Australia’s Big Bash has been a success as the people behind it realised the vast numbers not watching cricket outweighed the fusty concerns of those who wereWhen Cricket Australia first hired Dan Migala, he hardly knew a bat from a badminton racket. Migala is a baseball nut from Chicago, “the equivalent of the cricket fan who keeps score with a pencil and quotes statistics from a century ago”. And he’s also chief innovation officer at the sports marketing firm Property Consulting Group. When Cricket Australia first started work on the Big Bash League, Migala was the man they brought in to plan the marketing strategy. He had a hand in almost every last little part of it, the colour of...
If Steve Smith has a wider claim on some kind of ultimacy right now it is perhaps a minor role as the greatest Test batsman to be nobody’s favourite Test batsmanShakin’ Stevens was the biggest-selling British singles artist of the 1980s. It is probably worth remembering this fact the next time a man with a greying beard tells you the 80s were the last real golden age of popular music, a starburst of youthful creativity, artistic collectivism and sad, pale people standing behind synthesisers pretending they’re not surrounded by balloons on Top of the Pops.Forget all that. The rankings don’t lie. In reality the 80s were characterised by an apparently insatiable thirst for a handsome middle-aged Welshman miming to country music and...
The Australia captain and his coach Darren Lehmann have talked of resilience and adaptation after recent disasters, and those qualities were at the fore to end a 13-year wait for a Test win in India4,502. It’s a number Steve Smith wants everyone to know: the days since Australia last won a Test in India. Way back then, it was the only time the national side had triumphed in a series in this country since The Beatles stopped writing songs. Then, it was a team resembling the Harlem Globetrotters for the champions they boasted. It truly was their final frontier.When directly asked last month if his charges could do the same, the Australian captain avoided the question. It was taken as...
The Swiss player won a thrilling Australian Open final but would have been happy to ‘accept a draw’ against another wonderful ambassador for tennisRoger Federer’s claim to greatness has never been in question, not even in the five years since he won his 17th grand slam. However, his right to be regarded as peerless in the history of his sport was cemented beyond argument when he drew four majors clear of the 14 Rafael Nadal shares with Pete Sampras by defeating the Spaniard in an Australian Open final to rank alongside the best of the nine in which they have now contested a slam title. Related: Roger Federer eyes Wimbledon success after Australian Open triumph The triumph belonged not only...
Straight out of the notorious Los Angeles neighbourhood of Compton, the incomparable sister act show yet again that they dominate women’s tennisThere is by now a numbing effect to the decades‑long dominance of Serena Williams, who on Saturday captured the Australian Open championship for a seventh time to eclipse Steffi Graf’s record for major titles in the Open era, all but silencing the few stubborn holdouts who referred to the record book to deny that she is the best there has ever been. Related: Australian Open 2017: day 13 – women's singles final - in pictures Related: What the Williams sisters mean in America today | Derrick Clifton Continue reading...