Mihir Bose's Blog, page 28
September 4, 2015
Bryan Habana: England coach Stuart Lancaster is working towards something special
London Evening Standard
England's match against Ireland tomorrow is a final chance for Stuart Lancaster’s men to make a statement before the Rugby World Cup.
Any optimism generated by the first warm-up win, against France, was destroyed in Paris seven days later, when England were battered for 70 minutes, conceded a host of needless penalties and were lucky to come away with just a five-point defeat.
England may have failed to convince then but one notable voice talking up their cause is Bryan Habana.
The winger was IRB Player of the Year when he helped South Africa win the 2007 World Cup and will be on these shores this month for another tilt at the Webb Ellis Cup.
“I definitely think they are working towards something special,” he tells me. “Under the leadership of Stuart Lancaster and Chris Robshaw, they have done some wonderful things over the last three to four years.
England's match against Ireland tomorrow is a final chance for Stuart Lancaster’s men to make a statement before the Rugby World Cup.
Any optimism generated by the first warm-up win, against France, was destroyed in Paris seven days later, when England were battered for 70 minutes, conceded a host of needless penalties and were lucky to come away with just a five-point defeat.
England may have failed to convince then but one notable voice talking up their cause is Bryan Habana.
The winger was IRB Player of the Year when he helped South Africa win the 2007 World Cup and will be on these shores this month for another tilt at the Webb Ellis Cup.
“I definitely think they are working towards something special,” he tells me. “Under the leadership of Stuart Lancaster and Chris Robshaw, they have done some wonderful things over the last three to four years.
UK horseracing chief Simon Bazalgette on restructuring the sport
Financial Times
Simon Bazalgette loves his house in Kew, south-west London, so much that he does not mind living under the flight path of Heathrow.
We are in the back garden admiring his apple, olive and fig trees and a couple of frogs in the corner. The chief executive of the UK’s Jockey Club is telling [...]
Simon Bazalgette loves his house in Kew, south-west London, so much that he does not mind living under the flight path of Heathrow.
We are in the back garden admiring his apple, olive and fig trees and a couple of frogs in the corner. The chief executive of the UK’s Jockey Club is telling [...]
September 3, 2015
The Oval World: A Global History of Rugby by Tony Collins, book review
The Independent
There is no story more riveting in sport than that of William Webb Ellis suddenly picking up a football and running with it during a school match for Rugby in 1823 to invent rugby. Like many such creation stories, this is almost definitely a myth, but the World Cup, which starts this month, is named after him.
The fact is rugby's rules developed after many acrimonious meetings with football but, unlike its twin, it failed to come to terms with professionalism, leading to a historic split between the amateur union and the professional league.
Tony Collins narrates this history with magisterial skill, weaving in details of matches with the wider historical and social picture, including how the oval ball has managed to keep Ireland united when nothing else has – the Irish have always been one rugby nation with players even forming part of British Lions teams touring overseas.
For nearly a century, rugby not only tolerated racism but encouraged it, which remains a shameful indictment of the game's white administrators who have never acknowledged it or apologised for it.
New Zealand's behaviour has been most astounding, boasting that it had integrated its Maoris, many of whom were distinguished players for the All Blacks, a team which has always set the template in the sport. But when it came to playing the pre-Nelson Mandela South African team, New Zealand, despite seeing rugby as more than a game, readily accepted diktats to exclude its Maori players, including the legendary Ranji Wilson, born to an English mother and West Indian father, and George Nepia, forcing him to leave the union for the league.
There is no story more riveting in sport than that of William Webb Ellis suddenly picking up a football and running with it during a school match for Rugby in 1823 to invent rugby. Like many such creation stories, this is almost definitely a myth, but the World Cup, which starts this month, is named after him.
The fact is rugby's rules developed after many acrimonious meetings with football but, unlike its twin, it failed to come to terms with professionalism, leading to a historic split between the amateur union and the professional league.
Tony Collins narrates this history with magisterial skill, weaving in details of matches with the wider historical and social picture, including how the oval ball has managed to keep Ireland united when nothing else has – the Irish have always been one rugby nation with players even forming part of British Lions teams touring overseas.
For nearly a century, rugby not only tolerated racism but encouraged it, which remains a shameful indictment of the game's white administrators who have never acknowledged it or apologised for it.
