Sport

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: Cricketing over Christmas

How do cricket players get on with touring abroad over Christmas? Mike Atherton, the former England captain, penned an article on the matter for our Christmas issue in 2004. With England currently taking it to the Aussies in Melbourne, I thought it would be a good time to excavate it from the archives:  Some like it hot, Michael Atherton, The Spectator, 18 December 2004 ‘It is no more a place for them than a trench on the Somme’ was the withering verdict of John Woodcock, the Times’s cricket correspondent, on the presence of wives on an England tour three decades ago. Woodcock, it must be said, was and is single,

Saturday

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: The prizes they’re all waiting for

It’s time for the traditional, much-coveted Spectator Sports Awards, and this year your judges have been busier than Mitchell Johnson’s tattooist as we look back over a memorable 12 months. It’s time for the traditional, much-coveted Spectator Sports Awards, and this year your judges have been busier than Mitchell Johnson’s tattooist as we look back over a memorable 12 months. This has been a year of real achievement: the resurgence of English rugby and, spectacularly, the English cricket team; the continual brilliance of sports stars such as the All Blacks’ Danny Carter and India’s Sachin Tendulkar; the calm courage of Gareth Thomas in deciding to come out; Blackpool living the

Friday

Peter Hoskin

From the Archives: 1966 and all that

Yesterday, Coffee House recommended that disappointed English football fans take solace, as always, in memories of 1966. To that end, here’s The Spectator’s review of England’s World Cup victory at the time. These were clearly more innocent times, as evidenced by the closing observation: “whether we win or not is not a matter for negotiation between heads of states or men in striped pants.” Their cup runneth over, D.N. Chester, The Spectator, 5 August 1966 Let it be for ever recorded. At 5.15 pm on Saturday July 30 1966, the Swiss referee blew his whistle and England had won the World Cup for the first time, having just beaten West

Fraser Nelson

Cameron can be proud of his World Cup fight

It’s not often that I disagree with James, but I don’t think that David Cameron returns from Zurich with egg on his face. Of course, we Scots learn to see the upside in sporting defeat, but I really do believe the World Cup bid was a credit to England – and to the Prime Minister. That video which Pete blogged yesterday spoke with incredible elegance: England is already the home of world football. People get up at 4am in Singapore to watch Manchester United and Chelsea play, and I suspect most Man Utd fans have never visited Britain, let alone Old Trafford. It’s an extraordinary national asset, an area where

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

BREAKING: England lose their 2018 World Cup bid

Bad news, I’m afraid: Russia has won the contest to host the World Cup in 2018. According to some sources, England didn’t even make it beyond the first round of voting. So, not the fairytale result that David Cameron, or most English football fans, would have wanted – nor, indeed, the one that was expected earlier today. We’ll just have to console ourselves, once again, with memories of 1966:

Peter Hoskin

A winning bid?

Football and Coffee House rarely mix, except of course when Manchester United win the European Cup. Yet I’m sure plenty of CoffeeHousers want to see England come out on top when the winning nation of the 2018 World Cup bid is announced later today. This morning saw the English delegation – including Davids Cameron and Beckham, and Prince William – make their final presentation to FIFA dignitaries. To my eyes, it was schmaltzily effective stuff, but you can judge for yourself from the video above. All that remains to do is echo Iain Dale’s call of “Come on England!” And if we don’t win, then it was obviously fixed. P.S.

Saturday

Roger Alton

The World Cup we just might win

Quite how much tawdrier the plotting and deal-making for the 2018 football World Cup could become it is hard to imagine, and how appropriate that not just Sepp Blatter but officials at England’s campaign are so keen to denounce the devastating Sunday Times investigation into Fifa corruption. Quite how much tawdrier the plotting and deal-making for the 2018 football World Cup could become it is hard to imagine, and how appropriate that not just Sepp Blatter but officials at England’s campaign are so keen to denounce the devastating Sunday Times investigation into Fifa corruption. No, the only World Cup that matters for England is the 15-man game due to kick

Monday

Alex Massie

Lionel Messi’s Greatest Talent: Joy

Goals don’t come much better than this. Part of Lionel Messi’s charm – and his football really is charming – comes from the impish glee that runs through his performances. There’s an almost childlike joy to Messi’s game that leaves you smiling and feeling just a little better about the world. Some of that, no doubt, comes from the fact that he still looks as though he’s a 12 year old playing amongst men, but there’s a purity about Messi too that raises his football far above his erstwhile rivals for the title of Greatest Footballer of His Time. Aesthetics are not the only fruit, but they matter. Is there

Saturday

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Spare us the 2018 World Cup!

Andy Anson and Simon Greenberg are two splendid, clubbable chaps. Their current gig is running England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup, and forgive me for sounding disloyal but I hope these two delightful fellows find themselves disappointed when Fifa votes on the 2018 and 2022 bids in early December. Andy Anson and Simon Greenberg are two splendid, clubbable chaps. Their current gig is running England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup, and forgive me for sounding disloyal but I hope these two delightful fellows find themselves disappointed when Fifa votes on the 2018 and 2022 bids in early December. Because one thing England certainly doesn’t need is

Saturday

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: A great weekend without football

Roger Alton reviews the week in Sport How depressing, and poignant, to hear Danny Cipriani talking at the weekend about his imminent departure to join his new rugby team Down Under, the Melbourne Rebels — one of the country’s most gifted fly-halfs is heading away just when England is really short of quality at No 10. And all because the blazers at Twickenham axed a real coach in Brian Ashton (that’s a coach who makes you a better player once you start working with him) and decided to get someone famous, whether or not he was any good at coaching. And as Danny Cip recognises, the team now running England

