Would you trust this man to bat out 12 overs? Photo Wikimedia Commons
Clinging on against defeat
There’s a game England had no right to emerge from without defeat. But after a day when it almost invariably appeared that defeat was an inevitability, a draw was the result as Monty Panesar and James Anderson saw out the last 69 balls of the day and England finished 9 wickets down, holding a lead of 13 runs. Minimal credit to England for not eventually buckling to a situation that was largely of their own making, but the plus is that the series stays alive, which a stark defeat could well have prevented.
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Clinging on to your title dreams
At the Nurburgring Jenson Button slipped steadily down from the third he had achieved in qualifying to fifth in the final reckoning of the German GP. The points are valuable, but the second consecutive 1-2 finish of the Red Bull cars draws them ever nearer to Brawn in the Constructors’ Championship and whittles steadily away at Button’s lead in the Drivers’ Championship. While there is some speculation that the Brawn is underachieving in cooler northern European condition and may experience a resurgence come later races in the year, the race is opening up, and having enjoyed early season supremacy, the race is on to protect the lead he has. If the rest of season continues at this pace, Button’s title will be as much a story test of his resilience and and ability to eke out every last point when he has a good car as an ability to win from the front with a great car - and it will make compelling viewing.
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Clinging on to professionalism
Micah Richards has apparently had the distinction of being the first professional footballer to contract swine flu - encountering the virus on holiday in Cyprus. Like most who’ll encounter it, it will be a bit like… well… flu - and after a few days in bed with some lemonade and soup, he is getting back to normal. But we couldn’t help notice the following observation from Richards himself:
“At first I thought it was a really bad chest infection, or maybe alcohol poisoning,” he told The Sun.
Read: I assumed it was just the side effects of all the lashing I was doing. The body is a temple, as always. Still, we can only assume that Richards was telling it like it was; he’s been that blunt ever since his first interview after scoring for City in the FA Cup and swearing in his first televised sentence:
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Google SWS search of the week
Apparently someone found us looking for الموندو ديبورتيفو الرياضي, which is an Arabic transliteration for ‘El Mundo Deportivo’. An Arabic search on a US search engine looking for a Spanish newspaper and landing on an English site. Is that what people mean when they talk about the global village?
