Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 118
January 2, 2020
Peter Wright’s romantic tale from darts nearly man to world champion | Jonathan Liew
Peter Wright’s triumph on returning to darts after a string of dead-end jobs will remain one of the year’s great stories
Almost everything is different. For one thing the BBC graphic bills him as English, not Scottish. The throwing motion is not taut and measured but quick and impetuous. The hair is not spiked into a lurid Mohican but sensibly gelled and tousled, making him look less an elite sportsman and more the backing singer in an Irish pop group. The year is 1995 and, as a 24‑year‑old Peter Wright loses 3-1 against Ritchie Burnett in the first round at Lakeside, there is virtually nothing to suggest that we are watching a future world champion in the gestation.
Related: Peter Wright beats Michael van Gerwen to win his first PDC world title
Related: Gerwyn Price accuses Simon Whitlock of ‘pathetic’ play in PDC world darts
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January 1, 2020
Peter Wright beats Michael van Gerwen to win his first PDC world title
• Underdog won three successive sets in title charge
Perhaps we should have believed Peter Wright when he told us that this time things would be different. Perhaps, knowing what we do now, we should have paid a little more attention when he told us on the eve of his first world title that his darts finally felt comfortable in his hand, that his game finally felt in working order, and that he finally felt ready to rule.
The trouble was that to do so would have been to fight the overwhelming tide of logic. For one thing, Wright turns 50 in March, an unlikely sort of age to launch a grasp for greatness. A record of 10 defeats in 11 major finals hinted strongly at his ultimate level: a contender, not a conqueror. Seven of those defeats had come against Michael van Gerwen, the triple world champion, one of the greatest players in history, and his opponent here. This was the logic that Wright calmly and courageously ripped to pieces at Alexandra Palace on Wednesday.
Related: Michael van Gerwen 3-7 Peter Wright: PDC world darts championship final - as it happened
Continue reading...December 31, 2019
Out with the old and in with the nearly new: David Moyes is back at West Ham | Jonathan Liew
Well, I’m sorry to say again: it’s Moysey. In many ways the West Ham to which David Moyes returns this week is largely similar to the one he left 19 months ago: riven by discord, scarred by multiple defeats, lacking not just an identity but the most basic idea of what that identity might be. If Moyes was the answer, and then Manuel Pellegrini, and then Moyes again after him, then what on earth was the question?
Moyes has signed an 18-month contract. It is the gloomiest of all contract lengths: a Sherwood‑at‑Tottenham contract, an Allardyce‑at‑Everton contract: a transparently unsatisfying compromise between sporting artifice and financial pragmatism. It is a contract that says we’d all like this to work out but, come on, let’s be real. And to Moyes’s credit he perfectly captured this insoluble paradox in the first interview of his second spell.
Related: ‘I win’: David Moyes defends record and plans to stick around at West Ham
Related: ‘It feels great to be home’: West Ham appoint David Moyes on 18-month deal
Continue reading...December 30, 2019
Champion Michael van Gerwen and Peter Wright to meet in final fling
• Wright beats Gerwyn Price in an ill-tempered last-four clash
And so, with 94 out of 95 matches played, we find ourselves pretty much where we started: Michael van Gerwen against the field. As the world No1 and heavy favourite has carved a regal swath through the world championship draw, beating Nathan Aspinall 6-3 in Monday’s semi-final, one by one his closest rivals have fallen away: Rob Cross, Michael Smith, Gary Anderson, Gerwyn Price. Only Peter Wright, the man they call Snakebite, now separates him from a fourth world title.
On pedigree alone, it should be no contest. Van Gerwen is the indisputable master of modern darts, a silverware machine who treats all his opponents as impostors. Though he has looked several notches below his best over the last fortnight – and even his moment of victory here was greeted with a rueful shake of the head – his B-game has been more than good enough so far. Whether it will be good enough for Wright, however – a man who delights in upending the conventional maxims of the sport – is a matter of some interest.
Related: Fallon Sherrock earns place in all 2020 World Series of Darts events
Related: First woman to beat a man at PDC world darts overwhelmed by response
Continue reading...December 29, 2019
Arsenal’s innate fatalism means Chelsea loss may not surprise Arteta | Jonathan Liew
You can sense trouble brewing for Arsenal the moment they go on the attack. This sounds paradoxical but, once you’ve watched a club like this for long enough, reading the early signs of calamity becomes a sort of sixth sense, an almost shamanic instinct, like being able to see tomorrow’s weather in the pattern of a leaf. Perhaps it’s the way Nicolas Pépé retreats indeterminately towards the touchline, killing the momentum stone dead. Or the way Bukayo Saka advances just a few more yards than is probably wise. Perhaps it’s simply the breath of the wind on your cheek. Either way, you just know.
Related: Misery for Arteta after Chelsea’s Abraham grabs late winner at Arsenal
Continue reading...December 27, 2019
Molineux the stage for night of drama with plot twist for Guardiola | Jonathan Liew
Adama Traoré stole the show with his bustling runs and goal that gave Wolves confidence to go on and beat Manchester City
“It’s not football any more,” the Wolves fans sang at one point during this bizarre festive vaudeville. On this point, at least, they were wrong. This was, in many ways, modern Premier League football in its purest distillation: from the stark verticality to the puce-tinged rage, from the video-inspired plot twists to the freezing Molineux mist, from the humming madness of its start to the electrifying anarchy of its finish.
