Taking sport too seriously

I've previously made lists of The Greatest British Sportspeople of All Time and the Best Sportspeople in the World Right Now. Now, bringing the two together, it's time to consider the Greatest British Sportspeople this Century. This is more of a labour of love than anything else. The 80s, and particularly the 90s, as I was growing up, were pretty thin for British sporting heroes, not just in terms of the number of world beaters, but also whether they were the kind of people you could really warm to. This has changed on all fronts. There are so many world class sportspeople to choose from these days, and so many of these are genuinely endearing, or interesting. Though most of those I'm going to write about are younger than me, they're, conversely, more heroic, and more people that I look up to than the supposed icons of my youth. So I shall intersperse the list, which will, of course, be a touch arbitrary, with the occasional paean of praise. With little doubt,

The Euros are nearly always better than the World Cup - a more consistent, high quality, entertaining, less overblown festival of pure football. I hope it remains that way with 24 teams - great to see Wales, NI and Ireland in there, anyway. Still, despite myself, I'm going to concentrate on reasons to be cheerful for England. Getting out of the group will be a triumph for the other home teams - it'll be fun to watch Bale, I think NI have the momentum, but they've got a horribly tough group. Republic too, and they're not playing that well. Still, you never know. So, England. I had a strong thought in October that Spurs (who were then only mid-table) would win the league and England would win the Euros. Well, I was wrong on the 1st one, but not that wrong, and I think we'd be happy if England were in the Top 4 of the Euros. So, why might that happen? 1. There's no one player who, if they got injured, it would be a disaster. It's a talented squad which

I'll write a little about Muhammad Ali- what's this blog even here for if I don't? He was  a significant figure for me, as for many. His poster was on my wall when I was a teenager and throughout university, I watched all the documentaries and films, read three biographies, have watched all his famous fights  (apart from the later ones, which I could never bring myself to). He was the primary gateway to so many of my main interests - boxing, the counter-culture,  protest music, false history and propaganda, the antihero,  soul music, Africa, what it actually means to be a great man. He met in the middle (like Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese, but perhaps even more so) of so many areas - he was there in great literature, in hip-hop, soul and folk music, in blockbuster films and documentaries, in postcolonial studies, in civil rights, in poetry, in celebrity, in religious education, in our understanding of health and illness ... but most of all, he was in sport. He was in

For fear of sounding too grumpy or annoying anyone ... I've done Most Overrated Sportspeople, but what are the Most Overrated Sporting Events? All hype. Consistently disappointing. Self-mythologising. Barely sport at all. Inexplicably popular etc The Masters ... the obvious place to start. I quite like the Masters, but the fact that it thinks itself the most important thing in the world and a quasi-religious experience does my head in. It rarely turns out to be a great pure golf event (it was this year, I admit), it's the same course over and over, a limited field, it's a bit racist, an enormous way up its own arse, and I often feel it punishes good golf too much and doesn't punish genuinely bad shots enough.. So, yeah, not that I haven't watched all four days of it every year for about three decades. the Masters is the most overrated sporting event going. The Old Firm game ... Graeme Souness fiercely saying it's bigger than Liverpool-Everton, bigger than

I'm watching cricket. I love cricket. But I'm not sure what cricket to watch, because cricket's on two channels. On the one hand, there's some very exciting test cricket between England and South Africa, but (sacrilege!) I'm also finding myself flipping over to Australia's T20 Big Bash League on the other channel. I flipping love the BBL. It's the first T20 I've really relished. The IPL, the Ram Slam, the Caribbean Premier League, even our own T20 Blast, I can entirely take or leave - I can find them crass, garish, boring all at once, but I'm completely sold on the BBL. It's become a yearly sporting highlight, a wonderful background to these cold winter mornings. People complain about the modern Australian commentators being too matey, and I have found that in the past, but I love the mateyness of the guys they've got for IPL. I love Gilchrist and Ponting in particular - serious and knowledgeable, funny and good-natured. Fleming is a smoo