Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 68
July 6, 2022
Introducing our new Women’s Football Weekly podcast: Euro 2022 preview – Football Weekly Extra
We wanted to share the first episode of our new women’s football podcast. Faye Carruthers, Suzanne Wrack and a host of experts – some of whom you’ll know from the show – will be on hand three times a week to give instant reaction and analysis from the Women’s Euro 2022 competition.
In this episode, which was recorded on Monday, Faye and Suzanne are joined by Robyn Cowen and Jonathan Liew to preview the groups of Euro 2022, which kicks off on Wednesday. Make sure to search, listen and subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts.
Four groups, 16 teams and 24 first-stage matches. There’s plenty to talk about for the groups, including the big teams in trouble and dark horses who could cause an upset.
Plus: predictions from our panellists, which will be held over their heads during the next four weeks.
Continue reading...
July 5, 2022
Move over Wimbledon, the real jewel of the British sporting summer is here | Jonathan Liew
The Women’s Euro 2022 kicks off on Wednesday with the hosts England among the favourites in an open tournament
A curious sight appeared in the London skyline late on Monday evening. Tower Bridge stands 43 metres high at its centre and for a few moments its entire span was emblazoned with an image of England’s captain, Leah Williamson: bedecked in brilliant England white, a ball at her feet. This was not an isolated phenomenon. Around the same time giant light‑show Lionesses started popping up all over the capital: Lucy Bronze on Battersea Power Station, Demi Stokes on the Thames Barrier, Keira Walsh on the façade of the National Gallery.
Coming two days before the biggest women’s sporting event to be held in England, the symbolism was clear enough. For decades these women – and the thousands before them – have scrapped and striven and suffered for the simple privilege of being seen. For the next 25 days, as Sarina Wiegman’s team and their 15 rivals serve up a feast of football on prime-time television, it may be hard to avoid them. Now – and with the greatest of respect to the Commonwealth Games, Wimbledon and the rest – comes the real jewel of the British sporting summer.
Continue reading...July 4, 2022
Virat Kohli is box-office viewing but is India’s hype man becoming a liability? | Jonathan Liew
Former captain’s legacy is secure although his energy in the field doesn’t make up for the alarming drop in form with the bat
In the film Crank, Jason Statham stars as a hitman who – as a result of being poisoned by a rival gangster – will die unless he can maintain his adrenaline above a certain level. To this end he is forced to engage in constant acts of self-stimulation, from taking cocaine to starting random fights to having sex in public.
Not a lot of people outside Hollywood know this. But Statham’s character in that film was based directly on Virat Kohli.
Continue reading...Women’s Football Weekly: Euro 2022 preview show – podcast
Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzanne Wrack, Robyn Cowen and Jonathan Liew to preview the groups of Euro 2022, which kicks off on Wednesday
It feels like we’ve been talking about it forever – but Women’s Euro 2022 finally kicks off on Wednesday.
You can’t miss the Lionesses, whether it’s on crisp packets, drinks bottles, billboards or the cliffs of Dover. But what about the other teams who stand in their way?
Continue reading...July 3, 2022
Jonny Bairstow ready for England to chase any India total in fifth Test
“Whatever we’re set, we’ll try and chase,” Jonny Bairstow said with a shrug, as England stared down the barrel of a daunting fourth-innings target in the fifth Test.
India are already 257 runs ahead with just three wickets down but England’s centurion was supremely relaxed about the prospect, declaring: “Playing in the manner we are, you’re going to lose games of cricket.”
Continue reading...Jonny Bairstow indispensable to England after so long as spare part | Jonathan Liew
Even as India tightened their grip on the fifth Test, Bairstow was beautifully unconstrained
The sound is unique. How can this be? A regulation cricket bat hitting a regulation cricket ball: logic tells us this should sound the same whoever is swinging it. And yet intuition tells us otherwise.
Kevin Pietersen’s shots sounded like the crack of a rifle. Matthew Hayden’s sounded like an axe slicing through a tree. The bat of AB de Villiers, meanwhile, always made a delightful pock noise, however violently he was hitting it, as if he was simply helping the ball to wherever it was meant to go.
