So, farewell (perhaps), Andy Murray - quite possibly the finest British sportsman of his era

Normally, I'd have the decency to wait until Sir Andy formally announced his retirement before writing this - but circumstances suggest I'd better just get on with it, and today's loss in an epic five-setter in the first round of the Australian Open to the formidable Spanish player, Robert0 Bautista Agut seems as good an opportunity as any...

Welcome back, Serbinator! And could anyone explain why women players are paid the same as men?

I was going to give Wimbledon a miss this year, but I weakened and dipped into the Federer v. Anderson quarter-final. It was so enthralling...

World Cup Derangement Syndrome - I blame the heat, and the horrible, vindictive, mean-spirited New Left

Probably best to wait until the end of the match before tweeting, Dummkopf.  So much for the Daily Mirror associate editor - I wonder how the Guardian reacted to England's win? 

Putin reacts to the penalty shoot-out

via GIPHY

I think we now have a definitive answer to that particular question...

I didn't watch the Champions League final...

Watching the Boat Race on the BBC was like being being lectured by some aged, earnest, humourless left-wing aunt

I rarely watch the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, but my wife had it on when we sat down to a late lunch on Saturday, so I thought I might as well. After about quarter of an hour of the race build-up (races build-up, I should say, because the real thing is preceded by a female version) I decided I might as well not, because it was pissing me off quite severely. First, there was some guff about getting state schools involved in rowing (why?), then an interview where a black co-presenter interviewed two black kids, then a female interviewer interviewed some female rowers about how great it was that more women were rowing and what a battle it had been to get women's rowing established in the face of male... whatever, plus some tosh about how the boat race should be used to get the public more interested in rowing...

Australian ball-tampering - Mr. Schaden, let me introduce you to Miss Freude

I think The Sun spoke for us all this morning:

20 rules to turn a budding tennis player into another Roger Federer

I'd decided not to post anything more about my sporting hero, Roger Federer, until he announced his retirement - but, strangely, that day appears to be receding further into the future with each passing month. Besides, the old boy keeps rewriting tennis history. By reaching the semi-finals of the  Rotterdam Open last week he became the oldest player in the open era to reach (or recapture) the World No. 1 spot, beating the previous holder of that record, Andre Agassi, by three years. It may be the most impressive - and the most unlikely - of all his achievements. Players well over the age of 30 have been known to win the occasional slam, as well as lesser titles - but, because...

My cultural 2017: books, art, music, films (and sport)

Books: Fiction
Having set myself the goal of reading 25 novels I really should have read between 1st March 2017 and 28th February 2018, I have to report that I'm not going to make it. It seems that the emotional and intellectual effort required to fully engage with proper literature is simply too exhausting for me in my current enfeebled state. Still, I managed to read 19 of the titles before finally throwing in the sponge around the start of November. The most exciting discovery, for me, was probably Cormac McCarthy, whose All the Pretty Horses is a modern masterpiece.  My greatest relief was finding that my friend Christine Donougher's Penguin translation of Les Misérables is brilliant - utterly masterful.  My greatest feat, in terms of endurance, was finally reading Ulysses all the way through - and enjoying vast tranches of it. And my greatest surprises were rather enjoying Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and discovering just how funny David Copperfield is. One book which has stayed with me, despite my not enjoying it that much, is Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho - it has troubled my thoughts for months, and I rather wish I hadn't read it. My greatest disappointment was finding Henry James's The Wings of the Dove utterly unreadable - yet again...

Sorry, skip - can't bat. Got a bit of a twinge...

I'll be honest - I was...

