Refreshed Finn defies an old truism

Posted by Tom Walker on 31/07/2010

James Anderson may have grabbed all the headlines on the backpages in Saturday's papers after picking up a five-wicket haul on Friday, but it was the sight of a resurgent Steven Finn which was arguably more eye-catching. Vic Marks from The Guardian assesses the performance of the young fast bowler and turns his attention to the Ashes.

One or two stalwart old trundlers must have been grumpy tonight. It seems as if Steven Finn has defied the old truism that the best way to prepare for bowling is by doing lots of bowling. In his 11 overs today he grabbed three for 20.

Since picking up the man of the match award at the Old Trafford Test in June when Bangladesh were beaten Finn disappeared off the radar. There were naive suggestions that this was a cunning plan to hide him from the visiting Australians.

Finn was not selected for England's one-day squad, though he spent some time bowling at them in the nets. But he was never going to be anywhere near that squad. The England selectors are only interested in him for Test cricket. And the Australians have the capacity to dig up the odd video of Finn if they feel the need.

Nor was Finn in evidence in Middlesex's Twenty20 campaign. Since that Old Trafford Test he played in a second‑team game for Middlesex, when, according to his cricket director, Angus Fraser, he bowled rubbish. Then he played for the first team at Uxbridge against Sussex, when his rhythm was restored. Next stop a Test match in Nottingham.

Such a schedule would have had former England pacemen either swallowing their pipe (Fred Trueman) or doing their perfect turf-kicking impersonation of Eeyore (Fraser). Actually this would have suited other old stalwarts such as Bob Willis and John Snow down to the ground.

The evidence from Trent Bridge is that England have handled Finn's workload adroitly. The Middlesex (occasionally) seamer looked confident after all that strengthening and conditioning. He seems to be more stable too. At Old Trafford he kept falling over after delivering the ball, which invited both injury and ridicule. Here he stayed on his feet, maybe because he was not too preoccupied with veering off the pitch in his follow through. Maybe he has more muscles.

Finn bowled with a relentlessness that would have impressed Fraser. There were no frills as he aimed constantly at the top of off-stump. He did not bother searching for the dream delivery, a trap that Stuart Broad could not quite avoid as he grew exasperated by his colleagues picking up wickets at will.

James Anderson did bowl some dream deliveries, as is his wont. We know he can enchant and infuriate in equal measure. To paraphrase Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "when he is good he is very, very good. But when he is bad he is horrid".

There was nothing loose or horrid from Anderson today. He was relaxed because the ball was swinging obediently in both directions, whether he was bowling over the wicket or around, to left-handers or right. He picked up five wickets as a matter of course, while Broad, the form horse coming into this Test, could not buy a wicket until he finally penetrated Danish Kaneria's defence.

It was hard not to compare the success of the England bowlers against Pakistan with the travails of Australia at Headingley last week. There only Ben Hilfenhaus, without the artistry of Anderson – or indeed Mohammad Asif – was able to make the ball swing significantly. So the Pakistan batsmen could bat with more conviction.

The Australian left-handers Mitchell Johnson and Dougie Bollinger were whole-hearted, brisk and, by comparison with England's attack today, gun-barrel straight. England's bowlers have caused the Pakistan batsmen many more problems than the Australians. They have contrived movement and they have been more disciplined. So the easy conclusion: the Ashes are obviously in the bag.

It is not quite so straightforward. We must talk balls now. In these Tests we have been using Dukes cricket balls; in Australia they use Kookaburras. They have significantly different properties.

The Dukes ball swings and retains its hardness for longer. It suits the England bowlers and Pakistan's but not Australia's. Englishmen are familiar with this type of ball and Anderson, in particular, knows how to swing it.

The Kookaburra, by contrast, only tends to swing for the first dozen overs. The seam may be wider than its English cousin, but it is soon obliterated on hard Australian pitches. The trial for bowlers is that the damn thing declines to move at all after about 20 overs. The likes of Johnson and Bollinger compensate by banging the ball into the hard surface, hoping to surprise batsmen with their steep bounce and persistence. Later in the innings reverse-swing can be a weapon.

The evidence from Trent Bridge and Headingley is that England's bowling attack is more potent than Australia's when bowling at Pakistan's greenhorn batsmen. This does not guarantee that they will outbowl Australia in Brisbane. But it is possible.

Face it, Mascherano is off

Posted by Josh Williams on 30/07/2010

Robbie Savage, writing in the Mirror, has used his personal experience of agitating for a move to make the prediction that Javier Mascherano is destined to achieve his wish of departing Liverpool.

I look at Javier Mascherano at Liverpool and I was in a similar situation at Birmingham.

I wasn’t on the same level as him as a player, but I was as popular at Birmingham at the time as he is at Liverpool.

Continue reading "Face it, Mascherano is off"

Playing poker against Pakistan

Posted by Jo Carter on 29/07/2010

England players will have one eye on the Ashes when they take on Pakistan in the four-match Test series this week, and Graeme Swann, writing in The Sun, believes England need to lay down a marker to Australia with a convincing victory.

Pakistan are the most volatile and unpredictable team in the world - and that makes them very dangerous opponents.

But I expect us to win the four-Test series which begins at Trent Bridge today and receive another injection of self-belief. We will need every bit of momentum when we fly Down Under for the Ashes this winter.

It is amazing to think the First Test in Brisbane begins in less than four months' time and, like it or not, the Ashes is going to be a major sub-plot to our matches against Pakistan.
Some people think we shouldn't mention the A-word but it is the highlight of any cricketer's career and I can't wait for my first experience of a series in Australia.

Before then, Pakistan present a formidable obstacle. On their day, they can be brilliant.
But I would hate to play poker against them as you'd never know what hand they are holding.

They certainly had one of their best days at Headingley last week, when they bowled out Australia for just 88. The key is to make sure we dictate terms and stamp our authority from day one. If you give Pakistan a sniff, they can be a real handful - especially their bowling unit.

Our quick bowlers, in particular, need to cash in on the fact the ball should swing at Trent Bridge. They can hit their straps, take some wickets and get their confidence sky-high.
Jimmy Anderson is one of the best in the world when the ball swings and I saw Stuart Broad take eight wickets for Notts against Warwickshire last week.

Watching the Pakistan v Australia series was fascinating. With the likes of 18-year-old Mohammad Aamir, Pakistan have a fine seam attack.But Jimmy, Broady and Steven Finn will cause problems of their own.

My goal for the series is to continue how I have been performing for the past year or two. Shane Warne has said I'm the most improved cricketer in the world and that will do for me.

I was rested for the one-dayers against Bangladesh but ended up bored stupid. The wife had jobs for me to do that I'd been putting off for months and, suddenly, I couldn't wriggle out of them. So I had to tidy the spare room that was full of my cricket junk and hang up a stack of pictures.

Playing for England is the best job in the world. When I'm not in the middle, I start to think what it will be like when I retire and it is not so rosy.

Continue reading "Playing poker against Pakistan"

US may benefit from no Tiger at Ryder Cup

Posted by Josh Williams on 28/07/2010

After Corey Pavin revealed at the weekend that he was to seek showdown talks with Tiger Woods over the world No. 1's availability for the Ryder Cup in October, Martin Lipton in the Mirror suggests that the absence of Woods, who has never produced his best form in the biennial tournament, may be to the benefit of America.

If Pavin is honest, he might be hoping the answer is a firm and determined "No". Woods did not enjoy the scrutiny he was under at St Andrews.

Continue reading "US may benefit from no Tiger at Ryder Cup"

Team orders should be permitted in F1

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 27/07/2010

If you’ve read all the fall-out from the German Grand Prix, you may have been left scratching your head somewhat. Fernando Alonso, a man once embroiled in some serious politically incorrect allegations, is making more headlines than ever for winning a race thanks to the work of his team-mate. Scandalous! Felipe Massa stepped aside so that Alonso, the man with the better chance of winning the world title, could skip through for victory, and the Daily Telegraph’s David Coulthard has no problem with it...

Formula One is a team sport. There, I said it. It is not a popular view but it is the truth. And because it is a team sport, the frankly ludicrous ban on team orders that everyone is getting so worked up about should be scrapped.

Now just hear me out. I know that what we saw at Hockenheim on Sunday, when Felipe Massa was ordered aside for Fernando Alonso, was unpalatable to many fans but for goodness sake, wake up and smell the coffee. Team orders happen in F1. They always have and they always will. Just because Ferrari was ham-fisted in breaking the rules, does it make their transgression any worse? I cannot believe some of the hypocrisy we’ve heard in the past couple of days.

The only way to stop team orders would be to race with one car. As long as there are two (and some teams want three — how difficult would it be then to control team orders?) the rule is unenforceable.

Team principals should be allowed to do the best they can for their team, for their employees, for their owners. That is what they always used to do. At some point during the past 60 years we seem to have lost sight of that fact.

The public furore is based on a fundamental misunderstanding, which is that Formula One is about the individual. When I raced I lost sight of that as much as anyone else. Like every driver, I was racing for myself as well as the team. Unfortunately I was asked to make way for Mika Hakkinen at Jerez in 1997 and Melbourne a year later. Both times I acquiesced; both times reluctantly.

As I have written in previous columns, I have often wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t been so compliant. Perhaps I would have won more respect? Perhaps I would have been world champion? Perhaps I would have been fired? These are the kind of decisions a driver must weigh up.

No doubt Massa is grappling with such questions. The most damaging aspect of Sunday’s race is what it could do to his reputation. People will see him now as a ‘yes man’ who bends to the will of the company. And maybe they are right. Team player or stooge? The line is thin.

But it doesn’t change the underlying truth. My old team boss, Frank Williams, used to make decisions that would anger us drivers but when we complained about them he would say it was not about us, it was about the 700 employees in the team. We were just two paid drivers. He was right.

Ah, people will say, if it is a team sport then why is the drivers’ title the holy grail? You didn’t see Ferrari celebrate the constructors’ crown in 2008 after Lewis Hamilton pipped Massa to the drivers’ title. That’s true. Sponsors need stars so teams will try to win that crown above all. That is the ultimate goal. It is tough luck for one of the two drivers but only one of them can win the thing.

