Sport
A short history of ice skating
In landscape terms, the Fens don’t have much going for them. What you can say for them, though, is that…
Farewell to cricket as the archetypal English game
At the beginning of August this year, the England test team played what is supposed to have been the 1,000th…
The great thing about the World Cup is you don’t even have to watch it to enjoy it
Even though I don’t watch much football I love the World Cup because it’s my passport to total freedom. I…
Twenty20 is making cricket great again
Blame it on a marketing survey. In 2001, the England and Wales Cricket Board commissioned the biggest piece of market…
Two perfect kicks from Johnny Sexton destroyed England’s rugby’s dream
Which would you least like to see coming towards you? An Uber driverless car, Ant McPartlin in his black Mini…
Toby Young: I’ve been unmanned by a tennis brute in bright pink
As regular readers will know, Caroline has developed a fanatical interest in tennis and is currently captain of the ladies…
The straight dope
It’s not easy to get hold of Ángel Hernández, the legendary Mexican chemist who for a decade provided illicit performance-enhancing…
Our big fat problem
The good news is that Theresa May has dropped the threat to withdraw universal free school meals. Thank God (and…
Game changers
Have you been cheering for the excellent Johanna Konta at Wimbledon? Go, Jo! Or should that be Go, Yo? Johanna…
Match made in heaven
Tennis is best played with a wooden racket on a shady lawn somewhere close to Dorking. There is no need…
Jeeves and the Cap that Fits
A story about Bertie Wooster and a man called The Donald, with apologies to P.G. Wodehouse
Beware the Lycra louts
Cycling in funny clothes is bad for the soul
The fairytale factory
Leicester City’s triumphs demonstrate once again sport’s capacity to replay archetypal stories
How to do better at darts – and life
I have always been intrigued by the scoring systems for different sports, and the degree to which they contribute to…
The brain-damage game
In most sports, injuries happen when things go wrong. In boxing, they’re the ultimate goal. It isn’t right
Barometer
Name that town The representative of Slough in the UK Youth Parliament called for the town’s name to be changed…
Left without pleasures
No golf, no bridge, a tortured relationship with champagne… lefties deserve your sympathy, not your scorn
Barometer
Matters of life and death Lord Lucan is now officially presumed dead. How do you have someone declared dead? In…
Six Nations rugby
Back in 1882, exactly 100 years before I was born, the Four Nations rugby competition was formed. It was originally…
Game over
If sport loses the public’s faith – and it’s starting to – then all its power and glory will fade
From the dismal to the delightful: the year in sport
So long, then, to another thrilling year of sport in which the full range of human possibility — from the…
High life
Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it, tweeted Jon Ronson, a man I’d never heard of until…
Of course there’s no morality in top-level sport
Why do transgendered people need separate toilets? I thought, according to the prevalent orthodoxy, that the new gender they had…
Barometer
A marathon of cheats Russian athletes may be stripped of the medals they won at the 2012 Olympics, but what…
Sir Ian Botham is a hero – and a fool
Mark Mason 28 November 2015 9:00 am
In 1981, when I was ten and Ian Botham was 26, I thought he was God. Now, the week after…