New Zealand's behaviour has been most astounding, boasting that it had integrated its Maoris, many of whom were distinguished players for the All Blacks, a team which has always set the template in the sport. But when it came to playing the pre-Nelson Mandela South African team, New Zealand, despite seeing rugby as more than a game, readily accepted diktats to exclude its Maori players, including the legendary Ranji Wilson, born to an English mother and West Indian father, and George Nepia, forcing him to leave the union for the league.
August 30, 2015
West Ham renting the Olympic stadium shows how the British state has failed in the modern sports business
Inside World Football
West Ham must have hoped that the dust had finally settled on their move next year to the Olympic Stadium. Not a bit of it. There are growing calls for public inquiry by fans of other football clubs into the decision by Boris Johnson to let the Hammers rent the stadium built by taxpayers' money for the 2012 Olympics, an occasion of great British national celebration.
What makes this very interesting is how this controversy has reignited. This is due to the media, in particular the Daily Mail, which a few weeks ago ran a detailed comment page article on the saga highlighting how many aspects of the deal between Johnson and West Ham have not been made public.
There is a suggestion that this is part of a wider campaign by the paper to get Boris. The paper has a reputation for feisty campaigns and it is possible editor Paul Dacre has got Boris in his sights. However, if this is what prompted it the paper clearly wants to be fair for this was followed by the paper's celebrated sports writer, Martin Samuel, interviewing Karen Brady, the club's vice chairman, providing a defence for the deal. Since then David Sullivan, the co-owner, has gone further in the London Evening Standard arguing that West Ham far from benefiting will actually lose out by moving to the Olympic stadium.
West Ham must have hoped that the dust had finally settled on their move next year to the Olympic Stadium. Not a bit of it. There are growing calls for public inquiry by fans of other football clubs into the decision by Boris Johnson to let the Hammers rent the stadium built by taxpayers' money for the 2012 Olympics, an occasion of great British national celebration.
What makes this very interesting is how this controversy has reignited. This is due to the media, in particular the Daily Mail, which a few weeks ago ran a detailed comment page article on the saga highlighting how many aspects of the deal between Johnson and West Ham have not been made public.
There is a suggestion that this is part of a wider campaign by the paper to get Boris. The paper has a reputation for feisty campaigns and it is possible editor Paul Dacre has got Boris in his sights. However, if this is what prompted it the paper clearly wants to be fair for this was followed by the paper's celebrated sports writer, Martin Samuel, interviewing Karen Brady, the club's vice chairman, providing a defence for the deal. Since then David Sullivan, the co-owner, has gone further in the London Evening Standard arguing that West Ham far from benefiting will actually lose out by moving to the Olympic stadium.
August 28, 2015
Yohan Cabaye: I know the fuss Crystal Palace have made of me but there’s no pressure
London Evening Standard
Crystal Palace’s sole win at Chelsea came 33 years ago when both clubs were in the old second division. Tomorrow, Palace go to Stamford Bridge with the champions, after a shaky start to the season, buoyed by the impact of new arrival Pedro.
But Yohan Cabaye, Palace’s record £13million signing, says: “We won’t be scared of them. No, no, no. They have to feel that we are not scared of them. Tomorrow, we will not let Chelsea players play as they like.”
We are talking in the media room of Palace’s Beckenham training ground and, on the wall, is the exhortation “Respect the enemy’s strength” from the Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu. Cabaye glances at it and says: “We respect them, we respect all teams. But we will focus on getting something out of the game. I am not worried about the quality they have got.”
There is one Chelsea player whose quality the 29-year-old knows well, his former Lille team-mate Eden Hazard. “He is very special, the best player in the Premier League,” he says. “He could win the Ballon d’Or.”
In the last five years this FIFA award, signifying the world’s best player, has been shared by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Crystal Palace’s sole win at Chelsea came 33 years ago when both clubs were in the old second division. Tomorrow, Palace go to Stamford Bridge with the champions, after a shaky start to the season, buoyed by the impact of new arrival Pedro.
But Yohan Cabaye, Palace’s record £13million signing, says: “We won’t be scared of them. No, no, no. They have to feel that we are not scared of them. Tomorrow, we will not let Chelsea players play as they like.”
