Sport

Thursday

Patrick Kidd

The joy of school cricket

Few presidents can claim such an immediate success. At the end of June, I became president of my school’s alumni association and then, just five days later, the First XI won their first match at the annual Royal Grammar Schools’ Cricket Festival since 2017. A coincidence? Well, obviously. But I’d like to think that Colchester’s youth drew confidence from me having a net at the school field on Old Colcestrians’ Day and getting hit on the bonce by the first ball I faced from the sixty something head of Year 12. If this is how poorly the alumni play, they will have thought, we can’t be all that bad. I

Aidan Hartley

Welcome to the Republic of Dyslexia

Kenya It used to be that the black sheep from prominent British families were sent out to Kenya and told that so long as they stayed away in Africa, they’d be paid an allowance. These ‘remittance men’ established modern agriculture on the equator, they built railways and businesses, even while being regarded as intellectually dim. Nowadays, we know such fellows were seen as stupid simply because they were dyslexics – who of course can become great entrepreneurs – and it seems to have been handed down through the generations. The self-deprecating anthem of the Kenya Cowboys – ‘Kenya born, Kenya bred, strong in the arm, thick in the head’ –

Thursday

Toby Young

QPR’s downward spiral

Charlie, my 17-year-old son, was hopeful about QPR’s chances this season. True, we managed to avoid relegation only by the skin of our teeth in 2024-25, but we’ve just appointed a new manager: a Frenchman called Julien Stéphan, who won the Coupe de France in 2019 with Rennes, beating Paris Saint-Germain in the final, and getting into the last eight of the Europa League. In addition, we’ve had what football fans call a ‘good window’, recruiting several promising young players in the summer transfer period, including a much needed striker in the form of Richard Kone, a 22-year-old Ivorian who scored 21 goals for Wycombe Wanders last season. ‘I think

Roger Alton

Good riddance to the traditional sports bar

They used to be places that reeked of testosterone, sweat and male egos, their floors sticky with lager spilled by big boys with big biceps. Well, that’s all changing. As the Women’s Rugby World Cup powers through its early stages, the latest spin-off from the rise and rise of women’s sport is women’s sports bars. As such innovations tend to, this one started in America when, according to the Economist, a former chef called Jenny Nguyen opened the Sports Bra (ho ho!) in Portland, Oregon in 2022. She did so after having to watch a top women’s basketball match in a traditional sports bar with the sound on mute, presumably

Friday

Patrick Kidd

Patrick Kidd, Madeline Grant, Simon Heffer, Lloyd Evans & Toby Young

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Patrick Kidd asks why is sport so obsessed with Goats; Madeline Grant wonders why the government doesn’t show J.D. Vance the real Britain; Simon Heffer reviews Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea; Lloyd Evans provides a round-up of Edinburgh Fringe; and, Toby Young writes in praise of Wormwood Scrubs – the common, not the prison. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Roger Alton

Nothing can save test cricket 

Forgive me if I don’t join the general ‘Make mine a treble’ hoo-ha about the future of Test cricket after the theatre of the final day of the Oval Test against India, as an injured Chris Woakes made his way to the crease. Why was Woakes ever allowed to bat? His shoulder was dislocated and he was clearly in agony. Of course he wanted to help his country but he should have been stopped by Ben Stokes or Baz McCullum. This was a game of cricket, not the search for the nuclear codes. We knew the last pair would have to run to try to keep Woakes off the strike.

