BBC SPORT | Ben Dirs

All ends well in East End

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:17:46 +0000

In case anyone was wondering, I am not writing this from another space-time dimension: the world did not fold in on itself above Upton Park on Saturday, everyone present survived and even the sport of boxing came out the other side.

If us Brits aren’t moaning about the inclement summer weather, we do like to get on our high horse about a supposed moral outrage. When boxing is involved and things get a bit naughty, there aren’t horses high enough in the land.

Before David Haye’s heavyweight clash with Dereck Chisora, a couple of journalists likened the event to a “public execution”. If by that they meant the punters had a few beers, a jolly good time and went home happy, then, by medieval standards, they were probably right. If they meant the punters were implicit in something monstrous and immoral, they were wrong.

Of course, there were underlying problems with the bout. That two young men had a punch-up at a news conference was not, in itself, one of them: believe it or not, young men have been having punch-ups for thousands of years and, I boldly predict, will be in a thousand years’ time. Probably on Mars.

David Haye (left) defeated Dereck Chisora (right) with a fifth-round knockout in an enthralling contest at Upton Park. Photo: Getty

But young boxers who have punch-ups should be punished and that all parties involved were able to bypass the British Boxing Board of Control, which revoked Chisora’s licence following the brawl with Haye in Munich that led to the actual fight, was regrettable and only heightened the sense that boxing is the Wild West of sport: if you don’t possess a sheriff’s badge, then get one minted.

However, bigger crimes have been committed in boxing by far bigger names than Haye and Chisora, as I have argued on these pages before. And what went off in London’s East End on Saturday made some of the pre-fight condemnation appear nothing short of hysterical.

If the skies above West Ham were ominous, the 30,000 fans who braved the elements were treated to one of the most entertaining heavyweight bouts in recent memory: five rounds of compelling boxing, it was tremendous fun.

There were those who had dismissed the fight as meaningless, which is puzzling: on the one hand people complain about meaningless title fights that few people want to see; on the other hand people complain about meaningless non-title fights that 30,000 people want to see. It was what it was: two of the best heavyweights in Britain settling their differences in the ring.

The smart money was on Haye being too quick and too explosive for Chisora, and so it turned out. But Chisora’s well-earned reputation for durability – remember he took Vitali Klitschko 12 rounds back in February – kept it interesting right up until the end came, with a second left in the fifth round.

Indeed, there were hints in a humdinger of a third that Haye, who had come in light and gambled it on speed, might have underestimated his rival.

Looking momentarily tired, the snap gone from his jab, there was a hint of desperation about Haye’s work as he traded with Chisora either side of the sound of the bell, with Chisora, more than two stone heavier, doing the most damage.

But Haye settled and looked to be enjoying his work in the fourth, picking his shots and making look Chisora look ponderous. A ferocious uppercut and a couple of shuddering left hooks were a sign of things to come.

Even so, the end, when it came, was surprising. Chisora, whose whiskers were tested on numerous occasions by Klitschko, a man who has finished 40 of his 44 opponents inside the distance, was knocked bandy by a sweet left-right combination from Haye. And when the courageous Chisora got up, he was knocked bandy again. Redemption, of a sort, for both men.

Chisora having regained his senses, there followed the most heartening sights and sounds of the night: the two sworn enemies kissing and making up, to warm applause from the crowd. The much-maligned Chisora even had the decency to remind Haye he owed him 20 grand, to be given to the victor’s chosen charity.

Yet, to the conspiracists, all these niceties were the final act of a convoluted secret plot: “Can’t you see you’ve been had?!” The Munich brawl, say the conspiracists, was the start of it: Adam Booth wasn’t supposed to be hit over the head with a tripod, he just hadn’t been paying attention during rehearsals.

These conspiracists don’t understand boxing: it is possible for two men who hate each other to forge a mutual respect in the furnace of the ring. Just because they kissed and made up doesn’t mean they’ll be dining together any time soon. Although, as Chisora put it, “at least we can eat in the same restaurants”.

Hatchet buried, the two men bade farewell at the crossroads. Chisora, having lost four of his last five fights, took the route to an uncertain future. But having fought valiantly against Klitschko and Haye and been robbed against European champion Robert Helenius in Finland last December, he still has options.

For Haye, the road to ultimate redemption lays open again. Made to look foolish by Wladimir Klitschko in Hamburg last July – Haye talked big, fought small, blamed defeat on his toe – victory over big brother Vitali would be sweet.

“I’d like to regain the heavyweight championship of the world and challenge Vitali for the title,” said the 31-year-old Londoner. “But I’ve got a feeling this performance [against Chisora] was too good. I’m not sure the Klitschkos are in the business of hard fights, Vitali would rather fight another chump.”

If you can cram 30,000 fans in Upton Park to see a meaningless non-title fight with the morals of a public execution, then how many people would pay to see Haye challenge Vitali for the WBC heavyweight crown? Think big. Think Wembley. I’m thinking Vitali might be. Let the nonsense begin.

Haye v Chisora: Forget the nonsense, enjoy the fight

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 07:30:00 +0000

The most startling claim made at the final news conference before Saturday's bout between David Haye and Dereck Chisora came from the latter's trainer Don Charles: "I would go as far as to say the kid [Chisora] is a genius."

While I am aware that geniuses are not always immediately obvious - just ask the poor prostitute Van Gogh gave his ear to - I am equally certain that losing three of your last four fights, slapping a rival at a weigh-in, spitting at his brother and collecting parking meters does not a genius make.

Having headed for the news conference almost directly from the rather more buttoned-up environment of Wimbledon, the nonsense piled up so fast I needed wings to stay above it: playground insults traded by hard men through a metal fence that would have struggled to keep apart a couple of warring toddlers. How much more bonkers could this be? The answer is 'none': none more bonkers.

David Haye and Dereck Chisora ahead of their clash at Upton Park. Photo: Getty

And yet. And yet. My claim is this: that no activity in the sporting canon evokes in its audience such a wide range of emotions as boxing. Fear, anger, sadness, joy, admiration, disgust, shame, pity, all are there, with amusement gelling the whole thing together like a generous slathering of jam in a cake.

If one person embodied the sport's emotional incontinence it was two-weight world champion Chris Eubank: a man who wore a monocle and jodhpurs (anger, amusement, take your pick), fought with the heart of a lion (fear, joy, admiration) and was involved in his fair share of tragedy (disgust, shame, pity).

As much as I was filled with admiration for the talent on display at SW19, while I sucked up a few tears on seeing Andy Murray losing and laughed on seeing Jo-Wilfried Tsonga wear a forehand in his unmentionables, tennis is not a game that evokes emotional extremes. Because it is just that: a game.

So while sections of the media have condemned Saturday's fight at Upton Park, a lot of punters have bought into it: 30,000 are expected, which is 5,000 more than watched Lennox Lewis beat Frank Bruno in Cardiff in 1993.

Sub-consciously or not, these will include people for whom the undeniable silliness of professional boxing obscures, and perhaps makes more palatable, the seriousness of the activity. Boxing, when all the fripperies and all the supposed rights and wrongs are stripped away, is two men putting their lives and manhood on the line. And so it will be when David Haye fights Dereck Chisora this weekend.

So it is time to put behind us whether this fight should ever have taken place - something I discussed at length when it was announced - and concentrate on the here and now: it is legal, the punters clearly want it and it is an intriguing stylistic match-up that has the makings of a domestic classic.

At its heart the fight is a tale of redemption. But perhaps only for one man. While his trainer thinks his kid is a genius, most of the rest of Britain thinks Chisora is unhinged, someone who flits between biting and kissing opponents. Win with honour and a few people might change their minds.

When it was put to Haye that he is in danger of being remembered for all the wrong reasons, he didn't seem to mind: "It doesn't bother me. As long as the people I care about and boxing people know what I've achieved, I'm happy."

But to be remembered for his 'fight' against Audley Harrison (Harrison threw one punch in three rounds), his 'fight' against Wladimir Klitschko (Haye talked it up before blaming defeat on his toe) and his 'fight' against Chisora (February's glass-shattering brawl in Munich) would be a shame.

For Haye is a former undisputed cruiserweight champion, who climbed off the canvas in Paris to beat Jean-Marc Mormeck for the WBA and WBC crowns before blitzing Welshman Enzo Maccarinelli in two rounds. And let's not forget his win over Nikolay Valuev, to whom he gave away 10 inches and six stone.

While Haye will tell anyone who cares to listen that he will get Chisora out of the way in one or two rounds, others are not convinced it will be quite so easy. And Haye knows he needs an eye-catching performance to keep Vitali Klitschko, who Chisora performed so creditably against, from retirement.

In a battle between a ponderous, come-forward pressure-fighter (Chisora) and a speedy, back-foot counter-puncher (Haye), the outcomes are numerous, especially when punching power, chins and stamina are chucked into the equation.

Haye starts the favourite because most people believe he will be too quick and too explosive. But Chisora will be banking on his durability - he won the last round against Vitali - looking to make his rival fight three minutes of every round and hoping Haye blows himself out down the stretch.

"He gets blasted out real fast," is how Haye sees it. Chisora's response: "He's got speed for one round. By round four, he'll be blowing out of his backside."

