Cricket
Peter Oborne’s diary: My Pakistan cricket tour, and what the ‘no’ campaign needs
For the first time since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team six years ago, a Test match side…
Ten steps to save English cricket
If you watched England’s three-day Test defeat by the West Indies in Barbados the other day to the bitter end…
However daft English cricket gets, there’ll always be Wisden’s obituaries
He’s a tall man, Kevin Pietersen, and he casts a long shadow. It loomed large over the Long Room at…
I miss the days when French rugby was great. Thierry Dusautoir must, too
It used to be such a treat of a winter weekend, sitting down to watch France against Wales in Paris…
The Cricket World Cup needs minnows
Graeme Swann arrived late for the last cricket World Cup. His wife had given birth before the tournament and he…
One-day cricket can make even a turbo-charged century tedious
What a remarkable innings that was in Johannesburg earlier this week when South Africa’s admirable Hashim Amla carried his bat…
The myth of Steven Gerrard
‘As a leader and a man, he is incomparable to anyone I have ever worked with.’ Obviously quite some guy,…
When a cricket ball cost Britain an heir to the throne
A fatal shot The sad death of Australian batsman Philip Hughes was a reminder that a cricket ball can kill.…
International cricket must return to Pakistan (and my team went first)
In a tiny courtyard just off the teeming alleys of Lahore’s old town, a young Pakistani boy in a gleaming…
The secret kinship of good wine and good cricket
A high proportion of wine-lovers also enjoy cricket, and vice versa. This might seem natural. Anyone with an aesthetic temperament…
Pietersen’s unlikely Passage to India
A typical Merchant-Ivory film, their biography informs me, features ‘genteel characters’ whose lives are blighted by ‘disillusionment and tragic entanglements’.…
The unbearable vanity of Kevin Pietersen
Pietersen’s self-indulgent tales of woe lack credibility
Brian Lara: Why I'm helping build a cricket stadium in Rwanda
Why I’m helping to build a cricket stadium in Rwanda
What does Duncan Fletcher actually do?
Some years ago, when the last Conservative government was limping towards defeat, someone published a book called 101 Uses for…
Simon Barnes’s diary: A sportswriter is never without a big subject (unless it’s golf)
Sport is like love: it can only really hurt you if you care. Or for that matter, bring joy. You…
Alastair Cook is world class. Steven Gerrard isn’t
This time last year, England’s cricketers were 2-0 up against Australia, two thirds of the way towards their third consecutive…
What Germans are worst at
What Germans do worst Some things Germans aren’t very good at: — Making reliable car engines. According to a survey by Warranty Direct…
The Spectator's notes: Diana's bed, Boris's dirty trick and Prince Philip's mystery tie
On Friday night, I went to Althorp, childhood home of Diana, Princess of Wales, to speak at its literary festival.…
When the English cricket team toured Nazi Germany – and got smashed
Why have the Germans never been any good at cricket? This entertaining account of the MCC’s 1937 tour to the…
In defence of the BBC’s Sochi commentators
You can trust the BBC to behave like a leaf blown by any breeze, but even that spineless leviathan (if…
It’s not just Kevin Pietersen. England needs a whole team of new heroes
Englishmen used to be deported to Australia as a punishment. Now they get sent back to England as an act…
Five reasons to be cheerful about British sport (yes, even the cricket)
James Cook’s third voyage as an English captain ended in disaster, stabbed to death and disembowelled by a pack of…
Roger Alton: The day Viv Richards came to watch me play cricket
Sir Vivian Richards came to watch me play cricket the other day. That’s the sort of sentence you wait a…
Hurrah for Andrew Strauss
Andrew Strauss is a serious man and Driving Ambition (Hodder, £20, Spectator Bookshop, £18) is a serious book. It looks…
If Carberry doesn't open for England, the world should split asunder
In sport, as in life, you just don’t know where you stand any more. Look at the Premier League: no…
