Hodgson for Prime Minister

Fulham’s amazing season will have the chance to reach the climax it deserves after their comeback against Hamburg booked their place in the Europa League final. Fulham’s players have been on the go since July and the Times’ Patrick Barclay is convinced Roy Hodgson deserves to be named manager of the year.

For once, the fairytale by the Thames was not just about Fulham. Ricardo Moniz, who was once a coach with Martin Jol at Tottenham Hotspur, was making his managerial debut at the age of nearly 46 in the second leg of a European semi-final. But, fortunately for Roy Hodgson, that tale had an unhappy ending.

It is said that Ruud van Nistelrooy was handed £100,000 a week by Hamburg. Hodgson would be expected to sign four or five players for that. He seems fated never to have a lavish budget; even when he was with Inter Milan in the 1990s, the club, now in the Champions League final, were going through a phase in which it was sometimes a struggle to fill the substitutes’ bench.

He nevertheless took them from mid-table to third place in Italy and also to the final of the 1997 Uefa Cup, in which they lost on penalties to Schalke 04. Hodgson has never sought nor received a semblance of the adulation being showered on the messiah now in charge of Inter — but when was there ever a manager quite like José Mourinho?

The danger to Fulham this summer is that any English club with potential would be foolish to ignore Hodgson. One thing he does have in common with Mourinho is that he seems to be inhabiting the peak of his powers. To have saved Fulham from relegation, hoisted them into the club’s best league position and then into the Europa League, in which they have outlasted some of the continent’s most famous names, is glowing testimony to a working life intelligently dedicated to the game.

No wonder he is talked about as Barclays Premier League Manager of the Year. He would not have been flattered by the award last season, despite Sir Alex Ferguson’s completion of a hat-trick of titles, and for his squad to have coped with the extra demands imposed by a long run in Europe is arguably an even greater achievement than finishing ninth.

Time for redemption

The World Twenty20 gets underway on Friday and it is a chance for West Indies cricket to right the wrongs of the shambles that was the World Cup, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

Three years ago the International Cricket Council ran a World Cup in the Caribbean so inept that it made the Atlanta Olympics seem like a roaring success by comparison. The region, so keen to take advantage of the profile offered by the event, instead was humiliated.

Overshadowed by the death of Bob Woolmer, it was – beyond a memorable opening spectacular in Trelawny – a fiasco, culminating in the farcical finish it deserved. In wanting to present the essence of Caribbean cricket the ICC missed the point memorably. New stadiums were built, designed to hold the thousands who never came because they had been priced out, alienated and subjected to ludicrously overstated security. The disincentives to gaining enjoyment might have come straight from a puritan handbook.

But over the next three weeks or so there is a chance of redemption. That the World Twenty20 comes so soon after the last edition, an outstanding success in England, is unfortunate, not least for the reigning champions Pakistan, but represents a recalibrating of the international calendar. However, the opportunity for the region to re-establish its cricketing credentials is huge, with a hit-and-dash schedule to match the cricket.

The format is snappy, with group matches mainly in Guyana and St Lucia, all double-headers, designed to pare back a dozen teams to make a Super Eight series in Barbados. Then come semi-finals in St Lucia and a final on 16 May at the magnificently redeveloped Kensington Oval. The women's tournament takes place on St Kitts, with semi-finals and final following those of the men.

The failure of India and Pakistan to make it through to the Super Eight stage of the last World Cup was a financial disaster for rights holders on the subcontinent. From that perspective the biggest game was supposed to have been in Bridgetown between the two great rivals: Bangladesh against Ireland did not have the same allure.

For the next World Cup and indeed this tournament ICC has gone out of its way to try to ensure such an anomaly cannot happen. But the shorter the game, the greater the chance of an upset. T20 is set up for surprise results and so, if Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan after their brilliant story are marked down as the fall guys, then the warm-up games – in which Zimbabwe have beaten Australia and Afghanistan thumped Ireland – have shown what a dangerous presumption that can be.