At the end of which: an instant classic, and probably a fair result, albeit by wildly circuitous means. For all the outrageous swings in fortune, for all the operatic fury of those opening 25 minutes, the narrative thread of this game was one in which Manchester City were mastered as they have rarely been in the Pep Guardiola era: 62-38 in possession, 20-7 in shots, beaten in the press and beaten in the tackle.
Related: Matt Doherty stuns 10-man Manchester City to give Wolves thrilling win
Continue reading...December 23, 2019
Cruel news about Rob Burrow’s MND should provoke rugby into action | Jonathan Liew
The two codes need to show greater leadership and ask why so many of its number are suffering from brain injuries
You may not have heard of the former professional baseball player Pete Frates but you may just be familiar with his work. Five years ago a Facebook video in which Frates upended a bucket of ice-cold water over his head in order to raise money for motor neurone disease – or ALS, as it is known in the United States – swiftly went viral. Within weeks something that became known as the Ice Bucket Challenge was on the way to becoming a global sensation, raising almost £100m in that initial summer alone.
A couple of weeks ago Frates died peacefully at the age of 34. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2012 and though he had spent the past seven years tirelessly raising awareness of his condition, his passing was an ice-cold reminder this is a contest with only one outcome. There is no known cure for MND, and what makes last week’s news about Rob Burrow so heartbreaking is that for all the defiance and dignity with which he has been discussing his diagnosis, he, too, is now on the same horrific and inexorable journey.
Related: Leeds Rhinos' Rob Burrow inspired by Doddie Weir after MND diagnosis
Related: Landmark study reveals link between football and dementia
Continue reading...Jaw-dropping sport moments of 2019: England win the Cricket World Cup
The finish combined drama and terror, outrageous reversals of fortune and the utter confusion of a dead heat after a dead heat
Five months on I can still remember all of it. But never all of it at once. It returns, instead, in fickle flashes and brief bolts. Martin Guptill knocks the ball to midwicket and scampers for a run. England need 15 to win off four balls. The sunlight is golden and glorious. Ben Stokes slides desperately for his ground, bat outstretched. New Zealand win the toss and bat. Jason Roy gathers the ball. The sunlight is golden and glorious. I want to vomit.
Anyone who tells you the 2019 World Cup final was the greatest game of cricket played has probably not seen enough cricket. It is forgotten now what a drab spectacle it was for the most part: played on a terrible, sticky Lord’s pitch producing two tortuously low scores. But in one important sense it was utterly unsurpassable: the sheer, bewildering theatre of two teams wrestling each other on the narrowest, most hazardous of precipices.
Related: England win Cricket World Cup after super-over drama against New Zealand
Related: Forty-four years of hurt made England’s winning moment even sweeter | Tanya Aldred
Continue reading...December 21, 2019
Leicester’s hero is Jonny Evans as Manchester City rediscover potency | Jonathan Liew
Was that it for Leicester, then? As Manchester City washed forward here in smooth waves, slicing them into perfect little triangles, it was tempting to wonder if the Premier League’s outstanding overachievers had finally found their ceiling. Ten points off the lead. Three games without a win. The champions ominously shifting into gear. Liverpool coming next on Boxing Day. A savage clamour! Well may I get aboard! This is the chase: I am gone for ever. [Exit, pursued by José Mourinho’s Tottenham.]
At the very least, this was a reminder that for all Leicester’s slender advantage in the table, Pep Guardiola’s side remain Liverpool’s most likely challengers. Certainly that is the impression you suspect Jürgen Klopp will draw once he returns from Qatar, cleans the alcohol-free champagne off his tracksuit and sits down to watch this game back. Guardiola was happy to play down the title talk afterwards. But the manner with which his side hunted down the Premier League’s best defence may just light a few embers of belief.
Related: Gabriel Jesus caps Manchester City’s comeback win over Leicester
Continue reading...December 20, 2019
Darts – the original numbers game – is finally getting its stats revolution | Jonathan Liew
It’s a rowdy Sunday at Alexandra Palace, and Andy Boulton has one dart at bullseye to win a leg at the world championship. His opponent, Daniel Baggish, is back on 135: a difficult outshot, but not impossible. So Boulton now has a decision. Does he aim his last dart at bull, the most difficult double on the board? Or does he instead throw a single 18 or single 10 to set up a much easier finish on his next visit, and gamble on Baggish missing?
More than 3,000 miles away, in wintry small-town Massachusetts, a 27-year-old postal worker called Christopher Kempf knows the precise answer. Based on his exhaustive analysis of millions of darts thrown on the Professional Darts Corporation tour, he knows that a player on 50 with a single dart remaining should throw for the bull only if their opponent has a better than 10% chance of checking out. He knows, too, that the success rate of attempts at 135 is only 4.4%.
Related: Iceman Price keeps his cool after O’Connor’s brain-freeze at PDC
Wright survives elf scare against Malicdem
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