"Whatever happens," said Chisora's manager Frank Warren, "you can guarantee the winner's next fight will be against one of the Klitschkos. So much for all that nonsense they said about this being a freak show." Intelligent blokes, the Klitschkos, which is why they know nonsense is just part of this very dangerous game.

A soggy Wimbledon to savour

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 19:41:29 +0000

At Wimbledon

The 126th Wimbledon Championships will be remembered as 'the one when Andy Murray almost got it done'. But even without the deeds of Murray, the first British man to reach a singles final at SW19 for 74 years, the tournament would have gone down in the annals as a great one.

Heartening British cameos, Aussie woe and, lest we forget, a rare home victory after all. Shocking upsets, stirring comebacks and, at the end of a fortnight when the sun rarely shone and the Centre Court roof played a starring role, two singles champions that might just be the greatest of all. BBC Sport takes stock.

FEDERER A BEAUTY AMONG BEASTS

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While plenty of British tennis fans will have taken little pleasure from watching Murray being outclassed in the men's final, many will have turned to each other after the match was done and conceded: "At least it was Federer that beat him".

In equalling Pete Sampras's record of seven singles titles, and winning his first since 2009, the graceful Federer proved the epee can still prevail over the tanks parked all over Wimbledon's hallowed lawns.

A one-handed backhand that resembles an artist flicking paint on a canvas, touch shots that belong in the Wimbledon museum, you would have to be a philistine not to appreciate him. Surely the greatest of all time?

SERENA STILL SLAMMING IT

In January, Serena Williams proclaimed tennis wasn't really her bag: "It's not that I've fallen out of love with it. I've never liked sports." Some accused her of disrespect, others were not surprised. Like tennis or not, this year at Wimbledon she demonstrated the women's game is more vital with than without her.

Williams thought her career might be over when she went down with a career-threatening illness in 2011, and an ugly first-round defeat at Roland Garros last month, where she went down in three sets to 111th seed Virginie Razzano, left some suggesting that, at 30, her powers were on the wane.

But having looked ponderous at times in advancing to the semi-finals at SW19, Williams flicked a switch against poor Victoria Azarenka, sending down a record-breaking 24 aces and 45 winners in a straight-sets victory.

Radwanska made a fist of the final having lost the first set 6-1, but was eventually ground into the Centre Court turf by the juggernaut over the net. "I love being me," said Williams. And why not? There may never have been better.

RAFA SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES

The tournament smouldered for three days before bursting into a mighty conflagration on the fourth evening, two-time champion and number two seed Rafael Nadal going down in five sets to world number 100 Lukas Rosol.

Nadal came into the event as the reigning French Open champion and was as short as 100-1 on to beat his mysterious Czech opponent. The 26-year-old Rosol, meanwhile, was making his debut in the main draw having lost in the first round of qualifying in his five previous attempts.

Trailing 2-1 in sets, Nadal wore the expression of a man who had popped out for bread and butter only to find himself caught up in a gunfight. The Spaniard managed to wrestle the match into a deciding set, only for Rosol, eyes as wide as saucers, to continue strafing him with aces and winners.

With the Centre Court roof in place and with 15,000 punters baying for an upset, Rosol finished off the contest ace-forehand winner-ace-ace. Rosol called his victory "a miracle", and so it proved: he lost in straight sets in the next round.

UNDERSTATED AGGIE

In this age of often toe-curling, choreographed celebrations, Agnieszka Radwanska's almost imperceptible hop on becoming the first Polish woman to reach the women's singles final at Wimbledon since 1937 was affecting.

While certainly understated, Radwanska showed how much the tournament meant to her with a stirring comeback against Serena Williams in the final, before sucking up the tears of anguish having eventually lost in three sets.

THE GREAT ROOF DEBATE

There were times during a soggy fortnight when players, punters and journalists did not know whether they were coming or going. And the same went for the tournament organisers, who still haven't got to grips with the Centre Court roof.

Here's what the Wimbledon rule-book says: "The Championships is an outdoor daytime event. Therefore, in good weather, the roof will only be used if it is too dark to play on without it." Which is a contradictory statement: if Wimbledon is an outdoor, daytime event, then what are they doing playing indoors at night?

When the roof is on, Centre Court turns from ancient sporting cathedral into something akin to a rock venue: Nadal-Rosol was a scream, while Murray's third-round victory over Marcos Baghdatis, with the Scot racing to beat the 11 o'clock cut-off point, was tremendous theatre. Clarity is all we ask for.

AUSSIE DESOLATION

The last time Prince Charles visited Wimbledon in 1970, John Newcombe beat fellow Australian Ken Rosewall to win the men's final, Margaret Court of Australia beat Billie Jean King to win the women's final and Newcombe and Tony Roche beat Rosewall and Fred Stolle in the final of the men's doubles. Oh, I should have added, Roche and Stolle were Aussies as well.

Prince Charles returned in 2012 to find Australian tennis somewhat diminished. No Australian men and only one Australian woman progressed from the first round, while Sam Stosur, the reigning US Open champion, lost in the second.

"How did I feel at the greatest tennis nation in the world descending to the depths of being less than ordinary?" said the fair dinkum Pat Cash, men's singles champion in 1987. "Not angry, not ashamed but extremely disappointed. But can I say I'm hugely surprised? Not really."

Cash blamed the poor showing on the failure of grass-roots tennis in his home country, while also lamenting the lack of former top-class players coaching the youngsters. Still, the former top-class players are there if they want them.

GREEN SHOOTS IN BLIGHTY?

If Australian tennis is in crisis, at least Aussies can point to a glorious past. When you've got publications hailing the fourth day of Wimbledon as 'Brit Thursday' because five home players have won through to the second round for the first time in six years, you know things have been awry for quite some time.

Only Murray and Heather Watson made it to the third round, and while Jonathan Marray gave cause for some cheer by becoming the first Briton to win the men's doubles for 76 years, it was hardly the stuff of a madman's dreams.

"It's the same old story," said former British number one John Lloyd. "We get a win or two and we're so happy about it. But it isn't that good in the grander scheme of things. It's still not what it should be." Murray is one almighty fig leaf, but he doesn't really need to be that big: there's not an awful lot underneath.

Williams ready to serve up fifth Wimbledon title

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 12:11:53 +0000

It is often noted that the mark of a great champion is the ability to adapt and modify as existing parts of their games begin to creak and let them down.

When the old legs began to go, Ryan Giggs went from flying winger to linking frontman to controlling midfielder. When Steve Waugh finally realised dashing only gets you so far - usually out - he scaled down his batsmanship and evolved into a limpet.

When Muhammad Ali returned from enforced exile, he parked his bike and gambled it on heart. And so it is with Serena Williams, although the fine-tuning has been less technical, more of the mind.

Telling a woman that she plays tennis like a man might not sound like the height of chivalry, but it is the greatest compliment you could pay Williams at this year's Wimbledon Championships: a record-breaking 24 aces in her semi-final victory over Victoria Azarenka made it 85 for the tournament, meaning only Philipp Kohlschreiber (98) has delivered more.

Williams is such a potent on-court presence it is easy to forget she has been creaking for an awful long time now. As far back as 2004, a knee injury forced Williams out of the sport for eight months. The following year she finished out of the top 10 for the first time since 1998, the year before she won the US Open for her first Grand Slam singles title.

Hawkish observers suggested her heart - and mind - were elsewhere: designing outfits, on the catwalk, writing self-help manuals with sister Venus, anywhere but the court.

In January this year, Williams claimed that not only had the cynics been right all along, but that her heart, if not her mind, had never been in tennis in the first place. "It's not that I've fallen out of love [with tennis]," said the four-time Wimbledon champion, who plays Agnieszka Radwanska in the final on Saturday. "I've actually never liked sports."

Williams's announcement didn't exactly go down a bomb with those who had never really taken to a woman who always dared to be different, from playing at the US Open in a lycra catsuit to letting line judges and umpires know exactly what she was thinking. She was accused of complacency and ingratitude, of being scornful of her privilege.

But her performances at this year's Wimbledon suggest she was being economical with the truth, wilfully or not: that much aggression and that much focus is generated by an awful lot of work and an awful lot of pride, which in turn is generated by an awful lot of love.

"Serena is fitter than she has been in the past and she's playing with a much better attitude," says BBC pundit and 1977 champion Virginia Wade. "In the past she thought she could beat everybody without working too hard. Now she realises she has to make an effort all the time. She's an outgoing girl and likes to do other things but at this stage in her career I think she's really anxious to get the most out of herself."

The latest coming of Williams, the first 30-year-old to reach the women's final since Steffi Graf in 1999, is made all the more remarkable by the fact she spent almost a year on the sidelines in 2010-2011 after stepping on some glass outside a Munich restaurant.

The glass sliced a tendon before a clot travelled up her leg, forming a pulmonary embolism, a blockage in the main artery of the lung. If it sounds serious, that's because it was. "It could have been career-ending, but for the grace of God," said Williams. "I've missed tennis so much. If tennis has missed me half as much as I have missed tennis, we're in a good place."

Serena Williams celebrates reaching the 2012 Wimbledon final. Photo: Getty.

Tennis did miss Williams, a 13-time Grand Slam singles champion whose last victory at a major was at SW19 in 2010. In her absence, Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki rose to the top of the rankings and remained there for all but one week between October 2010 and January 2012. It's not that Wozniacki was a bad player, it's just there was always a sense she was keeping the throne warm while the rightful queen was stricken.

