***THIS BLOG WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ME ON THE DALE & CO WEBSITE***
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Weekend Sports Diary
Carl McQueen on Tevez, Messi, Sir Viv and Sky’s F1 coverage.
– It’s good to see the British Olympic Association are getting their excuses in early. Still well over 100 days to go until the Olympics finally start after the best part of a decade of hype, and now athletes have been advised not to shake anyone’s hand for fear of contracting an illness! The BOA’s chief medical officer has handed down this piece of ingenious advice this week, so if anyone fails to reach the medal places in August, they can say it was because they shook the hand of that suspicious looking eastern-European in the semi-finals. The Aussies responded, naturally, by saying such an idea would be an ’embarrassment’. A quick Google search of “handshake quotes” tells me “Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in the eye, particularly if he adds a firm handshake, is hiding something” – reading between the lines, anyone who attempts to shake a British competitors hand must be immediately given a drugs test…
– This week, one of the greatest cricketers to ever grace the crease turned 60. Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards, or just Viv to those lucky enough to watch him play, was without doubt one of the greatest batsmen to play the game. Those who saw him in the flesh would probably argue he was the greatest due to his explosive style that he mastered with such ease, compared to the dwindling number of people still alive who saw Don Bradman or the lack of nostalgia attached to the still-playing Sachin Tendulkar. Modern day players of the past decade such as Kevin Pietersen and Australia’s Matthew Hayden shadow a lot of what made Richards so brilliant by taking the game to the bowler and refusing to show any fear when a rock-hard ball is hurtling towards your head at 90 miles per hour – his style has progressed the game like no one else has ever been able to do. All you need to do is look at the accolades he has collected since retiring – being voted one of the five “Cricketers of the Century” in 2000. In 2002, Wisden – the ultimate cricketing almanac – voted him the greatest one-day international player ever, and the third greatest test batsmen ever. In 2004, ESPN voted him the third greatest player ever etc. etc. And, he is one of only four people still alive today to be knighted solely on the basis of their services to cricket (for pub quiz fanatics, the others are Garfield Sobers, Everton Weekes and Richard Hadlee – Ian Botham was officially knighted for his charity work). Well batted, Sir Viv.
– Carlos Tevez, remember him? Well after months of being left in the wilderness, and then finally being offered an olive branch by Man City boss Roberto Mancini, this week he scored his first goal for the club since May – in the semi-final of the Manchester Senior Cup in front of just over 1,000 people. The cup is more of an attempt to give development squads more of a competitive nature, but his goal in a 3-1 win signals the possibility of him playing for the first-team squad within a matter of weeks. As Mario Balotelli continues to hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons – he was fined two weeks wages this week for going to a night club the day before a match, and then kicked out of the Trafford Centre…for wearing a hoodie – Carlos Tevez will seem positively sedate in comparison.
– Is Lionel Messi really the best footballer ever? This week he became the first person to ever score five goals in a game in the Champions League, in a 7-1 Barcelona win over Bayer Leverkusen. If you were lucky enough to watch that game, granted Leverkusen had given up after 55 minutes, but secondly, he oozed the class that merely just one player a generation is able to do. As the game gets faster, as players become fitter, as tactics become more complex, Messi’s ability to outshine everyone with incredible ease is simply staggering. He now sits just seven goals behind the all-time goalscoring record for Barcelona…and he’s not even 25 years old. It may be a spurious argument, but it’s one that will fill hours upon hours of discussions in pubs, living rooms and offices up and down the land for years to come – is he the greatest footballer ever? Many of my generation will say Lionel Messi and highlight performances the like the one on Wednesday night. Now try and prove me wrong…
– Breaking a national athletics record doesn’t happen every day of the week, but when it happens if your country is the Seychelles, you don’t expect much coverage in the international press….unless your name is Gaylord Silly. (Please note, I am not making this up!) He broke his country’s 800metre record this week at the World Athletic Indoor Championships in Istanbul, with a time of 1 minute and 54 seconds…unfortunately he still came last, but for a few hours at least, trended worldwide on Twitter and made the news in briefs of all major sporting outlets…but I’ll be damned if I’m going to Google his name!
– Just a week to go until the start of the new Formula 1 season, and the biggest focus during the close season has not been on drivers moving to rival manufacturers, but on the viewing rights. Sky Sports will take up the chance to broadcast a sport which they have refused to acknowledge exists until now…or have they? Well, let me take you back to 2002, when Sky DID have the rights to Formula 1 coverage, but it was so unsuccessful hardly any of you would have noticed. “F1 Digital+” was a pay-per-view channel available on Sky in 2002, but was so catastrophically unsuccessful, the best figures it reached for a race were around a mere 25,000. Instead, most of the time it struggled to peak over the 10,000 mark. Sure, Sky will give us new fangled gadgets and graphics for us to go “oooooooooo” over, but will you honestly choose to watch the British Grand Prix on Sky or the BBC? It’s the same answer when it comes to the FA Cup Final – yes, we know Sky may do it bigger and better, but home comforts in the form of terrestrial TV still win us over.
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