Cricket
Sport’s first celebrity: W.G. Grace
Should you wish to have a good copy of the 1916 edition of Wisden, cricket’s annual bible, you should be…
Captain Cook proves good guys can triumph
The roar of the Premier League is beginning to drown out everything else in sport (there’s even Friday night football…
Best of enemies
Why nothing in sport beats thrashing the Aussies at cricket
The ugly game
I’ve spent years defending football from middle-class disdain. But I can’t do it any more
Fun runs
At long last, the England cricket team have rediscovered their love of the game
Tiger, Tiger, burning out
A car crash is a terrible thing, but hordes of people still slow down to cop an eyeful on the…
Diary
For the first time since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team six years ago, a Test match side…
A few tips for Straussie
If you watched England’s three-day Test defeat by the West Indies in Barbados the other day to the bitter end…
Cricket’s glorious dead
He’s a tall man, Kevin Pietersen, and he casts a long shadow. It loomed large over the Long Room at…
Sacré Bleus! At least the food is good
It used to be such a treat of a winter weekend, sitting down to watch France against Wales in Paris…
Little teams mean a lot
Graeme Swann arrived late for the last cricket World Cup. His wife had given birth before the tournament and he…
Bats out of hell
What a remarkable innings that was in Johannesburg earlier this week when South Africa’s admirable Hashim Amla carried his bat…
Myths and legends
‘As a leader and a man, he is incomparable to anyone I have ever worked with.’ Obviously quite some guy,…
Barometer
A fatal shot The sad death of Australian batsman Philip Hughes was a reminder that a cricket ball can kill.…
Cricket must return to Pakistan
In a tiny courtyard just off the teeming alleys of Lahore’s old town, a young Pakistani boy in a gleaming…
The willow and the vine
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’.…
An excess of spin
Pietersen’s self-indulgent tales of woe lack credibility
Field of dreams
Why I’m helping to build a cricket stadium in Rwanda
Putting Fletcher in the shades
Some years ago, when the last Conservative government was limping towards defeat, someone published a book called 101 Uses for…
Diary
Sport is like love: it can only really hurt you if you care. Or for that matter, bring joy. You…
Being the best
This time last year, England’s cricketers were 2-0 up against Australia, two thirds of the way towards their third consecutive…
Barometer
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
On Friday night, I went to Althorp, childhood home of Diana, Princess of Wales, to speak at its literary festival.…
Simply not Kricket
Why have the Germans never been any good at cricket? This entertaining account of the MCC’s 1937 tour to the…
