Feel the rush

As you may know I am particularly keen on my sport and have been dipping in and out of the World Athletics Championships in Beijing over the past few weeks. Pleasing as it was to see the English team doing well it was great to see David Rudisha back to his best. Top of the tree as ever was Usain Bolt who having narrowly beaten arch rival Justin Gatlin to retain his 100 metres title then destroyed him and the rest of the field in the 200 metres final. It may take him longer to tie his laces than it does to complete the race but there is always a sense of expectation whenever he takes to the track. I still get the feeling that he has more left in the tank, maybe he is saving it for Rio but I would hate to think he is holding back because if you're going to break records then there is no time like now because there are no guarantees of form or fitness in the future.

With the athletics still fresh in my mind I was in the locker room of my local sports club on Friday having participated in the regular squash night session. A couple of my mates and I were discussing recent events when I became distracted by an individual who had just entered the changing rooms. Usually at around 08:30 the changing room is packed full of sweaty squash players and members of the Taekwondo club. From what I have seen of their training sessions the rough and tumble for space in the changing rooms is the closest they get to justifying it as a contact sport.

This may have been a weekend that the Taekwondo boys went away since we pretty much had the room to ourselves and the guy who had just walked in. I was wondering what sport he was planning to participate in at this time of night since he was not carrying any equipment other than a holdall. Generally I do not pay much attention to others in the locker room since I find the steamy environment oppressive and it fogs up my glasses. An issue that is not helped by the heating having been on for most of the Summer.

From the shower I watched as this newcomer walked up and down the room, admiring himself in the wash basin mirrors. I must admit that being a public sports centre I do tend to keep one eye on my kit while I am taking a shower, and this guy was behaving oddly. He had left the room twice and returned by the time I had finished my shower. My friends and I were once more debating the athletics when he eventually decided to change into his gym kit. He then disappeared into one of the toilet cubicles and suitably refreshed, emerged, stripped off, jumped in the shower and got back into his civvies. I was bidding my farewell to my friends as he started to dress and thought no more about it until I was on my way home. Was this some sort of prank or was it the shortest workout in history? Maybe the guy strained himself in every sense of the word. Perhaps it was some new sport that I have never heard of. There seem to have been quite a few weird attempts over recent years to create unusual sports - chess boxing, free running, etc. One university even tried introducing a form of squash played in total darkness, with lines marked in luminous paint.

I have been on the premises when a couple of lorry drivers were caught by the staff trying to have a free shower at the centre's expense, that I can understand, what happened on Friday is beyond my comprehension.

Thinking about the shortest workout ever reminded me of a time when I worked in a small branch sales office with a disproportionate number of sports enthusiasts. There were only 32 of us, 23 of whom were male and with ages ranging from mid-20s to mid-50s, yet we managed to put out a competitive rugby 15 against the rest of the company. The 23 was reduced to 22 on account of one individual (who would have been a shoe-in had he been able to get a boot over his plaster cast or his crutch). We were pretty well covered in most areas with the exception of height so we were quite relieved when one of the managers who happened to be 6' 3'” and had only recently given up the game agreed to play in the second row. We were a complete scratch team, who had never played together, though many of us played or had played for different local club sides. This manager, who shall remain nameless, looked very good in the changing rooms, clean but well used boots, his own scrum cap, ran on the spot nicely in the warmup and gave a rousing braveheart rant during the huddle (more Gielgudian eloquence than Olivieresque abrasion).

Some were impressed by his keenness in rehearsing his 'hakka' in the dressing room, personally I thought he was going through the dance steps for 'Brotherhood of Man's Eurovision hit, 'Save your kisses for me'. In hindsight a hakka was a bit overambitious given that we had never played together as a team before let alone practiced synchronised grunting and gurning.

The 'rest of the company' won the toss and chose to kick off at which point our game plan fell apart, as did the aforementioned manager. A lofted drop kick drifted out towards the touch line and 'our secret weapon' collapsed on the floor like a house of cards before the ball had even bounced. The game was halted, his leg inspected and 2 of our cheerleaders were summoned to support him as he hobbled from the pitch. I believe there was ice available for his torn calf muscle though our 'sponge man' being the sympathetic soul that he was handed him a cold sponge and chose to save the ice for the Gin and Tonics.

