Cricket
Warner and Smith are paying for the sins of a generation of Australian cricket players
When the much-admired (and very tall) literary agent Gillon Aitken died in October 2016, he left most of his estate…
Cricket’s ball-tampering scandal has been nothing but a tearful pantomime
I haven’t seen so many men crying since the end of A Tale of Two Cities at the Scala Cinema…
When does cricketing banter cross the line?
‘Good morning, my name’s Cowdrey.’ England batsman Colin, later Lord Cowdrey, to the Australian fast bowler Jeff Thomson. ‘That’s not…
More Ashes tours like this and long-form cricket will be in trouble
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
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
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
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
Rugby’s autumn internationals are almost upon us and dark thoughts hover over lovers of the sport. One day soon a…
Playing it safe
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
This retiring is a hectic business. When I said in June that it was going to be my last year…
Swagger and squalor
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?
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
The weather forecast last Saturday promised 100 per cent likelihood of rain. I like that formulation: it doesn’t leave much…
What stopped Stoppard?
Two programmes this week presented two radically different world views, or rather ways of life. Aditya Chakrabortty’s series for Radio…
Test of time
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
Give them all peerages as far as I’m concerned: if you can pick up a gong for bunging a few…
High life
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)
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
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
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?
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
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
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
In the north of Antigua, just by the medical school, is a neat little cricket ground. It was a bit…
This could be the year that sport starts to die
If sport loses the public’s faith – and it’s starting to – then all its power and glory will fade
