Cheats? (July 19th)

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There has been a lot of talk in the press this week about fairness in sport and specifically about playing cricket in accordance with “the spirit of the game”. These days professional sport is big business and players are under unbelievable pressure to perform. Human nature being what it is, many players now break, bend or otherwise distort the rules, so much so that it is quite clear that nothing matters save for the result. Winning is everything.

Imagine a game of top flight football where on the last game of the season only a win will seal the league title for the title-chasing team. They are 1-0 up with five minutes to go, the opposing centre forward shoots at goal and though the goalkeeper “saves” the ball it is six inches over the line by the time he gets his hands on it. The goalkeeper knows that it is a goal but none of the officials had a clear view and the goal is not awarded. Does the keeper stand up and say “Actually, the ball crossed the line. It was a goal”. Of course he doesn’t. What would his team mates say? What would you, as a supporter say? Does that make him a cheat? Probably.
The reality is that the stakes are now too high for players to be trusted to police themselves and their honesty cannot be relied upon. However, there is now widespread technology available and it must be used – in every professional sport without exception. Forget about gentlemen and the spirit of the game. Sad though it may be, times have changed and changed forever.

Slaves to Technology (July 15th)

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Isn’t it amazing how dependent we’ve become on modern technology? We get in our cars, drive to work or to the shops, stop to telephone our friends and access the internet at every opportunity. It’s marvellous how all these inventions have contributed so much to our lives. Marvellous, that is, until they go wrong because machines, like flesh and blood will inevitably have off days and inevitably, at some point, will break down. And when they do, gosh, such drama, the world is surely coming to an end!

We become frustrated and angry and end up shouting at the darn things. Shouting at an inanimate object! That’s how crazy it has all become. What we need to do is take a step back, draw a deep breath, walk away and establish a sense of perspective. If the car breaks down, walk or take the bus. If your mobile or smart phone packs in use a landline or, perish the thought, speak to people face to face. If your lap top crashes, close it down, take it to the repairman and do without for a couple of days. 
It’s actually strangely liberating to be free of machines every now and again and it helps to remind us that we can and, up until a hundred or so years ago, did, live perfectly well without them, thank you very much. With or without technology life still goes on and without it life is certainly more simple and peaceful. How nice to go for a walk, to listen to the birds, to smell the flowers and to use the senses that we were born with instead of being force fed by some bloody machine. Still, I’ll be glad when I’ve sorted out Google and got my blog back up and running again!

Protest (July 12th)

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Yesterday six female members of Greenpeace scaled the London Shard, Europe’s tallest skyscraper, to draw attention to Shell’s plans to drill for oil in the Arctic, a hitherto virtually untouched wilderness and one of the world’s last.

 Of course, many will say how irresponsible these young women were to risk their lives in such a foolhardy manner. Others will protest that Greenpeace are right to draw attention to the way that huge corporations, built for nothing but profit, are destroying the environment and are exploiting the world’s resources without any thought for its welfare.
Greenpeace continue to highlight matters of grave concern to the planet that would perhaps otherwise escape our notice. For our own sake and for the sake of future generations, we should all be glad that they do.

Winner!

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Considering how much we British love our sport and how many games have their spiritual home in this land it’s a shame that we don’t win more than we do. I know our athletes had an outstanding year in 2012 and I know too that British cycling is in the midst of a golden era but in many other sports we tend to underachieve.