In retrospect we were a fairly unusual bunch since we were the only branch to ever put out a team consisting entirely of staff members. We managed to field a passable football 11, a strong cricket team and 2 squash teams, one of which contained 4 county level players.

It is a sad reflection of how attitudes towards work and leisure have changed that the company that I now work for was recently challenged by one of our customers to a 'friendly' game of cricket yet was unable to mass more than 6 players willing to represent the company from a national workforce of over 2500.

If I have learned anything in my years of playing sport it is to expect the unexpected so last Friday was nothing really out of the normal.

The eternal quest for adventure

It seems that barely a month goes by without someone coming up with some unbelievably expensive challenge that gets scientists over-excited and governments, who should know better, racing for their cheque books. To my mind, neither of which should be encouraged.

The latest hair-brained scheme is for a new aircraft that will fly the Atlantic in an hour. Dubbed ‘The Son of Concorde’ it will be a hybrid aircraft/rocket that has got international high fliers in a frenzy of anticipation. So, celebrity A-listers will be able to appear live at a US film premier, fly to the London for the UK launch and still be back in the US in time to appear live on the Late Show. The fat cats in the city will be able to enhance their bank balances by trading 24 x 7 on both continents and elite footballers will now be able to play for 2 clubs at the same time.

Last month it was high speed trains, the month before that they were looking for volunteers for a one-way ticket to Mars and before that there was talk of plans to build an even faster version of the Large Hadron Collider.

Just how many trillions of pounds are all these schemes going to cost? Is this really what the world is screaming out for? 

Like many commuters I often struggle to work in traffic that barely reaches 5 mph – will I be any happier knowing that an aircraft could make the 5000 mile journey from London to New York in the same time it takes me to negotiate the traffic and pot holes on the congested streets from my home to my office.

Maybe I should be more excited, after all it is little over 100 years ago since the Wright brothers first took to the skies. The wingspan of a 747 aircraft is greater than the distance covered in that first flight. In the intervening years we have seen supersonic flight, put a man on the moon and are on the verge of introducing space tourism. True, the greatest leap forward in rocket science was achieved through the development of weapons technology during the 2^nd world war but where would we be today without the satellites that are so much a part of our lives that we take them for granted.

There have been a great many spin-offs from these flights of fancy in the past and who is to say that future developments may not bring equally important discoveries. 

Having been blessed with the scientific mind of a goldfish I am probably the last person to be passing judgement on what is or isn’t feasible. I do however feel that there is a great deal more that is achievable closer to home without committing such fantastic sums of money to these projects.

Breakthroughs in medicine are still coming through which will hopefully reduce or eradicate some of the major diseases around the world. There are also new products such as graphene that offer great potential in so many different fields.

Personally, I have never understood the purpose of the Hadron Collider; firing a laser beam around a giant tunnel of mirrors under ground, what is that all about? Why did it need to be the ‘Large’ Hadron Collider? Would a smaller one not have been just as effective?

Scientists strike me as a pretty sceptical bunch so I suspect a great number of them will be atheists – why are they looking for ‘The God Particle’ if they are non-believers? What will they do if they do find it? How will they know if they have found it? “Oh, that was nice, now what do we do?” Everyone goes home and CERN is turned into a theme park attraction.

If we have survived all this time without ‘The God Particle’ why do we need it now? What are we looking to learn from it? What are we expected to do with it?

In this topsy-turvy world we live in I doubt that I will be around long enough to see an end to poverty, a cure for dementia and alzheimer’s disease, or self-sufficiency in the global food supply but I might be around long enough to see the maiden flight of ‘Son of Concorde’.

Anyone for tennis?

So once more the annual gruntfest is over and the fair weather amateurs can cast away their tennis rackets for another year. Pleased for Serena Williams and Novak Djokavic and delighted to see Roger Federer playing so well, but on the day you could only say that Novak deserved his win. A victory of efficiency over elegance.

What I find particularly interesting about Federer is the way that his game has evolved as he has aged. The improvements to his serve and his willingness to come to the net more in order to shorten the rallies have not only enhanced his chances of a further major trophy but made the game more watchable. To be landing 80% of your first serves in court, as he did against Andy Murray, is an incredible level of consistency. 

