Lewis Hamilton - a very British sort of victor

By the Times Simon Barnes

So which loser shall we give it to this year? Lewis Hamilton, who lost the Formula One drivers’ World Championship, is favourite to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year; he’s 5-2 on. It’s a done deal.

There is a great tradition of Formula One losers being made Sports Personality of the Year; Nigel Mansell in 1986, Damon Hill in 1994. Silver medal is the prize for the first loser: that, and the BBC Sports Personality award.

It’s not only drivers. There is a national habit of giving the award to people who haven’t won anything and that is, at least on the face of it, an odd thing in a business that is supposed to be about winning and nothing else. On five occasions since 1990 the award has gone to a nonwinner. That is to say, a loser. In 1990 it went to Paul Gascoigne, for losing to West Germany in the semi-finals of the World Cup. England finished fourth in that tournament after losing the third-place play-off. Gascoigne cried and didn’t even take a penalty in the shoot-out (he had been substituted).

In 1994 Hill got the award for not being Formula One world champion. It was the year he was driven off the track by Michael Schumacher; it was a sort of consolation prize from a sympathetic nation.

In 1997 Greg Rusedski got the award for being the losing finalist in the US Open tennis tournament. He lost to Pat Rafter, of Australia, in four sets; perhaps the fact that he won a set and was wearing a black armband for Diana, Princess of Wales, swayed everybody’s judgment.

The next year the award went to Michael Owen. The striker scored a great goal for England against Argentina, but England lost the match on penalties and so they went out of the competition in the round of 16. Is that as far from being a winner as an award-winner can get?

No, actually. In 2001 David Beckham won it. He got the award after England qualified for the World Cup finals in melodramatic fashion, almost losing to Greece in the last match in the qualifying group before Beckham’s swirling 93rd minute free kick made it 2-2. So England didn’t even win the match and, rather than actually wining something, England simply counted themselves among the 32 nations who would take part in the tournament. Not exactly world-beating stuff.

Now there are a number of ways of looking at this, but the first thing to be clear about is that we are by no means bigoted in our national taste for winners. (The past five recipients of the award have been serious winners: Paula Radcliffe, Jonny Wilkinson, Kelly Holmes, Andrew Flintoff and Zara Phillips).

But we are not pedantic about sporting heroes. We prefer winners, but we are happy to embrace the right kind of loser. In other words, losing also has a kind of beauty.

There is perfection and a beauty about defeat, but above all there is sometimes a story, a vivid tale of a cosmic striving and a desperate falling-short. Sport doesn’t only give you impregnable and immaculate heroes, it also gives you flawed heroes and flawed losers that excite our love. The nation judges and tomorrow night a loser will win.

Me? I’d vote for Christine Ohuruogu, but there you go.

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Pak Spin-Let it go, Captain Khan

By Cricinfo blog writer Kamran Abbasi

Younis Khan, suggest reports emanating from Bangalore, is about to turn his back on the Pakistan captaincy for a third time. We all know that Younis loathes nothing more than being somebody’s dummy. We all know that the unreasonable reactions of Pakistan fans turn his mind from the captaincy. But if the reports are true and Younis does not lead Pakistan in Bangalore, he will be the dummy and an unreasonable one at that.

Admittedly, Pakistan’s decision-making has defied logic. Yasir Arafat rushes in too late to play. Shoaib Akhtar leaves his hospital bed to open the bowling. Kamran Akmal remains Pakistan’s wicketkeeper for his batting and not his glovework. Abdur Rauf is summoned but blocked by the board. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s stand-in captain is an agitated bystander.

What power can Younis expect, though, as stand-in captain? He keeps the seat warm for his younger leader, and it is churlish to complain since this is a situation of his own making. The captaincy and the power could have been his.

Statistically, Younis is one of Pakistan’s best ever batsmen. Everybody who scoffed at his heroics at Kolkata needs to remember that Pakistan have an abysmal record of saving a Test match on the final day. Far more illustrious Pakistan batting line-ups than this one have flopped miserably in less trying circumstances.

Yet Younis has never managed to capture the broad acclaim to match that of the people he rubs shoulders with in the records table. Some of this reluctance is down to Younis’s unpredictability, although he is increasingly reliable. Some of it is down to juvenile mockery of his bottom-slapping technique of player motivation.

Much of this ambivalence, however, is entirely explained by his bizarre relationship with the Pakistan captaincy. The first refusal could be explained by principle. The second explained by emotion. Many Pakistan fans have been exasperated by these decisions. How could somebody refuse the national leadership role? This third hesitation will eradicate any sympathy for Younis’s stance. The question is a simple one: What matters more to Younis, his pride or the opportunity to rescue this Test series for his country?

Let it go, Captain Khan. Your pride infuses your play but your pride is also diffusing your senses. The best answer to people in the squad or in the PCB who might undermine you is to show them what you are capable of on the field. That is where you win the argument, not in press conferences, syndicated columns, or air-conditioned boardrooms.

A Pakistan team with its third captain of the series will be a limp challenger to India’s dominance.