In cricket, England are not too far off the pace and in rugby union Wales were unlucky not to win the 2011 world cup though they may do so in 2015. In golf, there are signs of improvement and the Northern Irish, in particular have punched way above their weight in recent years. In rugby league Great Britain are still some way short of the pinnacle and as for football, well, considering we invented the game, we are pretty inept on the world stage. How on earth England are officially ranked as high as 15th in the world is beyond me!
That is why what happened on Sunday, July 7th, 2013 is so momentous. Wimbledon is without a doubt the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world and, when interviewed, nearly all players worldwide say that their aim is to win there. For the last 77 years we had grown used to seeing a procession of foreign players take the glory as British players floundered in their wake. Now, at last, a man from these Isles has won the trophy and has, at last, removed the monkey from the nation’s back. Andy Murray, a proud Scot, made history yesterday and the whole of Britain, not just Scotland, can rejoice in his success.
Though admiring his undoubted skill and tiger-like fighting ability, quite a few Britons found it hard to warm to the man, although I confess to the tears in my eyes when he was interviewed having lost last year’s final! Yesterday’s success was wonderful and his victory speech, referring to a win for “the British” rather than Scotland (which must have really irritated the watching Scottish Nationalist Party leader, Alex Salmond!) was, to me at least, a sign of Murray’s maturity and a realisation of the enormity of what he had done.
We must hope that Murray’s success is the start of a new era, not just for him, but for tennis and sport in the UK generally. There are not enough tennis courts in this country and there are not enough sports fields either. I’ve said before in this blog that sport in schools is vital and that all children must have the chance to participate in as many sports as possible. Politicians must stop the sale of school and community playing fields, they need to reverse the slide and create as many opportunities as possible for children to participate and compete.

Competition is a dirty word among the politically correct liberal elite who govern our land but if they want to know the effect sport can have on people’s lives they should purchase and retain a copy of every one of today’s national newspapers and frame them on the walls of their Westminster offices!

A Winning Smile

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Professional sport is big business these days and judging by the demeanour of most professional sportsmen and women it’s a pretty serious business too. Most seem totally focussed on the result to the exclusion of all else and what emotion there is tends to be of the negative variety, shouting at their opponents, the referee and even themselves.  Sport is all about winning and when there are literally hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of pounds riding on the result their behaviour is not surprising.

How wonderful it is therefore to witness the success of Sabine Lisicki, the previously obscure German tennis player who, radiating joy and with an almost permanent smile, has made it to the Wimbledon Ladies Final this Saturday. I’ve not watched a great deal of Wimbledon this year but the little that I have watched and enjoyed has been dominated by this young woman who defeated the mighty Serena Williams (reckoned by many to be the greatest female player of all time) earlier this week before winning twice more to gain her place in the final.

With all due respect to her French opponent, Marion Bartoli, I really hope that Lisicki wins the trophy and demonstrates to the world, and youngsters in particular, that you can still win and reach the very top  not only with skill and determination but with grace, dignity and, most importantly of all, with a great big smile on your face. That said, if an Englishman or woman were ever to win Wimbledon I wouldn’t care how miserable, sullen and bad tempered he/she was. A bit like that bloke north of the border I suppose! I hope he wins too.

Drive Through Weddings

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Still on the subject of the USA (see Friday’s blog) I recently heard about the “famous” Las Vegas drive thru’ weddings. Evidently the happy couple can choose their preferred financial package, climb in the car, say those magic words and, bingo, they are man and wife! Presumably they actually get out of the car at some point before or during the ceremony but I’m not too sure.

There are companies who specialise in this sort of thing and one of them offers packages starting as low as $89 (approx £60) depending on whether you use your own car, a private limousine or even “Elvis’s Pink Cadillac”! For the cheap deal you can drive your car through the “fabulous drive thru wedding chapel tunnel” with the added bonus of a “Long stem rose for the bride”! If you really want to push the boat out, the service will be conducted by an Elvis impersonator who will sing three wedding hymns! It almost makes you want to get married just for the fun of it! This is America at its most wacky and eccentric and, personally, I love it!
No doubt the more serious minded and religious among us will take a different view and obviously, if marriage is to be treated as a serious commitment (and what else can it be?) they are right. It is undoubtedly  frivolous and probably not quite the way that holy matrimony was first conceived but life is short and who’s to say that drive thru’ marriages are any less successful or enduring than their more conventional counterparts?

One point worth remembering, at least as far as English law is concerned; a marriage can be declared void on the grounds that one or both of the parties are insane at the time the ceremony took place. Participants in a Las Vegas “drive thru wedding chapel tunnel” marriage would probably meet that criteria perfectly!

Death Sentence

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I’m currently working in the USA, where it was reported yesterday that Texas had just carried out its 500th execution. There was no celebration to mark that particular milestone, from what I could see, but it certainly grabbed my attention and got me thinking.

