Roger Alton

I first became aware of Alastair Cook in the Ashes summer of 2005 when he was named the Young Cricketer of the Year by the cricket writers’ association following some epic performances in the county game, not least taking a double hundred off the touring Australians. The assembled brains on our table, including Mike Brearley, agreed that the boy would go far. And how… The greatest of current English players, Cook — happily married and impeccably polite — set a perfect example. There were no nightclub brawls, no pedalos, not even any light aircraft. Blessed with incredible stamina and single-mindedness, he knew what worked and kept at it.

Watching the Chelsea v Arsenal match last Saturday I could spot one Englishman in the two starting line-ups: Ross Barkley, an England reject. I like our multicultural society as much as anyone, but this is taking things too far, no? It doesn’t chime with the euphoria of England reaching the World Cup semis and our younger national teams doing so well. There seems little will even to try to promote home-grown players. Poor Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who performed so well in Russia, has been hunting for a loan move from Chelsea just to get some game time. Sure, the days of a successful British-owned, British-managed team of largely British players are long gone. But couldn’t we try a bit harder?

Alice Cook’s impending third child could turn out to be the perfect delivery for England. Already the expectant father Alastair has asked for a few days off work, thus possibly sparing the England selectors a synapse-crunching headache. At some point before the end of days the problem of what to do with ‘Chef’ has to hit the top of the in-tray. Cook is England’s highest Test run-scorer by a country mile and blessed with the stamina, courage and application of a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner. But his batting form is beginning to tail off and his catching, once as solid as Fort Knox, is now erratic. Above all, this greatest of England openers should be able to call last orders on his international career when he wants to.

It’s just too hot and too early to get worked up about football, so the two highlights of the late-summer calendar are the US PGA golf tournament, in St Louis this time, and the US Open tennis from Flushing Meadows. Both compelling, vivid spectacles and — unless you have a lot of money and free time — best enjoyed from the sofa. But not this time. The PGA is being screened online by something called Eleven Sports, with the first two rounds also free on Facebook. Eleven Sports was founded by the Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani, who I’m sure is a thoroughly splendid fellow. It has already bought La Liga, Serie A and the Chinese Super League among others. But you try finding your way round its bloody website.

So in the end it was a fallible Tiger that won all hearts at the Open, not the glowering, red-shirted monarch of the fairways who carried all before him long ago. But a softer, puzzled, vaguely frail Tiger is hard not to like: this is someone now who isn’t quite sure what shot to play, who doesn’t quite know where the ball is going. Now we like him, and by golly the sport needs him. Like a fading but reformed rock star, he looks happier too: easier with the media, and carrying an ailing sport with dignity. The money is pretty good too. Sadly the fact that the sport’s biggest star is ten years past his prime says plenty. If I went out on to the street now and asked 100 people to tell me something about Kevin Kisner or Xander Schauffele, there wouldn’t be any takers.

Like most people with any taste, I like the odd vodka, I love Crime and Punishment, I enjoy Turgenev and Chekhov, and who doesn’t like to listen to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov? Their national anthem’s not bad either. In other words, Russia’s quite a place, give or take the odd poisoning or country takeover. And as this epochal, joyful, brain-churning World Cup roars into the last lap, let’s look back at what some of Fleet Street’s finest were predicting just a few weeks ago for the land of Dostoevsky and Stravinsky.

Let’s talk about VAR, why don’t we? We love the World Cup though the football is getting bonkers. The scoring of a goal or a penalty decision or just a foul is merely a starting point for negotiation, as players compete to be the quickest with the ‘check the TV’ hand signals after every tiny incident. You can pop out for a cup of tea and come back to find the whole landscape of the game has changed, with the course of the match rewritten like Bobby Ewing’s murder in the 1980s. ‘I thought South Korea were five goals down?’ ‘No, that didn’t really happen: they’re 2-1 up now but down to nine men.

