Tuff Love

‘IT doesn’t say much for the health of our summer sport that the best thing to happen to cricket recently is Phil Tufnell’s appearance on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!

‘Mom, why am I so tall?’ asked Daniela

However, that’s the opinion of Michael Soper, deputy chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

‘People like heroes, however unlikely,’ Soper tells the Telegraph.

‘He was a bloody good spinner but, bless his heart, he has done more for cricket in these past 10 days than anyone I know, raising cricket’s profile.’

Tufnell has also given young ITV viewers a fair indication of what they can expect if they take up the game – hours of sitting doing nothing and waiting for the rain to stop.

But cricket is in a healthy state, compared with our winter sport – football.

All the papers today splash on the news that after months of looking for a new chief executive to replace sacked Adam Crozier, the FA have achieved exactly what their name suggests.

The Indy reveals the lengths the organisation has gone to in its search with its headline: ‘FA left in void as man from Mars pulls out.’

‘Cash-strapped and rudderless’ though it may be, we would never have believed that the FA would have got the stage where it had to look outside Earth for a boss.

But the Telegraph has no doubt who’s to blame for this latest fiasco – FA chairman Geoff Thompson.

‘Thompson’s handling of the situation leading up to Adam Crozier’s departure last year and the search for a successor that carried all the hallmarks of Inspector Clouseau at his most bumbling will surely be used by business schools the world over as part of their ‘how not to’ seminars,’ it says.

Not so. The way things are these days, he will almost certainly get a knighthood and a six-figure pension.

As to actual sport, well there were a few games of tennis played yesterday.

One of them was by Anna Kournikova (hence its inclusion in the papers) in the Cloister Cup, a third division tournament with total prize money of just £15,000.

For the record, she won against Maria Fernanda Alvez…but only because the Brazilian retired with a thigh injury midway through the deciding set.

Also playing was Daniela Hantuchova, although there was considerably more attention paid to the Slovakian’s weight than her tennis.

The 20-year-old admitted she was thin, but denied that she was anorexic.

‘I eat almost everything,’ she told the Guardian, ‘especially what my mum cooks. Unfortunately, it’s not as often as I like.’

Come on, Mrs Hantuchova. Pull your finger out…

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Posted: 9th, May 2003 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink