Taking sport too seriously

You may recall I did something like this a few years ago. This time, mercifully, I'll be much briefer.  These will my personal favourites, and I'll try not to write more than a short paragraph or three on each.  I'll also mention a couple of my least favourite sporting moments, because when a sport, or a sporting figure, brings you close enough to the action that you really care, the worst feeling is a hair's width from the best. I'll also ramble a bit at the end about how sport is bad, like the world. I'll start with something that was surely the ultimate feelgood story. John Terry slipping and missing his penalty in the 2008 Champions League Final The reality is that, for most of us, as relatively nuanced and empathetic people, bad things happening to bad people are rarely, it turns out, as wholly satisfactory as good things happening to good people. Especially in the world of sport where "bad people vs good people" is, rarely, when examined, a wholl...

This is the third time I’ve had a go at this list. I seem to be doing it every 3 years.  Since I last compiled it, a lot has happened which affects the order - whereas, even in 2017, it felt like the great Manchester City players were still on their way somewhere they hadn’t yet reached, and were consequently hard to judge, they’ve now had a full era (perhaps complete, perhaps not)  as a dominant Premier League side. It’s also possible to look at the players of the freak Leicester season and see how good the individuals really are. Liverpool have put together a couple of seasons the likes of which we’ve hardly seen before. The Ferguson years are completely and utterly in the past, and look all the more remarkable for it. Saying all that, most of my main ‘opinions’ are still the same. In a sporting sense, talking about greatness only makes sense if you know what you personally mean by greatness and you can, to some extent, explain that. I have a specific thing in mind here, a...

 What I've done is pick "All Time Best XIs" for the main eight test cricket nations (men's teams). I thought about doing it for Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan too, but, though they've all had a few fine players, there was not the same fun to that, especially with the last two. Then, we can put them all into an imaginary round-robin test tournament, all played in some purpose-built neutral venue with a pitch with a bit of help for everything, and imagine what happens. Needless to say, for selections, test averages are very important when I haven't seen players in real life, and I will usually veer to someone who I have seen if in doubt. These will be First XIs - I've added five squad members in case of injuries, but generally the idea would be you can't change the teams for different conditions - these have to be teams for all conditions and oppositions. Starting with  ENGLAND Jack Hobbs Herbert Sutcliffe Len Hutton (c) Walter Hammond Kev...