Cricket

More Ashes tours like this and long-form cricket will be in trouble

13 January 2018 9:00 am

So will the sight of poor Joe Root at Sydney, pale as a ghost and barely able to stand, heroically…

Tea in the hallowed grounds of Lord’s: The Long Room reviewed

13 January 2018 9:00 am

As dreams of winning the Ashes became, well, the only word is ash, for 4-0 is not a number even…

Why Ben Stokes should be picked for Perth

9 December 2017 9:00 am

And so to a cloudy, chilly Adelaide, more like London in October than Australia in the early days of high…

Let’s give young Ben Foakes a chance to sweep out the Ashes

25 November 2017 9:00 am

So the Ashes has finally got over the line, and not a minute too soon. At the time of writing…

Death hovers over the scrum

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Rugby’s autumn internationals are almost upon us and dark thoughts hover over lovers of the sport. One day soon a…

Playing it safe

5 October 2017 2:00 pm

BBC1’s latest Sunday-night drama The Last Post, about a British military base in Aden in 1965, feels like a programme…

Close of play

23 September 2017 9:00 am

This retiring is a hectic business. When I said in June that it was going to be my last year…

Swagger and squalor

16 September 2017 9:00 am

This is a monumental but inevitably selective survey of all that occurred in Britain, for better or worse, in the…

Which way will Lord’s leap?

2 September 2017 9:00 am

In the rarefied circles of the sporting establishment a decision will soon be made affecting not just the future of…

England’s new heroes were real Test Match specials

5 August 2017 9:00 am

The weather forecast last Saturday promised 100 per cent likelihood of rain. I like that formulation: it doesn’t leave much…

What stopped Stoppard?

29 July 2017 9:00 am

Two programmes this week presented two radically different world views, or rather ways of life. Aditya Chakrabortty’s series for Radio…

Test of time

22 July 2017 9:00 am

I first walked into the Oval as a small boy in the early 1950s. My family home was in Brixton,…

The keys to the kingdom await

8 July 2017 9:00 am

Give them all peerages as far as I’m concerned: if you can pick up a gong for bunging a few…

High life

8 July 2017 9:00 am

A funny thing happened on my way to lunch last week. I opened the Daily Mail and read a few…

The biggest threats to gorillas (Cincinnati Zoo not included)

4 June 2016 9:00 am

Gorilla warfare Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla, was shot at Cincinnati Zoo after he started dragging away a boy aged four…

Cricket needs a top-to-bottom overhaul: here’s how I’d do it

28 May 2016 9:00 am

No place for the faint of heart, Headingley, and certainly not for some sketchy Sri Lankan batsmen at the back…

Revealed: the true and unrepeatable secret of Leicester City’s success

14 May 2016 9:00 am

A few years ago a motivational speaker brought out a smart little book called Legacy: What The All Blacks Can…

The Archers v the cricket: which was the more dramatic?

9 April 2016 9:00 am

It was a toss-up on Sunday between the atmosphere in the Radio Five Live Sports Extra studio in Kolkata for…

Reasons to be cheerful about cricket, football and the Grand National

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Well the sun is out, the sky is blue, and poor Boris Johnson is taking such a pounding from Matthew…

Two big hitters leave the crease: Brendon McCullum and Hugh McIlvanney

5 March 2016 9:00 am

Two great men have just bowed out from their chosen trades and it is bloody sad. The New Zealand cricket…

The angry young bowler who could take the West Indies back to the top

20 February 2016 9:00 am

In the north of Antigua, just by the medical school, is a neat little cricket ground. It was a bit…

Novak Djokovic, the world number one, said that he turned down US$220,000 to throw a match. (Photo: Getty)

This could be the year that sport starts to die

30 January 2016 9:00 am

If sport loses the public’s faith – and it’s starting to – then all its power and glory will fade

In most state schools, cricket is a dead ball game

23 January 2016 9:00 am

The England team may be riding high, but state schools have all but abandoned cricket

Every Test match should have a Ben Stokes (or even a Chris Gayle)

9 January 2016 9:00 am

On Sunday morning a friend texted: ‘You watching the big bash, or the domestic stuff down in Australia?’ On one…

From the dismal to the delightful: the year in sport

12 December 2015 9:00 am

So long, then, to another thrilling year of sport in which the full range of human possibility — from the…