Like the Tour de France, which is all about getting the team leader across the line first. Like a football team, who can sometimes sacrifice a player to man-mark a member of the opposition in order to give his striker room to score. Like any team sport, in fact, the manager must be free to decide how best to manage his team. The players involved are free to obey or disobey — often the best sportsmen are not team players — but they do so at their own risk.

That is all part of the delicate and unique team-driver relationship. The only possible drawback I can see to repealing the team orders rule is the encouragement it might give to the illegal gambling industry. But it remains the only way of stopping charades such as the one we saw on Sunday.

Lance has the last word

Posted by Jo Carter on 26/07/2010

On the final leg of the Tour de France is the convention that no one attacks on the run to Paris, and Andy Schleck stood by tradition and did not try to attack Alberto Contador's 39 second advantage as the Spaniard won the yellow jersey for the third time. But one man who did challenge the Tour's protocols was seven-time champion Lance Armstrong, writes Richard Williams in The Guardian.

On Lance Armstrong's last day as a Tour de France rider, the American's obsession with his own interests brought the race close to farce. As the riders left Longjumeau, the commissaires noticed that he and the other eight members of his RadioShack team were wearing black jerseys emblazoned with the yellow logo of Livestrong, the organisation that covers both Armstrong's cancer foundation and, increasingly, his own commercial activities.

A change of colours is against the Tour's rules, and they were forced to stop, replace the jerseys with their regular red shirts, and reaffix their race numbers, held on with safety pins, before being allowed to continue on their way to collect the team prize.

"The idea was to talk about the significance and magnitude of the fight against the disease," Armstrong said, "but the commissaires didn't see it that way. In the end I suppose what happened probably brought more attention."

Later, in a gesture of apparent defiance, all nine riders put the black jerseys back on for the podium ceremony. Armstrong may not have won his final Tour de France, but he was always going to have the last word.

Continue reading "Lance has the last word"

Looking back on the highs and lows of a legend

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 25/07/2010

On a sad day for sports fans, the Daily Mail reflects on the life and career of a snooker legend: Alex “the Hurricane” Higgins...

Stalking round the green baize like a man possessed, the people's champion blew away opponents with a fast and furious style which made him the biggest character ever to wield a cue. But away from the snooker hall, his private life was a chaotic whirlwind of drink, womanising, fights, illness and debt.

Twice world champion, in 1972 and 1982, he earned millions in the years when snooker was a British national obsession, but blew it all in a long and turbulent descent into homelessness and drink. His career disintegrated in a blizzard of fines, bans and court-cases and he was left penniless after losing his luxury house in Cheshire to the taxman.

Despite being the man credited with making snooker popular as a TV sport, Higgins had latterly suffered the indignity of being pitched against unknowns in back-street halls in the pre-qualifying rounds for ranking tournaments, instead of playing in the finals by right.

But he never lost his passion for the game, recently saying: “I think I was the most natural, charismatic player who ever lifted a cue. I think my presence around the table was mesmerising at times. It captured people. I'm not telling you this to bolster my own ego. It's what people tell me.”

Born in Belfast, Higgins discovered the game that was to dominate his life when he stumbled across a snooker hall while taking a short-cut home at the age of 11, and became a teenage 'pool-shark', hustling money from older and less talented players.

He claimed the world champion's crown at the first attempt, aged 22, and took it back again ten years later from Ray Reardon at the Crucible in Sheffield. The scenes of him then, weeping in triumph, one arm round wife Lynn and the other cradling his baby daughter, are among the most famous and moving images in snooker history.

But what many feel was his finest hour came the following year at Preston Guildhall, when he came back from 7-0 down against the seemingly unbeatable Steve Davis to win the 1983 United Kingdom Championship final 16-15. His fall from grace began in the same hall three years later, when he head-butted an official and was fined £12,000 and banned for the next five major tournaments.

He raised his game one more time, to outplay up-and-coming Stephen Hendry and win the Irish Benson & Hedges Masters in 1989, hobbling round the table with his leg in plaster due to a broken ankle suffered when he fell from a first-floor window.

The following year, he was in trouble again, and was banned for 12 months after thumping an official and telling Northern Ireland team-mate Dennis Taylor that he would have him shot. By then, Higgins' age and the effects of his phenomenal thirst were beginning to show, and eventually he slipped out of the top 100 rankings in 1997.

But his descent into chaos failed to dilute his ability to beat the odds. After being diagnosed with cancer for the third time, he appeared gaunt and weary at the funeral of his great friend, Oliver Reed, in 1999. No one at that point believed he would live into his 60s, especially as his life unravelled in sheltered housing on the Donegall Road in Belfast.

Yet Higgins still played the game which made his name, appearing at the Irish Professional Championship in 2005 and 2006. He then published his autobiography, From the Eye of the Hurricane: My Story, in 2007.

With modern champions including Ken Doherty, Jimmy White and Ronnie O'Sullivan hailing him as an inspiration, he was set to make an emotional return to the Crucible in Sheffield on April 8 to take on the likes of Jimmy White, John Parrott and Cliff Thorburn. For a man perpetually strapped for cash, Higgins cited the return as one last chance to get his life back on track.

Time running out for Schumacher

Posted by Jo Carter on 24/07/2010

Michael Schumacher's return to F1 this season prompted huge excitement, but his failure to challenge the McLarens and Red Bulls have led some to suggest he can no longer cut it in the sport. David Coulthard in The Telegraph believes Schumacher now needs to start finding the results, and where better to do it but at his home grand prix at Hockenheim?

Michael Schumacher's defiant words in the build-up for the German Grand Prix to the effect that he is to stay in F1 next year and attempt to win an eighth world title went down predictably well in these parts.

The consensus among Schumacher fans is that after three years in the wilderness, and with the lack of in-season testing, the former world champion deserves to drive a car in which he feels comfortable before we can write him off.

My own view, which is what I said before the campaign started, is that we owed him half a season to get used to the new machines and we have now reached that point.

Schumacher knows how to develop a car and he has now had time to influence things. With nine races to go it is time for Michael to put up or shut up.

I don't think he should be winning races in his Mercedes but he should certainly be expecting by now to be matching, or bettering, team-mate Nico Rosberg if he is still world champion material. That has to be the minimum requirement.

We have just seen Lance Armstrong whimper out of his last Tour de France. It would be awful to think that we might be one and a half seasons away from seeing Michael do the same in a sport he once owned.

Continue reading "Time running out for Schumacher "

The genius of Ian Holloway

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 23/07/2010

In all honesty, the 2010 World Cup was... well... boring. By and large the action was forgettable and the punditry even more so. Maybe what it was missing was a certain Mr Holloway, who shows in the Daily Mail that he is the man to brighten up the Premier League this season...

The sun is beating down on an Army field in Devon. On the football pitch a distinctive, Bristolian voice is booming out instructions to accompany the sweat and graft of pre-season training. “Show for it, play it where you want and then move on. If you don’t get it, then move again,” he calls. “Keep it, keep it, keep it,” is the constant mantra.

Then a shout of ‘stop’, and a walk through a move that just broke down. “We don’t do things wrong here, we redo them until they are right,” raps the voice again.

Welcome to the world of the real Ian Holloway. Not the funny little bloke who does the soundbites and the one-line gags, but the proper football coach who’s in his element out on a training ground. It’s the side of ‘Ollie’ that only his players normally get to see while the rest of us enjoy his quips and comedy quotes.

In just over three weeks’ time he will take Blackpool into the Premier League with the smallest and, on paper at least, most ill-equipped squad that have tried to survive there. And this is where the hard work to chase that miracle is being done. Today he’s setting out the pattern of play before a pre-season friendly match against Accrington Stanley. It won’t be any different when he is getting ready for the real thing against Arsenal.

“You ask my lads if I am a clown or a coach,” he says later, when we’re back at the hotel and the players are resting before another session later in the afternoon. “I think it’s what I do best. I had to think hard about it during the year I spent out of the game after it all went wrong for me at Leicester, and I realised how much I liked talking to players and how much more I wanted to say; how much I wanted to push myself to add to somebody’s thinking.

“At the moment I could spend all day and all night on the phone trying to find new recruits and couldn’t be out working with them. But that’s not what I want to do. I need my players to understand where we are going, how we are trying to get there and how they are good enough to do it. And the place to learn that is out on the training ground.

“If you look at any standard, the higher you get the better they are at keeping the ball,” he says. “Spain proved it in the World Cup. If your whole ethos is about keeping it and passing it, and you teach people control and movement, then that’s the way to go. It’s easy to say that’s because they are world class players. But why are they? How did they get like that? Were they born world class or were they manufactured? My argument is that they were manufactured and it just takes practice, practice, practice.

“The more you keep doing it, the more you believe in it, and the better the players become. I don’t want to be defensive. We’ll be playing teams who will be much better at keeping the ball, but I still want mine to get better with passing and keeping it and moving and that’s what we will focus on. It’s what we did last year and we won all three play-off games like it, home, away and at Wembley.

“We are the only club ever that have had to build a whole new stand and even that has hamstrung us. We’ve got to turn our first home game into an away game, so we have five of the first six away. You can normally scrub all of them off, so that’s no points from 15, but we can’t look at it like that.

“OK, we’ve changed the opposition and that’s gone in a pretty worrying dimension if you look at some of the results that some of them had. But how many times did other teams go to the big clubs and try to retain possession and move the ball from one side to the other? Or were they more worried about blocking up these people?

“When you’ve gone a goal or three down, where’s your game plan then? Our game plan, and you saw it in the run-in and the play-offs, is to outscore the opposition, so if we let a goal in it didn’t knock us, didn’t dent our confidence, to say ‘OK, we’ll outscore them’.

“We might not be good enough to outscore Mr Drogba and all those, but we’ll have a right go at it.”

Meanwhile, he’s having a go at bringing in the right recruits at a club who have never spent more than £500,000 on a player and where the current squad list is only 17 names long. He’s going through a pile of paper with lists of names.

“Take a team at random — Everton? Let’s count the numbers, one, two three… it goes on to 37. So they are double me already for numbers and then look at the names and some of them are unbelievable. Fellaini, what was he? £16million? Even the youngsters, Jack Rodwell, how good’s he?

