Roger Alton

Roger Alton is an executive editor at The Times. He writes the Spectator Sport column.

Another Federer-Djokovic classic – let's pray it wasn't the last

19 September 2015 8:00 am

A thumping physical confrontation testing mind, muscle and sinew to the ultimate degree, and from which there could only be…

A World Championships that puts Sebastian Coe on the right track

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Sebastian Coe’s new job as head of world athletics will be a heck of a lot easier thanks to the…

Alastair Cook's victory for character, calm – and cunning

22 August 2015 9:00 am

The roar of the Premier League is beginning to drown out everything else in sport (there’s even Friday night football…

The edge of the Gobi desert, some 100km northwest of Beijing (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty)

The madness of the Beijing Winter Olympics

8 August 2015 9:00 am

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

25 July 2015 9:00 am

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

11 July 2015 9:00 am

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

27 June 2015 9:00 am

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

13 June 2015 9:00 am

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

30 May 2015 9:00 am

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

16 May 2015 9:00 am

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

2 May 2015 9:00 am

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

18 April 2015 9:00 am

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

4 April 2015 9:00 am

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

21 March 2015 9:00 am

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

7 March 2015 9:00 am

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

21 February 2015 9:00 am

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)

7 February 2015 9:00 am

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

24 January 2015 9:00 am

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

10 January 2015 9:00 am

‘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

13 December 2014 9:00 am

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)

29 November 2014 9:00 am

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)

15 November 2014 9:00 am

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

1 November 2014 9:00 am

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

18 October 2014 9:00 am

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

4 October 2014 9:00 am

Well, that was a lot of fuss wasn’t it? The Ryder Cup is a strange old creation, only fractionally less…