Let’s talk about VAR, why don’t we? We love the World Cup though the football is getting bonkers. The scoring of a goal or a penalty decision or just a foul is merely a starting point for negotiation, as players compete to be the quickest with the ‘check the TV’ hand signals after every tiny incident. You can pop out for a cup of tea and come back to find the whole landscape of the game has changed, with the course of the match rewritten like Bobby Ewing’s murder in the 1980s. ‘I thought South Korea were five goals down?’ ‘No, that didn’t really happen: they’re 2-1 up now but down to nine men.

Here’s a question: name some famous Belgians. Well there’s Kevin De Bruyne, Vincent Kompany, and Eden Hazard. And if that’s not enough, there’s Romelu Lukaku and Dries Mertens; not forgetting Toby Alderweireld and Thomas Vermaelen. Or Mousa Dembele, Thibaut Courtois, and Marouane Fellaini. If all goes well England will still be in with a chance of making the last 16 of the World Cup when they meet the mighty Belgians — not a line you see very often — in their final group match in exactly two weeks’ time. England have, arguably, only one star of similar status: Harry Kane. But I’m less convinced than I was a few weeks ago that England are bound to lose this match in Kaliningrad.

I must have missed the memo when it became compulsory for major football matches to operate as a marketing opportunity for the game’s marquee players, but that was what we got at Kiev after Liverpool were outmuscled and outplayed by a flinty-eyed Real Madrid. After Ronaldo announced that his time at Madrid was in the past, then our very own Gareth Bale, he of the annoying man-bun and sublime skills, in a rather graceless piece of scene-stealing, decided to ask for a transfer. Live on TV. Well, you do the math. He is on £300,000 a week (or £600,000 depending on who you trust), but assuming someone somewhere has to come up with a lot of loot. In a timely coincidence, Bale’s remarks come just as an excellent book is published by my friend Jon Henderson.

I must have missed the memo when it became compulsory for major football matches to operate as a marketing opportunity for the game’s marquee players, but that was what we got at Kiev after Liverpool were outmuscled and outplayed by a flinty-eyed Real Madrid. After Ronaldo announced that his time at Madrid was in the past, then our very own Gareth Bale, he of the annoying man-bun and sublime skills, in a rather graceless piece of scene-stealing, decided to ask for a transfer. Live on TV. Well, you do the math. He is on £300,000 a week (or £600,000 depending on who you trust), but assuming someone somewhere has to come up with a lot of loot. In a timely coincidence, Bale’s remarks come just as an excellent book is published by my friend Jon Henderson.

Good for Ed Smith. The new national selector can’t just rock a fine pair of sunglasses, he can make bold decisions. Though quite how bold it was to pick Jos Buttler, arguably England’s most gifted cricketer, is a matter of opinion. It would have been remarkable if one of the world’s best players, and a phenomenal striker of a cricket ball, had been left on the sidelines for the Pakistan Tests. Smith has brought an adventurous spirit to this England team, after years of excessive caution. Buttler has illuminated the Indian Premier League for the Rajasthan Royals, who will be scowling into their Cobra beers after losing their best player. The purists will be saying he is just a white-ball basher, but however you look at it, his IPL run has been extraordinary.

Difficult to know quite what to make of The Hundred, which has the feel of being knocked up on the back of a packet of Senior Service and anyway sounds like a film about a heroic battle rather than the name of a new cricket thrash coming to a Test ground near you sometime in 2020. My only hope is that the ECB will call on the bikini girls to march round the ground signalling the change of overs. But I’m old-fashioned like that. The tournament is scheduled for the ‘school holidays’ to pack in the kids, but in my day the school holidays were when people went away, to spend rain-swept hours in the Morris Minor on the prom at Exmouth. Chennai it wasn’t. But maybe I’m old-fashioned about the hols as well.

Fittingly, it took a dire performance from a dismal and dreary United against the worst team in the Premier League to push Guardiola’s magnificent project over the line. And fittingly, too, Mourinho greeted it with one his most awful displays: lashing out at his players and painfully recalling his own record of title wins as well as his defeat of City. It marked a new low for José’s gracelessness and that’s quite a crowded field. There’s nothing not to admire about Pep: from his golf swing to his ability to fill a grey rollneck to the fact that he liked to shoot the breeze over lunch with Johan Cruyff at Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli restaurant in Barcelona (quite a surfeit of excellence, but you wouldn’t half like to be there).