Personally I have found the quality of the tennis in both the women’s and men’s events have been exceptionally high this year. It has surprised me that there have been so many gritty performances, particularly in the women’s game, and not just from ladies with the stature of a Williams or Kvitova. Some of the more petite players thumping down serves at 100 mph plus, making returns and actually placing the ball is a welcome sign of progress.

Maria Sharapova remains an enigma to me, in comparison to others her game is a powder puff yet her mental strength is phenomenal. Her serve has never been great, even before the shoulder surgery, and she lacks the power of some of the up and coming players but her resolve to fight for every point continues to get her out of the bleakest of scenarios. 

Once again the question of ‘the grunt’ has been raised again. Much has been made of the noise level and frequency of the Sharapova / Azarenka / Nadal grunting and there would appear to be a split in the camp as to its acceptability.

I did read somewhere that young players are taught to grunt in their early years as it helps them to exhale when they make a shot. I can understand why that may be the case but is it strictly necessary in later years.

In martial arts students are taught to yell as they strike a blow because it forces you to breathe, meaning you take in more oxygen to give you energy. Effectively control of your breathing helps to focus on delivering the blow.

When I played cricket taking a breath and raising the bat were part of my backlift routine for the same reason but I never felt the need or urge to shriek as I played the shot, it simply helped to focus the mind for that split second before deciding how to play the ball.

I have also played a fair amount of squash over the years and never once have I heard anyone grunt while making their shots. Grunts of dismay (or worse) following a bad shot there have been plenty but grunting has never routinely been part of any opponent’s game.

Martina Navratilova says that she finds grunting a distraction since she prefers to listen to the ball off the racket in order to determine the quality and direction of the shot.

To my mind the answer is simple, if you start to penalise players for persistent offending it will not be long before the practice stops. The number of 2-footed tackles dropped dramatically in football when it was decided to make this a red card offence and players now think twice about removing their shirt in celebration of a goal. Similarly rules have been introduced in rugby and cricket to curb the more unwelcome elements of the game so I believe a change in the rules on grunting will greatly reduce the noise level on the tennis court.

The ultimate catch

Fortunately throughout my life I have never been someone who has given much thought to their age. Why should I? There is nothing I can do about it. There may have been times when I had wished I had been a little bit older, so that I may have enjoyed more of the 60s music scene or younger so that I could still be playing as much sport as I used to do, but overall I am pretty satisfied with the hand that I have been dealt.

That said, a friend and I were recently debating the favourite county cricket matches which we had seen in our teens. I casually mentioned how I was looking forward to spending the odd day or two reliving those times slumped in a deckchair, with thermos and sarnies watching the county games in my retirement. Not only did it dawn on me that retirement is now considerably closer than I had realised but the way the game is going there may very well be no proper county cricket played by the time I do pack up the day job. From delight to despair in a matter of seconds.

It is understandable that the bean counters should want to maximise the revenue from the 20-20 game but the 5 day test match is to my mind the blue riband of cricket and the only way players can learn how to play that type of game is through playing the 3 day game.

I still enjoy the one day game and I can appreciate the 20-20 version as a spectacle but I don't like the pyjamas and razzamattaz that goes with it. Each of the versions of the game has their own set of technical demands and strategies and not every player is capable of adapting their game to suit each discipline. It is a bit like expecting a derby runner to win the Grand National or Usain Bolt to be equally as adept at running the marathon.

In my club cricketing days we used to put a team into the evening knockout tournament which was a 20 over cup competition for clubs in the area. As both player and spectator it was always enjoyable to be play on a beautiful ground on a warm July evening while watching the sunset. Availability apart no club could ever play their full 1^st XI and in our case there were at least 2 players who were deemed ineligible for selection on grounds that the game would be over before they had finished kitting themselves up with their usual array of liniments, bandages and additional padding.

This conversation has played on my mind for several days now and though it has been great to rekindle the memories of watching my boyhood heroes there is a nagging doubt in my mind that there will be a yawning gap in my retirement if I can't perambulate the boundary and sit in the sun listening to the thud of ball on willow.