“I’ve got to find people who will help the very good ones I’ve got, and I know there are some who might not see Blackpool as a good enough option to stay in the top flight. Well, to be honest, I don’t want those people anyway. I’d rather have somebody that I can work with, who understands what I’m trying to say long term and wants to stay, and I’ll be calm and work and give him the opportunity to do what you saw us do today.

“Nothing is expected of us, everybody will get on the back of us and think, ‘This is quirky, we’ll enjoy this, see how they get on’. But we know what we are trying to do. It’s not easy, is it? But then life never is.”

Aamer shows why cricket needs Pakistan

Posted by Tom Walker on 22/07/2010

Cleaned up for a paltry 88 runs. It still defies belief that the mighty Australia were given such a humbling on the first day of the second Test at Headingley on Monday but there was nothing disbelieving about the performance of Pakistan bowler Mohammad Aamer. While the young, talented fast bowler made Ricky Ponting and his men look nothing more than a poor village cricket team, Mike Selvey from The Guardian puts the display into context and turns his attentions to the deeper issues surrounding Pakistan cricket.

I turned on the television after lunch yesterday to watch some of Pakistan's match against Australia and thought I was watching the highlights. Mohammad Aamer looks like a kid. In fact he is a kid, but my goodness he can bowl. The first ball of the afternoon session was a perfect, snappy late inswinger, seam-perfect, that castled Steve Smith. You could almost hear it zzzzzzzip, like a hornet. The next delivery was the stuff of dreams for the bowler: to the left-hander Mitchell Johnson, who saw only something homing to leg stump that he could clip away square for runs; a nightmare. As his blade clipped only fresh air, the ball swerved to the off, and flushed the very top of off-stump. The hat-trick ball, which swung in as Ben Hilfenhaus was expecting but then jagged away off the seam, missing bat and stumps, would have claimed Sachin, Viv, Ricky or the Don first up. Hilfenhaus is none of these. Aamer has the great Wasim Akram's capacity to manipulate the ball, rather than simply rely on an action to swing it. The same quick arm too. It means he is in control of what he does rather as a wrist spinner might be with his leg-break and googly.

What we were witnessing was old-fashioned Headingley cricket, although it appeared to be overcast rather than one of those dank, gloomy days where the light meter is always only a twitch away from being out, and by the second session there was blue sky around. Yet still it moved around. Ricky Ponting and the thinktank must have misread conditions although it is usually ill-advised to make judgments until events have unfolded further and Ponting's instincts, which belie his Punter nickname, are almost always to bat first whatever. What struck me most, though, was the way in which the three Pakistan seamers, Aamer, Mohammad Asif, and Umar Gul, had adapted to the conditions. There will have been considerable input from Waqar Younis, the Pakistan coach, who has performed brilliantly at Headingley himself (seven for 36 in an ODI nine years ago), but talking and doing are different things: England bowlers have talked for years about bowling there and almost invariably have been awful, not least last year when they were embarrassed by Australia. The key, when the conditions favour the bowler, is not too difficult to discern: you bowl a tight line, at the stumps, from a good length. Movement will take care of itself. Thus, only one of the first eight Australian wickets fell to a catch.

The upshot for me was two-fold. Firstly, it is evident that the Pakistan trio could test England as much, if not more, than any they have played against in this country for some while, including Australia last summer. When backed up by the leg‑spin of Danish Kaneria, it is a formidable all-round attack and if Mohammad Yousuf is to be brought back as well to stiffen the batting, a fine all-round side. Secondly, though, it rammed home to me just how important Pakistan cricket is to the wellbeing of the game.

It needs West Indies cricket to be strong too, of course, but the destiny of that rests in Caribbean hands. Pakistan cricket is in turmoil for reasons that have nothing to do with administrative incompetence, player power, or even arrogance and lack of pride, all of which accusations have been levelled at West Indies. They need outside help.

There is no shying away from the fact that Pakistan's cricket has had its own self-generated problems over the past couple of decades, but the situation in which they now find themselves, forced to play matches in the Middle East or Lord's and Headingley as "neutral" venues, is not of their doing. Security issues were already playing havoc with international cricket in Pakistan even before the atrocity involving the Sri Lanka team in Lahore. Domestic cricket has been unaffected largely, but the public have no top-level cricket to maintain their interest beyond that on television. For the health of Pakistan cricket then, there has to be an imperative to find a way that the national side can compete at home.

To this end, ICC has taken on board two good men as ambassadors, eminent figures in the game, in Mike Brearley and Greg Chappell. Their role, says ICC is "to encourage all cricket stakeholders to support the Pakistan Cricket Board and its players at a time when it is not possible for Pakistan to host home international cricket and to help keep the plight of Pakistan cricket in the public eye during this difficult period".

It hardly needs saying that this will not be an easy exercise. No national team, based on the recommendations of its security advisers, is going to tour there, or even undertake a brief excursion. Instead, it is thought that the first advances might involve an ICC side, and Twenty20, although even this could prove tricky, for individual players will be understandably reluctant to go against the advice of their own board or players' association.

They would need to be genuinely evangelical, committed to the philosophy of creating a resurgence in Pakistan cricket. Nothing will happen overnight. It will be a lengthy process. But one day, it will happen. It has to. In the meantime, we can look forward to seeing Pakistan next summer, probably against the touring Sri Lanka. India are here, too, but the feeling is that this might be a neutral step too far.

Even a blind man can see England is in trouble

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 21/07/2010

When a football manager states, quite brazenly, that he is a “firm believer that if the opposition scores one goal, you must score two to win”, you know he is well clued up on what he is talking about. Which is why English football fans should be alarmed by Howard Wilkinson’s current assessment of the national game in the Sun newspaper...

"The figures show a worrying trend for anyone who cares about the England national team and believes it still matters,” he said, in response to the fact that 79 percent of Premier League signings made this summer have not been English.

"Even a blind man can see that it will inevitably have major consequences for the England team. It doesn't surprise me because this is the way it has been going - but it does concern me that it's so high.

"The pool of players we are going to have to pick from in four years' time is going to be smaller than it was this time and in the last couple of World Cups.

"If you want to do well in international football, the pool of players needs to be big enough. Secondly, it needs to have the necessary experience of playing at the top level. I'm talking about the top leagues in Europe.

"Our young players will not get that in the Premier League if clubs keep signing foreign players at this rate.

"We genuinely identified this group between 1998 and 2000 as the group that could go on to achieve success in 2006 - maybe semi-finals - and be serious contenders in 2010. I don't see us bringing together players of this quality in the same numbers.

"Undoubtedly, the pool of players from whom we will be choosing in four years will be smaller than the pool now, and that will continue."

Cole was right to pick Reds above Spurs

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 20/07/2010

The old saying about blood being thicker than water usually rings true when it comes to issues of loyalty. But what happens when half of the blood running through your body is familial, and the other half is Liverpool red? The Daily Mail’s Jamie Redknapp has such a problem, which is why he turns against his dad in the case of Joe Cole...

Joe Cole has made the right decision. Going to Anfield to play for Liverpool is the right move. I know my dad, Harry, tried to take him to Tottenham and I can see why. He's a clever footballer, who unlocks defences and who still has so much to offer, an old fashioned dribbler.

Tottenham have those players. Luka Modric, Niko Kranjcar ... would Joe have got into the team? I doubt it. Of course, in what they hope will be a Champions League season, they need strength in depth but he needs to be playing first team football now.

At 28, Joe cannot continue to be an impact substitute. He's better than that. He needs a manager to love him. He didn't have it with Chelsea, he hasn't had it with England.
When he played for my dad at West Ham, he performed better with an arm around the shoulder. He will get that from Roy Hodgson.

Signing Cole is a coup for the new Liverpool manager. With there being doubts cast about the future of Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard and questions about their lack of spending power, this is a message of intent. For the club, it's a no brainer. They have signed a £15 million player for free. I know Joe's wages have caused much debate, but he wasn't asking for astronomical amounts, he wasn't being greedy.

Players hold so much power and sway now and he had found himself in an enviable position. His club, Chelsea, didn't want him, that was clear. They didn't go out of their way to keep him - can you see them letting a player like Michael Essien get into the same position? So he has just been looking for the right deal. Remember, Joe scored that brilliant goal for Chelsea at Old Trafford last season which effectively won them the title. Even then, they still didn't love him enough.

So Joe knew he wasn't wanted and has spent the time since the World Cup considering his options. Arsenal were also interested and you can see that he is Arsene Wenger's kind of player; very comfortable with the ball. Where will he play for Liverpool? He can play off the front, behind a striker, or he can play left or right. I don't suppose you will see him in a central midfield position in a 4-4-2, but he is no luxury player.

I've played against Joe and he will get about the pitch and close you down, he's not afraid of the dirty work, or of putting his foot in. I know Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher will be pleased he is coming. I hope it is not as a replacement for Gerrard, because that would be a big step backwards.

Liverpool need to soak Cole with the ball and he will create chances and score goals. Their crowd appreciates a good footballer and will welcome him to Anfield. There has been much talk that he wanted to stay in London, but I made the transition as a young boy and so he can as a player at the peak of his powers.

This is no gamble by Liverpool. And for the player, it is the ideal chance for him to get his career going again.

Tiger who?

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 19/07/2010

As a golfer, you know how far you've fallen when Jon Daly's crazily coloured trousers are getting more TV coverage than your round at St Andrews. Which is exactly what happened to Tiger Woods, writes the Daily Mirror's Oliver Holt...

It felt strange following Tiger Woods around the Old Course yesterday. He was so far down the field that he teed off nearly two hours before the final pairing. Most last days of The Open in previous years, he hadn't even left his rented house by then. In fact, knowing what we know now, he probably hadn't even left his bedroom by then.

The applause from the crowd as he walked down the first fairway at the Home Of Golf was sympathetic. They knew he didn't have a chance of winning. They knew his life is a mess. They knew that before his fall from grace, he was strongly tipped to win the first three Majors this year. And that he has not won any.

There were a few plaintive cries of 'come on Tiger' from little lads perched on stone walls. It took a while to work out the tone of their voice. Then the penny dropped: they felt sorry for him. No one has ever felt sorry for Tiger Woods before.

The cheers came from the galleries all around him but they were not for him. There were only a handful of journalists following him instead of the hordes that usually trail in his wake. There were roars for the men behind him, the protagonists in the drama, the players battling to try to catch Louis Oosthuizen. Woods was never one of those players. He was too far back to be even close to being part of the shake-up.

