With a golfing major already in the bag, this weekend’s
Lions opener and Champions Trophy final should accelerate another glorious sporting
summer.
The ‘Golden Generation’ may be a title more associated with
football, but in Rose, Poulter, Donald and Westwood, English Golf has had an
array of talent blunted by a similar shortage of top-level silverware. Rose
finally held his nerve on the toughest of courses and – with the world’s best
floundering - the stage is tantalisingly set for another English win at the
Open.
Cricket’s Champions Trophy has also been distinctive due to
its unpredictability, with eight evenly-matched sides taking on each other,
plus the weather, in a format blending 5-Day patience with T20 ingenuity. That
said, England and India
have been the standout sides and a final showdown pitting Jimmy and co. versus
Dhawan and co. could prove magnificent.
Squad players Tredwell, Bopara and Buttler have really come
to the party, but getting big names – like Anderson and Trott – playing well
has been instrumental. Some still lambast Trott for being too slow and selfish,
but as he is pretty much the world’s most reliable batsman in both forms of the
game, they are plain wrong. He is the sort of doughty, impenetrable battleaxe
which all great teams need and he will be just as pivotal as flair players Root
and (fit-again) KP if the Ashes are to be won.
Team spirit is so important in sport, and while England lost it last summer they appear to have
rediscovered it in some style and it is essential that the Lions display
similar togetherness tomorrow in Brisbane .
Like the cricketers the Lions have a mixture of styles:
Welsh power, Irish experience and, dare I say it, English flair. The
youngsters: North and Vunipola, alongside the grizzled veterans: O’Connell and
O’Driscoll. Injuries have hit them hard but they should still overcome Australia ,
although they will have to be at their absolute best to do so. We must abandon
the partisan bias which still clouds message-boards, and get behind every
single one of them, as the series could come down to one missed kick or one
tackle.
With the Lions and back-to-back Ashes Series, Britain expects
a double triumph over its fiercest rivals. As Chris Froome should have too much
for Aussie hope Cadel Evans, in the Tour de France we will bag a third (although
I suppose the fact that Froome’s principal teammate is Aussie Ritchie Porte
does deserve a mention)
At Wimbledon such assumptions are impossible.
Books could be written, marriages could be broken and riots could be started
over the respective merits of the male contenders. While Djokovic has the best
draw, Nadal the best form, and Federer the SW19 pedigree, Murray is looking
good and, naively, foolishly and stupidly - I think that it could be his year. Maybe...
Such hopes are for two week’s time however and we must dream
about this weekend first. In Miami Basketball star cum NBA winner Lebron James,
and Racehorse owner cum Ascot winner the
Queen, yesterday threw-up two champions who have probably never previously been
compared.
And our Rugby and Cricket teams will require a similarly
unlikely fusion of style, culture and strategy if they are to be successful.
They will also need team spirit, character, inspiration and humility and, as
this gem of a good luck message from one to the other suggests, they are
unlikely to be short of that.…
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