Monday

Alex Massie

14.5 vs 13.5

A great effort from the Americans today but when it came to the final match you knew Europe could rely upon that tough little Ulsterman, Graeme McDowell. Not a chance he was going to let Hunter Mahan get a grip on their match.  Great drama, mind you and pleasing too that every member of the side contributed points. Quality stuff all round. Even UKIP voters can like Europe today…

Saturday

David Blackburn

Delhi’s disaster indicts the Indian state

Spectacle counts in the emerging East. China confirmed its coming dominance with the spectacular Beijing Olympics. On the evidence of the Commonwealth Games village, India has the squalid air of an impoverished country ineptly governed. William Dalrymple, author on all things Indian, wrote a measured commentary for the Times (£) yesterday: “The Commonwealth Games was meant to be India’s coming-out party, a demonstration to the world that the old days of colonial domination and subsequent relegation to Third World status were finally over. Sadly, the Games have shown that the Old India is very much with us. This is a country, after all, where — alongside all the triumphs of

Gary Dexter

Alternative reading | 25 September 2010

The cover of On Snooker shows the Queen Mother sizing up a shot, making a passable bridge but rather failing to get behind the cue. The book is by Mordecai Richler, the great Canadian novelist and essayist, author of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Barney’s Version, who died in 2001. On Snooker takes in all the major figures of the late-20th-century game, and is unafraid to bring out its juicier side, particularly the depredations of its bad boys: Alex Higgins trashing hotel rooms, urinating in plant-pots, whaling his cue at the spectators, ending up broke, drinking from left-over beer glasses; Ronnie O’Sullivan and his dad, Ronnie O’Sullivan Sr., who

Thursday

James Forsyth

Cricket’s dilemma

That the three Pakistani cricketers involved in the spot-fixing allegations have withdrawn from the rest of the tour means that the T20s and one day games will now definitely go ahead. If the accused had played, it would have been hard to see how the matches could have gone ahead and if they had, how they could have been taken at face-value by anyone. If the allegations against the men turn out to be correct, then the game will have to decide how to punish them. This is going to be a hard call. On the one hand, banning them for life would serve as a real deterrent to anyone

Monday

James Forsyth

Cameron, Villa and the succession

The Prime Minister is, as we know an Aston Villa fan. So we can expect him to be disappointed at Martin O’Neill’s departure. On his trip to Birmingham the other week, Cameron’s support for Villa caused the PM to, as the phrase has it, misspeak. He told the Birmingham Post that with “the Governor of the Bank of England as a supporter, the next King of England and the current Prime Minister, [Aston Villa] got a good set” of fans in high places. But his reference to the next King of England being a Villa fan will raise a few eyebrows as it is Prince William — not Prince Charles

Saturday

Benjamin Moorehead

Over and out?

Cricket writing, in the age of professionalism, affords less room to dreamy scribes. Fact and revelation are preferred to style and reflection. The roaming tour diary is rare, ghosted autobiographies rife. There are notable exceptions, of course, and we can happily toss Duncan Hamilton among them. Hamilton is on a roll. He has won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year twice, in 2007 and 2009, the latter for his biography of Harold Larwood, chief executioner — and victim — of the infamous Bodyline tactic used to nullify Don Bradman’s Australians in 1932-33. The Larwood book cracks along at a hurtling pace; A Last English Summer, set to the

Tuesday

Mark Littlewood

Never again should so much be wasted by so few

If you tire quickly of the tediously lengthy build up to Christmas, which starts about now, then heaven help you in dealing with two years of hyperbole about the 2012 Olympics. Even the most enthusiastic synchronised swimming fan will find it hard to imagine that the actual event will live up to the billing. And as a keen follower of sport (well, proper sport like football or motor racing), I hope that the London Olympics absolutely bomb.   I want half empty stadia, feeble athletic performances (particularly from British competitors) and embarrassingly low television viewing figures. Because – after this fiasco has finally ended – I don’t want there to

Saturday

Mark Mason

Teed off

There are those of us who, asked if we play golf, reply: ‘No, I like women.’ A relaxing game in pleasant surroundings it may be. There are those of us who, asked if we play golf, reply: ‘No, I like women.’ A relaxing game in pleasant surroundings it may be. But that disappears under a landslide of regulations about shirt collars and footwear, penned by men who boast of ‘values’ yet are happy only when everyone in sight is Exactly Like Them, and not just in terms of gender. Maurice Flitcroft loved the game with a passion. Regulations less so. A crane driver at Vickers shipyard in Barrow, Flitcroft reached

Saturday

John Preston

Odd men out

The first game played by the Allahakbarries Cricket Club at Albury in Surrey in September 1887 did not bode well for the club’s future. The first game played by the Allahakbarries Cricket Club at Albury in Surrey in September 1887 did not bode well for the club’s future. One player turned up wearing pyjamas, another held the bat the wrong way round while a third — a Frenchman — thought the game had finished every time the umpire called ‘Over’. The Allahakbarries were skittled out for just 11 runs and under the circumstances it seemed entirely appropriate that the team’s name should have been derived from the Moorish phrase for

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Morgan in Parliament? Surely not!

Is Piers Morgan going to be an MP? I suspect that this is one of those questions to which, as John Rentoul would tell you, the answer is no. (UPDATE: Indeed it is!) So Fraser has to be joking, right? I mean Piers Morgan is ubiquitous enough as it is without raising the chill prospect that he might make it into parliament? That said, Morgan is right to suggest that vastly increasing the provision of sport in schools is something most people should be able to agree upon. Doing so, mind you, would a) be hugely expensive, b) exceedingly difficult and c) be bound to further annoy the teaching unions.