"I'm so happy to be playing," said Williams after her straight sets defeat of Azarenka. "I'm so happy to be on the court. I feel like this is where I belong. Maybe I don't belong in a relationship. But I know for a fact I do belong on this tennis court."

Good news for tennis, bad news for Radwanska. If Williams's serve is on song - and it hasn't looked like malfunctioning thus far - it will be a case of the tank against the epee and a fifth singles title will be hers, 10 years after her first. Centre Court will be where she belongs and Centre Court will belong to her.

Sport's greatest rivalry?

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 23:28:14 +0000

It will be of little consolation to Andy Murray that he had an on-court seat for arguably the greatest multi-player rivalry in tennis history: in the final reckoning, our good fortune is the British number one's rank bad luck.

American golfer Billy Casper called his recent autobiography 'The Big Three and Me': 30 years after his retirement from the PGA Tour, Casper is still defined by the deeds of others. And this is a man who won three major titles.

Had Murray been born 10 years earlier he might have replicated Casper's feat but as the years tick by a genuine fear is brewing that he will never pierce the iron curtain that Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have thrown round men's tennis.

Andy Murray would love to join the ranks of the tennis "Big Three". Photo: Getty

Some British tennis fans might find this hard to accept, but perhaps they should learn to savour the status quo: multi-player rivalries as we have in men's tennis at the moment happen rarely in any sport, which might explain why the very modern word 'Trivalry' has been coined to describe it (although not by me).

Rafael Nadal's victory in the 2012 French Open means 28 of the last 29 Grand Slam tournaments have been won by the fearsome threesome, while the three have also accounted for the runners-up trophy in more than half of those events.

If Murray is Casper, then Roger Federer is Arnold Palmer: winner of 15 major titles between 2003 and 2009, the ageing Swiss master, without doubt the most aesthetically pleasing of the three, has landed 'only' one since.

Just when observers had anointed Federer as the greatest tennis player ever, along came Nadal. And just when they thought Nadal might actually be greater than Federer, along came Novak Djokovic. Now no-one knows what to think.

But numbers tell only part of the story of any great rivalry. When all three men have hung up their racquets and the new breed are wielding weapons made of unknown materials from Mars, your average punter will only remember when Nadal beat Federer at Wimbledon in 2008; when Federer beat Djokovic at Roland Garros in 2011; when Djokovic beat Nadal in Melbourne in 2012.

And maybe they will be saying: remember when Murray conjured a miracle at Wimbledon in 2012 and beat the lot of them? We can but hope.

BBC Sport looks at other multi-player rivalries and asks: is Federer-Nadal-Djokovic about as good as it can possibly get?

Palmer, Player and Nicklaus - Golf's Big Three

Arnold Palmer tees off as Gary Player (second from left) and Jack Nicklaus (third from right) watch on. Photo: Getty

Between 1958 and 1970, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus notched up 20 major victories and 22 runners-up spots between them. A heady cocktail of charisma, outrageous natural talent, professionalism and commercialism, for many it was a case of 'The Big Three' and everybody else.

Palmer, with his movie star looks and swashbuckling approach to the game, was first on the scene, securing the 1958 Masters and winning 29 PGA Tour events between 1960 and 1963, including five majors. The man from humble Latrobe, Pennsylvania was the first superstar of the sport's burgeoning television age.

Player, South Africa's man in black, finished second at the US Open in 1958, won the Open in 1959 and the Masters in 1961 before it became a three-way battle for golfing supremacy in 1962, the only year all four Grand Slam tournaments were won by the illustrious triumvirate.

When Nicklaus trumped Palmer in a play-off for the first of his 18 majors, the 1962 US Open at Oakmont, members of 'Arnie's Army' taunted the new kid with cries of "Fatso". Their leader was rather more magnanimous: "Now that the big guy's out of the cage, everybody better run for cover."

Palmer won his seventh and final major at Augusta in 1964 and you might say 'The Big Three' became 'The Big Two-and-a-Half'. Player and Nicklaus attracted new rivals - Lee Trevino and Tom Watson chief among them - but that intense three-way rivalry is destined never to be repeated.

Hagler, Hearns, Leonard and Duran - Boxing's Four Kings

Sugar Ray Leonard returned from a three-year hiatus to beat Marvin Hagler in 1987

There have been countless great rivalries in boxing - Robinson-LaMotta, Ali-Frazier, Holyfield-Bowe - but for sustained drama, for sheer quality and ferocity, for the majesty of its narrative, the nine-bout, almost decade-long round-robin between boxing's 'Four Kings' will surely never be matched.

The series began in June 1980, when Sugar Ray Leonard lost his world welterweight crown to Panama's Roberto Duran, the United States' new poster boy finding himself out-psyched and out-machoed by 'Hands of Stone'.

In the rematch, Duran, having been driven to distraction by the Ali shuffling, bolo-punching Leonard, shocked the world by quitting in the eighth round. The following year, Leonard came from behind to win a stirring battle against Tommy Hearns, a fight that had just about everything.

In 1983, Duran partially redeemed himself by taking middleweight king Marvin Hagler the distance, only for Hearns to knock Duran cold in two rounds in 1984. Hagler and Hearns went head to head the following year, a bloodied Hagler stopping Hearns after three of the most savage rounds in boxing history.

There were disappointing rematches between Leonard-Hearns and Leonard-Duran in 1989, but the last truly great fight of what many deem to be the sport's last golden age took place in 1987, when Leonard, having been inactive for three years, sent Hagler into retirement by winning a controversial decision.

Prost, Piquet, Senna and Mansell - Formula 1's best of enemies

Of the eight drivers to have won three or more world championships, three of them were active during the 1980s. Chuck in chippy Brit Nigel Mansell and you had a mixture so combustive it is a wonder they allowed it on the F1 paddock.

Nelson Piquet, world champion in 1981, '83 and '87, was uppity and unpredictable, labelling Mansell "an uneducated blockhead" and fellow Brazilian Senna "a Sao Paulo taxi driver". Mansell, champion in 1992 after three second-placed finishes, was so suspicious of everyone around him he probably thought the pit girls were spiking his champagne.

But the most vicious rivalry was between Senna (champion in 1988, '90 and '91) and Frenchman Alain Prost (champion in 1985, '86, '89 and 93). As team-mates at McLaren, the two men fought like dogs. When they were separated in 1990, Prost moving to Ferrari, the relationship grew worse, with Prost calling Senna "a man without value" after their coming together at Suzuka.

The 1986 season was a four-way classic, with all four men in with a shout of the Formula 1 crown with three races remaining. Senna, driving an inferior Lotus, dropped out of contention after running out of fuel in Portugal, while a poor showing by Mansell in Mexico opened the door for McLaren driver Prost and Williams team-mate Piquet, with whom relations were sub-zero.

Going into the final race in Adelaide, Mansell led Prost by six points, Piquet by seven and claimed pole position. But the Englishman blew a tyre on lap 64 and Piquet was called into the pits for a precautionary stop, meaning Prost landed the win, nine points and a second consecutive drivers' title.

All hail super-human Froch

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Sun, 27 May 2012 14:22:47 +0000

Capital FM Arena, Nottingham

If anyone still harboured doubts Carl Froch was one of the greats of the British ring before Saturday night, those doubts will surely have been demolished by the same wrecking-ball the now three-time world champion used to dismantle a shell-shocked Lucian Bute in Nottingham.

"Maybe finally people will wake up to such a tremendous boxer," said Froch's trainer Rob McCracken, who is eternally irritated by the lack of respect afforded his charge. "He's a special fighter and just a normal, hard-working kid. Hopefully now he'll become a British boxing legend. It's long overdue."

McCracken may have hit upon the reason why Froch is so undervalued in his own country: being "normal" - Froch said he would celebrate his victory by laying some lino in a new bungalow he is renovating - does not sate the appetite of a public which apparently prefers its boxers to come with controversy. Unless you are so aggressively "normal" and down to earth that you are almost underground, as was the case with Ricky Hatton.

That a fight against fellow super-middleweight legend Joe Calzaghe, who retired in 2009, never happened is a shame. But we now have to ask if Froch's death-defying career is a match for the dazzling Welshman's, despite the two losses on his record to Calzaghe's none.

The fight was stopped in the fifth round. Photo: Getty

Calzaghe fans will point out that no-one was able to beat him in a professional career spanning 15 years and that he has victories over future hall-of-famers Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones on his resume, as well as British hero Chris Eubank. Detractors will say Calzaghe, for whatever reason, failed to fight some of the best boxers in and around his division for too long and that the '0' is therefore devalued.

Froch's career is a mirror image. That he has not fought such boxing luminaries as Hopkins, Jones and Eubank is through no fault of his own. That he did not fight Calzaghe was entirely the Welshman's decision. God knows Froch tried.

However, the throwback fighter Froch is, he has disproved the modern folly that an unblemished record is the be-all and end-all in boxing. Froch, now knocking on 35, has fought everyone there is to fight in the super-middleweight division.

In addition, Froch, who before Saturday had not fought in England since 2009, has always been prepared to get on his bike, while Calzaghe spent the large part of his career fighting in his own backyard. For the record, I believe Calzaghe would have beaten Froch comfortably. But then again, I thought Bute would do that, too.