He was playing at the margins of the tournament. He was playing for a place. Not for the big prize. The leaderboards positioned all around the course had plenty of names on them but none of them was Woods. After the end of his level-par round, Woods looked up at the scoreboard again. That man Oosthuizen was leading by eight shots, just like Woods had done here in 2000 when he was heading for the Tiger Slam. Those days are long gone now.

This year was supposed to offer Woods the chance of a Grand Slam in a calendar year with Majors at his three favourite courses - Augusta, Pebble Beach and St Andrews. The scandal surrounding his private life that engulfed him last year and forced him to take five months away from the game put paid to that dream.

So if he can't win at Augusta, Pebble Beach or St Andrews, where can he win? And when can he win? There is a possibility that he will never get back to where he was before and there is certainly a possibility that this fallow year has cost him his chance of overhauling Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 Major victories.

When he stood in the marquee next to the clubhouse, talking about where it had all gone wrong and looking at a board that said he had finished in a tie for 23rd spot, alongside Stephen Gallacher, Trevor Immelman and Graeme McDowell, he dismissed the idea he had missed an opportunity by not winning any of the last three Majors.

"That's just the way it goes," Woods said. "I'm not going to win all of them. I've lost a lot more than I've won."

The way things are heading, his ratio isn't going to get any better.

Tiger not the only one to fall off his perch

Posted by Tom Walker on 18/07/2010

Tiger Woods will begin his final round of the Open Championship on Sunday some twelve shots adrift of the leader. With such a huge deficit to overcome to have any chance of winning his 15th Major, the world No. 1 is beginning to lose his aura. Kevin Mitchell from The Observer looks at how the great modern sportsmen are losing their invincibility.

When Tiger Woods set out on his strange and absorbing odyssey (aged two) he could hardly have envisaged that the road to golfing greatness would be rocky as well as strewn with riches.

Three decades later, as he goes to the 1st tee at St Andrews today on three under par, his hair thinning appreciably almost in emphasis of his mortality, he will exclude all thoughts of the lingering angst in his life and settle down to the only job he has ever known, tearing up a golf course.

If he triumphs again, to win his 15th major, Woods will have gone some way towards erasing the ignominy that has enveloped him over the past year. Some people will never forgive or forget, but they should. To be obsessed by someone else's misfortune reveals the nastier side of human nature.

It ought to be none of our business what goes on when Tiger shuts the door on his hotel room or back at his gated and now echoing mansion in Florida. But it's out there. There is no putting the bad stuff back in the box. That's Tiger's burden and he has to live with it.

He should have said the only people he ever needed to apologise to for his serial infidelity were his estranged wife and his children. That he chose to also do so publicly was his choice, one driven, possibly, by his concern for his image and the attendant financial implications. That continues to irritate sections of the media – and probably a much wider constituency: the gauche attempt to ameliorate our perception of his behaviour as he tries to save his commercial backside.

Woods owns golf but golf owns him, too. He is a prisoner of his wealth and the slavering sponsors who feed off him, not to mention the associated cast of thousands who knock out those awful trousers and expensive kit, a truly giant representative of capitalism in sport at its most grotesque.

He just about has pulled it off in America where such values are hard-wired into the national psyche and where sycophants abound, but Woods came to Scotland knowing, surely, that he would have to undergo one more grilling about "that night" and all the other nights, as well as his foul language and on-course demeanour, traits that offend the straight-laced.

He has probably seen off the hound dogs for now, although the FBI are lurking, interested to know more about his association with the Canadian doctor Anthony Galea, a Mr Fix-It suspected of using illegal tools.

Tiger, on his best behaviour and playing well, has declared himself pleased with the reception he has received on the other side of the ropes this week. If that is the final verdict on him, maybe it is the most fitting one. The fans have flocked to Scotland to see some golf, after all, not a human being squirming on a pin. Lance Armstrong is also trying to restate his case for greatness, against the odds, on the Tour de France, an event that once was his personal property. The finest cyclist of them all is not accused of marital faithlessness but betraying his sport, allegations he refutes with intimidating consistency.

But the whispers of impropriety will not die. Daily, the American who has won seven Tours disappears into the pack. His time, at 38, has gone. That will trouble him, obviously – but, like Tiger, he will be just as concerned about his legacy. Armstrong is either a monumental fraud and drug abuser or one of sport's incomparable heroes. We might never know, because he guards his reputation like a lean and angry wolf, feared rather than adored – which is how he will be remembered.

And what to make of Roger Federer? He, too, can fairly lay claim to have no peer in the history of his sport. Yet Mr Nice has turned nasty in recent months. Winless since the Australian Open in January, he shocked some – and confirmed for others that he is a manipulative individual – by trying to varnish his defeat by Tomas Berdych at Wimbledon last month, claiming he had a chronic back injury. It did not occur to him, apparently, that this demeaned his conqueror. Losing does not become him. Nor does the almost imperceptible fading of his gifts.

He is, of course, entitled to argue that he will regain his No1 ranking and he could prove his doubters wrong; but he has no divine right to suggest a contrary view is heresy – or that other players are incapable of beating him on their merits.

When great athletes fall, there is usually a loud thud because the distance from the top of the mountain to rejoin the rest of us is a pretty long one. Lately, they have been landing in an undignified heap at a rather alarming rate.

McIlroy's love life hits a stumbling block at St Andrews

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 17/07/2010

At 21 years of age, there's a fair chance that Rory McIlroy has never experienced true love. But after his woeful second round at St Andrews on Friday, the Daily Mail's Derek Lawrenson feels sure McIlroy now knows what it feels like to be dumped by a trusted partner...

That's the trouble with love affairs, isn't it? Just when you're completely smitten and think it will always run smooth, you run into a little turbulence and it knocks you sideways. For his first nine rounds at St Andrews, Rory McIlroy thought he had found the perfect partner in the Old Course, one who never gave him a moment's bother. The 10th was the day she picked an argument.

What a windbag she proved to be. By the end the pair were having a full-blown row of epic proportions. You remember that stat about McIlroy never having failed to break 70 in those nine rounds, played in an aggregate of 43-under-par? Yesterday the poor lad couldn't break 80, finishing on that mark after a round without a single birdie.

You know what 21-year-olds are like. As he traipsed off the 18th green he looked absolutely crushed. How could his supposed great love be so cruel as to treat him like this? 'I have never experienced anything like that before,' he said. It brought back memories of Colin Montgomerie shooting 64 in the second round of the 2002 Open and coming in like a love-struck teenager, only to follow it with an 84. The wind blew a hoolie that day, too.

What an afternoon this was at St Andrews, with the winds at venomous speeds after lunch. After all the compliments the Royal and Ancient fielded in the build-up, here was an occasion that set player against ruling body. In mid-afternoon, the gusts blew so hard that balls were moving on the greens and a 65-minute suspension in play - the first in 12 years at The Open - was called. Then came the fury. The R&A were damned by players before the suspension for not calling it earlier and damned by the ones who finished afterwards and could trace no discernible difference in the wind speed.

McIlroy, therefore, was just the most spectacular victim of the contrasting fortunes of links golf. On Thursday morning his half of the field had caught the break of their lives, playing in flat calm, and those who took advantage spent the afternoon sniggering over their good fortune. Here the unlucky half got their own back. True, yesterday morning - when they played - was no picnic, with heavy showers making life unpleasant. But every player would take heavy rain any day over the hoolie that blew in after lunch. With players not allowed to leave the course during the delay, it meant those like McIlroy and Tiger Woods spent over seven hours completing their rounds.

Not for nothing has Woods won 14 majors. Some players thrive when there are birdies to be had all over the course. But it is the greats of the game who thrive in tempestuous conditions such as these. Towards the finish it looked as if even Tiger, however, the most fearsome competitor of all, was spoiling a notable day's work by dropping shots. Others were dropping simply through exhaustion. At the end, however, there was one mighty moment for the decent smattering of people who stayed until 9.45pm to witness it, as he drove the 18th green to set up a two-putt birdie.

Poor McIlroy. Smacking gum furiously, he began in the same confident vein as the day before, registering three fine pars to begin. Then came the suspension; then came the unravelling. When play resumed, he just happened to be standing over an approach shot to the fourth, one of the most difficult holes, and he ended up with a bogey-five, his first dropped shot of the championship. At the fifth, a par five reachable in two, the Ulsterman failed to get the birdie on offer and then at the sixth, a pushed drive into some of the heaviest rough on the course led to another bogey.

At the seventh more trouble led to his fourth five in a row. At the short eighth, he had to hole from three feet to stop registering another five, but it was yet another bogey. When he missed a short birdie-putt at the ninth, it meant the man who played the back nine in 30 shots on Thursday had needed 40 to play the front nine a day later. On the agony went. 'I let it all get away from me,' he confessed.

Tiger's on the prowl

Posted by Alex Livie on 16/07/2010

Tiger Woods' opening round 67 sees him trail leader Rory McIlroy by four strokes, and Kevin Garside in The Telegraph believes his uncharacteristically subdued first-18 holes leaves him in an ominous position to make his mark on this year's Open Championship.

Apart from one shout of 'go Tiger' and an ensemble of blondes in Tiger T-shirts engaged in a spot of ambush marketing beside the 16th tee box, it was oppressively quiet on the Woods trail.

Bruce Forsyth offered potential for mischief at his hotel window overlooking the 17th fairway, but he was subdued. Not even a wave as he tracked Woods through his outsized binoculars.

Woods's playing partner, Justin Rose, thought the muggy, windless conditions might have been a factor. Perhaps the group, which also included Camilo Villegas, were becalmed by the birdie shower erupting ahead. John Daly birdied one and two and might have begun the run for home 11 under according to the marshal who followed him through the four-hole loop from eight to 11. Rory McIlroy could not miss after warning that this would be his week.

Despite an apparent lack of incident, when Woods entered the scorer's hut the numbers on his card added up to 67, the same five-under total that he posted on day one of the 2000 championship, which he won.

He did not make a serious error until the Road Hole. Maybe the thought of being ogled by Brucie put him off, or was it the blonde gaggle, each one of whom might have caught his mince pies in another life? No chance, not in this, his 'no sex, please, I'm Tiger' period.

