Roger Alton

Thank god for the Commonwealth Games: at least they gave us a brief respite from football transfer stories. Instead of having to read about an 18-year-old defender being bought by Overambitious Wanderers for the GDP of a medium-sized African nation, we could delight in Norfolk Island beating South Africa at lawn bowls, Kiribati and Nauru

A jaw-dropping moment on the front page of Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph the other day: ‘How to fix England’, read the  blurb, ‘by Kevin Pietersen’. Rather like ‘How To Stamp Out Diving, by Arjen Robben’; or ‘Take Vanity out of Football, by Cristiano Ronaldo’.   Pietersen joins a dressing room full of former international  captains —

Iran, eh: who knew? Last time I checked it was the great Satan, locking up its own people, stamping out dissidents, and a centrifuge or two away from bringing nuclear winter to the world. Now it seems to be the West’s big hope in the war against the bearded hordes blitzkrieging their way through the

A revealing handwritten letter emerged at the weekend from the England scrum half Danny Care, who wasn’t playing in the first Test against New Zealand, to his Harlequins and England colleague Joe Marler, who very much was. And how! ‘Joe, Just wanted to wish you all the best when you step on the battlefield tonight,’

Ah teamwork! There’s no me in team, as David Brent used to observe sagely, but there are often plenty of cocks, as he didn’t. And really, you get to thinking, Lewis Hamilton ought to start sorting himself out. He whines and moans just a tad too much. Watching Lewis and Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg on

Sport is all about streaks, winning and losing, though whether one of the gloomiest runs in world sport — England’s footballing failure to reach the final of a major tournament for nearly half a century — can be brought to an end by Roy’s Boys remains to be seen. It seems unlikely, but how nice

It’s hard to love Saracens rugby club — their centre is called Bosch, a word that also describes their bulldozing style of play — but you have to admire the demolition job they did on Clermont Auvergne in the semi-finals of the Heineken Cup. The flamboyant French side, free-runners to a man, had 68 per

The brotherhood of cricket, as we know, transcends race, creed, class and nationality. It can also be a big help when it comes to dealing with the law, as this East–er parable demonstrates. My distinguished Times colleague Phil Webster, besides being a doyen of political writers, is also a ferocious cricketer and a man once

It’s Boat Race time again and as soon as the BBC starts its broadcast on Sunday there will be those who invade Twitter and such places, having a moan faster than the Bullingdon Club can trash an Oxford curry house. Why’s it always the same two teams in the final? The more strident will demand

There are many eternal questions. Why do all aircraft, no matter how much your ticket cost, where you’ve come from, and what time you land, always dock at a gate requiring a walk of not less than 47 miles to the terminal? Why was there no running water in the taps on my train to

Just do it. The people who make trainers have been telling us to ‘Just do it’ for 25 years now. As a slogan it is simple and effective. (It was also, I learn from Google, inspired by the final words of the executed 1970s spree-killer Gary Gilmore. There’s a free fact for you.) But how

You can trust the BBC to behave like a leaf blown by any breeze, but even that spineless leviathan (if such a beast could exist) might have tried to grow a pair and stick up for its admirably manic commentators at the Sochi Winter Olympics. It was Ed Leigh, Aimee Fuller and Tim Warwood on

Englishmen used to be deported to Australia as a punishment. Now they get sent back to England as an act of mercy. There was not much of a campaign to ‘free the press box three’ after Australia’s immigration services ordered the eviction of the men from the Sun, Mirror and Daily Mail before the winter’s

James Cook’s third voyage as an English captain ended in disaster, stabbed to death and disembowelled by a pack of angry Hawaiians in 1779. The latest Captain Cook’s third tour since taking charge of the national cricket team has been just as successful, with Alastair’s England given the Hawaiian treatment by Australia. But don’t despair:

Sir Vivian Richards came to watch me play cricket the other day. That’s the sort of sentence you wait a lifetime to write. What’s more it’s true. Sort of. I haven’t been able to say anything like that for ten years, just  a few days before the Rugby World Cup final in Sydney in November

British sport used to be dead. You only have to look down the list of past winners of the Sports Personality of the Year award to see that. In 1994 Damon Hill won it for not quite winning the Formula 1 drivers’ champion-ship; three years later Greg Rusedski won it for not quite winning the

My friend Miles was bowling in a festival of wandering cricket clubs in Oxford the other day. First wicket down and in walked an immaculately turned out Japanese gentleman. As he took guard, he turned to the slips and said, ‘I’m the best batsman in Japan.’ Miles’s first ball he edged to the keeper, and

In sport, as in life, you just don’t know where you stand any more. Look at the Premier League: no club knows where they stand except for Crystal Palace, who are being stood on by all the others. Everyone else can beat everyone else. Manchester City, who must be one of the best teams, are

The comic book Asterix in Switzerland is full of joys, not least the many jokes about Swiss obsessions with tidiness and bureaucracy. Watching the Basel Open last week, the audience was a treat. Immaculate of course, with giant glasses, and cashmere V-necks looped over the shoulders, and doubtless trading assets between matches over hot chocolate

The more you see of Jack Wilshere, the more admirable he becomes. He seems to have taken wholeheartedly to fatherhood, a path he embarked on when he was barely out of short trousers. And then there’s the agreeably relaxed way he was toking on a Marlboro Light outside a London nightclub the other day. It