"A lot of people in the press have had a lot to say and there's been a lot of negativity flying around," said Froch, having pummelled the previously unbeaten Bute in five savage rounds. "That fuelled me. I've shown and proved to everyone what I can do when I'm on my game."

Few could remember Froch, a notoriously slow starter, charging out of the blocks so fast. Literally charging at times. He could not miss Bute with his right hand, and when the champion attempted to trade, it was if his punches were being fed into a threshing machine. Froch was that powerful.

Bute's corner should have pulled him out at the end of round four, the Canadian, drunk on Froch's punches, having to be helped to his stool. And exactly what referee Earl Brown was thinking, giving Bute a standing count when he was out on his feet, is anybody's guess. Given Froch's old-fashioned qualities, perhaps Brown got confused and through it was the 1950s.

How Froch's Herculean run of seven elite-level fights, all of which went 12 rounds, had not diminished him is a miracle. Some of Froch's post-fight comments - Froch admitted he pondered retirement following his defeat by Andre Ward last December - suggested even he feared his lifeforce had been sapped. But his restorative victory over Bute had him believing in miracles again.

"I'm not sick of the sport yet, I still love boxing," he said. "That was the very best of me [on Saturday night], I felt so young and fresh and ready for more. Fighting like that, with the focus I had and the way I felt physically, I'd beat anyone in my weight division. There's nobody who can touch me. Even Andre Ward."

Given the one-sided nature of his first meeting with Ward - in short, the American was too quick and too skilled - it is difficult to envisage Froch turning the tables in a return.
But with home fans at his back and the same positive attitude, it would be advisable not to bet against him: not 'The Postman', the British fighter who almost always delivers.

On the evidence of Saturday's fight, a return bout against Bute in Montreal would have been easy money for the Englishman. But it is unlikely Bute will trigger the rematch clause: another defeat like that, especially on home turf, and his career would be in tatters. "I'd be surprised if he fights anyone again," was Froch's chilling appraisal of his victim's options.

Froch suggested he might take a break from "fighting monsters" and drop down a level. But in the very next sentence he said he would take a rematch with Mikkel Kessler, who beat him in Copenhagen in 2010, "in a heartbeat".

Back in Nottingham, that is certainly a fight he could win. Do that, and the comparisons with Calzaghe would become even more salient, Calzaghe having outpointed the Dane in Cardiff in 2007 in one of his defining fights.

But Froch is about much more than victories and defeats. He defines an attitude, a philosophy of boxing. It was a philosophy that used to be common in the sport but which has gone hopelessly out of fashion. Such is the vitality of the man, do not be surprised if it comes crashing back in style. And wouldn't that be great?

Warrior Froch ready for war once more

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Fri, 25 May 2012 09:25:08 +0000

Heard the one about the boxer who hit his own trainer over the head with a tripod and his rival who threatened to shoot him? Instead of a one-way ticket to Palooka-ville, they landed a fight outdoors in a ball-park.

God knows boxing needs a few good news stories right now. So thank God for Carl Froch, the boxer who almost always delivers. So much so, he should consider changing his nickname from 'The Cobra' to 'The Postman'.

It would be remiss of me at this point not to mention Scouse heavyweight hope David Price, the 6ft 8in Adonis with the manner of a jovial publican whose progress since striking bronze at the Beijing Olympics and surgical dismissal of Sam Sexton last weekend suggests he might be the real deal. But Price is the future, whereas Froch is the here and now. But for how long?

No boxer likes to hear the end might be nigh - as Muhammad Ali once said to broadcaster Howard Cosell, Cosell having suggested Ali was past it: "I asked your wife, and she told me you're not the same man you were two years ago." But Canada's Lucian Bute will ask more taxing questions of Froch in Nottingham on Saturday than the most sceptical journalist can muster.

A few years back and Froch, now 34, would have been a hot favourite to beat Bute on his own patch. But an epic sequence of seven elite-level fights - a couple of them minor skirmishes but a few of them wars - cannot have failed to diminish the former two-time super-middleweight world champion as a fighter.

"He's a clean liver, he doesn't drink or smoke," counters Froch's trainer Rob McCracken, also head coach of the GB Olympic team, "he's never had weight issues and doesn't have hard spars. He's fresh enough to win on Saturday."

Carl Froch takes on Lucian Bute in the IBF world super-middleweight championship. Photo: Getty

But McCracken's assertion that Froch's fights "have been harder than we'd have liked of late" - the former middleweight world title-challenger is a master of understatement - is actually a little disingenuous. For at times, both McCracken and Froch seem to revel in the Herculean nature of their labours.

When I suggest to McCracken that perhaps Froch needs protecting from himself, McCracken replies: "That's not the type of fighter he is. This is what boxing is all about, why it was so great in the '60s, '70s and '80s, the very best fighting each other, fight after fight; not fighting safe fights where nobody's bothered about the outcome because you already know what it's going to be."

Froch's situation highlights a great paradox of boxing: handle your fighter with care, steer him through a path of lesser resistance and the fans will complain of feeling short-changed; lead him down the most treacherous route and there will be those who accuse you of recklessness and negligence.

"I said to Carl, 'I really think we should look at a warm-up fight'," says Froch's promoter Eddie Hearn. "And he said, 'what's a warm-up fight?' I've got no right to protect him, it's his call. And when you get the chance to fight for a world title in your backyard, you have got to take it."

Hearn is head of boxing at Matchroom Sport, the company founded by his father Barry. Having fallen out of love with the fight game, Hearn Sr now concentrates his efforts on Leyton Orient, snooker and darts.

Dapper, personable and with a gift for the eye-catching quote, Hearn Jr is a chip off the old man's block. He describes the making of Froch-Bute thus: "It was like when there's a girl who's really interested in you and you keep saying 'no', they just keep coming back. They're more interested the more rejection they get." But what you might call Eddie's 'Hearnisms' cannot disguise a serious operator who shares his dad's seemingly boundless innovatory spirit.

"I'm new to promoting but I've been in boxing since I was 11 years old," says Hearn, whose dad promoted Frank Bruno, Chris Eubank and Naseem Hamed, among many others. "My dad told me right from the start: 'Listen, this sport is a huge pain in the backside,' and he's right. But he also said: 'If you can get 1% of the buzz your fighter gets you'll be happy.' I'm loving it, loving that buzz.

"I've got an understanding of what fans want, and it's not rocket science: they want great fights, great promotions, great publicity and value for money. Kell Brook against Matthew Hatton delivered the highest figures for Sky for many years and there were 10,000 in Sheffield's Motorpoint Arena. The right fight with the right promotion shows the audience is still there."

While Matchroom's approach to matchmaking might be a little bit gung-ho for rival promoter Frank Warren's taste - Northern Irish prospect Paul McCloskey losing to veteran American DeMarcus Corley earlier this month was not supposed to happen - Hearn would argue that protecting a fighter's '0' is an attitude that has to go if boxing is to thrive on the ultra-competitive modern sports landscape.

"The sport is doing OK, but it's not flying, and we think we can make it big again," says Hearn. "Froch v Bute is a pure fight, two great pugilists in the sport for the right reasons. Money matters in any walk of life, but this fight is about two tremendous fighters wanting to be the best in the division.

"Every sport needs a bit of controversy now and again, not everyone wants to read about what a great bloke Carl Froch is and how hard he works. But Carl is a warrior and should be regarded as a hero for the fights he's been through."

Bute, 32, is a heavy-handed southpaw with a wide variety of punches, his left uppercut and right hook signature shots. While not as slick as Andre Ward, who beat Froch in the final of the Super Six tournament last December, the suspicion is the Englishman struggles against fighters who don't sit in front of him.

The challenge for Froch will be to close the gap, apply pressure and test out Bute's chin - Librado Andrade had him in all sorts of trouble in their first fight in 2008 - while soaking up those vicious body punches of Bute. If Froch can land enough on the champion, a third world title could be his. But it's a big 'if'.

Lose and Froch will still have options. Fights against compatriots George Groves and James DeGale would be lucrative, while Wales' Nathan Cleverly and Denmark's Mikkel Kessler, who beat Froch in 2010, are viable opponents at 175lb. But in boxing, options are not necessarily a good thing. Howard Cosell knew that, whatever Muhammad Ali might have said about his wife.

"A loss isn't the end of the world, but it would be a disaster," says Hearn. "If Carl does lose, there are bundles of fights out there. But we want the big super-middleweight fights, the unifying fight - we want Andre Ward.

"But he's had some tough contests, earned a lot of money and victory over Bute would finally get him the respect he deserves." Indeed, in the perverse world of boxing, Froch might only be fully appreciated when he's hung them up and disappeared.

Way of the Tiger

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:23:29 +0000

If the thought of sharing the same square of Leicester soil as the Tigers team of the mid-to-late 1990s chills you to your boots - think Martin Johnson, Dean Richards, Neil Back and more jagged edges than a breakers yard - then spare a thought for those condemned to share the same Welford Road changing room.

"I was just 18 when I made my first-team debut," recalls Leicester legend Lewis Moody. "When I walked in, all my heroes were there. 'Deano' stood up and I thought he was going to welcome me to the club. 'Lad', he said, pointing through the door, 'the youth team changing room is down the other end of the corridor.'"

