Your Move

Last week, I attended the London Chess Classic at Earls Court Olympia and followed the four games being played in Round 3 of the 7-Round all-play-all competition as they unfolded live on stage.

This is only the second year that the London Chess Classic has been staged but already it is gaining momentum. This year the players are: the young Norwegian, Magnus Carlson (currently rated the world’s number one), Vishy Anand (the current World Champion), Vladimir Kramnick (the ex-World champion), Hikaru Nakamura (the US number 1) and the top four rated English players (Messrs Adams, Short, McShane and Howell). Quality or what? Play started at 2.00 pm and spectators may remain until all games are complete which can be anything from 2 hours to 7+ hours. And the cost of a ticket? £10.

Where else in the world of sport can a spectator get to see the current and ex-World Champion and the World Number One player for a tenner? It seems that Chess is the last bastion of a time gone by when the average punter could get up close and personal with the elite of sport – and all for a modest cost. I even shared a lift with veteran world title challenger, Victor Korchnoi and held the gents' door open for eventual tournament winner, Magnus Carlson. Only in chess would this happen.

In the early 1990s, I attended a Chess Event in a Park Lane hotel that is now known, rather quaintly, as the Snowdrops v Veterans Match in which a team of young-up-and coming Women players takes on a team of Veterans. The event I attended featured some of the best women players at that time and the vets team included a seventy year old Vasily Smyslov, World Champion I957-58, who eventually won a gruelling 7 hour game. He died earlier this year, aged 89, but I am so glad I was able to witness his success on that day from little more than a few feet away from the board.

The event didn’t start well as the lights failed in the playing area and we were told to go away and come back in an hour when play would start. Taking the lift down to the ground floor, I found myself in the company of half the women’s team including Sofia Polgar and Pia Cramling, two of the best Women players the world has ever seen. What is it about chess players and lifts? Anyway, they sauntered off down Park Lane as if it was the most natural thing in the world – no entourage, no bodyguards.

A year or so later, I found myself browsing the foyer bookstall with Vassily Ivanchuk, the Ukrainian Grandmaster, rated number 5 in the world at that point, during the London Rapidplay competition. I cannot think of any other sport where the world’s top players have such freedom to come and go, usually unrecognised and where the likes of you and I can mingle with them and watch them perform for so little.

Unfortunately money is already raising its ugly head in the Chess world and prize money is increasing. How long before we, the public, lose contact with the players as we have in virtually all other sports?

England Lose World Cup...Again

So England exits yet another World Cup at the hands of the Germans and on the back of the poorest showing since 1958. I can’t see us winning a major tournament ever again. But it wasn’t always like this.


When I was at junior school a lifetime ago, I was already a convert to our national sport, football, or soccer as the Yanks insist on calling it (correctly, I might add) and played it every spare minute of every day, but nothing had prepared me for the sort of playground politics that come with being a fan.

‘So what team do you support then?’ was the question that threw me, as giving the wrong answer could be fatal and the truth was, I didn’t support anyone. Luckily, the following Saturday saw the staging of the 1963 FA Cup Final when Manchester United stuffed Leicester City 3-1. I’d actually heard of Man U and as they were clearly winners, they would do for me. Thus it came to pass that a home counties boy who’d never travelled north past Luton let alone to the far north-west of the country became a Man U supporter for no other reason that they were there and I’ve followed them ever since.

So by 1966 when I would sit goggle eyed in front of our flickering black & white TV watching the World Cup games, it was United’s Bobby Charlton and Nobby Styles that I cheered on (in lieu of my true hero at United, Dennis Law, but he was Scottish). One of my fondest memories is Bobby’s thunderbolt goal against Mexico in the Group stage, a goal that still looks amazing today. Just have a look at that mazy run and catapult shot that bulges the net before the goalkeeper has time to reach it.



There was much comment at the time about Alf Ramsey’s assertion that Martin Peters was a player ten years ahead of his time. Actually if he had truly been ten years ahead of his time, he would’ve sported long greasy hair and wide lapels, but we’ll let that pass. In truth, Alf had picked the wrong man. Hindsight shows that it was Nobby Styles that was genuinely ahead of his time by his relentless harassing of the opposition and his willingness to stick the boot in. Watching those games from the 1960s, it is obvious that players had slightly more time and space to play. These days, the opposition close you down relentlessly, but not so then – except for Nobby who gained a reputation for doing just that with terrier-like tenacity.

