It’s not clear how many readers of this journal will be affected, but anyone planning a stag weekend in Prague ought to steer clear of the first week of June. That’s when the city hosts the Uefa Conference League final at the 20,000-capacity Eden Arena, home to Slavia Prague. The finalists are West Ham – average home gate a 60,000 sellout – and Fiorentina, average gate 25-30,000. Which raises the question: is Uefa just utterly useless or is it worse than that?

Both finalists have been allocated 5,000-odd tickets, with the remainder going to assorted sponsors and what is laughably known as the ‘Uefa family’. This is insane. It’s completely understandable that Uefa wants to play big games in unlikely venues to spread the word about football – last year’s final was in Albania, for example. But it means that hardly any self-respecting fan will be able to get a ticket. This game could have filled Wembley twice over; now it’s like holding the coronation in a parish church.

Uefa has got form here. Last year’s chaotic Champions League final was in Paris and scarred by police violence when Liverpool fans were tear-gassed. Both Uefa and the French government tried to accuse Liverpool fans of using ‘fake tickets’. That was total nonsense, though it took months before Uefa apologised to the club for attempting to pin the blame for the shambles on its supporters. Sixty-eight people were arrested and 174 injured. And that was in Paris at the Stade de France.

Now buckle up for Prague on 7 June. The pent-up appetite for this match is huge: West Ham haven’t played in a European final since losing to Anderlecht in 1976, though they did win the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965 at Wembley in front of 98,000. It’s anybody’s guess how many ticketless fans will be heading for Prague, just to be there and enjoy a generous helping of Czech beer. Uefa has privately acknowledged the whole thing is a terrible mistake and promised to host future prestige games in significantly bigger grounds. It’s too late to relocate this match, but it will certainly be a busy few days for Czech police.

Of all the accolades Ben Stokes has received since he took over the England captaincy, the praise heaped on him by Jimmy Anderson the other day must have been as pleasing as any.

Stokes was an 11-year-old member of the short-trousered autograph-hunting brigade when Anderson made his Test debut for England in May 2003. If he did ever approach Anderson for his signature, it might even have been a ‘Please, Sir’ moment.

But now here’s Sir, who will turn 41 in July during the fifth Ashes Test, commending Stokes, a stripling of 31, for the maturity of his leadership. ‘He is someone you want to play for, he is incredible,’ said Anderson.

It has been quite a turnaround for Stokes, whose cricketing career was jeopardised when he was arrested after being involved in a street brawl in Bristol in September 2017. Even that incident says something positive about Stokes’s character, though. If you study the police bodycam footage you can’t help but be impressed by his coolness and savviness in a stressful situation. Handcuffed, he asks whether he is being filmed. Told that he is, he says simply: ‘Sweet.’

It was, in the words of the poet C. Day-Lewis, one of those ‘scorching ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay’. No one can have any doubt that Stokes’s clay has been fired to a toughness that even Australia’s hardened Test warriors will find difficult to shatter during this stamina-crunching Ashes series crammed in between 16 June and 31 July. ‘He knows what he wants to do,’ Anderson continued. ‘He thinks about it a lot, the fields that he sets. It’s great for us. It’s exciting to try different things.’