It is a revealing snapshot of the forbidding, clannish culture that has made Leicester the most enduring English team of the professional era and carried them to an eighth successive Premiership final, against Harlequins at Twickenham on Saturday.

"It might sound to outsiders like a horrible place to be, but it draws you closer as a team," says former Tigers lock Ben Kay. "It's not the most comfortable environment to be in. But if you're driven by success, it's exactly where you want to be."

The Leicester ethos can be boiled down to a couple of lines from Tennyson: "The path of Duty was the way to Glory... he that walks it... learns to deaden love of self." Or, for those who like their poets more grounded, a line from Bremner, the exemplar of Don Revie's Leeds United side of the 1960s and 70s: "Side before self, every time."

Martin Johnson and Lewis Moody cut loose against great rivals Wasps in 2001

"A player is only at Leicester for a short period of time, on loan almost," says Moody, a World Cup winner in 2003. "It's never your club or your position. The culture is drilled into you as a 14-year-old: no-one is a star and no-one is bigger than the team. Everyone understands you're here to work, you're here to win, and that's the end of it.

"Some players that come through from the Tigers academy are talked up as the next big thing and they've very soon departed because of a lack of application. And some guys that came from other English clubs or from overseas who don't buy into the philosophy will leave quite quickly.

"It's not about bringing in big-name players and buying trophies, they'll create a squad from players that you wouldn't consider to be the best in the world. Look at Geoff Parling: he had been at Newcastle for six years, came to Leicester having had no real recognition and all of a sudden he's an international player. He's a great example of how players can suddenly thrive in the Leicester environment."

"When did Leicester last have a genuine superstar, like a Jonny Wilkinson, a Shane Williams or a Richie McCaw?" says World Cup-winning England scrum-half Matt Dawson, who waged many battles with Leicester for East Midlands rivals Northampton and as part of Wasps' great side of the mid-2000s.

"It's never about that with Leicester, it's just about winning trophies and being part of a winning team. That seems to flick a Leicester player's switch, being more than an individual. And if anyone does step out of line, they get it verbally and physically."

Leicester's feared front row of Rowntree, Cockerill and Garforth

Dawson's views are informed by myriad bar room tales from Leicester pals of training ground spats and legendary, character-testing hazings. "Even if it was a game of touch, you knew at some stage a scuffle would break out," says Moody, who spent 14 years at Welford Road before two years at Bath and retirement in March.

"It was an intimidating environment for a young man but it was about fronting up at every opportunity and not taking a backward step. If someone confronted you, you had to confront them back. It was like a test of your manhood.

"I remember fights between Neil Back and Fritz van Heerden, Julian White and [current Leicester head coach] Richard Cockerill. I didn't really have a fight with 'Johnno', more of a disagreement - he hit me and I fell over.

"One day we were having a ruck and maul session and someone landed on Will Johnson's ankle and broke it. Everybody heard the crack, he was in a lot of bother. 'Wellsy' [John Wells] just moved us about 20 metres to the right and we continued as if nothing had happened. If one player went down, another one came in and replaced him. Nothing ever got in the way of us succeeding."

Kay, who made 281 appearances for the Tigers between 1999 and 2010 and was also part of England's World Cup-winning team, recalls: "It would erupt and there would be no referee to stop it. I never got punched by Johnno. Lewis did, but he was never exactly the brainiest member of the squad.

Teenage fly-half George Ford is part of an exciting back-line at Leicester

"It was like a tempestuous relationship you might have with a sibling that you love more than anything. But if the guys were prepared to do that to each other in training they would do twice as much in a game for each other."

While Revie's Leeds were simply labelled "dirty" by fans of rival teams for their robust style of play, Leicester, as is the way in the sometimes wilfully myopic world of rugby, are rather more charitably lauded as "masters of the dark arts".

"There was always something going on when you played against Leicester," says Dawson. "Darren Garforth, Graham Rowntree and Cockerill - the old 'ABC Club' - wouldn't have finished a game in this present climate, they would have been sin-binned or sent off because of all the little bits and pieces and the niggle.

"And Welford Road is a hell of a place to play rugby, right up there with some international stadiums because it is so oppressive. I only remember winning once or twice at Leicester, it was a very, very intimidating place to go."

What now seems an almost organic connection between players and fans was in actual fact man-made. A succession of wily businessmen and administrators took a side that attracted gates of less than 1,000 in the early 1970s and built it into a forward-thinking, cup-winning amateur outfit before steering it, full-mast, into the professional era.

A compliant council saw Welford Road swell to 24,000 fans by 2009, with another 6,000 seats planned, making it the largest purpose-built club rugby ground in England. Compare with Wasps, nominally of London but who play their home games in Wycombe and whose prospective new owners want to move to a site off the M40.

Financial reasons apart, Kay cites more spiritual reasons as to why Wasps, whose two Heineken Cup triumphs match Leicester's back-to-back victories in 2001 and 2002, have fallen off the pace, to the extent they were nearly relegated last season.

"It's not so much that Wasps were a team of players who thought they were big stars," says Kay, "but they certainly built a team on a lot of very good individuals. When a lot of those players retired there wasn't that natural succession. At Leicester, it's ruthless: as soon as you're not good enough, no matter how big a name you are, it's a case of 'thank-you very much, we'll find someone else who's on the way up'."

While Moody talks of the Leicester ethos and history being "continually churned through", with the likes of Cockerill and executive director and front-row great Peter Wheeler tangible links to a glorious past, Dawson is keen to point out that all that churning serves another purpose, namely to keep the ingredients fresh.

"One of the strengths of Leicester has been their ability to move on," says Dawson. "They can still play that tight game if they want to. But when they want to counter-attack and offload they've got the likes of Geordan Murphy, Manu Tuilagi, Anthony Allen, Toby Flood, Ben Youngs, real international-class players.

"They had a couple of years of being a little bit more attritional but they didn't want all their old titles to become history, they wanted to stay in the present and that means a team that plays from 1-15. Conversely, it was plain for everyone to see how Wasps played in their heyday and no-one could stop us. But this year and last, Wasps didn't move on and tried to do the same things they'd done for years and years."

So while Wasps face a period of rebuilding - both literally and metaphorically - Leicester carry on as they always have done: taking the path of Duty to Glory, through "stubborn thistle, bursting into glossy purples". Or as Cockerill puts it: "Just hard work." Prose over poetry, spoken like the Leicester front-row he was and always will be.

Haye v Chisora: Boxing madder than ever

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:15:00 +0000

Those who condemn the bout between David Haye and Dereck Chisora presumably condemn the bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Or perhaps not. More likely they eulogise over "The Rumble In The Jungle", a multi-million dollar fight orchestrated by a man who once kicked another man to death and which took place in Zaire, a poverty-stricken African country run by a maniacal despot who publicly executed dissenters in a stadium that doubled as a dungeon.

David Haye and Dereck Chisora at the announcement of their fight. Photo: Getty

Bigger crimes have been committed in boxing by far bigger names than Haye and Chisora, which is why some connected to the sport will find all the hand-wringing over July's fight hysterical in its hypocrisy. For those still not convinced, look up the Brawl in Porthcawl on the web and marvel at the great Brian London ironing out Dick Richardson's trainer, a man about twice his age and half his size. The year? 1960. The punishment? A £1,000 fine - a substantial amount then - but, crucially, no ban.

Boxing is mad, bad and dangerous to know and always has been, since men fought with bare knuckles on heaths. So mad, that if I told you the Luxembourg Boxing Federation, under which auspices Haye-Chisora will take place, has included a clause in the fight contract allowing the use of tripods, some people might even believe me.

People will say nothing should be measured by the crimes of its past but if this is the way the sport has always been then how can people claim to be disappointed by it? It wasn't that long ago that Mike Tyson was rolling about on the floor taking chunks out of Lennox Lewis's leg and threatening to eat his children. Guess what? The bout itself went down a bomb, becoming the highest-grossing event in pay-per-view history.

Then again, there are two sides to every story, and this story is positively polygonal. So forgive me for echoing what I wrote in the immediate aftermath of Haye and Chisora's Munich melee, namely that the real problem is not that this tawdry affair happened at all but that, as far as many are concerned, it took place in a vacuum.

When boxing was a more mainstream concern, boxing people were able to point to better things when things went wrong. However, the Munich melee was the only 'boxing' many would have seen for months, if not years. And when this week's other big boxing news is the fight between Amir Khan and Lamont Peterson potentially falling through because Peterson has failed a drugs test, you've got a bit of a problem.

Questions also have to be asked of Frank Warren, the manager of Chisora, who is prepared to let his fighter box despite his behaviour in Munich - which don't forget included the weigh-in slap of Vitali Klitschko and the pre-match spit at Wladimir.

"A message has to be sent out that some conduct is not acceptable," conceded Warren after the British Boxing Board of Control's decision to withdraw Chisora's licence. So why is Chisora in the ring again so soon? "Why should he [Chisora] not make a living?" said Warren on Tuesday. Because he slapped and spat at two large Ukrainians before threatening to shoot and "physically burn" David Haye. Whatever that means.

