General sport

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

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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

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BBC World Service – The World Today Weekend

Join the World Today Weekend each Saturday and Sunday morning for a breakfast news show with a difference.

Every programme one of our presenters is joined by two distinguished guests.

Politicians and diplomats, writers, journalists, scientists, philosophers and comedians have all been on our panel.

We dig behind the headlines to ask the questions that are missed in the daily rush to deadlines.

Whether it’s an important newsmaking interview, the latest insights from the worlds of business and sport, or a bit of music and poetry, we find a different way to bring you the weekend’s news.

In this programme, presenter Fergus Nichol discusses, among other things, the loss of the original Corinthian spirit in sport, internet privacy and China’s growing influence in Africa and across the world with Mihir Bose ; Kate Crawford, deputy director, Journalism and Media Research, University of New South Wales; and sports correspondent Seth Bennett.

Click here to listen to the programme

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Evening Standard

Image courtesy of Evening Standard

England have broken with the old guard following their poor World Cup but Francois Pienaar says the team will only progress if the game in this country is overhauled from top to bottom.

The flanker, who captained South Africa to their epic 1995 World Cup triumph, played for and coached Saracens and believes the disjointed nature of the fixture list is harming the development of talent.

Pienaar told Standard Sport: “The English game suffers from a vicious cycle in the way the season is organised. Having played in England and being still involved with Saracens, I’ve always said the structure of the season baffles me.

“It starts, then you shut down in September and go into Europe, then you start again and shut down for the Six Nations. To produce international winners you need a virtuous cycle. When I played in England I proposed changes but they were ignored. Given the downward cycle England are in, it will be difficult to rebuild unless you look at the entire structure starting at the grass roots, going up to the selection of players, refereeing and the administration.”

Pienaar’s comments came ahead of him collecting an award from the All Party Parliamentary Rugby Union Group. He will attend a dinner at the Commons tonight when MPs will also honour World Cup winners Jonny Wilkinson and John Eales plus Wales’ record try scorer Shane Williams.

BBC Radio 4 – Broadcasting House

The Sunday morning magazine programme with a fresh approach to the news and discussion about the big stories of the week.

With Paddy O’Connell. News, views and discussion … with a difference.

Click here to listen to the programme (Note: The paper review with Mihir starts at  0:37:50. This interview will be available until 28th Jan 2012)

Click here to find out more about The Spirit of the Game