The subject of the execution  was a youngish woman who had been convicted of murdering a neighbour some 16 years ago in 1997. I have no idea of the circumstances of the case but it seems that her guilt was confirmed after several appeals and reviews. They may well have got it right but they may not and that, for me at least, is the big caveat as far as the death penalty is concerned.

However, irrespective of whether or not you believe in the death penalty, does it not  seem somewhat cruel and barbaric to keep a person on death row for 16 years after they were convicted of the crime? Either carry out the execution straightaway or abolish the death penalty altogether. To keep somebody on death row, indefinitely in some cases, seems to me to be nothing short of inhumane.

A State of Mind

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I didn’t see the England cricket team’s capitulation in the latter stages of the Champion’s Trophy  yesterday but the manner of the collapse, without taking anything away from India, who are obviously a top class side, was clearly pretty dire. I was reminded of something I once read about winners in sport.

It was an article by a leading American sportsman and sports psychologist who said, that at the highest levels of sport, (and this could apply to virtually any area of human endeavour) sportsmen, all bar a few exceptional athletes, are similar in their skill levels. He said that the skill factor accounts for approximately 90% of the performance but the vital part is the remaining 10% because that is what separates the great from the very good.
That 10% he said is all in the mind. You can call it self-belief, determination, lack of nerves, strength under pressure, positive thinking or an attitude of never say die. Whatever label you give it, it is an inner strength that for the most part cannot be taught. A psychologist may well be able to assist the athlete and add a few percent to the performance but without that steely inner core the athlete is doomed to be one of the also-rans. It is as true in life as it is in sport.

As for England, who have now lost their last five one day cricket finals, it’s a case of back to the drawing board. I hope somebody in the camp has got the telephone number of that sports psychologist!

More Destruction

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For most of this week Singapore has been suffering from the worst levels of smoke pollution in its short history. The problem was caused by the illegal lighting of forest fires by farmers on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. News footage has been quite shocking with a vast blanket of smog blotting out the sun. It brings back memories of the infamous London smogs of yesteryear when thousands of people suffered ill-health and even death due to the appalling levels of pollution. You would think that  mankind would have learned the lesson by now wouldn’t you? No? Neither would I.

Clearly nothing, not even the destruction of the planet, will stand in the way of man’s greed and avarice. Large forests all over the Far East, and not just Indonesia, are being cleared and destroyed to make way for the growing of palm plants. This is big business and world demand for palm oil is as strong and insatiable as ever.
It comes at a price though, as we are now seeing in Singapore, where pollution records were shattered this week, with the Pollution Standards Index reaching a massive 371. I don’t know too much about that index save to say that, like the Richter Scale with earthquakes, it acts as meter by which to measure the severity of the problem. And there is a huge problem, not just for the Far East but for all of us.
This is just another example, in a long list of misdeeds, of how we are destroying our environment, wiping out trees and plants, diverting rivers to form dams and obliterating wildlife as if there is no tomorrow. And the tragedy is, for our children at least, there may well be no tomorrow.

We have to keep the pressure on our government and other governments worldwide and it seems to me that the only realistic and effective way is to join pressure groups, groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. They have websites so all we have to do is find them on Google and pledge our support. We should all do it before it is too late.

Waterloo, a Cause for Celebration

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Tomorrow is the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, June 18th, 1815, when the tactical nous and skill of one of Britain’s finest generals, the Duke of Wellington, aided by Marshall Blucher’s Prussians, finally defeated the might of the French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. The victory was followed by nearly a hundred years of peace and the finest days of the British Empire when Britain really did “rule the waves”.

No doubt there are those who would say that it is politically incorrect and insensitive to celebrate and glory in the memory of our victory but they would be  wrong. A British defeat on that day would have resulted in a Europe crushed and ruled by a vainglorious tyrant (as it would again, of course, in 1940) so I think we have every right to celebrate the anniversary of our victory.

There won’t be any celebrations of course and we really mustn’t upset anybody must we? Well, I disagree. It happened and the rest of Europe, France included, should be eternally grateful that it did. I for one will feel no embarrassment at all in raising a glass of brandy (Napoleon, of course!) and toasting the memory of one of the greatest days in British history!