Warren is at pains to point out that he has done nothing legally wrong, which is true. But what about morally? And the fact he was able to skirt around the regulations so easily highlights just what a farcical muddle boxing is in: banned by Britain's boxing board, so Warren asks the boxing board of Luxembourg (which has no professional fighters) to license his man to fight in Britain and a German company, Sauerland, to promote it. Mad? If boxing was an animal, it would be tethered to a tree and shot.

But in a sport saturated with governing bodies, the only governing body that matters is money. And while it will irritate some that Haye and Chisora are able to benefit financially from their Munich melee, the irony is that the British public will ultimately decide whether they deserve it or not. Expect Upton Park to be packed. And given Haye's speed against Chisora's durability, they will probably see a pretty good fight.

Can snooker afford to lose Ronnie?

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:27:45 +0000

The Crucible

The genius of Ronnie O'Sullivan is not what he can do with a snooker cue, a table and some balls. The genius of Ronnie O'Sullivan is his alchemist's knack of turning the cerebral into the visceral, while managing not to sacrifice any of the purity of a sport he plays as well as anyone has ever done.

People who do not watch snooker watch O'Sullivan, who claimed his fourth world title with victory over Ali Carter in Sheffield on Monday. Just as people who did not like tennis watched John McEnroe or people who did not like golf watched Seve Ballesteros. O'Sullivan is one of their breed.

People might smirk when seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry says his great rival is "like a rock star playing snooker", but the comparison holds true: O'Sullivan, like a rock star - and unlike most of his fellow snooker pros - has an emotional attachment with the fans. He elicits feelings of delight and pathos; of shock and awe. He demands a response in this most buttoned-up of games.

But the real joy of O'Sullivan comes from watching a man wrestling with an extravagant talent and all the mental turmoil that spawns. "He didn't lose the plot at all," said Neil Robertson after being beaten by O'Sullivan in the quarter-finals, with more than a hint of surprise. For his part, O'Sullivan said it had been a case of managing to temper his lofty, often unattainable, expectations.

For O'Sullivan's is a high-wire act, and you watch in the knowledge that the high-tariff tricks he performs and the demons within increase the likelihood of it all going horribly wrong. Which is why, when it goes right - as with his magnificent break of 92 in the seventh frame of this year's final - it feels doubly rewarding. Like watching a frayed McEnroe reel off a string of passes; or a coiled Ballesteros conjure a series of miraculous escapes.

In truth, it rarely looked like going wrong for O'Sullivan at the Crucible this year: as with his last Crucible triumph in 2008, it was a tournament in which he appeared to have his sport's number. "When he beat me in the semi-finals in 2008 [O'Sullivan won 17-6] it was as close to perfect snooker as I've ever seen," Hendry told BBC Sport. "Some of his play has been as good this year.

"He's taken the game on to another level. I changed snooker to be a more aggressive game, but Ronnie plays the same game in a much more flash and fluent way. He's the most naturally talented player we've ever seen and at the moment he's the best player in the world by a distance."

Even when Carter, channelling the spirit of his mental guru and 2002 champion Peter Ebdon, sought to drag his rival into the trenches, O'Sullivan, 36, managed to float above the squalor. As well as that run of 92, there was also a clearance of 141 and a rapid-fire 101 in Monday's opening frame. As Hendry said: "When he's on fire he can make great, great players look very, very average."

All of which makes O'Sullivan's suggestion that he might hang up his cue should snooker chief Barry Hearn not yield to his demands a little bit sad and a little bit worrying. Hearn might protest that no single player is bigger than the sport but O'Sullivan represents a disproportionately large part of the whole.

One irony of this year's World Championship was that, while lesser players were creating minor stirs with ill-advised public statements, a sharply-focused O'Sullivan was quiet as a church mouse. But still you heard the telephone conversations between journalists and editors in the press room, which can be abbreviated as follows: "How much do you want on the snooker? "Give me 500 words on Ronnie, stick everything else in a paragraph at the bottom."

"It doesn't sound like Barry Hearn is going to be begging Ronnie to stay," said Hendry, who announced his own retirement from the sport following his quarter-final defeat by Stephen Maguire. "But I wouldn't like to try and sell big tournaments to fans and sponsors without having Ronnie involved."

Hearn, perhaps betraying his inner fears, quipped: "Whatever's going through his mind now, I hope he goes and sees his doctor and sorts things out."
O'Sullivan, whose mental and domestic troubles are well documented, has threatened to retire on numerous occasions and there will be many who will have rolled their eyes and sighed at his latest pronouncement. Even his highly influential mental coach, Dr Steve Peters, sounded frustrated.

"He does find the lifestyle difficult but I think that's universal for all elite athletes," Dr Peters, team psychiatrist to the British cycling team, told BBC Sport. "But I would rather he didn't open up so much because his mind can change from day to day."

O'Sullivan punches the air in delight after clinching his fourth world title. Photo: Getty

If Dr Peters doesn't know what's coming, then perhaps nobody does. But the extra workload that Hearn's revamped 50-week, 27-event tour entails might prove to be the straw bale that breaks this thoroughbred camel's back.

Whether O'Sullivan calls it quits this season or next, the day might come soon. As O'Sullivan put it, "I'm not going to hang around for another two years for things to become fair". And Hearn will be left as the biggest personality in snooker by some distance: great for his own ego, perhaps not as healthy for the sport he surveys.

Hearn will tell himself, and anyone who cares to listen, that every revolution has its high-profile victims. And, rightly, he will point out that O'Sullivan has been threatening to bow out since he was a teenager, long before Hearn came riding to the sport's rescue in 2010 and implemented his exacting new plan.

Still, Hearn may well find himself watching O'Sullivan doing the cha-cha-cha on Strictly one day and think to himself: "What poise; what personality; what class. It was a dark day in snooker when we lost him from the baize."

Was Stephen Hendry the greatest of them all?

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:15:22 +0000

It is said that professional sportspeople die twice: first when their career ends and again when they draw their last breath. As with real life, the end of a sportsperson's career is less likely to be sudden than more of a drawn-out affair.

For Stephen Hendry, his unedifying defeat by Stephen Maguire at the Crucible on Tuesday was the last stirrings of a sporting career in terminal decline. By Hendry's own admission, he had been descending the "slow, slippery slope" for the best part of 10 years.

Even when he was making his 11th career 147 against Stuart Bingham last week and savaging defending champion John Higgins in the second round, Hendry, the perfectionist's perfectionist, knew he was nowhere near to being back to his best. "Did I really play that well?" he said. "I don't think so."

Different sports allow their legends to age with different levels of dignity. When a footballer's legs go, they have no option but to quit. When a tennis player burns out, they either quit or they fast disappear from the rankings. But the non-athletic nature of snooker means its legends invariably play on: stalking past glories, their often agonising death throes on display for all to witness.

Not every snooker player's career fizzles out in pain. Higgins once said that while Steve Davis loves snooker, Stephen Hendry loves winning. Which would explain why Davis is still not retired, 17 years after capturing his last ranking event and 23 years after winning his sixth and last world title.

While for Davis, the experience of World Championship qualifying, involving as it does battling young hopefuls and faded stars in a cavernous, partitioned sports hall, is just about bearable, for Hendry it was demeaning.

Stephen Hendry announced his retirement after a 13-2 defeat by Stephen Maguire. Photo: Getty

"The only people watching were my opponent's family on their big day," said the 43-year-old, who was forced to qualify for the Crucible this year for the first time since 1988. "Without meaning to be disrespectful, it's not a big day for me, I'm just there trying to survive."

Only last week, Hendry gave me an insight into just how great his love of winning was: "It's nice when you're beating an opponent and you're kicking him when he's down," said the Scot. "That's what sport is all about, the only reason for playing." An ideal epitaph, but his comments made some readers queasy.

Indeed, Hendry's winning made British sports fans feel uneasy throughout his career, especially during his glorious 1990s when he won his record - and perhaps never to be surpassed - seven world titles.

"I am not a superstar in Britain," Hendry told the BBC in 2008. "In Britain we don't appreciate people who have been a major success in sport. It is grudgingly given to you. If you just practise, work hard every day, win tournaments and don't go out doing whatever [so-called characters] do, you are boring and no-one wants anything to do with you.

"Even when I used to play Jimmy White in Scotland, he would have the majority of the support. Jimmy was their favourite, he is one of those characters, I suppose. Jimmy was great to watch - but what did he win?"

It is Hendry's misfortune that the general sports fan in Britain is shot through with a rather sentimental streak: "Yes, Stephen, but why did 'our' Jimmy not win? Because you kept on beating him, you miserable old thing."

Even by British standards, snooker is more misty-eyed than most sports. Hence why the discussion even takes place as to who is the greatest to have ever picked up a cue. Seven world titles say it's Hendry; 27 consecutive Crucible appearances say it's Hendry; 36 ranking titles says it's Hendry; 775 century breaks say it's Hendry; 11 147s say it's Hendry. But someone will always raise a hand, wipe away a tear and bring up Alex Higgins' 'miracle break' in 1982.

Before anyone cries "hypocrite", I will admit I am guilty as charged. A couple of weeks back, I wrote a blog hailing Ronnie O'Sullivan as a snooker game-changer, someone who changed the face of his sport. In terms of aesthetics, decoration and glitter, I stand by my point. But in terms of bricks and mortar, of relocating the very foundations of snooker, Hendry was, and is, the main man.

