Taking sport too seriously

I suppose Jonah Lomu's death is not a shock, considering he'd been desperately ill a few times before. It's striking how much it's clearly hit home, though, even in such a ghastly week as this. Despite my cold republican, rugby-shunning hear, I was moved by this little detail   http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/34876711 . He was a guy you never forgot. I first saw him at the Hong Kong Sevens in 1994 - it's quite rare for a Sevens player to cross over to 15-a-side so despite the extraordinary impact he made there, you couldn't be certain. He almost didn't make the All Black squad for the 1995 World Cup due to fitness concerns but when he got there, he changed rugby. It's simple and true. Everyone's been trotting out the line "first global superstar" this week, but it's exactly right. The modern professional game is created in his extraordinary image. That game against England is written in my memory. I watched it at school on ...

My post, a few months ago, about who, right then, were the best sportspeople in the world, inevitably made me look a fool, to an extent. I thought I'd look back and see who I was right about, who I was completely wrong about. Here was the 50/100 I listed. But I'm going to put bold those ones where I'm wrong, based on current performance (or retirement!), and write a list of names who I missed out. The first 50 Gennady Golovkin (Kazakhstan, Boxing) Rory McIlroy (UK, Golf) Floyd Mayweather (USA, Boxing) Ashton Eaton (USA, Decathlon) Missy Franklin (USA, Swimming) Tom Brady (USA, American Football) LeBron James (USA, Basketball) Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka, Cricket) Alberto Contador (Spain, Cycling) Lionel Messi (Argentina, Football) Marianne Vos (Netherlands, Cycling) Valerie Adams (New Zealand, Shot Put) Mo Farah (UK, Athletics) Marc Marquez (Spain, Motorcycle Racing) Tony McCoy (Ireland, Horse Racing) Ronaldo (Portugal, Football) Usain Bolt (Jamaica, ...

I don't tend to be one for big sporting theories - more medium-sized. What I mean is, when it comes to the England football team losing all but one Penalty Shoot-Out in a major tournament and Germany winning every one for over 30 years, I'm not interested in ideas about overarching national psyche, but I'll extend to the notion that Germany used to practice it more, a couple of times it was down to luck, it became self-perpetuating, some England players therefore went into shoot-outs with fear, it became more than likely it would continue to happen. That's my idea of a sporting theory - "lots of little things" serves to explain hoodoos and superstitions and patterns in my book. So, what's the big idea behind England's major sporting teams' recent profound failures in World Cup? Recent, you say? Perennial, more like it... But no, recent is right. Things have changed. Things have got particularly bad. For decades, across football, rugby and, to a l...

At my desk at home, directly in my eyeline, every day, I see the evidence of my life's pursuit, the yellow covers of the 32 almost identical Wisden Cricketers Almanacks for every year from 1984 to 2015. These are my own years of watching and loving cricket; that's why this list will encompass the slightly awkward figure of 31 years. It could just as well have been 30. There'd have been no change. I haven't found much about sport to write about lately, and since I'm always happy considering and compiling a list, this seemed the obvious task for me to get the ball rolling again. I put together something similar for Football a few months ago, though I limited that to post-2000, to avoid going out of my depth in pretending to remember players from the 80s and early 90s I couldn't actually recall that well. I didn't feel that would be a problem for cricket - I've watched huge amounts of cricket since 1984, as much as could be watched, really, and there is...

I keep on meaning to write at length about the spectre of cheating in sport, horrible as it is, that makes fools of us all, that won't go away. I haven't got the time or the heart, but here are just a few thoughts in light of recent events. I admire the people that are so appalled by it that they sever contact with sports that they used to love - forget cycling, forget athletics, they say, and that's that. If you're like me, however, and you're too much of an addict, you love the stats and the struggles and the stories, they keep your life ticking over, the truth is you have to lie to yourself a bit. I haven't watched athletics and boxing over the last couple of decades without knowing there was a large percentage of cheaters in there, and I know that I don't have a perfect radar capable of picking out the baddies and the goodies. Plenty of my favourites will have cheated, I know that. They'll have lied and lied and cheated and cheated. When the ...

Look, I love Roger Federer. There's really nothing wrong with him except a very occasional slight smugness, he seems a fine person, he's obviously the most graceful sportsman ever, a pure joy to watch, he took his sport to a new level, he deserves to bask in the acclaim of his vast vast army of fans (albeit his mild smugness seems to reflect on them and magnify thirty-fold, such as every oleaginous SW19 We Love You Roger slightly lessens my affection for the man himself), 17 Grand Slams, even if that's all he gets, will probably never be beaten. Hell, he's even a big cricket fan. What's not to love? There may well be a strong argument for suggesting he's the greatest sportsman of the modern era, if not of all time. Yet, he's not, is he? Not by the measure of pure fierce indomitable will-to-win, of besting the best, of staring into the abyss and coming out stronger, of draining every last drop from his talent. There are a few, not damning, but pertinent fac...

It's not like there hasn't been loads to be depressed about in sport lately, I think that's why I haven't posted anything for a couple of months. Jeez, the nearest thing to a post I wrote was entitled 'Reconciling to Chelsea' ... no, I can't. But Chelsea's stroll to the Premier League and the fact that I couldn't object to it or feel that miffed about it is just one of the sporting events to be depressed about recently. As this Guardian article coherently suggests, this may just be  the most boring time in the history of football . Only little Mr Messi is elevating it, and the Real Madrid fans' horrendous treatment of Gareth Bale is another spirit-crusher. I'll win you the Copa del Rey and the Champions' League, I'll score a goal every couple of games, and then you can start booing me for not passing to Ronaldo enough. No wonder the poor guy's spirit was crushed and his form nosedived. Get the fuck out of there, dude, that's...