I haven’t seen so many men crying since the end of A Tale of Two Cities at the Scala Cinema in Oxford in the late 1950s. As the credits rolled, stern-faced blokes whipped out their hankies and dabbed their eyes. But by the time the lights went up, the hankies were replaced and upper lips stiffened. These after all were men, many of whom had served in the war. On balance, you feel, that is how men should behave, rather than sobbing uncontrollably with their parents around, like Steve Smith, or — in the case of wee Davey Warner — doing an absurd name, rank and number impression from a prison camp film. All because they had been caught. And then caught lying. I’m not sure how long these Aussie cricketers would have lasted in Revolutionary France.

Which would you least like to see coming towards you? An Uber driverless car, Ant McPartlin in his black Mini after a long lunch, or a Johnny Sexton up and under? Sexton is a rugby genius: two of his kicks won Ireland the VI Nations Grand Slam at the weekend (as predicted by this column, we should modestly note). The first was the miraculous drop goal from as far away as the Gare du Nord which beat France in the final seconds in Paris; and the second was the milli-metre-perfect kick to the England line which led to the first try. England never recovered. Sexton’s penalty, incidentally, came after Owen Farrell had late- tackled the Irish fullback; something worth considering amid all the ballyhoo about the newly matured Farrell.

The incomparable Roger Bannister, whose passing marks the end of our links with a vanished age of sporting innocence, could have been knighted in 1954, such were his achievements in that year. He was eventually knighted 21 years later, in 1975: he could have been knighted for services to medicine or athletics, or both. We have started to play fast and loose with knighthoods. Bradley Wiggins and David Brailsford were both knighted at the end of 2012, the year of the London Olympics and Wiggo’s epic win in the Tour de France. Not looking such a bright idea now though. Wiggo and Brailsford are perfect examples of the rule that sports people shouldn’t be knighted while still on active duty. It’s just asking for trouble.

Despite the best efforts of this column (and the BBC), too many Brits regard the Winter Olympics with the same enthusiasm as they would a traction engine rally or a village fête. Well you are so wrong, people. Admittedly you can get fed up with the BBC TV breakfast presenters nattering away about how they are going off after the show to watch the Nordic combined, as if they really believe we believe them. And when you find yourself in the small hours, like me, watching the curling mixed doubles or listening to ice hockey commentary on the radio you are forced to question whether your life has gone seriously wrong somewhere. But hey, they are only on every four years and there’s plenty of reasons to love these Games.

Despite the best efforts of this column (and the BBC), too many Brits regard the Winter Olympics with the same enthusiasm as they would a traction engine rally or a village fête. Well you are so wrong, people. Admittedly you can get fed up with the BBC TV breakfast presenters nattering away about how they are going off after the show to watch the Nordic combined, as if they really believe we believe them. And when you find yourself in the small hours, like me, watching the curling mixed doubles or listening to ice hockey commentary on the radio you are forced to question whether your life has gone seriously wrong somewhere. But hey, they are only on every four years and there’s plenty of reasons to love these Games.

‘It’s never easy going to Rome,’ observed Anthony Watson after the traditional mauling of a hard-working but outgunned Italian side at the weekend. Eh? Well Watson is a brilliant winger (two tries in ten minutes no less) and a thoughtful and well-spoken credit to English rugby. But a difficult trip, Anthony? Sure the A23 to Gatwick can be pretty hellish, valet parking is a tad pricey, and security a nightmare. And don’t get me started on Fiumicino Airport. But all that said, Anthony, I don’t think it’s never easy going to Rome. And in the unlikely event you were referring to the rugby: come off it. England never fail to beat poor Italy. Which is a great pity: at last, Italy are going in the right direction under Conor O’Shea.