Roger Alton

We don’t half take a lot for granted. We may look up to the Aussies, kowtow to the Americans and look on in awe at the Chinese, but we’re not doing too badly ourselves. To judge from the papers, we’re a nation of fatties who when not pigging out on Pringles on the sofa are waddling down the high street looking for drugs. But it turns out we’re pretty good at sport: cricket World Cup winners, rugby World Cup finalists, women’s football World Cup semi-finalists. It was English teams who contested the Champions League final, after two mesmerising semis when Liverpool thumped Barcelona and Spurs defeated Ajax in the last seconds of added time. At home, Liverpool continue to dazzle under a charismatic manager who has made the Kop his own.

Maybe it’s just an age thing, but the death of Bob Willis has left me — and, I am sure, a whole generation of cricket lovers — feeling more than usually bereft. Since when has the passing of a sports-person triggered quite such an outpouring of genuine emotion? But only now are we seeing quite what an extraordinary figure he was. And it wasn’t just cricket: he loved Bob Dylan, Wagner and wine, as should all right-thinking folk. He was a huge, gangling figure with arms like windmills and an awkward ungainly action once described as being like a first world war biplane taking off into a headwind. He bowled very fast and usually seemed to be starting his run-up from beyond the boundary. God knows what it was like to face him: pretty scary, I imagine.

Oh those lazy, hazy, Stokesy days of summer: how long ago they seem now. When England won the cricket World Cup — or scraped it anyway — in July, and pulled off the unlikeliest of Ashes Test wins on that blazing Leeds day in August, Ben Stokes loomed as a greater certainty to be the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year than Vladimir Putin to win a Russian election. Don’t think we can be so sure now — about Stokesy, that is. He’s odds-on favourite from the shortlist of six contenders for the award announced by the BBC this week, but it is his misfortune that by the time this silly old competition comes round each year, the cricketing heroics of the summer have gathered so much dust they have pretty much disappeared from view.

Sports events come and go, but good manners, as William of Wykeham might have put it, last for ever. Or the lack of them. Which is why the surly, petulant behaviour of most of England’s rugby players after losing the World Cup final was so disgraceful. Refusing to wear the medals presented to them (by Sir Bill Beaumont, for heaven’s sake, a man who knows a bit about losing as well as winning), or hastily discarding them, standing around scowling, and then failing to bow in unison to the Japanese people who had created such a marvellous tournament. It was all pretty shameful. The rugby fraternity loftily dismisses this as being because the team care too much and felt they had let down the nation.

New Zealanders can teach the world a lot about sportsmanship. Steve Hansen after last Saturday’s All Blacks defeat by England in the World Cup semi-final showed the uncomplaining loser can be just as impressive as the triumphant winner. As he put it: ‘Winning’s easy…[but] when you lose… you have to show humility, do it gracefully and be honest about it. Sometimes you have to bite down on your gumshield and suck it up.’ The Springboks have put rugby back several decades. Big, beastly, and brutal, they made the first half of their semi-final with Wales almost unwatchable. Afterwards the Wales hierarchy talked about losing the ‘arm-wrestle’: but why are Wales trying to arm-wrestle?

Proud son of Wexford he may be, and of doughty farming stock too, but the heart sinks at the prospect of seeing yet again Tadhg Furlong, all 20-odd stone of him, emerge from a pile of bodies laying siege to the opposition line to lumber over for a try. Ireland’s brand of suffocating rugby has been effective but uninspiring over this World Cup. And without wishing to offend our cousins across the Irish Sea, the heart sinks at the prospect of Furlong, Stander and the rest of the boyos possibly putting out a free-running (if so far slightly untested) New Zealand in the second of this weekend’s mouth-watering quarter-finals. Those interminable multi-phase pick-and-go assaults might be part of rugby but they are sure as hell not great to watch.

The ITV set for the channel’s thunderingly good coverage of the Rugby World Cup is more Japanese than anything in Japan. And after the Brave Blossoms’ quite sensational victory over the Irish team — until recently rated world No. 1 — we need more Japaneseyness. More sushi. More Hiroshige. More Hokusai. We should never lose sight of how remarkable Japanese rugby is. The country has had a love affair with the game for more than 150 years. It’s all about konjo — the Japanese word for discipline, endurance, sacrifice, sincerity, courage, strength. There’s the samurai warrior for you: not somebody to mess with but deeply honourable too.

A day of sporting shocks this Sunday past. As if the news of Tracey Horrobin’s bewitching performance with the ball to give Ambridge victory in their grudge match against Darrington wasn’t enough, then out of a clear blue sky, one of the best broadcasters in the country announced that he’d be standing down. For anyone interested in sport, Garry Richardson’s Sportsweek was unmissable. In a dignified little farewell at the end of his last show, Richardson said how much he had enjoyed it and paid generous tribute to everyone who had made it possible. Why should this matter? In an age where sport is expanding like a barrage balloon on steroids, Richardson could cut through the chaff to shine a light on what mattered.

Feeling depressed about politics? I hope not. Politicians don’t shape the world: they are the furniture movers, not the furniture makers. It is inventors, scientists, philosophers, craftsmen, artists and poets who influence our lives. And sports people of course. Which means it’s time to think about Ben Stokes again. The Test Match Special lunchtime guest on the Saturday of the Headingley Test was Joe Simpson, ace climber and cricket-lover, and author of the epic Touching the Void. There’s not much Joe doesn’t know about coming back from the dead, and some of it must have rubbed off on Stokes. The most extraordinary moment of that extraordinary innings came when Stokes reached his century.