Robin Oakley

The unorthodox appeal of the Shergar Cup

With DJs and MCs inviting the crowd to dance on the parade-ring steps as if they were on a beach in Ibiza, and hectoring them into shouting ‘Yay’ or ‘Neigh’ to racing quiz answers, Ascot was a different place last Saturday – Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup day. Grimacing traditionalists would have been stamping on their Panamas. But the traditionalists don’t come. Shergar Cup day, a series of team races between groups of three jockeys representing Europe, Asia, Great Britain and Ireland and the Rest of the World, is aimed at a different crowd and it simply doesn’t matter that it’s as artificial as a plastic Gruffalo. It’s an informal

Henry Winter

Don’t believe the doomsday talk about London

It is one of the joys of sport that friendships forged in changing rooms and on playing fields can be immediately rekindled decades later. Conversation flows like a tap turned back on. My old Westminster School team celebrated an anniversary recently. Players flew in from Dallas, Miami and Tallinn or tubed it from Hampstead and Wimbledon. We had a team photo taken in front of the altar in Westminster Abbey (after asking some tourists politely to move). We had a tour of the school, admired the investment in science and arts blocks and especially in the restored and extended pavilion fronting the pitches behind Tate Britain. Standing on our old

Patrick Kidd

Why is sport so obsessed with Goats?

It was late at night in rural France and Martin wanted to discuss Goats. And he didn’t mean livestock. ‘You write about sport,’ he said. ‘Who is the Greatest of All Time?’ I asked if he was talking about my stunning victory in the village boules competition the previous night, but it turned out he was thinking of a certain Serbian tennis player. ‘Novak Djokovic is the Goat,’ he said, with the certainty that comes from a third bottle of Bourgueil. I conceded that Djokovic’s record was a smidgen better than Rafael Nadal’s, though some might prefer the artistry of Roger Federer – but didn’t Bjorn Borg have an even

Thursday

Henry Blofeld

Will Ben Stokes be fit for the Ashes?

What a marvellous summer this has been for Test cricket, which is sadly at risk of becoming an endangered species. The dramatic world of the T20 franchise, fuelled by the outrageous success of the Indian Premier League (IPL), has pushed traditional Test cricket uncomfortably close to the margins. The Test matches began with South Africa’s remarkable win over Australia at Lord’s in the World Test Championship final in June. This has been followed by a thrilling drawn series against India. These matches have perfectly illustrated the greater variety and more exciting possibilities the two-innings game has to offer. In two-innings cricket a side can be bowled out for 40 in

The Spectator

How bad can August storms get?

Injury time England bowler Chris Woakes won a standing ovation for coming out to bat against India at the Oval with his arm in a sling after dislocating his shoulder – although in the event he didn’t have to face a ball before England lost. Some other sportsmen who carried on while injured: — Franz Beckenbauer played out half an hour of extra time during the semi final of the 1970 football World Cup, also with his arm in a sling after dislocating his shoulder. — Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann played the last quarter of an hour of the 1956 FA Cup Final with a broken neck after colliding

Tuesday

Michael Henderson

It’s hard to beat a drawn Test series

‘You can always tell a proper lover of cricket’, Michael Kennedy, the great music critic, liked to say. ‘It’s whether they can appreciate a draw.’ A hit, a palpable hit. By concluding a magnificent Test series at two matches each, after India’s victory in the fifth game at the Oval, even England’s disappointed players may nod in agreement. They fell seven runs short, but nobody lost. Everybody who took part in this contest of equals should feel proud. ‘Proper’ cricket-lovers will have no doubt, for this contest was one for the annals. All five matches went into the fifth day, and India eventually prevailed by the tightest winning margin in

Thursday

Roger Alton

The Ashes just got spicy

You don’t have to look hard to find swaths of sports fans around the world who dislike England – England’s men’s teams that is. The women are a different matter. Now, surprise surprise, the Australians have come to the party. If they ever left. The trigger this time is Ben Stokes’s surly behaviour to the Indians at the end of the fourth Test when Washington Sundar and Ravi Jadeja chose to bat on to pick up their centuries, rather than march off for the draw that Stokes wanted. All that was left was sledging: ‘Fucking hell, Washi, get on with it,’ said Harry Brook, who never shuts up; ‘If you

Thursday

Roger Alton

The sorry demise of Windies cricket

The tub-thumping atmosphere in the Long Room at Lord’s was so raucous late on Monday afternoon as India and England fought out the tightest of Test matches that it made a Millwall home game against West Ham seem like the Albert Hall. So a great triumph for Test cricket, yes? Well, up to a point. While England and India were showcasing the five-day game at its most thrilling and competitive, in front of a sell-out crowd for the fifth day running, one of the sadder events in the history of Test cricket was unfolding in front of no one in Kingston, Jamaica, where the West Indies were being flattened by

Thursday

Patrick Kidd

Does AI belong on the tennis court?