Woods stood at six under when he pulled his drive left off the tee at the 17th and into the long grass. He escaped to 75 feet and lagged his putt to four. The ball sat above the hole – tricky but not the worst. A gasp rippled along the road behind as the par putt slid past. "We've got a long way to go," Woods said. "Just gotta keep plugging along."

A 67 will do. Woods has not broken sweat yet and smiled when asked if he could chase down McIlroy. "We've got three more rounds," he said. From his tone one inferred a different response: Rory who?

"I'm in good shape. I took advantage of a golf course when I needed to. We all saw what Rory was doing, what JD was doing. I just let the round mature. It could have been pretty good today."

Continue reading "Tiger's on the prowl"

FA Cup replays in danger

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 15/07/2010

If England’s players and manager are to be believed, the entire World Cup bid faltered the very moment Wayne Rooney and Co. were asked to leave their beds on Boxing Day to play Premier League football. A winter break is the solution so they claim, and, for the first time, the Guardian’s Owen Gibson reveals a way in which such an idea could be enforced...

The growing clamour for a winter break to benefit the England team could be answered by the Football Association dropping FA Cup replays, according to one idea under consideration that is gaining support from within the game.

The proposal to axe replays is one of a series of radical ideas being considered by an FA committee looking into ways to revitalise the 139-year-old competition but is being seized upon as the possible solution to the debate over a winter break.

Successive England managers – Sven-Goran Eriksson, Steve McClaren and now Fabio Capello – have called for a winter break in the belief that the debilitating Premier League season leaves players physically and mentally drained by the time major tournaments come around. Before the World Cup Wayne Rooney added his voice to the growing number of players backing the idea.

The FA's main board meets today for the first time since Capello's team crashed out of the World Cup against Germany, sparking a debate about the future of the England team. Sir Dave Richards, the Premier League chairman who is also chairman of Club England and sits on the FA board, will report back on the ill-fated campaign. The idea of a winter break is not believed to be on the initial agenda but could be raised.

The Premier League has historically been unwilling to countenance the idea of a winter break, arguing that there is no slack in a congested fixture calendar. But it is understood that if the FA were to propose dropping replays it would be willing to negotiate. The decision would have to be voted on by the 20 Premier League clubs, with a two-thirds majority required. If replays were abandoned it would free up a midweek slot that could accommodate a full round of league matches and allow a two-week winter break. Any changes would not be implemented until the 2011-12 season.

Both sides would want reassurance that the break would not simply be filled with more matches. The FA would seek assurances that clubs would not arrange potentially lucrative overseas tours during the break and that players would be available for an England squad get-together.

There would also be concerns that doing away with replays might impact on the FA's broadcasting deals and hit smaller clubs who benefit from money-spinning replays against larger rivals. Premier League clubs, meanwhile, would want binding assurances that the FA would not seek to fill the gap with a lucrative Wembley friendly. There would also be issues to be overcome with the Premier League's broadcasting partners and sponsors.

Other ideas under consideration as part of the ongoing review of the FA Cup, set in train by the former chief executive Ian Watmore in response to dwindling attendances and relevance, include playing some rounds under floodlights rather than at weekends, drastically overhauling the scheduling and consulting with broadcasters about innovative new approaches to presentation. The review will also look at how the prize fund is distributed.

The review, conducted by the FA Challenge Cup committee chaired by the Fulham director Mark Collins, is due to report its final conclusions before the end of the year. In addition to his other hats, Richards also sits on the committee.

Tiger's divorce

Posted by Jo Carter on 14/07/2010

Tiger Woods' 11th-hour decision to ditch his faithful putter hit the headlines yesterday, and Neil Squires in The Daily Express believes his caddie Steve Williams could be next.

Tiger Woods' caddie ­Steve Williams may have clouded his own future with unprecedented criticism of his employer but definitive confirmation of another ­divorce finally came through from the embattled world No 1 yesterday.

Separations are always painful and yesterday, when Woods delivered the news that it was all over at St Andrews, there was a sadness in his eyes.

Before the recent painful episodes, they had been through many good times. It had seemed like a marriage made in heaven, one that would last forever.

But the truth is that if one party cannot behave, a pair cannot have a future together and so, yesterday, the relationship ended. Woods and his putter of 11 years are no longer an item.

The faithful Scotty Cameron, which has brought Woods 13 of his 14 Majors, is being replaced by a heavier Nike weapon at The Open tomorrow. Another crutch in Woods’ world, one that lasted longer than his collapsed marriage, has gone.

It is hard to overemphasise the importance of this development. In the wizarding world, it would be akin to Harry Potter changing his wand.

But the putting malaise which reached a new low for Woods last month at the AT&T National, where he missed 15 putts inside 10 feet, persuaded him that action needed to be taken. The sluggish pace of the Old Course’s vast greens has confirmed it.

Continue reading "Tiger's divorce"

Barcelona snatch Cesc (for one night only)

Posted by Jo Carter on 13/07/2010

As Cesc Fabregas' Arsenal future continues to hang in the balance, the Gunners captain was subject to a prank courtesy of his Spain team-mates, writes Simon Cass in The Daily Mail.

Cesc Fabregas was the subject of an embarrassing prank on Monday night as Spain celebrated their World Cup success, when he was forced to don a Barcelona shirt in front of 200,000 fans.

With Liverpool goalkeeper Pepe Reina acting as an unofficial master of ceremonies at the party in Madrid, Barca target Fabregas was ambushed by Barcelona defenders Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique.

Reina shouted: ‘The future of Barcelona’ as his Spain team-mates pulled the famous blue-and-red striped shirt over an embarrassed Fabregas.

The Arsenal skipper, who had earlier dedicated Spain’s 1-0 victory over Holland to his current club, quickly whipped off the jersey.

But with his Arsenal future in serious doubt and new Barca president Sandro Rosell eager to bring Fabregas to the Nou Camp, the horseplay is unlikely to have gone down well in north London.

Continue reading "Barcelona snatch Cesc (for one night only)"

Armstrong hits the wall

Posted by Alex Livie on 12/07/2010

Lance Armstrong had a day to forget in the Alps, losing 12 minutes to his major rivals. There were those who were quick to claim his time at the top is over. Three crashes hardly helped the seven-time Tour de France winner, but the Guardian's William Fotheringham feels it is the end of the line for the Texan.

Most of the Tour's greats are forced to endure a moment of brutal clarity, when they are reduced to the ranks of mere mortals. For some a particular time and place always denotes the point where they have visibly taken on un Tour de trop.

After Lance Armstrong's disastrous showing today the next 13 days will show whether or not signing up for one last Tour at the age of nearly 39 was the two-wheeled equivalent of the boxer who cannot resist one final bout and ends up sprawling on the canvas after two rounds.

Halfway up the Col de la Ramaz, a sign offered leisure cyclists the chance to take part in a circuit of the rock of hell. The heat beating off the asphalt definitely had an infernal quality about it, and the steepest part of the climb leading to a series of tunnels and avalanche shelters through a rocky gorge marked the start of Armstrong's personal purgatory as he slipped inexorably off the back of the group that included all those with pretensions to a high placing overall.

The group still numbered some 35 and that made the point: the seven-times winner was about to have the worst day he has endured in 12 Tour starts.

The Texan's mentor, Eddy Merckx, lost his mystique in 1977, when he rode up the Col du Glandon in a daze due to stomach trouble. Miguel Indurain was never the same again after blowing up at Les Arcs in 1996. For those places and dates, read Armstrong, Col de la Ramaz, 2010.

Don't get carried away
Great Britain crushed Turkey to keep themselves out of tennis bottom tier but Matt Dickson, writing in the Daily Mail, feels it would be folly to get carried away.

Despite the encouraging signs of the past fortnight, the report card for British tennis over the past seven weeks of frenetic activity sees it registering around five-and-a-half out of 10, with the message that it could still do much, much better.

One of the more impressive aspects of a promising Davis Cup captaincy debut for Leon Smith was that, in the wake of GB’s 5-0 win over a weak Turkey team at Eastbourne, he clearly recognises that this is just the start of a long road.

Only those with selective amnesia will forget that last month we were talking about Britain’s worst ever Wimbledon, some sketchy performances prior to that and confusion over wildcards.

Yet there is definitely a more positive air blowing through the sport, a result of encouraging junior results and the thoroughly professional dispatching of the Turks.

By the time of the next Davis Cup tie — not until early March next year when further progress back towards the World Group can be made — things are likely to have improved a little further.

The early signs are that Smith is a good appointment. What he did to stop the rot in the Davis Cup was shrewdly assemble four of the British game’s most solid citizens — James Ward, Jamie Baker, Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski — to do the job.

Compared to what John Lloyd had to put up with in the last five defeats it was different.

There was no worrying about walking on eggshells around Andy Murray or stress about his highly strung relationship with his brother, or about whether Alex Bogdanovic would implode under pressure, or about Dan Evans’s off-court activities.

For British tennis, the set-up was refreshingly free of neurosis. Moreover, the coaching staff was largely young and British; people who care deeply about the state we are in. Baker praised their ‘meticulous’ approach.

That said, even the Turks’ No 1 player Marsel Ilhan was very disappointing, and to make serious headway in the competition it is all going to come back to Murray Jnr and unearthing a second high-class singles player.

It is tolerable for Murray to sit out the Davis Cup at this very low level, (although he will have to play at least once in the competition in the next two years to make himself eligible for the London Olympics).

He ought to be a bit more sensitive, however, about keeping his head down when he is sitting out ties.

If he is meant to be resting then fine, but seeing him pop up on things like James Corden’s excruciating World Cup show and fulfill sponsor commitments

The Dutch need to shackle Villa

Posted by Alex Livie on 11/07/2010

Four years of work on the international stage has boiled down to one game, Netherlands take on Spain for World Cup glory. Two sides steeped in international history lock horns, but there will be a new name on the trophy as neither has tasted victory on the biggest stage. Spain head into the match as favourites and Sunday Telegraph writer Henry Winter feels the Dutch have to find a way to blunt the threat of David Villa if they are to triumph.

It could come down to a defender’s mistake, affording a glimpse of goal for David Villa or Robin van Persie. For all the weight of support for Spain’s style council, this is a final of many imponderables.

