The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Harry Kane

[Pete Jones]

Do you English constantly rank sports stars on "all-time-greats" lists? This is 3% of all sports talk here in the US. And now we have very mature current stars themselves telling us where they rank in history. I admit it provides me with plenty of pointless rage.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Pete Jones]

Most Often Loved? I wish you all the best.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

Do you have any examples of me making bogus complaints about bogus lists?

[Mick Harper]

An Idea for Cricket

Baseball has just introduced a system of batters appealing against whether a pitch is a strike or a ball. From 1785 to 2025 the catcher would 'frame' the ball i.e. make 'a ball' look like 'a strike' to the umpire.

From 2026 ABS (like DRS only quicker), not the umpire, calls balls and strikes but the batting side get a number of appeals against the verdict. So now the catcher frames a strike to make it look like a ball to the batter. (You still with me?) Persuading the batter to dispute the strike call and his team loses an appeal. Sweet or what?

Over to Lords

1. The batter nicks the ball faintly to the keeper.
2. Nobody says anything deliberately.
3. First slip says belatedly, "I heard something."
4. Everybody else says, "Nah."
5. First slip says, "Skip, I heard something."
6. Captains say, "OK, howzat."
7. Umpire raises his finger.
8. Batter thinks he hit it but is now unsure.
9. He appeals to DRS.
10 He loses his team an appeal.

[Mick Harper]

Whenever the government wants to find out how many people of a particular country live here, legally or otherwise, they ask the FA to put on a friendly against that country. They then count the fans who turn up by the colour of their scarves etc, apply a known formula and bob's your uncle.

We now know, thanks to last night's match at Wembley, approximately 84,000 Uruguayans are resident in the UK. Of which, according to Home Office records, only some fifty thousand have leave to remain. The next step...

'That'll teach them for winning more World Cups than the country that gave football to the world,' said an anonymous Arsenal-supporting prime minister later.

[Pete Jones]

[Mick Harper]

One of my regular beefs, as you know all too well, is teams not being readily distinguishable on the telly. This is not because they play in the same colours but because the colours they are in are not sufficiently 'light and dark' or some other factor that means in a melee sport (i.e. not cricket and baseball) the eye cannot take in who's who when a bunch of them are on screen in close proximity.

New ground was broken in this weekend's USA vs Belgium friendly in Atlanta, Georgia. Both teams play in white, both teams had just brought out a new version, both teams trotted out in white. Nobody had thought to check.

There was some discussion about what to do but Belgium had not brought their 'away shirts' and the Americans discovered it would take too long to go back to their distant training ground to get a change of kit. They could of course had one team wearing 'subs vests' but that would have fatally undermined the dignity of the occasion.

[Mick Harper]

Your Football Scores Tonite

'How Do We Treat War' semifinals
Iran 5 Costa Rica 0
Qatar vs Argentina (match cancelled)

Big Beasts vs Little Beasts
Kosovo 0 Turkey 1 (Kosovo go out)

We'll Definitely Miss Them elimination match
Bosnia Herzegovina 1 Italy 1 (Italy out on pens)

Hard to say one way or the other eliminators
Sweden 3 Poland 2 (Poland out)
Czech Republic 2 Denmark 2 (Denmark out on pens)

Definitely Not Going To Be Missed exhibition match
Russia O Mali 0

[Mick Harper]

England 1 Uruguay 1
England 0 Japan 1

Pundits have described these as disappointing results with the upcoming World Cup in mind but, as we here know, AEL discourages judging by results. I thought England played well in both games, dominating the opposition.

They played like any team in the top half of the Premier League. (I estimate the England team would be in the lower half of the top half, if they were playing in the Premier League--if you see what I mean.)

* They resolutely played it out from the back
* They pinged the ball around well going up the park
* They ran out of ideas when they reached the opposition's third
* They pressed the other team well
* They conceded the odd goal from breakaways
* They should have won both games but in the event won neither.

I agree however with the pundits. This doesn't presage well for the Americas Cup. The other teams (which include Uruguay and Japan) will be playing the same way so the chances of putting the necessary string of wins together is statistically small.

But it's too late to do anything about it so we must put our faith in the fact we've got as good a chance as anyone else. And it's our turn.

[Mick Harper]

All-rounders are much less common in baseball than they are in cricket--though this is probably because the former is much more rigorously organised than the latter. You couldn't imagine whistling down a Kentucky coalmine for a Big League fastball pitcher like they did in Harold Larwood's day (from a Nottingham mine to throw beamers at Don Bradman).

And him turning out to make a decent number three in the batting order. I don't know any quick who's ever done that. But things are more relaxed in Japan so you can whistle up an all-rounder from there.