Sport
The best (and worst) of this year’s sport
It was quite a year for some of the worst of sport – America’s golfers, already among the richest and…
Who says Test cricket is boring?
Under a dark sapphire sky, tearing across grass as green as a lick of new paint, Mitchell Starc raced in…
The towering talent of Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii
When it comes to dishing out God’s gifts, you feel the Almighty could be a little more even-handed. Take Joseph-Aukuso…
I listened to a solid week of Woman’s Hour…
I was a weird kid, and though I harboured the usual innocent girlish ambitions of being a drug fiend and…
I hope Mike Tyson teaches Jake Paul a lesson
Tedious narcissist blowhard Jake Paul will fight Mike Tyson on Saturday in a meaningless freakshow in Texas that will likely…
Did I deny my son a shot at the Premier League?
When my youngest son Charlie was seven he was talent-spotted by a QPR scout who saw him playing football in…
The glaring mismatch in English football
Your starter for ten: who was the last English manager to win the top flight of English football? Treat yourself…
The hypnotic competitiveness of Sir Ben Ainslie
Sailing’s very own ubermensch Sir Ben Ainslie has every right to be considered the world’s most competitive bloke. Those who…
Meet England’s octogenarian matador
It’s a sunny October morning at a bull-breeding ranch north of Seville, and 82-year-old Frank Evans is preparing to step…
The ladies who punch
Double jab, right, hook body, duck, right… Right, left, right, upper, four hooks… Ten straight punches… And ten more… Twenty…
At Las Vegas’s Sphere I saw the future of live arts
Does Elon Musk have a good eye for the aesthetic? Earlier this month, the Tesla magnate took a break from…
Sorry, but you’ve got to love the Springboks
There may still be some poor benighted souls who regard the Springboks as the bane of rugby union. If you…
Why play the Saudi anthem before an all-British boxing match?
For only the second time in my life, I went to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last weekend. At least,…
It may be too late to save trail hunting
There’s a grumble, often repeated among country folk, that ‘hunting people got hunting banned’. What they mean (I think) is…
The art inspired by the 1924 Paris Olympics was a very mixed bag
George Orwell took a dim view of competitive sport; he found the idea that ‘running, jumping and kicking a ball…
Why women’s golf is better than men’s
In the exhilarating event of Somerset managing to sneak past Surrey and being on their way to claim their first…
Why can’t China play football?
It would be tough for any country to lose 7-0 in a World Cup qualifier, but when the losing team…
Mickleover: the real home of cricket
Readers concerned that the seemingly imperious march of Bazball across the cricket firmament has blotted out the more, er, traditional…
Will there ever be another cricket captain like Richie Benaud?
The thrilling fourth Test of 1961 at Old Trafford showed Benaud at his enigmatic best, in sharp contrast to his English counterpart, the uninspiring Peter May
The simple beauty of the Hundred
Time to come clean: I really like the Hundred. This is the sort of view that normally makes people look…
Does it matter if Trump is weird?
Would-be veep Tim Walz has opened Pandora’s box with his use of the W-word to characterise Donald Trump and his…
About as edgy as Banksy: Joe Rogan’s Netflix special reviewed
My resolution this summer was to see how far into the Olympics I could get without watching an event. It’s…
This Olympics belongs to the female athletes
You knew it was going to be a superb Olympics from the moment Celine Dion belted out an Edith Piaf…
Does ‘artistic swimming’ truly describe the world’s hardest sport?
Journalists in the 1980s routinely mocked what was then known as synchronised swimming – until they tried it themselves, and emerged from the water gasping in shock
