sporting history

Bad sports, from the ancient Greeks to the present

21 August 2021 9:00 am

Sports history, writes Wray Vamplew, is sometimes ‘sentimental, reactionary and built on the implicit assumption that the sporting past was…

Snakes alive! Playing cricket in Latin America

19 June 2021 9:00 am

Cricket in Latin America sounds like an oxymoron. Yet in almost every country in the region willow was hitting leather…

Sport, for the English, has always been a defiant assertion of liberty

22 August 2020 9:00 am

The history of English sport reflects a defiant people determined to protect their ancient prerogatives, says Alex Massie

The deserted village green: is this the end of cricket as we know it?

9 May 2020 9:00 am

Imagine an archetypal English scene and it’s likely you’re picturing somewhere rural. Despite losing fields and fields each year to…

Britain’s obsession with boxing is as deep-rooted as its devotion to cricket

7 December 2019 9:00 am

Boxing has long been a British obsession, exported successfully to North America, but never widespread on the Continent. Mainland Europeans…