Sport columns
2017 Sports Quiz
There’s more to sport than high shots, low blows and fine lines. Test your familiarity with sport’s rich tapestry by tackling this quick quiz of the 2017 sporting year!
Maria Sharapova and Meldonium
So tennis superstar Maria Sharapova has tested positive to a banned substance, been dumped by some big brand sponsors and faces a lengthy ban. Oh dear. How sad.
Martin Crowe: Requiem for a Perfectionist
Two of the new faces in the 1977/78 Auckland cricket training squad were a journeyman all-rounder (me) and a 15 year old Auckland Grammar boy named Martin Crowe.
Big and Bigger - Jonah Lomu
Jonah Lomu’s death was a reminder of sport’s essentially ephemeral nature and its paradoxical capacity to engage emotions and transcend race, language and geography.
It’s Our Game
And with a single result we were free. The All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup triumph is laden with significance but perhaps its single greatest merit from the New Zealand rugby public ‘s perspective is that it delivers peace of mind…
Boksing on
Given that the build-up often verged on the surreal, the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup quarter-final performance against France was appropriately out of this world.
Eyes on the ball
In November 2013, when the All Blacks were in London preparing to play England, a Daily Telegraph journalist exploited lax security to sneak into the hotel room where team meetings were held.
Us vs them and us
Given that New Zealand is the world’s leading exporter of rugby players, it’s perhaps appropriate that the All Blacks were on the receiving end of the most famous performance by a foreign-born player in international rugby history.
Yesterday’s Heroes
As that unlikely alliance of our parents and the Rolling Stones often pointed out, you can’t always get what you want. In my 2015 wish-list (Sport, January 31), I expressed the hope that no-one would die of heat exhaustion at the Australian Tennis Open (check)…
Heads we win, tails you lose
You could argue – as many have – that test cricket is an absurdity.