Perhaps only Babe Ruth, who transformed baseball completely in the 1920s with his power-hitting, has had such an impact on an individual sport. Fluid and aggressive, a fearless long-potter and a rapacious break-builder, the young Hendry confused as much as excited the fusty, traditional world of 1980s snooker.

It irked Hendry that some people viewed Judd Trump's expansive game as a great leap forward: "Everyone goes on about how attacking it is, but that's exactly how I won World Championships. It's nothing new." But 'snooker people' - those well-versed in this most esoteric of sports - knew the truth.

"One of my greatest heroes is Tiger Woods," said Hendry following his retirement announcement. "He said 'as long as you're in the discussion [as to who the greatest in your sport is], you've done all right'."

Done all right? Thankfully, the dead don't usually write their own eulogies. It's a shame Hendry didn't feel more loved while he was playing the game. Luckily, unlike with a real funeral, Hendry is still around to lap up the more florid - and infinitely more accurate - eulogies that will flood in over the coming days.

Anatomy of a Crucible decider

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Tue, 01 May 2012 08:38:29 +0000

Ali Carter sweeps back into the theatre first, striding purposefully to his seat: having won the previous three frames, the underdog is riding a wave of momentum. Ten seconds later, the curtain parts and Judd Trump appears: pallid and ghostly against the black material, like a silhouette in reverse.

Many sportspeople have stories pertaining to that final 'look': "He was already gone," they tell you, "you could see it in his eyes." They don't tell you about the times they thought an opponent had gone and those empty eyes had lied.

But there is definitely something in the pre-deciding-frame handshake: Carter, looking officious, holding Trump's gaze a moment longer than necessary; Trump breaking the spell before seeking succour in some water.

"I never really felt good out there and he was more mentally ready," said Trump, last year's runner-up and this year's pre-tournament favourite. "I've played this game a lot of years," said Carter, "so I just felt that when it really mattered, at 12-12, it was going to turn for me."

For what seems an age, neither player pots a ball. Although Trump, in the words of Carter, "has a few lashes". "He'd been doing that the whole match and he just did not stop getting away with it," added Carter, a beaten finalist in 2008.

After 10 minutes and 22 seconds, Trump finally makes one disappear and all those whispers, all those stifled belches, splutters and coughs are buried in an avalanche of cheers. But Trump makes only nine before missing a red to the corner, the alchemy within the Crucible turning the cheers into "oohs" and "aahs" and no doubt a fair few "what on earth happened theres?"

Ali Carter was 12-9 down but recovered to beat Judd Trump runner-up 13-12. Photo: Getty

"Even little shots were hard," said Trump, "I was slowing down too much, taking too much time." Carter, staring at his toes and shaking his head, was equally unimpressed: "I don't think Judd realises how much luck he gets."

Carter cuts a red into the corner and Trump, neck craned, looking skywards through spidered fingers, searches for the Crucible's furthest nook. But Carter soon runs out of position and lets Trump back in. You get to tell the different Crucible murmurs apart: this one says "there's only one winner from here".

Only Trump knows different. "I felt really nervy towards the end. I finished perfect on the red and I was just trying not to over-screw it. But I decelerated through the ball and took my eye off it." Trump misses the red with the rest just before the half-hour mark and the inhalations of disbelief seem to suck the life out of the place. "But," said Trump, "Ali still had to clear up from there."

"Judd's missed that red by a millimetre," said Carter, "he's just not gone through the ball quite quickly enough. Miss: I've won. Simple."

Or at least it should have been. Carter, pausing after every shot, muttering audibly to himself in front of the scoreboard - working out how much of himself he is still required to give - chisels out a break of 47.

The Essex man becomes more and more Essex before our eyes, until he is verging on jaunty. Trump, meanwhile, looks ready to dissolve into tears.

"I potted the pink, gave it the fist pump, I think I've done enough," said Carter. "Next thing I know, Judd's got me in snooker after snooker after snooker and I'm thinking, 'oh, what's going on here, I should have known not to do that'."

Trump, requiring four snookers, is suddenly rebooted and precision personified. Carter misses one attempted escape and when he misses a second, he is half an inch away from leaving a free ball. "That summed it all up," said Trump. "Millimetres here and there were the difference."

"I was giving it large and now I'm back to the table," said Carter. "Before you know it, he's got you in a snooker and you lose - how do you feel then?"

Having given up four more points, Carter gives us a taster: disgusted with an errant safety, he moves on the press seats and swipes a flannel from the ledge. A camera swivels and is wheeled under his nose: an X-ray machine for the soul.

Eventually Trump blinks, not once but twice. Carter, having rattled the jaws with his first attempt, does not miss second time, cutting a red into the middle. Forty-three minutes of pent-up tension froths over, at least in the Crucible crowd. Carter, having learned his lesson, just waggles his tongue.

"Ali dealt with the pressure better, and that was the difference," said Trump. Added Carter: "The granite players, you can't just blast them off the table. I know my way round a table and I knew how to break him down in the end."

Carter pots the yellow, green and brown before making a perfunctory attempt at the blue. Almost as much as Trump, he just wants out by now. A tilt of his glass, another fist pump, and he's gone, sprinting through the curtain. Trump weaves towards the exit like a drunk having overshot his stop on the Tube.

"I've been on too many wrong ends of matches like that," said Carter. "Now he can feel what it's like to have a nasty scar on his career. It's not easy to get over." Something tells me Trump already knew that: not so much scarred by one of the bloodiest Crucible deciders, more like hanged, drawn and quartered.

The torture chamber hidden within World Snooker's Crucible

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 07:45:00 +0000

Exit the Crucible stage left, turn right past the players’ dressing rooms, funnel down the narrow corridor and you will eventually reach the media centre in the bowels of the building. There, behind a partition at the back of the room, is snooker’s torture chamber: where beaten men come to bare their souls.

In eight days of this year’s World Championship so far, 20 losing players have ploughed this lonely furrow: wounded, grey, shrunken - and that’s before the Press men have started picking at their still weeping sores.

Mark Allen blamed his inadequacies on his opponent’s supposed cheating; Ding Junhui was reduced to anguished, barely audible mutters of “rubbish”; Peter Ebdon broke down in tears; Graeme Dott, looking smaller than ever after a 10-1 hiding, looked as if his life-force had been chewed away from the inside.

Stephen Hendry and John Higgins at the World Snooker Championship. Photo: Getty

Saturday was the turn of defending champion John Higgins, fresh from a 13-4 drubbing at the hands of Stephen Hendry. “Last night was torture,” said Higgins, referring to the penultimate session which Hendry took 7-1 in frames.

“You watch other players going through the same emotions and you think ‘how the hell did he miss that?’ But when you’re out there you can see the miss coming quite clearly. I could see that last night.

“It’s a hard thing to go through. You can hear people whispering in the crowd. It’s a tough place to be when you’re going through turmoil. This place can give you your best moments but it can also give you your worst nightmares.”

And what a nightmare. A vast green cloth on legs; remote-controlled cameras lurching and whirring up above; huge, brightly-coloured balls, clinking and clunking, rearing this way and that; those conspiratorial whispers. And all you can do is watch as your opponent makes those cursed balls disappear. It’s like a psychedelic hallucination as directed by an early David Lynch.

Terry Griffiths, world champion at his first attempt in 1979 and runner-up in 1988, is mightily eloquent on the psychological demands of the game. “It can be a very lonely place despite being in the company of so many,” Griffiths told BBC Sport. “It’s the company of many that’s the problem.

“They’re in front of television cameras, which are right in their face to see their struggle. And there’s an emptiness in their eyes, simply nothing there. The crowd wants you to do something, you can sense that and you feel worthless.

“People say it must be difficult to play against Barcelona, because they never give you the ball. But in our game you might not get the ball for 30 or 40 minutes. And by the time you get the opportunity, it feels like three months.

“There’s many a player said to me that they get to the stage where they hope their opponent doesn’t leave anything on if they miss. That’s how bad it gets.

“And when they lose, they immediately have to go to the Press room. That was the worst John Higgins has ever played at the Crucible, and he probably doesn’t even know why. You’re just raw, there’s an emptiness about you, you’re in a cocoon of grief. It’s just you, the Press and all your disappointments.”

Snooker doyen Clive Everton has witnessed every Crucible World Championship and seen plenty of meltdowns, including in 2006, when Ronnie O’Sullivan lost all eight frames in a session in his semi-final against Dott.

“We’ve seen O’Sullivan come here over the years with his head full of rubbish and simply implode,” said Everton, former BBC commentator and still editor of Snooker Scene. “He was in such a state in 2006 he got obsessed with tips, he must have tried 12 or 13 during the tournament. I’m not a psychiatrist, but there was something going on there.

“Snooker is a very cerebral sport and the most important distance is between the ears. The chess player Bobby Fischer said the idea of the game is to crush the ego of the opponent. As long as a player is sitting in his chair thinking, ‘come on, miss, I can still do it’, he’s OK. But sometimes a player gets to the stage where he knows he can’t do it - his ego is crushed.

“There are times when a player feels so low, he just wants to get out of there: ‘Crikey - is it only 6-1? I wish it was 10-1 already.’ A humiliation in snooker is a long, drawn-out affair, unlike in other sports, where it’s over relatively quickly.

