in one of the most brutal (and thrilling) Ashes Tests in history, and then had to do a live BBC interview. But this was the ever-courteous Aggers, for heaven’s sake, the nearest thing to a secular saint for TMS.  There’s no need for a four-letter outburst. He was asking what were standard if faintly

And so it begins, as Donald Trump likes to say, though not usually about cricket. He was offering his thoughts on the New York mayoral elections, which is not as much fun as the Ashes. Pleasingly, the goading is reaching volcanic levels as the Perth Test gets ever closer. Who needs Trump? The West Australian is not a paper many readers will be familiar with but its pages have been plastered with pictures of English players making their way through arrivals at Perth airport. A large photograph of Ben Stokes pushing his luggage trolley was headlined ‘BAZ BAWL’, with the subheading ‘England’s Cocky Captain Complainer, still smarting from “crease-gate”, lands

‘Gosh he seems full of himself’ was how my friend’s wife reacted when she came in to see Henry Pollock celebrating his stunning try against the Aussies at the weekend. And she was spot on too: 20-year-old Pollock, England rugby’s latest prodigy, whips up emotions, not least the desire from anyone who has played against him – and plenty who haven’t – to give him a good belting. He’s swaggering, confident, brash, with rockstar charisma and a bleached blond mop, and he can wind up opponents until they need a bomb disposal expert to calm them down. Referees might soon want to tell him to rein it in. That’s youth

So we won’t be watching the Boat Race next year on the BBC, but on Channel 4. Never again will we hear the likes of John Snagge commentating on the fogbound 1949 race: ‘I can’t see who’s in the lead but it’s either Oxford or Cambridge.’ It’s a funny thing the Boat Race: an eccentric contest between the country’s two most distinguished academic institutions, rowed against the flow of the Thames along a tidal stretch with winds as ungovernable as a nursery school class, taking place at a time of year when the water can be in ferment. It’s a cranky British institution whose natural home should be the Beeb,