"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same"
(Rudyard Kipling's "IfEvery year for two weeks, the British put on the greatest show on earth. I don't care what anybody else says, but there is nothing as good as The Championships at Wimbledon. It's the (only) highlight in the British tennis calendar and the ( Read more... )

When Roger Federer stepped onto Centre Court on Tuesday 30 June 2015, it marked his 63rd consecutive Grand Slam singles appearance, a record-breaking streak (for men and women) dating back to the 2000 Australian Open. If it wasn't for his losses as a qualifier in the preceding US and Australian Opens of 1999, he might easily have been playing his ( Read more... )

I've updated my entry from a couple years ago to reflect this week's episode with Freddie Flintoff. As with almost every episode of this awesome programme, it's worth a listen, not least for that gorgeous Lancastrian accent.

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For about the next four weeks, depending on the episode, five excerpts of this fine book read by the author himself, will be available to listen anywhere in the world. Each episode is a delightfully compact fourteen minutes, so there's no excuse to miss out on any of them. Apparently, it was originally broadcast in 2010, repeated in 2011 and again ( Read more... )

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As we're consumed with Ashes fever and other cricketing action in general, I thought it fitting to devote this week's track to something relevant. Some months ago, I came across this delightful ode while putting together a playlist of cricket-related songs. It originates from a 1973 concept album, Preservation: Act 1, which according to ( Read more... )

Aggers is this week's castaway and I'm sure the podcast will brighten up the usual commute, tomorrow morning.

Last summer I posted a list of all the Asian castaways, a dataset not searchable on the DIDA website. In comparison, castaways from the world of cricket are searchable, however, I have still chosen to list them below. For some reason, ( Read more... )

Murray was 30-0 on serve at 5-6 in the second set. At 30-15 he over hit a forehand down the middle, was duly broken and lost the set. Then came the game from hell. I can't remember a longer one since the Graf/Sanchez-Vicario Final at Wimbledon in 1995. This year's marathon game went on for nearly twenty minutes. Ten deuces and several break points ( Read more... )

Seventh Wimbledon (equalling Pete Sampras's Open era record), seventeenth Grand Slam (extending his own record) and world number one (equalling Sampras's record of 286 weeks at the top). All at the age of thirty, exactly one month short of his next birthday. Only two other thirty-something men had won The Championships in the Open Era (Rod Laver in ( Read more... )

The People's Final. Two weeks ago this seemed a distant dream but that's the beauty of sport. It's good to know that elegance and subtlety can still succeed at the highest level of men's tennis. The manner in which Federer dispatched of the world number one served a timely reminder to those who had written him off. There's no doubt that the power- ( Read more... )