“It’s an awful feeling when a player is out there and he knows in his heart he can’t do it. There’s almost a disconnect between his emotions and what he’s trying to do. Emotions cut out, the rubber band comes off that’s holding everything together. And when that happens, you’re not truly alive.”

Snooker as described by Higgins, Griffiths and Everton sounds like a sport ripe for banning, on the grounds of cruelty to humans. But Griffiths insists it is because of the emotional ground zeroes that the highs feel so intoxicating.

“This is the special event of the season for all the players and this where your dreams are fulfilled or shattered,” says Griffiths, now a BBC commentator. “But this place gives you something special, so you can’t have it both ways.

“The boys who suffer bad defeats, if they’re any good it will make them stronger for when they come back. If they’re no good, I wouldn’t worry about it. All the players here are very skilful, but the real challenge is in the mind: snooker is a series of disasters followed by a minor miracle.”

Which is why Higgins, Dott and the rest will be back: the sickly, psychedelic nightmare of the previous year a distant memory; wishing more torture on their rivals; hoping for their own, personal miracle at the cruel, foreboding Crucible.

Hendry still loves winning

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:56:07 +0000

The Crucible

I knew Stephen Hendry loved winning. We all knew Stephen Hendry loved winning - seven world titles told us that. But it is his brutal frankness about his love of winning, more than the winning itself, that takes the breath away.

Try to recall all those classic Crucible 147s: Bill Werbeniuk peeking round the partition as his mate Cliff Thorburn claws his way to the first maximum at the venue; Mick Price, all child-like and wide-eyed with wonder as Ronnie O'Sullivan slings his chalk into the crowd; and Stuart Bingham only last week, genuinely delighted to see Hendry complete the 11th of his career. But if anyone did that to Hendry, he readily admits he'd be burning up inside.

"No-one's ever made one against me, I would hate it - I wouldn't be genuinely happy for them," says the Scot, playing in his 27th straight World Championship.

"It's not nice when the shoe's on the other foot. It's nice when you're beating an opponent and you're kicking him when he's down. That's what sport is all about, the only reason for playing."

It is fair to say that if the Olympic movement is ever considering an alternative to founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin's motto - "the most important thing is not winning but taking part" - they won't be canvassing Hendry for ideas.

While Hendry might still sound every bit like 'The Ice Man', in reality it is 13 long years since he landed the big one, while he has not won a ranking tournament since 2005. For the last seven years, Hendry, who was forced to qualify for this year's event, has been descending a "slow, slippery slope".

"I don't put the work in on the practice table that I used to, so a bit of the sharpness goes," says Hendry, whose victory over Bingham in the first round set up a first Crucible meeting with fellow Scot and defending champion John Higgins. "And other things in life become more important. It's not the eyes, I had them checked out and they're perfect, so that's one excuse I can't use.

"But the longer you go without winning, the more your confidence goes down. You only get confidence from winning, so it's a vicious circle. I've got a deep-down belief in my ability, but not necessarily the belief I can go out and win."

At the end of last season, having been hammered 13-4 by Mark Selby in the second round at the Crucible, Hendry toyed with the idea of retiring. He sucked it up and decided to continue, but readily admits scrabbling around in the foothills of the sport he once straddled is an undignified experience.

"The last time I had to qualify was 1988 and it wasn't a nice feeling," says the 43-year-old. "And all the PTC [Players Tour Championships] events make it harder for me and people with families, but you've just got to get on with it.

"The way the ranking system is at the moment, players are blackmailed into playing the PTCs because there are so many ranking points. Snooker players are not like golfers where you can take two or three tournaments off, you have to play in absolutely everything, the sport is tough in that way.

"But I still love the buzz of walking out to a packed Crucible. And, although I came to the tournament as an underdog and a qualifier this year, I still have tremendous pride in my own performance. And I still expect big things."

Hendry's first-round display - as well as his third Crucible 147, he made a century and six breaks of more than fifty - suggested big things were possible again. To the extent that Higgins, not the previously unfancied Hendry, who only jetted in from China the day before his victory over Bingham, might be the one enduring an uncomfortable Thursday night.

"We've been together in snooker now for 20-odd years so it's amazing we've never played each other [at the Crucible]," says Hendry. "And to play the defending champion and one of the favourites for the tournament is exciting.

"I've not got any form over the past six years to be saying 'I'm coming down here to win the tournament'. But the longer I stay in it I've got a chance of winning. If there's one place I know I can win at, it's the Crucible."

When Hendry surveys today's snooker landscape he denies he feels old - he has five years on the next oldest left in the draw, Joe Perry - but says he feels tremendous pride at seeing the game he created being replicated by others.

"Nobody's doing anything that I wasn't doing in my prime, there are just more players doing it," says Hendry, who won his first world title in 1990 at the age of 21. "The game that Judd Trump plays, everyone goes on about how attacking it is, but that's exactly how I won World Championships. It's nothing new."

Such is the British public's perverse relationship with winners, which fosters an environment in which the underdog is so often king ("the applause I get now is far louder than when I was dominating the game") Hendry is sure to be backed to the rafters against Higgins. Yet you sense Hendry would rather it was like the good old days, when his victories were met with shrugs and rolls of the eyes.

"I want all the glory myself," he says. "I'm a winner and I still hate to see other players winning. I still believe the World Championship belongs to me."

Snooker boss Hearn flexes his cane

Ben Dirs (BBC Sport) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:30:00 +0000

Think of Barry Hearn as a schoolteacher – Mr Hearn, if you will. In one class, he has his darts boys: willing to learn, always open to new ideas, you might call them Mr Hearn’s swots. In the other class, he has his snooker boys: every bit as bright as the other lot, but a bit of a pain in the Crucibles.

And so, on day three of the World Championship in Sheffield, Mr Hearn was forced to read his snooker boys the riot act. First, he had one of his star pupils – two-time winner Mark Williams – bad-mouthing his hosts; second, he had the naughtiest boy in class – Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen – accusing one of the new kids of cheating, before suggesting some of his mates were at it as well.

While Hearn has too much front about him to ever look hurt, some of his language betrayed his true feelings.

“I want everyone to understand it is a very good time to be a snooker player,” said Hearn. “Not a good time to be an idiot."

“Everything is going our way. We’re doing everything we can to make this game great again and then the ground gets taken from under us. Prize money has more than doubled in two years [Hearn took over as chairman of World Snooker in 2010] and that comes at a price, and that price is professionalism.”

Barry Hearn and Steve Davis from 1984, the year Davis won his third World Championship

Hearn clearly knows what he is doing, which makes the behaviour of a few of his charges even more perplexing. One of the main architects of snooker’s golden era in the 1980s, this is a man who made his protege Steve Davis so famous he had two singles in the top-10 simultaneously. And the whole point of Davis, remember, was that he was supposed to be boring.

If his work in snooker was startling, his darts revolution has been a minor miracle.

Since taking over as chairman of the Professional Darts Corporation in 2001, he has transformed what was once a pub pastime into nothing short of a juggernaut: the second-most watched sport on satellite television, playing to packed auditoriums, with millions up for grabs.

Yet his reworking of snooker has met with plenty of whinging. Allen – him again – said the “whole tradition of the sport was going to pot” following the introduction of shorter matches at the UK Championship.

Reigning world champion John Higgins complained about the air miles involved in competing in snooker’s revamped calendar. Yet, interestingly, not about the money.

“The opportunity is there [in snooker], go and take it,” said Hearn. “They’ve got to go to work. I don’t want to hear players going on about how tired they are – millions out there would like to be tired going to work but can’t get a job. And be supportive of those who support us, it’s not a lot to ask.

“I’ve had 30 wonderful years in sport and I’ve never seen anything like darts. And it’s all down to the players - they’re fantastic to work with, real pros. Darts has been one of the great success stories in sport.”

Little wonder, then, that Hearn described Williams’s outburst as “absolute lunacy”, while suggesting the £1,000 fine meted out to Allen – him again – for his criticism of China during the Haikou World Open in March was not enough.

With five ranking events in China next season, Allen’s unflattering comments about the country and its players could not have come at a worse time, which is why Hearn will presumably see to it that the Antrim antagonist is hit with a hefty punishment, which could stretch to a ban from the game.

“I was looking at some of the comments on the internet and 95% of them are quite angry,” Chinese journalist Victoria Shi told me.

“They were calling him a bad loser, asking why he accused the other Chinese players of cheating and why he always criticises China. If he doesn’t want to come to China, don’t come. Nobody’s making him.”

Which pretty much sums up Hearn’s attitude: if you are willing to put in the effort, we can conquer the world together and reap the financial rewards. If not, you may as well get off now and let someone who shares my vision get on.

"We’ve got a great breed of new talent looking at these players as role models and what sort of message are they sending out?” said Hearn.

“But I haven’t had a lot of problems with new players - they’re concentrating on playing snooker.”
When asked whether Allen’s handlers were partly to blame for his behaviour, Hearn pointed out he managed six-time Crucible runner-up Jimmy White for 10 years and “didn’t know where he was most of the time”. Chances are he was round his great mate - Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood's - house, snooker was that rock ’n’ roll back then.

Mark Allen might think his outbursts are a little bit rock ’n’ roll, which would have been fine in another age.

But the days of mucking about are over: time to knuckle down and concentrate on snooker. Or risk the cane of Mr Hearn.