It hasn't been a great Cricket World Cup, has it? It can still be redeemed by a couple of good semi-finals and a great final, but it's fallen into all the usual traps of meaningless games, one-sided processions, hyperbole and, above all, dragging on and on. Cricket pundits en masse have shown their rank hypocrisy by suddenly proclaiming the ludicrousness of the competition's reduction to 10 teams in 2019, when for years and years they've all been advocating just that and saying the presence of the associate minnows was a waste of time. Jonathan Agnew is the only one I've heard who has at least admitted that he's changed his mind, rather than just hoping people have no memory. It is always to cricket's detriment that it is full of, at the same time, small-minded conservatism and knee-jerk reactions. Ad to that mix, over the last decade or so, gross cupidity and self-aggrandisement and it can all look rather ugly. English cricket is, of course, its own u...

As England's World Cup comes to a miserable end, I feel compelled to consider the case of one of the players people are suggesting should be consigned to England's ODI past as soon as possible to make way for the bright new technique-free talents out there. Ian Bell's the England player of the last 10 years I've most wished well for and whose successes I've enjoyed the most. I came across him on a cricket tour to the Midlands when I was about 15 and he'd have been about 11. I don't think I played in the game, I think I was just scorer, so I was able to hear the opposition players talk about this tiny kid with high regard. He'd apparently scored 200 the week before. This game was an Under-18 game and he was about half the size of some of the players, but he easily, calmly made 30* and I thought I'd look out for him in future. It was no surprise when his name started to come up as a future star in his late teens, he made his England test debut vs W...

Since it's going on right now, let's try this. I'm just going back to the start of the Six Nations in 2000, and I've set a rule that there has to be at least one from every team - to be honest, that helped make a couple of trickier decisions. Also, subs really are integral to modern rugby, so I've included 8 subs too . I'm not a massive rugby expert - I played it when I was young but, even then, I was a back and didn't fully understand forward play, and, of course, the game has moved on light years since then. Still, I've watched most of the Six Nations, within which I have various allegiances, so will probably be reasonably unbiased. It's mainly been a four team tournament - France have won it the most, just ahead of England and Wales, Ireland are usually contenders, England just about have the best game-on-game record. Logic dictates there ought to be more France players in the team I choose, but,  somehow, that didn't quite sit right, so t...

One of the questions I'm asked most often (by myself) is "What is the Greatest All Time West Indies XI"? To me, it is the great unsolvable riddle. There is no right answer, only wrong answers. It is impossible to pick a balanced side while picking the best players or anywhere near it, it's impossible to pick a captain, it's impossible to decide based on average or an number of runs or on any of that stuff. West Indies have had 15-20 All Time Great cricketers, a lot of whom have very similar records - it really is hard to know where to start. Well, you start with Sobers, obviously, but then anything can happen. West Indies cricket is a riddle in many respects. It is, for those that are interested, one of the great tales of the last century, a tale of determination, self-determination, post-colonialism, unity, pride, power, defiance, arrogance, dominance, fear, invincibility, flamboyance, leadership, dignity, grace, brilliance, partnership, all those things on t...

I read or watch something. I have an idea. That idea begets a new one. Often then, I confuse myself, stall myself because the interlocking ideas become too big for me, see the flaw in my idea, give up. I was watching the Kazahstani middleweight Gennady Golovkin batter Martin Murray (the 2nd or 3rd best middleweight in the world) last week, and it was suddenly clear to me that, though it might not yet be true on acclaim, wealth, status, achievement, Golovkin was, right now, one of the very very best sportspeople in the world. He was at a level of highly skilled, effective, brave but brutal utter dominance in his realm which few achieve. There is not, right now, a cat in hell's chance of another middleweight boxer beating him. So, I, being who I be, naturally thought "I can do a list of who, right now, are the best sportspeople in the world. I've compared across sports before, that's ok. I'm going to really try to focus on the now, rather than legacy or years of ...

If 'The Theory of Everything' wins any kind of Oscar, Frank the Beef aka Frank LeBoeuf, will become the first person to act in an Oscar-winning movie and play in a winning World Cup final. Is there anyone less deserving? No, I'm being mean. LeBouef bugged me with his "cool Frenchman on the King's Road" column when he was at Chelsea, but he wasn't a terrible defender, did a good job when he filled in for the suspended Laurent Blanc in the 98 final, and is perfectly serviceable in his brief scene as a Swiss doctor in 'The Theory of Everything'. Good luck to him. He could be the next Eric Cantona. But it got me thinking - who are the worst footballers to have won World Cups? The answer, disappointingly, is that there are not all that many bad footballers who have played on World Cup winning teams [I'm only going back to 1990. I know a lot of the 86 Argentinians were meant to be a bit dodgy and carried by Maradona, but I really can't remember...

It was the ridicule Roy Hodgson received for nominating Javier Mascherano, Phillip Lahm and Manuel Neuer for the Ballon D'Or recently that prompted me to think in depth about this. How odd that, in a World Cup year, it should seem strange that he, an international manager, would highlight three people whose influence on the World Cup final and throughout the tournament was so evidently massive. Is football really so shallow that it can't see past the glory boys? Well, yes, judging by the history of Ballon D'Or (or World Player of the Year as it was) Top 3s. It's almost all attackers or attacking midfielders. The only defensive players in the Top 3 in the last 25 years are Roberto Carlos, Oliver Kahn, Manuel Neuer and Fabio Cannavaro, with Cannavaro the only one to win. Rugby's equivalent award is the opposite, going out of its way to tell us that the real stars of the game are not those prancing, point-scoring backs, but the big lumps upfront whom the casual rug...