Alastair Cook's victory for character, calm – and cunning
The roar of the Premier League is beginning to drown out everything else in sport (there’s even Friday night football…
The madness of the Beijing Winter Olympics
Jumping the shark isn’t yet an Olympic sport, but if it were the International Olympic Committee would be a shoo-in…
Australia’s amazing, exhausting sporting comebacks
I have never met an Aussie I didn’t like, but, crikey, their sporting indefatigability is exhausting. Don’t they ever give…
Nick Kyrgios is exactly the bad boy tennis needs
Well thank heaven for Nick Kyrgios. The lavishly inked, blinged and barbered Aussie is quite one of the most thrilling…
The twilight of Tiger Woods
A car crash is a terrible thing, but hordes of people still slow down to cop an eyeful on the…
The Kiwi tourists are a lesson in sportsmanship
A rather desultory Test series is taking place in the Caribbean where Australia are marmalising the West Indies, with a…
Thrills and chivalry at Lord’s
If heaven is a place on earth, as Belinda Carlisle so wisely observed, then surely that place has to be…
Ten steps to save English cricket
If you watched England’s three-day Test defeat by the West Indies in Barbados the other day to the bitter end…
Next time, David Cameron should pretend to support Bournemouth
Here’s an election-winning idea for Dave: forget about Aston Villa (or West Ham) and become a full-on Bournemouth fan. They…
However daft English cricket gets, there’ll always be Wisden’s obituaries
He’s a tall man, Kevin Pietersen, and he casts a long shadow. It loomed large over the Long Room at…
Rory McIlroy and the grandest prize in golf
The grand slam in golf is a feat almost impossible to imagine now. It meant winning all four golfing majors…
In praise of Ben Moon: the man who took rock-climbing to new heights
For anyone who knows or cares about rock climbing — a minority sport if ever there was one, albeit pretty…
I miss the days when French rugby was great. Thierry Dusautoir must, too
It used to be such a treat of a winter weekend, sitting down to watch France against Wales in Paris…
The Cricket World Cup needs minnows
Graeme Swann arrived late for the last cricket World Cup. His wife had given birth before the tournament and he…
We should be grateful for Andy Murray (and Kim Sears)
It wasn’t that long ago when the most exciting event in any British tennis fan’s life was whether Jeremy Bates…
One-day cricket can make even a turbo-charged century tedious
What a remarkable innings that was in Johannesburg earlier this week when South Africa’s admirable Hashim Amla carried his bat…
The myth of Steven Gerrard
‘As a leader and a man, he is incomparable to anyone I have ever worked with.’ Obviously quite some guy,…
Fifteen things we learned about sport in 2014
It was the year of KP, Keano and the Kiwis; of Federer, Froch and Phil the Power (no change there…
What football can tell you about Jim Murphy (and what Jim Murphy can tell you about football)
The author of a rather brilliant little book about football could just hold the key to Labour’s otherwise negligible prospects…
International cricket must return to Pakistan (and my team went first)
In a tiny courtyard just off the teeming alleys of Lahore’s old town, a young Pakistani boy in a gleaming…
Test cricket and the Archers are both in deep trouble
Lions and weasels The Archers and Test cricket: words you rarely find in the same sentence and more’s the pity…
Pietersen’s unlikely Passage to India
A typical Merchant-Ivory film, their biography informs me, features ‘genteel characters’ whose lives are blighted by ‘disillusionment and tragic entanglements’.…
Please don't let the Ryder Cup go the way of football
Well, that was a lot of fuss wasn’t it? The Ryder Cup is a strange old creation, only fractionally less…
Roy of the autobiographers
It has become a weary cliché to say that a book’s publication is eagerly awaited, but when an event is…
Just what Diego Costa needed: a guide to the traditions of the Premier League
That excitable but likeable hombre, Everton manager Roberto Martinez, took it upon himself to give a stern lecture to the…