Even if you hate sport, Rod Liddle's article about the uselessness of England footballers will make you laugh out loud (h/t: SDG)

Rod Liddle's article in last week's Spectator - "Why English footballer's are so useless"- addressed the question that those of us who gave up expecting anything from the England football team around the start of the new Millennium have been asking ourselves for years. No, the question hasn't anything to do with those specific issues that have seen zillions of man-hours squandered in discussions in pubs, TV studios, websites and newspaper sports sections, i.e. is 4:4:2 the best formation for the lads, or could Stevie G. and Lamps play effectively together, or whether Wayne Rooney was a real striker, or why did the so-called "golden generation" fail to come close to winning anything, or whether the team was staying in the wrong hotel. or wearing the wrong strip, or whether an English manager might rouse the team into a patriotic frenzy which would help it fulfil its destiny by winning the World Cup after a 50-year hiatus? The main reason for the England team's lack of success isn't the formation,  or the manager, or the incompatibility of certain "key" players, or whether they're being made to play in a different position from the one they're used at club level, or whether their World Cup hotel was a bit noisy - it's that the players, compared to foreign footballers, just aren't good enough. And if they're not useless when they burst onto the scene...

Pass the sick-bag, Alice! More social media madness - and something for the weekend...

It did indeed...

BBC Wimbledon: please replace Andrew Castle and Boris Becker with Simon Reed and Frew McMillan

I'm sure the BBC's main Wimbledon commentator, the former player Andrew Castle, is a very nice man. But he makes my flesh crawl. As for the bankrupt former champion Boris Becker - I'm sure he's an extremely entertaining dinner companion, but the Gert Frobe-lookalike is a dreadful commentator. My preference would be for Simon Reed and Frew McMillan - a really superb double-act on Eurosport - to commentate on important matches, with John McEnroe filling in for McMillan when he's available.  McEnroe works well with Simon Reed, but can't stand McMillan, according to the champion South African doubles specialist. This antipathy presumably stems from their playing days, when McMillan partnered Bob Hewitt, a spectacularly nasty piece of work, whom the British No. 1 player Roger Taylor once punched to the ground after a match during which words had been exchanged...

Are test cricketers trying to kill off test cricket?

I only mention this because I spent an hour this afternoon watching the first South Africa v. England Test at Lords's on Sky. No complaint about the entertainment value, especially as first-time England captain Joe Root and vice-captain Ben Stokes were rescuing England after a terrible first session (Gary Ballance is back in the team - just...why?).  Apart from the Ashes, in just about every country apart from England, test cricket is dying as a spectator sport...

Different ways of losing - Andy Murray v. Theresa May

Feeling a trifle shell-shocked this afternoon, following a sleepless night - and unwilling to subject myself to any more ghastly political news - I sat and watched the French Open semi-final between Andy "Churckles"  Murray and Stan "Strong like Bull" Wawrinka. Wowsers. One of the greatest matches I've ever seen. Murray edged the first set, Stan struck back in the second, Murray sneaked the third - against pretty much any other player, Murray would have won in four or five sets: he has an impressive five-set record, being a bloody-minded Scot and all. The only doubt in my mind arose from the fact that Wawrinka has this knack of - every now and then - suddenly...

Is Federer the Greatest of All Time? The forehand winner that settled the issue once and for all...

Federer is at the far end:

I missed the match on television. Deliberately...

Watching Andy Murray reach the final of the ATP World Tour finals this week be like...

And...

So how did Andy Murray finally reach No. 1? The Grønmark Blog spills the beans...

At the start of 2016, I wrote of Andy Murray (or "Glumboy" as I referred to him at the time): "I ask nothing more of him - the Olympics, Wimbledon and the Davis Cup: that'll do." So what does he do? Wins a second Wimbledon title, another Olympic gold medal - and, in the most unlikely of his 2016 achievements, reaches No. 1 in the Men's World Rankings for the first time in his extraordinary career. At the start of June, Novak Djokovic was 8,000 points ahead of Murray. Even after Murray won Wimbledon, he was still nearly 5,000 points behind (Murray had 10,195; Djokovic 15,040). So how the hell has he managed to overhaul the seemingly invincible Serbinator? Here's how:

Crybaby American football players refusing to stand for the US national anthem need a lesson in true class from Usain Bolt

Ungrateful wretch

The protests started with the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who apparently wants to complain about racial inequality, which has evidently forced him and an enormous number of other black athletes to become unfeasibly rich and famous. I'm sure we all feel their pain and sympathise with how they've suffered under the jackboot of American racism.

The two worst Olympics-related ideas of the week... and a reminder of what sort of human being Diane Abbott is

Yeah - that's really going to work, because who just wants to represent their own country?