For now, only one thing is certain: Holland have a real problem with Villa. It is not simply the goal threat emanating from Villa, who craves the chance to add to his five goals. It is also the elusive nature of this Scarlet Pimpernel. Until seeing Spain’s line-up, and discovering whether Fernando Torres starts, Bert van Marwijk will not know how best to blunt the dashing blade called Villa.

If Vicente del Bosque decides Torres has demonstrated sufficient sharpness in training, proving his readiness to run at Johnny Heitinga and Joris Mathijsen, then Villa will begin on the left, cutting in and letting fly at goal or linking with Xavi, Andrés Iniesta and Torres.

A striker responsible for six of Spain’s last eight goals at World Cup finals, Villa needs one more to equal Raul’s national scoring record of 44. He stands on the threshold of Spanish greatness today.

Villa is most effective when starting on the flank. Holland’s right-back, Gregory van der Wiel, must either stop Villa before he builds up speed or communicate with Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong that Spain’s No 7 glides inside.

If Del Bosque resists the temptation to recall Torres, then Villa will form the spearhead of the 4-2-3-1 formation, a role that does not suit him as much unless Holland leave space in behind, and Xabi Alonso and Xavi can find him with a through-pass. If Holland do push up, then the focus will also rest on Darren Cann and Mike Mullarkey for the right offside calls, something they have managed so far in this World Cup.

Spain cannot expect Holland to defend as deep as Germany did in their semi-final, a surprising tactic by Joachim Löw that allowed Xavi, Iniesta and Pedro to play their favourite possession game. Even at the risk of Villa or Torres exploiting room in behind, Holland will surely press Spain, seeking to deny them the oxygen they need to express themselves.

Van Bommel and De Jong will be in the faces of Xavi and company. They will be well aware of Spain’s strengths and weaknesses, elucidated by Del Bosque with his observation that “we feel better when we have the ball. When we don’t have the ball, we suffer’’.

Yet all this talk about Spanish artists against Dutch artisans ignores the presence of Wesley Sneijder, who can trick his way past Alonso and Sergio Busquets, and Arjen Robben, who can trouble Joan Capdevila. And then there’s Van Persie. The Arsenal striker has not enjoyed the best of tournaments but has too much skill in his left foot and imagination not to shine at some point.

Van Persie’s season was blighted by an ankle injury and he is hardly the only star not to impress out here. Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Lionel Messi have all failed to parade their undoubted gifts on the world stage, a subject occupying Fifa minds yesterday.

“Player freshness is always an issue at the World Cup,’’ said Danny Jordaan, of Fifa and the World Cup organising committee. “We have been wondering about this question, about just how many matches the body of a football payer can take. Is it 70? Less?

“At the end of a season the body cannot take the pressure and extra energy required for the World Cup. Messi did not score a single goal. Rooney did not score. The players we expected to score many goals did not score. We have to make sure these players have a rest before they come to a very demanding World Cup in 2014.’’

As the marathon season concludes, Villa will aim to tire the Dutch out on Sunday.

Time to make Haye

Posted by Jo Carter on 10/07/2010

David Haye seems to be stalling talks to fight one of the Klitschko brothers, but Frank Warren in The Sun calls for Haye to be willing to compromise for the sake of the sport.

American TV paymasters HBO have pulled the plug on heavyweight boxing. They say not enough people are interested in the States.

It is a blow to the division and especially to the Klitschko brothers, who have benefited most from the broadcasters' money. Yet they will not be on the breadline just yet. Their fights in Germany attract crowds in excess of 60,000, as well as getting massive viewing figures on German TV.

The only way HBO will reverse their decision is if one of the Klitschkos fights David Haye or an American star hits the scene. At the moment, neither seems likely.

Both Vitali and Wladimir want the Haye fight but it looks like The Haye-maker is stalling. This week he said he would not bow to the brothers' unreasonable financial demands.

It appears the nub of their dispute is how television money should be split.

Haye wants all the British TV revenue and says the Klitschkos can keep all the German cash. But the Klitschkos want 50-50 across the board.

It does not seem a huge stumbling block to me, as that was the deal when Ricky Hatton fought Manny Pacquiao. The Klitschkos are the bigger draw and Haye, if he wants the fight, should cede some ground. After all, he has agreed to fight both brothers for less money in the past only to back out.

Haye also has only one of the world titles, with the brothers holding the other three. I don't see where else he is going to get a better offer.

Another problem is that German outfit Sauerland Promotions have a stake in Haye's next two fights, while Golden Boy also say they have the US rights to represent Haye there.

Kalle Sauerland said: "David is keen on fighting one of the Klitschko brothers. But the devil is in the financial details."

So what is Haye's next move? There was talk of a fight with Audley Harrison. But Haye poured cold water on the match by stating he would 'never' share a ring with Harrison because Audley did not deserve the chance.

A lot of people, me included, will agree. The question is, who will be in the opposite corner to Haye in November?

Continue reading "Time to make Haye"

July 9, 2010

Beckham picks the team

Posted by Jo Carter on 09/07/2010

While ESPN.co.uk have picked their best players from the World Cup in our Friday Top Tens, David Beckham has made his choices in The Sun.

Fernando Muslera (Uruguay)
The Lazio keeper is a find for me having only just recently made his international debut a few months ago. Uruguay didn't concede any goals in the group stage and his two penalty saves against Ghana in the quarter-final shootout show that he has the temperament for the big stage.

Ashley Cole (England)
I also enjoyed watching Portugal's Fabio Coentrao but Ashley for me is the best left-back in the world and probably England's star performer in South Africa. He never stops running and, while he is a very good defender, he loves to attack opposing full-backs.

Sergio Ramos (Spain)
Having played with Sergio at Real Madrid I can say he's one of the most determined and committed defenders I've come across. He enjoys linking up with the attack and loves to shoot when he gets the chance. He has had a great World Cup to help Spain reach the final.

John Mensah (Ghana)
The Ghana captain was very solid as they progressed through the tournament and were unlucky in their quarter-final with Uruguay. The rugged defender, on loan at Sunderland last season, leads by example and is not afraid to put his body on the line for his team.

Carles Puyol (Spain)
The semi-final showed how important he is for Spain. Not only was he strong defensively, he got the crucial goal that took Spain into the final. I've played against him and not only does he have natural talent, he has enormous presence and a really strong work ethic.

Thomas Muller (Germany)
Not a name many had heard before the tournament but four goals and three assists from five games is an amazing return from the 20-year-old. It was a shame he missed the semi and you could tell Germany missed his pace and finishing ability.

Bastian Schweinsteiger (Germany)
Has had a very good World Cup tournament and was particularly impressive in the 4-1 last-16 win against England. He has all the attributes of a modern midfield player. You would certainly want him alongside you in any team.

Xavi (Spain)
You could pick Xabi Alonso or Andres Iniesta but I love to watch Xavi play. Every team needs a Xavi. He runs the engine room and is such an intelligent player.
He has amazing vision and passing ability and, for me, is Spain's main man. He is a worthy candidate for player of the tournament.

Wesley Sneijder (Holland)
A talented playmaker who has had a great season for both club and country. He has an eye for a pass and impressive dead-ball ability. He's got many goals here from an advanced midfield role. The Inter man will definitely be one to watch in Sunday's final.

David Villa (Spain)
With five goals taking him joint top of the scoring charts so far, he has proven he is one of the world's best finishers. He can play off either foot and is devastating in front of goal. It's frightening that he is joining what is already a great Barcelona team.

Diego Forlan (Uruguay)
A striker who has got better and better over the years. I was lucky to play with Diego at Manchester United and we could all see what a talented player he was. Now he has supreme confidence. With four goals and several assists, he's had a great tournament.

Continue reading "Beckham picks the team"

July 8, 2010

Don't fall into the speed trap

Posted by Alex Livie on 08/07/2010

Australia’s Shaun Tait set tongues wagging when pinging the ball down at 100mph at Lord’s last week. It was certainly slick from the paceman, but the Guardian’s Mike Selvey feels the it would be wise to take the readings with a pinch of salt.

I like the concept of the speed guns we see on television at international matches, and of course on the big screens at the grounds. In my view, they are an enhancement of the enjoyment, an integral part of the entertainment. When the quick men are on, they give it the extra wow factor. The bowlers love them too.

Darren Gough, for instance, almost cricked his neck trying to see the speed, which in his time was displayed on a little screen affixed to the advertising hoardings on the boundary, immediately after delivery. It was almost an obsession. They are also pretty useful at the other end of the scale, in helping to highlight whether a spinner has a default pace or whether he varies it, and by how much.

But as with Hawk-Eye, or the pitch mat for lbw, or Snicko, or even the enhanced technology of Hotspot, it is not there to be taken too seriously. It has its flaws. It is not definitive. There is a margin for error. It may even be open to a little trickery if there is a little tinkering with the calibration.

I was reminded of this during the first of England's recent one-day internationals with Australia at the Rose Bowl, when in the course of the England innings Ryan Harris was deemed to have sent down a delivery in excess of 96mph. This marks him down as one of the fastest bowlers in history, and while I bow to no one in admiration of Harris's blood-and-guts, in-yer-face bowling, he isn't that. Goodness only knows what that would make Tommo, or Mikey Holding, or Shoaib Akhtar.

So later that evening, I asked a fellow from Sky about the accuracy of a piece of technology that apparently is similar to the ones used by traffic police. "All I will say," he said guardedly, "is that if I was pulled over by the police on the evidence of cricket's speed gun, I don't think I'd be too happy."

Then last week, at Lord's, we had Shaun Tait delivering what has been billed as the fastest over ever delivered there, during the course of which one delivery burst through the 100mph barrier. Actually I'm not going to argue all that much in that it certainly was rapid, although I have witnessed at very close hand Jeff Thomson, from the Pavilion End, sending down what he himself described to me as "the fastest spell I ever bowled on a slow pitch". I also recall Waqar Younis obliterating England through the air. But 100mph is a pretty significant figure, and not one with which to trifle.