We are talking in the media room of Palace’s Beckenham training ground and, on the wall, is the exhortation “Respect the enemy’s strength” from the Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu. Cabaye glances at it and says: “We respect them, we respect all teams. But we will focus on getting something out of the game. I am not worried about the quality they have got.”
There is one Chelsea player whose quality the 29-year-old knows well, his former Lille team-mate Eden Hazard. “He is very special, the best player in the Premier League,” he says. “He could win the Ballon d’Or.”
In the last five years this FIFA award, signifying the world’s best player, has been shared by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
August 21, 2015
Bournemouth chairman Jeff Mostyn: Eddie Howe was the cheap option – but he has made us special
Bournemouth chairman Jeff Mostyn: Eddie Howe was the cheap option - but he has made us special
London Evening Standard
It is a sign of Eddie Howe’s standing at Bournemouth that millionaire owner Maxim Demin consulted him over who should be chairman.
At the meeting two years ago, also attended by assistant boss Jason Tindall and chief executive Neill Blake, Howe plumped for Jeff Mostyn, the man who gave him his break as a manager.
“I was at home when I got a call from Maxim,” says Mostyn, who moved down to vice-chairman after the Russian bought 50 per cent of the club in 2011. “He said, ‘Hi, Jeff we’re having a board meeting in Moscow. I have Eddie, Jason and Neill with me and we have decided you are the new chairman’.
“It must be the first time in football that a manager and assistant manager have appointed a chairman.”
London Evening Standard
It is a sign of Eddie Howe’s standing at Bournemouth that millionaire owner Maxim Demin consulted him over who should be chairman.
At the meeting two years ago, also attended by assistant boss Jason Tindall and chief executive Neill Blake, Howe plumped for Jeff Mostyn, the man who gave him his break as a manager.
“I was at home when I got a call from Maxim,” says Mostyn, who moved down to vice-chairman after the Russian bought 50 per cent of the club in 2011. “He said, ‘Hi, Jeff we’re having a board meeting in Moscow. I have Eddie, Jason and Neill with me and we have decided you are the new chairman’.
“It must be the first time in football that a manager and assistant manager have appointed a chairman.”
August 20, 2015
Why Platini is the Dauphin, the insider, in the battle to succeed Blatter
Inside World Football
The contest to succeed Sepp Blatter could still produce surprises, not least we could have more candidates. Some Africans, aided by European advisers, are still trying to find a heavyweight African, Tokyo Sexwale is the name most often mentioned, to provide a realistic chance of the first black man occupying Blatter's wonderful House of Football in Zurich. Prince Ali could still stand. But whatever the final list of candidates already the contour of the election is clear. This is that Michel Platini is the insider and Chung Mong-joon the outsider.
Now this may come as a surprise. After all, is Platini not the man promoted by Europeans to clean up football and provide the new, alternative, leadership that FIFA desperately needs? That Platini will be different to Blatter cannot be doubted. For a start he will discard the Imperial Presidency that Blatter has built up. The Swiss presents FIFA as the Vatican of sport and, despite not having any territory or Army, sees himself as the head of a state. Platini has no such pretensions and will not only be more softly spoken, and say less, but will be seen less.
The contest to succeed Sepp Blatter could still produce surprises, not least we could have more candidates. Some Africans, aided by European advisers, are still trying to find a heavyweight African, Tokyo Sexwale is the name most often mentioned, to provide a realistic chance of the first black man occupying Blatter's wonderful House of Football in Zurich. Prince Ali could still stand. But whatever the final list of candidates already the contour of the election is clear. This is that Michel Platini is the insider and Chung Mong-joon the outsider.
Now this may come as a surprise. After all, is Platini not the man promoted by Europeans to clean up football and provide the new, alternative, leadership that FIFA desperately needs? That Platini will be different to Blatter cannot be doubted. For a start he will discard the Imperial Presidency that Blatter has built up. The Swiss presents FIFA as the Vatican of sport and, despite not having any territory or Army, sees himself as the head of a state. Platini has no such pretensions and will not only be more softly spoken, and say less, but will be seen less.
August 19, 2015
Migration is about people, not numbers
Migration Museum Project
This guest blog by Mihir Bose, a distinguished friend of the Migration Museum Project, was written shortly after his visit to Adopting Britain, the exhibition at the Southbank Centre to which the Migration Museum Project has been a proud contributor.
Migration is always presented as a story of numbers. It goes as follows: that [...]
