The N Word

Wilmore and Oliver investigation. One of the funniest ever clips from the Daily Show.

An Undiluted Champion

From Rob Steen’s blog on Cricinfo

You wouldn’t think there could possibly be anything more he could do to embellish the legend, but even as the warm breath of the Kandy Man’s most momentous feat enveloped the Asgiriya Stadium, came another reminder of his uniqueness.When Fred Trueman became the first man to take 300 Test wickets at The Oval in 1964, he observed with typical drollness that, if anyone outdid him, he’d be “bloody tired”. Having sent down 38,000-odd balls to Trueman’s 15,000-odd, most of them in steamy, strength-sapping conditions, Muttiah Muralitharan had even more reason to prattle on about work ethics and sweat-drenched toil. Heaven knows he’d have been justified, in the heat of the moment, in hailing his historic delivery to Paul Collingwood this morning as the greatest ball of his career, an impeccable fusion of sorcery and sauce. What followed was as unexpected as anything he has ever served up for our delectation.

Collingwood was bewitched, bothered, bewildered and bowled by a ball that straightened: the “toppie” or doosra, or so we assumed. The author, astonishingly, disclaimed all responsibility: he’d tried to bowl the orthodox offie (as if anything he does can ever be regarded as such) but “the ball went the other way”, or so he confessed in typically disarming fashion to Sky Sports’ Nick Knight. Up in the commentary box, Sir Ian of Bothamshire was pinching himself black and blue.

In each of the seven categories to the right of the wickets column – best bowling, best match bowling, average, economy rate, strike rate, five-fors and 10-fors – Murali bests Shane Warne. Among that magnificent septet, those 61 five-fors are the most revealing (Robert Croft, the former England offspinner, justly equates such hauls to centuries). Yet even that staggering stat only hints at the colossal burden the tigerish Tamil has had to bear. Only one colleague, Chaminda Vaas (322 as I write), has scalped more than 100 Test victims; only Vaas (11) among Sri Lankans has taken five wickets in an innings more than five times. No bowler since Charlie Griffith, moreover, has had his action, and hence integrity, assailed by so many outrageous slings and arrows.

Through it all, almost without exception, he has resisted any urge to bitch back, to fire vengeful salvos about Brett Lee or Shoaib Malik or any other owners of dubious actions. Through it all, he has been mindful of the wider world, of tsunami victims and those less fortunate, as kind to dressing-room newcomers as he is respectful to the senior team-mates he has carried on that impossibly broad back. We Hebrews have a word for such occasions: mazeltov, meaning “congratulations”. “Mazel”, though, means luck, and luck has played no discernible part in this cockle-grilling story whatsoever.

Warne may have done more to revive the art and heart of spin, but Murali has redefined our notions of sporting heroism. Verily, a champion for our times.

Michel Platini cashes in to keep Europe happy

From the Times Gabriele Marcotti

The best deals are those from which everyone walks away satisfied. It is the nature of good business, the kind of thing Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, envisioned in the 1700s. Michel Platini, the Uefa president, may have neither an MBA nor an advanced degree in conflict resolution, but he has shown that, at least when it comes to carving up club football’s biggest prize, he knows what he is doing.

On Friday, Uefa approved Platini’s plan to overhaul the Champions League format. In fact, it was more of a tweak than a revamp, but it was an important tweak. The crux of it is that Europe’s 12 biggest leagues will be guaranteed a place in the Champions League proper (under the present system it is only the top nine nations).

This is important because it means that more second-tier leagues will be represented. And that makes their Champions League television rights more valuable. Imagine that you are a broadcaster in Belgium. The Belgian champions have to go through a round of qualifying and sometimes they make it, sometimes they do not. Yet you have to decide how much you want to bid for the competition, knowing that, if there are no Belgian clubs involved, your ratings will not be very high and you will make less in advertising and sponsorship (for all the talk of globalisation in football, one thing remains constant: a domestic club, no matter how lacklustre, continue to draw more viewers than a high-profile match involving two foreign teams).

However, under the new plan, as long as the Belgian league remains among Europe’s top 12, you know that a Belgian club will get at least six matches in the group stage against high-profile European opposition during prime-time. And, most likely, they will be ratings winners.

Platini played a similar game at the top end of the European scale. Europe’s top three leagues – La Liga, Serie A and the Premier League – will have three guaranteed spots, rather than two. Again, this helps in the sale of television rights in the most valuable markets. When negotiating with the likes of BSkyB and ITV, Uefa can promise that there will be at least three English clubs involved, which, it is hoped, will prompt the television companies to part with more money.

Of course, for all this to happen, somebody had to get the short end of the stick. Twenty-two spots will be assigned directly, the remaining ten will come from the preliminary rounds (as opposed to the present 16). The difference is that teams from the 15 biggest leagues will face each other for five spots, while the remaining 38 leagues will contest the other five.

What this means is that we are likely to see more high-profile clashes in the preliminary round (had the system been in force this year we might have witnessed Werder Bremen versus Arsenal or Valencia take on Lazio). And that, too, should help the sale of television rights.

Sharks find easy prey in game loath to bite back

By the Times Simon Barnes

I was on local papers, I was in disgrace. Again. This time it was my expenses. I was summoned to the editor’s office. Take this expenses form away. Have a think about it, and then do it again. This time do it properly. You should be claiming no more than £7.50. I had claimed just over £3.

I made the mistake of arguing. I said that three quid was what I had spent, and therefore three quid was what I claimed. With heavy patience, my editor explained. Expenses aren’t supposed to be honest. No one expects expenses to be honest. They are a legitimate way of increasing our otherwise pathetic salaries.

Everybody did it, so that made it all right. And if I was to be the one who didn’t do it, I would spoil it for everybody else. I would be a fool not to cheat: what’s more, it was my moral duty to cheat. It was expected of me. Now go away and do it.

So I did, and with a good heart. Thus I fiddled 50p here and a quid there, claimed transport for journeys never made, claimed money for meals never eaten. I never had any trouble with my expenses again. Soon my mentality had changed. It was a game, it was a fiddle that the firm winked at, because fiddled expenses are tax-free, cheaper than a pay rise any day and far more easily taken away.

Thus I was initiated in a culture of small-scale, petty, rather pathetic corruption. My scruples, both about the morality and the problem of getting caught, evaporated. Here’s a good one: buy in a match report from some other local hack, when your local team are playing miles away, then run the piece under your byline and charge full fare and meals. Nice one. The firm deserved it. I deserved it. Nobody would say anything. So it was all right then, wasn’t it?

Oh, it’s easy to enter a culture of corruption. A little bit at a time, and soon you are hopelessly compromised. But then so is everybody else, and they won’t say anything. So you’re not really compromised at all, are you? And anyway, it’s not as if the readers care, is it?

That’s the way that institutionalised corruption works. And perhaps the most damaging fact about corruption in football is that nobody really cares; apart from Mike Newell. About the same time that Newell, Luton Town manager at the time, went public with his statement that corruption was endemic in football, the News of the World was breaking an absolutely colossal story.

But the News of the World, which makes its money by giving the fans what they want, did not work a complex set-up to expose corruption. What would be the point, since nobody cares? Instead, it worked a complex set-up, fake sheikh and trip to Dubai and all, to demonstrate to the world that the England head coach at the time, Sven-Göran Eriksson, was vulnerable to flattery and big bucks: well, shock bloody horror.

Many have said that corruption in football is a nonissue because the fans aren’t interested. So long as their team beat the other team, who cares whether or not an agent has creamed off a few grand? And if the boss has done the same thing, then good old him, he’s a great man, he’s winning, so he deserves it, doesn’t he?