In fact, I was there at Newlands, in 2003, when Shoaib sent down what was the first officially recorded 100mph delivery. Now I know not whether Shoaib is the fastest ever (and this is not a forum for that chestnut) although I reckon that when on the rampage, before he let the ball go, he would have overtaken in his run-up anything bowled by Paul Collingwood, and know that the fastest single delivery I ever saw castled the New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming in the semi-final of the 1999 World Cup. What I can say with absolute certainty is that far from leaving scorch marks on the pitch, and the batsman's blade in tatters, the historic ball sent down by Shoaib was calmly flicked off his hip for a single by Nick Knight.

"What," I asked Nick, "did the first 100mph delivery feel like?" "About 78," he said. There was always a feeling that the South Africa World Cup was going to produce that delivery at any cost. It was a fix.

It is not going to be easy to draw comparison between the attempts at measuring in different eras. When Tommo was timed within a whisker of 100mph 35 years ago, it was done by using the frames on film.

Subsequent methods have taken the speed of the ball over the length of the pitch, thus giving different readings for bouncers relative to yorkers or even a full toss. What is measured now is effectively muzzle velocity, the speed as the ball leaves the hand, which can create an entirely different picture, and certainly not something that was available to assess Tommo or Holding.

What we need to do therefore is keep a perspective on these things and what they actually mean. During another Lord's spell from Waqar, I happened to glance at the little illuminated strip with its digital numbers, set in front of the grandstand, and one delivery read 120mph. Few seemed to see it. It was nonsense of course, an anomaly. But if that was an anomaly, how can we trust other readings.

Tait is rapid and great for the game, a real buzz. But 100mph?

July 7, 2010

Celebrate Murali's greatness

Posted by Alex Livie on 07/07/2010

One of cricket’s most famous faces announced on Tuesday that his Test career is drawing to a close. Muttiah Muralitharan, ever smiling, is the leading wicket taker in the history of the game and that record may remain his for all time. His career has been dogged by controversy but Mike Selvey in the Guardian feels the Sri Lankan deserves his place in the history books.

No cricketer can ever have courted controversy or split public opinion quite as much as Muttiah Muralitharan. To some he has been a genius, throughout the past two decades a worthy counterpoint and rival to Shane Warne for the title of supreme spin bowler. To others, though, he has been a cheat, a "chucker" in the words of John Howard, the former Australian prime minister, whose bid to become president of the International Cricket Council has foundered not least on the back of the antipathy such a statement might have caused in Sri Lanka.

There has even been debate about how to spell and pronounce his name, something to which Australia's Channel 9 in particular barely paid lip-service. Murali pretty much just grinned and said do as you wish. Such things were not worth fighting over for someone who had spent his life as a Tamil in a country in which they were marginalised, or who did so much to raise funds in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami that lay waste the south of the island. To criticise a genuine humanitarian at such times seems petty.

It is 46 years since Fred Trueman became the first to take 300 Test wickets and pronounce that if anyone else managed it they would be "bloody knackered". Quite what Trueman would have made of Murali's relentless march does not bear thinking about. He will go to Galle to play India for his final Test (although not his final match for Sri Lanka) with 792 wickets. When he was in his absolute pomp and taking wickets like pick-and-mix from the sweet counter there was talk of 1,000 wickets, but it is still a total, given the demands on modern international cricketers, that will never be beaten.

Galle is not a bad place for a final hurrah (if indeed it proves to be – let us see what he does if he fails to take the eight he needs to reach 800). His home ground is Kandy where he dismissed Paul Collingwood to regain the record from Warne one last time but there is no Test there. Instead, of course, he will remember the desolation and death in Galle from the tsunami as well as recognising a ground that brought him 103 of his wickets at a rate of more than seven per match.

Some of the statistics are staggering. On 66 occasions, he has taken five wickets in an innings, compared to Warne's 37. He has managed 10 wickets in a match 22 times and to place this in context, only 11 bowlers have managed more five-wicket innings than this. Twice – in 2001, against India, Bangladesh and West Indies and again in 2006 against England and South Africa – he took 10 wickets in four successive matches. No one has sent down more than his 43,669 deliveries (40,850 for Anil Kumble and 40,705 for Warne are the only ones in the parish). A total of 73 of his wickets have come with catches by Mahela Jayawardene, the most by a non-wicketkeeper off a single bowler.

He did not carry the Sri Lanka attack for the bulk of his career, until his shoulder began to object and a little of the fizz went out of him – he was the Sri Lanka attack. Murali would occupy one end until play was done. Only his record against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, 176 wickets from 25 matches, diminishes him compared to Warne, who took only 17 from three games.

Often it is a unique method that elevates a sportsman above his contemporaries and Murali has been unique. Where many have called him a thrower, some extremists even suggesting his deeds should be struck from the records and that somehow he has devalued rather than enhanced the game, others have recognised someone who has overcome disability to make of himself what he has. His right arm remains permanently bent, the flexibility and rotation of his wrist beyond the norm. It is why those who imitate him actually do break the bounds of legality.

The degree of spin he gains as a result of a combination of finger manipulation and wrist has been extraordinary, way beyond that achievable by those who are finger spinners alone. And when the spin became so vast yet predictable that batsmen began to learn how to play him, he developed the top spinner and then the "doosra", the other one, a delivery bowled with the same action but which turns away from the right-hander.

With it came the sort of clamour that had greeted first sightings of him. It is, critics will say, physically impossible to bowl as he does without a jerk in the action, to which the response is that it is possible, but only to someone who has Murali's freakish attributes. In 1995, in Melbourne, in what appeared a premeditated and arbitrary act, the umpire Darrell Hair called him for throwing and, not for the last time, sparked an international cricket incident. He was no-balled again during the subsequent one-day series.

He underwent the indignity of biomechanical analysis at the University of Western Australia and the University of Hong Kong, both of which concluded that his action created the "optical illusion of throwing". It failed to end the controversy – he was no-balled three years later by Ross Emerson and in 2004 reported by the match referee Chris Broad.

From this, though, came not the continued vilification of Murali but, with the aid of modern technology, the recognition that almost all bowlers to a greater or lesser degree fail to conform to the letter of the bowling law when it comes to straightening the arm. If some allege the limit of 15 degrees of flex by the elbow was agreed specifically to include Murali, then ultimately he became vindicated.

July 6, 2010

Luck of the Irish tempts the Tiger

Posted by Jo Carter on 06/07/2010

Tiger Woods made his first appearance in Europe since the revelations surrounding his private life hit the headlines last year. Much to the delight of a packed crowd in Limerick, the world No. 1 attended JP McManus' pro-am, but The Daily Mail's Derek Lawrenson wonders how the Irishman managed to tempt the Tiger to play.

How on earth does he do it? People pay Tiger Woods over £2million a tournament to turn up outside America - and here's Irish entrepreneur JP McManus securing his services for a two-day pro-am in Limerick for nothing.

Woods is getting acclimatised for The Open, you say? Actually, when his second round is over at lunchtime today, he is due to board Air Tiger and head back home to Orlando before returning to Scotland next Saturday.

This was the first time Woods had been seen on a non-American golf course this year and, as he walked from the practice ground to the first tee yesterday, he had cameras of all varieties stuck in his face.

How on earth does JP do it? Mention the words pro-am to most top players and they speak of it in terms of a necessary chore to be carried out only when there is no alternative.

But here they all were, no fewer than 14 major champions with 35 major titles between them. They boarded planes charted by JP in Paris and Philadelphia to make their way for an extra two rounds of golf at the height of the business end of the season.

How does he do it? Not only Woods, but Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington and John Daly as well, plus many of the glamour pusses of the modern game, like Rory McIlroy, Ian Poulter, Paul Casey and the new US Open champion, Graeme McDowell.

Gather all those players at a regular European Tour event and you would be looking at an appearance money bill in the region of £7m, but here they all turned up to play for a prize fund representing loose change. How does he do it?

Continue reading "Luck of the Irish tempts the Tiger"

July 5, 2010

The mark of a true champion

Posted by Jo Carter on 05/07/2010

As a former world No. 1 and three-time Wimbledon champion, Boris Becker is qualified to comment on Nadal's qualities as a champion. It remains to be seen just how good Nadal will be, but in his column in The Telegraph, Becker knows that grinding out results when you are not at your best is the sign of a great player.

Rafael Nadal was good yesterday, but not great. If he is honest with himself he would admit that he was not at his best.

He won not because he was much better than Tomas Berdych, but because he had been in that situation before, he knew what to do, and because he has a ‘B’ – or even a ‘C’ – game. He made a lot of unforced errors on his forehand, but what did he do? He took off some speed, played the ball into the middle, and put the pressure right back on Berdych.

But that, of course, is the key to winning a major tournament, and the reason that Nadal is such a great champion. It is impossible to play seven straight matches at your best. You do what is necessary to win each point, and it does not always have to be a magical forehand winner. That is what sets champions apart from finalists. Nadal finds a way to win — scrambling, fighting, putting the ball back one more time. It is not down to technique, but attitude, and it just goes to show the kind of player he is.

Still, I was disappointed by Berdych. I had expected more from him.

He was given a number of chances, especially in the second set, but he could not convert. We have been waiting for the big breakthrough from the Czech, and there was something in the air this time around, but it seems as though he still does not believe that he belongs at the peak of the game. The core essence of the result was that he was overwhelmed when it mattered, at the latter stages of each set.

It is understandable. The world does not watch you when you play in Milwaukee, but it watches you on the Centre Court of Wimbledon, and as a player you can feel it. Everyone around you is nervous, and whether good or bad, it effects you. Some players thrive on the big stage, others have to put themselves in situations like yesterday over and over again to learn from it and get better. Berdych has the game, now he has to get consistency, to be a regular player in the big finals.

Winning Wimbledon does not happen by luck. You have to earn it, and it starts with adopting the right game strategy. This has to be the first time in the history of a Wimbledon final that there was absolutely no serve and volleying.

That is why Nadal has now won eight grand slam titles, and why he will go on to win plenty more. Roger Federer has 16, of course, and there is still a long way to go, but it is certainly possible that Nadal can catch him. Judging by the way that Nadal changed his schedule this year, not playing too many weeks in a row, it looks as if he has an eye on just that. To have a long career, to still be playing at the age of 28 or 29-years-old, that is what he has to do. Play less.

Continue reading "The mark of a true champion"

July 4, 2010

Who was worried about Nadal?