Continue reading...July 2, 2022
Ben Stokes’ new world order gets sobering reality check against India | Jonathan Liew
England have been playing positive cricket for four weeks, but the slick visitors have perfected it over the past four years
At one point during an interminable and broken afternoon at Edgbaston, the camera zoomed in on the array of listless faces on the England balcony. Perhaps this, rather than the swishing blade of Rishabh Pant or Jasprit Bumrah, was the first big test of England’s vivid new approach to Test cricket. Whether with the bat or in the field, this is a team that feeds on momentum, the buzz of a live audience, that lives for the vibe and the thrill, that wants to do everything in a hurry. So what happens when the heavens open with India leading the series 2-1, a deficit of 356 still on the board and much of the crowd already sloping off home?
Then again, maybe that’s just the old negativity talking. Maybe the England of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum were fervidly formulating yet another bold stratagem. Attack the rain. Run into the downpour. Certainly you could imagine Stokes himself itching to get out there and show the weather who was boss. Obviously you’ve got to respect precipitation’s record at this level. But like any meteorological phenomenon, put it under pressure and it cracks. And really, when you break it down, is there really any difference between wetness and dryness?
Continue reading...June 28, 2022
Nadine Dorries offers the illusion of easy choices while trans athletes pay the price | Jonathan Liew
A powerful movement extending far beyond judo or swimming is framing trans people as aggressors and frauds
Nadine Dorries cares. Nadine Dorries just wants to help. Nadine Dorries is making the pinched, sympathetic face she makes when she is doing something that pains her deeply but nonetheless needs to be done, like abolishing the BBC or selling off the colour red. “In a choice between inclusivity and fairness, as culture secretary I will always choose fairness,” Dorries writes in the Mail on Sunday. “So I’m setting a very clear line on this: competitive women’s sport must be reserved for people born of the female sex. I want all our sporting governing bodies to follow that policy.”
Nadine Dorries chooses fairness. Nadine Dorries has a very clear line. One of the most squalid aspects of this entire discourse is the way it has been essentially condensed to a game of political slogans. “Inclusion versus fairness.” “Follow the science.” Comforting, catchy bromides that offer the illusion of clarity, of easy choices and easy binaries.
Continue reading...June 26, 2022
Zak Crawley should be a perfect fit for this England but offers only high farce | Jonathan Liew
Opener’s flashy 25 was of a piece with the McCullum ethos but he could do with a bit more fear, and a return to his county
And frankly, were we not entertained? There were times during Zak Crawley’s blustery, tempestuous second innings at Headingley when you wondered whether we were watching a kind of brilliant performance art, perhaps even a sort of interpretative dance in which a 24-year-old man attempts to express the full gamut of human emotion via edges alone.
Either way you could argue that there is no player in this all-singing England team fulfilling his brief more perfectly than Crawley.
Continue reading...The cultural stigmatisation of referees is still relevant today | Jonathan Liew
A new novel based on Uriah Rennie – the Premier League’s first and only black referee – has reopened an age-old issue
In one of the most memorable and moving passages in Your Show – the new novel by Ashley Hickson-Lovence based on the life of Uriah Rennie – the Premier League’s first black referee is scrolling through a selection of internet comments and press coverage on some of his recent performances. “Too big for his Fila-sponsored boots.” “In my picture book dictionary under ‘showy referee’.” “The penny never dropped that the match wasn’t about him.” “A Malteser Sellotaped to a bag of marshmallows.”
On it goes, for pages and pages. Your Show is a remarkable book: highly stylised, written in the second person and – although based on extensive interviews with the man himself – largely imagined. Yet the most affecting parts of the novel are the stuff we know happened. The title of the book derives from an announcement made over the public address system at Deepdale as the officials emerge from the tunnel during a match between Preston and Crystal Palace: “Enjoy the second half of the Uriah Rennie Show.”
Continue reading...Jonathan Liew's Blog
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