Charles Walford

Bazball's revels are now ended, and this week English cricket enters a brave new world after the retirement of captain Ben Stokes and defenestration of head coach Brendan McCullum. Well, actually, it's not all that brave, nor particularly new - Joe Root returning as skipper; recalls for Dan Lawrence and Ollie Pope for the Test series against Pakistan. And overseeing it all is another New Zealander in Stephen Fleming; though McCullum does assure us that his former international team-mate is 'like me only better'.  Of course, one might argue that isn't necessarily hard. McCullum's tenure started in a blaze of glory in that heady summer of 2022 when all things – enormous run chases at least - seemed possible.

More often than not, controversy over liquid refreshment at a football World Cup focuses on the unsavoury antics of England's travelling support. But, in the US these past two weeks, the focus has been less on the booze and more on the boos that have greeted that dreaded moment, roughly at the midpoint of each half, when play must stop for a 'hydration break'.  These hiatuses were introduced, as so many Fifa initiatives are, with all the good will in the world. The idea was that when the temperature tops 32°C, the players should get a chance to take a short break to get extra fluids on board for fear of dehydration.

This afternoon, just shy of 75,000 fans of American football will flood in to watch the Atlanta Falcons take on the Indianapolis Colts, in what is set to be the Colts’ largest attendance for a home game this season. A few weeks ago, more than 86,000 turned out to watch the Jacksonville Jaguars face the LA Rams in what was the Jaguars’ best-attended home game this year. The most surprising thing about this? Both games were taking place more than 4,000 miles from the NFL’s heartland – one in Berlin, one in London. Recently, Sean Thomas claimed on Spectator Life that America has failed to export its ‘laughable’ sports.

Boris Johnson didn't like Adolescence. In his Daily Mail column last week he acknowledged the fine acting of the most talked-about television programme of the year, but still concluded that it was ‘tosh’. The problem, he felt, was that it wasn't based on a real-life crime, which somehow lessens its worth as a lesson for our times in the eyes of the former Prime Minister. I'm not sure his logic fully holds up to scrutiny (nor, for that matter, does Keir Starmer's plan to show Adolescence in schools). But if it is real-life drama that Boris wants then Netflix, with impeccable timing, this week released another one of those sports documentaries at which they have become rather adept.