Fans dealt raw deal with the Wildcard
As a national end-of-term showstopper, rugby union’s Zurich final at Twickenham tomorrow is on even more of a hiding to nothing than football’s limp and flaccid FA Cup final seven days before. The Zurich final is a phoney farce and in anticipation and outcome it will warm the cockles of only one-eyed obsessives on either side. Sharing a bill with the crackpot contrivance of the Wildcard final accentuates the ersatz catchpenny which the Zurich play-off match has become, debasing a season’s endeavour to a one-off chancer’s pot luck.
Millwall’s minnows out of their depth
The FA Cup final suffered from a different kettle of coarsening. It was just another match, bombarded night and day with so much utterly irrelevant soccer gush that a “game” challenge by the “minnows” of Millwall was always going to be a mundanely underwhelming anti-climax.
And whose idea was it to get Sven, the Swedish sphinx, not only to make a twerp of himself with a barmily off-beam man-of-the-match award but be the eminence to hand over the Cup itself? Because he doubles as a B-list gossip column celeb? Imagine asking Sir Alf Ramsey to discharge such a double of self-importance. The Doge of Dagenham would have been horrified: “Ay do not consider those sort of public postures applicable to my professional situation.”
Royals or ministers no longer do the honours. Tomorrow the sponsor’s global big-cheese chief exec Axel Lehmann will present the trophy. That provides one consolation: we will see a gnome of Zurich in the flesh.
Strauss classy but Lord’s hardly a classic
It was a good Test match, excellent in as much as Lord’s was picture-perfect in the sun as the contest flowed and ebbed to the fifth evening. But a great Test? Unforgettable? A classic? Surely not. Richardson nurdled, Strauss made a
notable bow, Richardson nudged, Jones bowled well as Richardson played and missed; so did Harmison; Cairns was memorably bold, bonny and brief and Hussain produced a timely and operatic curtain call. But historic? Grandeur imperishably to be remembered for years? Weeks, more like.
Some commentators rated the first Test as lustrous as the second coming – led by the drooling patriarch Bill Deedes in the Daily Telegraph, who reckoned the five days revitalised all Britain as he quoted Newbolt, Churchill and Francis Thompson and just about demanded every Anglican church bell in the land be pealed . Did I watch a different match? For me both captains just stood there, Micawbers on glum autopilot, much of the batting was little more than a shade above crabby, the fielding was so-so and, as for the Kiwi bowling, well, I was transported back to the pre-Hadlee days of drearily keen, south island second-change club trundlers. I expect a higher overall standard at Headingley. If it comes to pass, fear for old Bill’s ticker. . .
The voice of cricket and a year of wonders
An old man’s two pin-ups won Royal Television Society awards on Tuesday – C4 News’s Sue Turton and BBC’s Clare Balding, respectively news reporter and presenter of the year. Surely the latter must soon win promotion to be BBC’s all-sports prima diva. Balding is a broadcasting natural.
“Lifetime achievement” award went to the only front man who speaks out of the side of his mouth without moving his lips. Headingley next Thursday will be Richie Benaud’s 501st Test as pressman, broadcaster or player (thrice as 12th man), easily an all-time record and, phenomenally, almost one third of all Tests ever played. Richie, 74 this autumn, reckons the last 12 months in England, Australia and Sri Lanka have probably staged the best Test cricket he has ever seen.
His commentator’s credo: “Engage your brain before opening your mouth; never say ‘we’ if referring to a team; concentrate fiercely; and try to avoid: ‘Of course’. . . ‘As you can see on the screen’. . . ‘You know’. . . ‘I tell you what’. . . and ‘Tragedy’. . . and ‘Disaster’. . . The Titanic was a tragedy, an African famine is a disaster; neither bears any relation to a dropped catch.”
Give Paris torch and save a lot of bother
The London Olympiad 2012. Do we really need the hassle? Sure, if they presented them to us, we’d cope OK, stage them well enough, soldier through (cue Vera Lynn and all that). But seven years of rows, ructions, hellish turmoil and ludicrous expense? Aren’t we mature enough to say, thanks but no thanks. Let’s say bonne chance to Paris and we’ll see you over there mes amis when the time comes.
For London to say no is not accepting mediocrity, it is accepting maturity. It beats me why only an Olympic Games can rejuvenate school sports, fitness, slums, London transport etcetera. Didn’t Blair’s government promise all that anyway? Let them get on with it. It is childishly daft for the sports agent and bid vice-chairman Alan Pascoe to rail at those with cogent doubts as “disloyal and unpatriotic” and, quaintly, to charge us for being “happy just to sit back and become obese”. Oh, all down to bandwagon “obesity” now, is it? The United States staged Olympics in both 1984 and 1996, two in 12 years. The Games sure solved the US obesity problems, didn’t it?
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