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If England are to be special again, FA must take a walk on wild side

By the Times Simon Barnes

Say the Football Association and Brian Barwick, its chief executive, could somehow be embarrassed into it. Say that the FA could be chivvied out of its safe-pair-of-hands, risk-averse world-view. And say that the man in question was not, after all, playing games while tarting about for Real Madrid. Just say that all those things happened – then ask yourself, what would it be like?

What would happen if José Mourinho was England manager? Would he actually be any good? What sort of trouble would he find (for all England managers find trouble)? And what weaknesses would he ultimately reveal? (It is one of sport’s eternal laws that every England manager must eventually stand before us exactly as he is.)

It all comes down to Mourinho’s colossal, almost ludicrous sense of self-esteem. That is his strength. It is also his weakness, of course, but let that go for a moment. Let us start at the beginning: the opening press conference, the first meeting with the team.

The job has been discredited by the appointment and subsequent failure of the hapless Steve McClaren, “the reductio ad absurdum of England managers” in Brian Glanville’s telling phrase. Mourinho would restore, in an instant, prestige to the position and, by extension, to the team. Both would be special again.

If I am doing the job, it must be one of the most important jobs in the world: Mourinho would bring that attitude with him and, at a stroke, everything to do with the England team would be important, serious, requiring total commitment. After all, everything that relates to Mourinho’s vanity is important.

The England team would become, in an instant of time, a wonderfully sexy thing. The effect of this, at least at first, would be inspirational. It would be a complete and radical relaunch for the England football team: exactly what is needed.

Now on to the actual football. Sven-Göran Eriksson, when England head coach, empowered his players by treating them as grown-ups, by allowing them to make their own decisions, by trust. Eriksson succeeded admirably, up to a certain point, that point being the quarter-finals of big tournaments.

Mourinho’s methods are radically different. Players are required to worship him, to do all they can to win his confidence. Could these methods secure England’s qualification for the World Cup of 2010? It would be surprising if Mourinho failed to pull it off. He has a capacity to win the loyalty of players at a profound level: very much a two-way street, as he established with his core players at Chelsea, his Untouchables. He can do hard slog; he can make a team who reliably beat the teams they bloody well ought to beat.

This same talent would work in tournament play, that unique form of football that club managers never have to worry about. Success at a World Cup is about getting on a roll. England did that, to an extent, at the World Cups of 2002 and 1990, reaching a level at which success began to seem logical and inevitable. Mourinho is capable of doing that with England, of doing as well as Eriksson.

S**t that will get you suspended from School. Part 1

This essay was one of two that got a student suspended and earned him a 0 in his exams. They also made him the President of the Writers Forum.

“Do you agree that most of the charitable work that Multinational Corporations undertake is driven by a motive to promote and publicize their own products?”

I agree. I agree as agreeably as by some rare victory of chance, two usually unagreeable mollusks might agree that to be in agreement, is to agree. I agree. You might not agree with me; but then we are not two unagreeable mollusks now, are we? Yes, I think even you would agree.

Multinational corporations exist for one sole reason that is the soul of their sole reason to exist: profits. Profitability profits them and though they might not be prophets, they are most certainly, blessed in that department.

Come to think of it, it is rather misfortunate that they are not prophets, for the profit for a prophet would have been truly profitable for all of humanity. And since they are not prophets, the profits of multinational corporations benefit none but their own inane selves.

There. My logic is undeniable. My reasoning as sure as two shores never meet.

I am a horse that eats rocks.

But that is beside the point. The point being the much-publicized benevolence of multinational corporations. If only I had some rocks right now, I would throw them at these multinational corporations. But no. That would be wrong. It would be very wrong, because I am blinded by my own maddening desire to hurl rocks. It is not that I dislike them. It’s just that I want to throw some rocks.

Vis-à-vis my blindness, it surely does not preclude the undeniable fact that these companies are doing good. Never mind their selfish motives, I say. If some rich corporation’s selfish-motive-driven-action ends up benefiting the sorry homophobes of Croatia, then I certainly do not have a problem with it.

Lets take an example here. Lets say if some giant rope manufacturer starts an advertisement campaign worldwide, proclaiming: SAVE RUSSIAN JEWS. WIN FABULOUS PRIZES! Lets say these Russian Jews in question can only be saved using the rope produced by this certain Rope Manufacturing Corporation that had advertised the plight of the Russian Jews.

Now what happens is that this Rope Manufacturing Corporation starts doling out free rope to one, all and sundry willing to go save the Russian Jews. The Rope Manufacturing Corporation hands out plenty of Russian-Jew-Saving-Rope for free, the end result being that the Russian Jews are indeed, saved.

The world sits up and takes notice. There is a rope-manufacturing firm out there that people perceive as a ‘good’ company. Suddenly, everyone starts buying rope from this Good Rope Manufacturer that had so generously aided in saving the Russian Jews who would have surely perished if not for the wonderful Russian-Jew-Saving-Rope donated by this Good Rope Manufacturing Corporation.

The Rope Manufacturing Corporation’s sales skyrocket, taking their profit ratios for a free ride in the northern stratosphere. The Russian Jews were saved, there’s a lot more rope being produced in the world and the Good Rope Manufacturing Corporation builds itself an HQ made of gold.

Everyone’s happy. We all agree. Why throw rocks at them? Feed them to me.