Journalism

The Spectator

by Ed Smith

There was a time when sportsmen fretted about the morality of being paid to play. Now the question is whether you are taking money to win, or taking money to lose. Mervyn Westfield, the Essex fast bowler, was only 20 when he accepted £6,000 to bowl deliberately badly in a county match. Three Pakistani cricketers, of course, are in prison for the same offence. How quaint the old distinction between the amateur who plays for love and the pro who toils to make ends meet now appears.

How did sport become so morally complicated? It was the Victorians, as Mihir Bose explores in The Spirit of the Game, who decided that sport had to be good for you. The Georgians, in contrast, had been content with sport’s more obvious pleasures of gambling, blood-letting and licentiousness. The Victorians, with an empire to run, wanted sport to educate the officer class. No matter that Thomas Arnold, allegedly the founder of ‘muscular Christianity’, didn’t even like organised games. With Tom Brown’s Schooldays, the idea that Britain became great by playing sport hardened into folklore….Read the full review

Click here for more information about The Spirit of the Game

Evening Standard

by Michael Prodger

The infiltration of sport is such that the 2010 football World Cup final was watched by 700 million people. Amazonian Indians and Kalahari Bushmen notwithstanding, that is one in 10 of the world’s population.

What they saw was a match of minimal finesse and maximum thuggery as Holland and Spain forsook the laughably titled beautiful game and reverted to what Philip Stubbes in his 1583 tract Anatomie of Abuses called “this murthering play”. Kicking an opponent’s shins was only banned from the sport in the 1860s but it looked as though the rule – on shins and other body parts – had never been passed….Read the full review

Click here for more details about The Spirit of the Game

Evening Standard

British aid to India was once an admirable, benevolent gesture. But to carry on giving aid is a colossal failure to understand how the country has changed.

Just consider the new India. The ninth largest economy in the world by GDP, it is growing at over seven per cent and is predicted to overtake the UK by 2022. There are more billionaires in India than in this country. Since India gained independence in 1947, Indians have squirrelled away more than £900 billion in Swiss bank accounts, more than the rest of the world combined. India also gives £3.5 billion of aid to Africa and is spending £2 billion to put Indians into space.

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BBC Radio 5Live – Tony Livesey Show

Breaking news that more than 70 people have died during riots at a football stadium in the Egyptian city of Port Said. We talk to people in Egypt. Tony gets reaction from one of the club’s spokespeople, as well as fans and journalists in Egypt and the UK.

The Government wants to attract “fewer but better” immigrants to the UK. Ahead of a speech, by the immigration minister Damian Green, we ask if the UK can attract the cream of the world’s professionals? Do they really want to come here and why?

Coppers is a fly on the wall documentary on Channel 4 with more than two million viewers. Some scenes are shocking, so we ask is policing the most difficult job in the country?

Tony talks to Ann Widdecombe. A survey and report says that older women are exploited on BBC Shows like Strictly Come Dancing. The report mentions Ann Widdecombe who was a hit on Strictly. She tells us that she doesn’t mind being a figure of fun.

Click here to listen to the programme (Note: This programme is only available until the 8th February 2012)

PlayUpCricket

What makes Saeed Ajmal so dangerous and how can the English batsmen counter Ajmal? Mihir Bose shares his views. England need to be more positive against Pakistan’s spinners.