This guest blog by Mihir Bose, a distinguished friend of the Migration Museum Project, was written shortly after his visit to Adopting Britain, the exhibition at the Southbank Centre to which the Migration Museum Project has been a proud contributor.
Migration is always presented as a story of numbers. It goes as follows: that [...]
August 14, 2015
At Home : French TV producer Jean-Louis Remilleux talks about fulfilling his dream to live in a historic chateau
French TV producer who lives in a château with a 100-seat theatre
Financial Times
The first thing Jean-Louis Remilleux does when we meet is apologise. “I speak English like a Spanish cow,” he says, but as he does so the French television producer smiles, very aware that his 18th-century Château de Digoine — a French national heritage site — needs no apology.
Digoine, in Palinges, Burgundy, is open to the public during summer afternoons for a fee of €12, but this personal tour has come about as a result of a Christie’s auction next month that will feature more than 1,000 paintings, pieces of furniture and other objects belonging to Remilleux, in an effort to fund the refurbishment of the château’s 19th-century theatre.
To read the full article please go to
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb9bbc56-3b...
Financial Times
The first thing Jean-Louis Remilleux does when we meet is apologise. “I speak English like a Spanish cow,” he says, but as he does so the French television producer smiles, very aware that his 18th-century Château de Digoine — a French national heritage site — needs no apology.
Digoine, in Palinges, Burgundy, is open to the public during summer afternoons for a fee of €12, but this personal tour has come about as a result of a Christie’s auction next month that will feature more than 1,000 paintings, pieces of furniture and other objects belonging to Remilleux, in an effort to fund the refurbishment of the château’s 19th-century theatre.
To read the full article please go to
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb9bbc56-3b...
August 12, 2015
Letter to The Times
Times Newspapers
Letter to the Times
Alice Thomson’s affecting Opinion piece on society’s reaction to Alzheimer’s patients touched many readers
Sir, I was struck by Alice Thomson’s brilliant description of how her aged father became part of her family life during the summer holidays (“A simple way to ease the despair of dementia”, Opinion, Aug 12).
This seems a British version, albeit heavily modified, of what in India is called the joint family system. In this historic system three generations live together in one house. The generation in the middle are the breadwinners who look after their aged parents and bring up their children, confident that when they are too old to work their children will look after them.
The system is not without its problems, and when I was growing up in India in the 1960s young Indians, much influenced by the West, criticised this system as part of the decadent Indian way of life that had to be discarded if India was to really take to the superior western ways.
They were encouraged in this by influential western intellectuals such as Arthur Koestler who in his 1960 book, The Lotus and the Robot, wrote that the father-son relation in India was “the problem which overshadows all others”. He condemned “the nursing of the sick father, the evenings spent with him, the sacrifice of the son’s private life”.
Many western-educated Indians still hold to Koestler’s view, and it is now not uncommon to put elderly parents in retirement homes.
It would be fascinating to know what people like Koestler would have made of the growing western view that children caring for sick parents is not such a bad idea after all.
Mihir Bose
London W6
Letter to the Times
Alice Thomson’s affecting Opinion piece on society’s reaction to Alzheimer’s patients touched many readers
Sir, I was struck by Alice Thomson’s brilliant description of how her aged father became part of her family life during the summer holidays (“A simple way to ease the despair of dementia”, Opinion, Aug 12).
This seems a British version, albeit heavily modified, of what in India is called the joint family system. In this historic system three generations live together in one house. The generation in the middle are the breadwinners who look after their aged parents and bring up their children, confident that when they are too old to work their children will look after them.
The system is not without its problems, and when I was growing up in India in the 1960s young Indians, much influenced by the West, criticised this system as part of the decadent Indian way of life that had to be discarded if India was to really take to the superior western ways.
They were encouraged in this by influential western intellectuals such as Arthur Koestler who in his 1960 book, The Lotus and the Robot, wrote that the father-son relation in India was “the problem which overshadows all others”. He condemned “the nursing of the sick father, the evenings spent with him, the sacrifice of the son’s private life”.
Many western-educated Indians still hold to Koestler’s view, and it is now not uncommon to put elderly parents in retirement homes.
It would be fascinating to know what people like Koestler would have made of the growing western view that children caring for sick parents is not such a bad idea after all.
Mihir Bose
London W6
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