Posted by Jo Carter on 04/07/2010

Two years after knocking Roger Federer off his Wimbledon throne, Rafael Nadal is back to his best and one match away from an eighth Grand Slam title. But after a year of struggle with injuries and off-court issues, the Spaniard is simply unstoppable, writes Mark Hodgkinson in The Sunday Telegraph.

For Middle England, Wimbledon's core constituency, worrying about the state of Rafael Nadal's knees is a bit like worrying about house prices: it never turns out to be quite as bad as you had imagined.

When did you fear most for Nadal? Was it when he summered "away from everything" last year, when his parents were having difficulties with their marriage and he could not play at Wimbledon because of his knees?

Or perhaps it was when he failed to win a set in his three round-robin matches last November at the end-of-season tournament on the Greenwich Peninsula?

Or maybe it was when he arrived on the French Riviera this April, for the tournament at the Monte Carlo Country Club, having not won a title for almost a year?

Or was it earlier in these Championships, when Nadal was concerned about his body? Nadal could confirm his dominance of men's tennis by beating Tomas Berdych, the son of a train driver and a grand slam final debutant, on Wimbledon's Centre Court.

For the first time since 2002, Roger Federer will not feature on the second Sunday of the Wimbledon fortnight, and Nadal has only previously lost in grand slam finals when he has played the Swiss on this lawn.

For the past three months, starting with that tournament on the Cote d'Azur, Nadal has been showing more teeth than Julia Roberts, performing his victory celebrations of biting into trophies, and now he is just three sets away from chewing on that golden Wimbledon cup again.

Nadal has won 30 of his last 31 matches, with his only defeat in that run coming against Feliciano Lopez in the quarter-finals of the pre-Wimbledon tournament at Queen's Club.

From Monaco to Roland Garros, Nadal played a perfect clay-court season, going undefeated, including regaining his French Open title, and this afternoon he could be presented with a second replica Wimbledon trophy to be lovingly placed on top of his television in Majorca.

Whatever happens on Sunday, Federer will on Monday morning be ranked outside the top two for the first time since 2003, and it will look as though Nadal, the world No 1, has every chance of finishing this season at the top of that list.

Continue reading "Who was worried about Nadal?"

July 3, 2010

Let's blame Beckham for Murray's loss

Posted by Alex Livie on 03/07/2010

Andy Murray came up short in his quest to reach the Wimbledon final, as he was found wanting by world No. 1 Rafael Nadal. In truth there was little between the pair, but Nadal edged the vital moments. Not even David Beckham could inspire Murray and the Telegraph’s Jim White feels it was another instance of Brits proving they are the nearly men of tennis.

"At match point, with Andy Murray just seconds away from defeat in his second Wimbledon semi final in a row, someone in the Centre Court crowd articulated the precise cause of his exit.

“I blame David Beckham,” the heckler shouted. Beckham, the new cheerleader in chief of British sport, fresh from chivvying our footballers on to humiliation in South Africa, looked suitably sheepish as he sat in the stands. It was a funny intervention. And so much easier to blame the man who is rapidly becoming the nation’s sporting Jonah than it was to face the simple truth: when up against the very best, our collective hope once again fell short. Critically short.

In just over two hours twenty minutes, Murray lost in straight sets to Rafael Nadal, thus becoming the tenth British man to lose in the semis since Bunny Austin reached the 1938 final. We are good on this island at producing the nearly men of tennis. But if you want to know what the real thing looks like, he was wearing a white headband, calf length shorts and hit every ball yesterday as if it had personally insulted him.

“It’s not like I played badly,” said Murray afterwards, the disappointment catching in his throat. “It was just he played great.”

Murray was spot on in his analysis. His problems on Centre Court were not of his own making. Unlike the England football team at the World Cup, he approached the most important engagement of his career if not in the form of his life, then pretty close. There was little sign of nerves when he stepped out to a rousing ovation, no hint that the pressure of expectation was too great for him to bear. As he had throughout this tournament, he played well. His forehand was vicious, his lobs imaginative, his serve precise.

No, his problems were exclusively served up by the player on the other side of the net. Nadal did not become world number one, did not win seven grand slam titles, by having the backbone of a jellyfish. As was evidenced by his role in Wimbledon’s greatest ever match – that epic final in 2008 – this is not a man who gives up. Like Monty Python’s Black Knight it would require the severance of all his limbs for an opponent to gain advantage. And still he wouldn’t quit.

Rarely in sport are we witness to a force of will as great as that Nadal demonstrated yesterday. Take the second set. Murray had lost the first easily, unable to find the geometry in his shots to outwit the Spaniard. But for much of the second, it appeared momentum was ebbing the Scot’s way. As he won his service games to love, as he three times stretched Nadal to deuce on his serve, in the crowd you could feel the hope rising. Surely, at last, their time had come: they were about to witness history. But Nadal refused to be cowed. Time and again, he battled back from the edge. In the set’s tie break, Murray took the lead. He looked good. He looked on his way. But Nadal, pummelling the ball so hard you expected the cover to fly off at any second, insisted he would win it. And when the inevitable happened, when Nadal clinched the set to go two up, Murray hurled his racket to the ground. It was not an act of petulance. It was a moment of despair: what did he have to do to beat this man?"

Murray must go on the attack

Boris Becker is writing a column for the Daily Telegraph and he believes Murray must become more attack minded and also questioned the role of his coahes.

"Without doubt, falling just short at another grand slam is going to hit Andy Murray hard. Be it today or, if it is not too painful, when he watches the final from a sofa at home tomorrow, he will get the sinking feeling that comes with every big chance blown.

But Andy is not destined to always fall short. I really believe that he has a slam in him.

In truth, Murray played as well as he could have done yesterday. Tactically and strategically, it was his best match of the tournament.

Rafael Nadal was just as we expected he would be, running down every ball and putting Murray under incredible pressure, and for the most part, he handled it well. But the semi-finals of a slam revolve around a handful of points, and when they came, Andy hesitated.

Would the match have changed had he won the second set? Of course — his set point in the tie-breaker was the key moment. But it is an inescapable fact that a player reverts to instinct on the big points at the business end of a tournament like Wimbledon.

Unless you really believe that is the right way to play, when crunch time comes, you slip back to your old ways, and Murray’s gut feeling is still to play defensively.

For example, if he had put a big first serve in the corner, only for Nadal to rip a return past him, he would have had to hold up his hands, and say “too good”.

But he missed the first serve, played a tentative second, and retreated three feet behind the baseline. Just then, he let Nadal do the talking on the tennis court, and he was always going to lose that point. It was a classic example of lacking 100 per cent belief that attacking was the right way to go.

Nevertheless, Murray is on the right track, but his improvement over this tournament begs the question: why has it taken so long for him to adopt an aggressive mentality? Finally changing things around when he comes to the most important tournament of the year does not make sense. He should have been playing like this back in March. What have his coaching team been doing all this time?

Another concern I have is that someone in his group said on the eve of this semi-final that they were not worried about him being knocked out of Queen’s in the third round. They said it meant he could have a week of practice on court before Wimbledon started. That is the last thing you want to do. It is too late – everything has to be in place by then. That is a difference between players such as Nadal and Federer, and Murray.

It makes me wonder, therefore, whether he will be with the same coaching team next year. Andy is an ambitious young player, but he needs help. He needs someone in his corner that will take him to the next level, especially over the next phase, the hard court season."

July 2, 2010

Go for the throat Andy and you can beat Rafael Nadal

Posted by Rob Phillips-Knight on 02/07/2010

Brad Gilbert and Andy Murray never enjoyed the best of working relationships. The American coach was employed by the Lawn Tennis Association to turn Murray into a Grand Slam champion but the Scot cut short their partnership halfway through the deal citing his desire to move in a different direction. Gilbert, though, knows Murray’s game better than most and, writing in the Daily Mail, says the world No. 4 should take himself back to the mindset that saw him beat today’s semi-final opponent Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open at the same stage.

My advice to Andy Murray today? Ignore the weight of history on your shoulders and try to think yourself back to that mindset you had when you faced Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open in January.

I am pretty sure Andy can do the former, but the latter is more difficult to achieve. What he needs to find is the balance which we saw that evening in Melbourne when he produced the perfect blend of attacking tennis.

That was the best match I ever saw Andy play (I am sure he would have won even if Rafa had not suffered knee problems after two sets) as he came out with a lethal offensive game that really took the Spaniard by surprise.

He needs more of the same this afternoon because the world No 1 is simply too good not to take advantage if Andy falls back into being too defensive.

There are two specific areas in which the British player really has to perform if he is going to knock over a man who has developed such a fine record on grass.

Key one is that Andy has to have a good day with his first serve. If this is working consistently — up above 60 per cent — then you can make a lot of progress against Rafa, who I have noticed is standing further up the court to receive the first delivery.

You could see when he played Robin Soderling in the quarter-final that he was struggling when the Swede opened up with a high percentage of first serves. But when that dropped, Rafa showed how rough he can be when it comes to attacking second serves. The other key is that Andy has to be aggressive when returning serve himself and try not to allow Rafa to be in a position to dictate the rallies from the off.

The Spaniard simply has too much power off both wings and is particularly brutal from the middle of the court against righthanders, especially when he drives to his opponent’s forehand side with a stroke that is very hard to read.

On absolutely no account can Andy afford to lapse during rallies into his tendency to hit what I call ‘meatballs’, shots that dribble up the middle of the court. Those get killed by Rafa.

July 1, 2010

Am I Isner or Mahut?

Posted by Ben Blackmore on 01/07/2010

When watching John Isner and Nicolas Mahut slug each other into a standstill in the great marathon match of Wimbledon, the only thing that could have heightened the drama would have been mini-microphones allowing us to find out what each player was thinking. Well, Isner has since recounted his top 10 thoughts on the David Letterman show, and the Guardian have listed them for us...

10. I'm exhausted

9. We've been playing so long I've forgotten - am I Isner or Mahut?

8. Remember when I said I was exhausted? That was eight hours ago!

7. Wonder if I'll be sore tomorrow

6. I'm gonna lay back until 51-50, then make my move

5. I'm asleep

4. Why couldn't I have played Federer?

3. Cramp!

2. Honestly, I don't care if I win or lose, I just don't want to die

1. Larry King has had marriages that didn't last this long