The evidence was clear, the official had dropped a clanger. At 4-4 in the first set of the women’s match at Wimbledon last Sunday, the British player Sonay Kartal should have had her serve broken when she hit a backhand long. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova saw the ball land well out of court, as did those watching the replay, but the line judge remained mute. ‘Replay the point,’ the umpire said, leading the Russian to complain that ‘they stole the game’. This nameless offender – let’s call him Hugh after Hugh Cannaby-Serious, the official who used to wind up John McEnroe – was napping. It turned out that Hugh had been switched

Thursday

Roger Alton

State-school cricket at Lord’s? Bring it on

A state-school cricket competition announced last week with a final at Lord’s is such a good idea you wonder why it has taken until now for someone to come up with it. Ever since Lord (George) Byron convinced the authorities to allow the first Eton vs Harrow match to be played at Lord’s in 1805, the public schools have monopolised the cricket played on the game’s most celebrated turf. Byron himself, although crippled with dysplasia and a deformed right foot, played for Harrow in that match and afterwards went to the West End to ‘kick up a convivial row in the Haymarket Theatre’. The new T20 competition was launched at

Thursday

Roger Alton

The (nearly) lost art of the Test match

If you can bear to turn away from the Fifa Club World Cup, take a moment to ponder cricket and work out how the Bazball top brass have ended up with a team that lacks a proper no. 3 and has a woefully limited pace attack. And that’s after stating that their sole aim was to build a side for the imminent series against India, and then the Ashes this winter. But first things first. The ripples from South Africa’s victory in the World Test Championship will be felt for some time. It was also an outstanding game, which contained a wonderful example of the (nearly) lost art of the

Tuesday

Marcus Berkmann

The titans who shaped Test cricket

Cricket histories are a dangerous genre both for writers and readers. They can be incredibly boring, the dullest of all probably being John Major’s weighty tome, which said everything you knew it would say as drearily as you feared. So Tim Wigmore, a young shaver who writes on cricket for the Daily Telegraph, has entered hazardous territory. Speaking as a proud cricket badger, who even has a book by Merv Hughes on his shelf (Dear Merv, 2001), I will admit that I have read rather too many cricket histories, and I swore that it would be a cold day in hell (or possibly at the county ground in Derby) before

Thursday

Roger Alton

Sportswashing? Bring it on...

If that was sportswashing, let’s have more of it. The Champions League final, when Paris Saint-Germain vaporised Inter Milan, was a sublime game of football, mesmerising and beautiful in the PSG’s display of sustained excellence. But the win has also generated a fair bit of anguish from many commentators. The club, you see, is owned and financed to the hilt by Qatar. And Qatar has a fairly mixed record, it might be said, on human rights, the role of women, same-sex relationships and all that. Mind you, if sportswashing is meant to be the use of sport to improve a government’s image, it’s not working that well. We still talk

Thursday

Roger Alton

How football found God

Without wanting to sound like a refugee from the 1950s, it was a shame that last week’s Cup Final was not the climax to the domestic season but sandwiched between a cluster of Premier League games – and kicked off at 4.30 p.m., which must have been unhelpful for those hoping to get a train back to Manchester. Palace wholly deserved to win: they defended brilliantly, broke like lightning and cunningly sabotaged any momentum a ponderous Manchester City might have been trying to develop by hurling themselves to the ground at the slightest opportunity. Never mind: the Palace fans were fantastic and kept Wembley afloat on a rich sea of