Alf’s theory about Peters was that he had the ability to ‘ghost’ into shooting positions so late that he was never picked up – a trait that few possessed. But actually Geoff Hurst could do that as well, as his goal against Argentina in the bad-tempered quarter-final shows. This is actually my goal of the ’66 tournament and a memory that will never fade. It made me gasp at the time and still looks good today. The skill with which, Hurst glides in at the near post, unmarked, and just lets the ball skim over his head with enough purchase to guide it into the far corner of the goal is just awe-inspiring. Such delicacy in what was an ugly and spiteful game.

Lily 'Ashes' Allen

Just when you think it's all over, there's cricket. Having wrenched The Ashes from the long term grasp of arch rivals, the Aussies, in that balmy summer of 2005 only to promptly lose them again by being completely whitewashed 5-0 down under in the winter tour of 2006/7, the England cricket team have confounded us all by reclaiming the diminutive urn this summer – and without Pieterson and Freddie Flintoff for much of the series. I am amazed.

But I am more amazed by cricket’s new patron – Lily Allen. Was it not her being interviewed by Jonathon ‘Aggers’ Agnew on Radio 5’s Test Match Special (TMS) during the lunch break on day 3 of the deciding Oval Test? And was it not her who had to ask what the ‘Extras’ are that are added to the innings total? Oh Gawd! There has been a lot of adverse comment about the choice of interviewee on that day as the usual suspects are either veteran international cricketers or well known celebs who actually know something about cricket (and have a book to plug). But no, Lily declared her undying love for the game even though she was a bit wobbly on the rules.

However, she did strike a cruel blow against the administrators by saying that the new Twenty20 short form of the game was rubbish and that she only follows proper grown-up Test Matches. Hurrah! In fact she had a few ideas of her own. My favourite being that the Test series should be extended to 7 or even 9 games, to be known as the ‘All Out War’ series. Great Stuff! She clearly has a better grip on the game than some of those in charge.

Given her lack of a comprehensive knowledge of the laws of the game, I would’ve loved to have asked her whether she adhered to the ‘six and out’ rule having heaved the ball into a neighbour’s garden when playing at home with the family (I bet Keith bowls a mean leg cutter). And did she have any penalties in place for breaking windows? I only ask because I never actually broke any glass with a cricket ball myself – but my Dad once put a thick outside edge through the kitchen window (failed to spot the away-swinger) much to the consternation of my mother who was washing her hair in the kitchen sink at the time.

The standard of banter is always first rate on TMS and Lily’s contribution was a lot of fun. Even the real broadcasters have their moments of sheer surrealism. Like this:
Phil Tufnell (ex-England spin bowler and lad-about-town): ‘How did you prepare to bat, Matthew?’
Matthew Hayden (ex-Aussie opening batsman of some repute): 'I’d have a routine… (goes on for about 5 minutes about eye exercises and mental attitude etc etc)'
Tufnell: 'So having a snooze was completely the wrong approach then?'

I’m not sure Lily was so out of place after all.

Olympian Effort

What’s all this then? Team GB winning a shed load of medals at the Olympic Games and finishing fourth in the medal table? Whatever next? What happened to the usual noble-in-defeat attitude and ‘I’m just pleased to be here’ platitudes? What has turned us into a nation of contenders? It could be the lottery money pumped into sports so that athletes can pay the bills whilst learning their trade or it could be the hiring of proper coaching and technical staff or it could even be the public school ethos of competition in sport (heaven forbid!) But I think it is more than that.

I reckon that the real reason for all this success is down to the weather! I’ve touched on this before in my previous Cricket post, but climate is so important to the Brits, after all, 50% of conversation in this country revolves around it. Without a bit of weather to contend with, we are nothing - look at the evidence. For once, a major sporting event has been held in a country where the climate suits the average Brit. We have won countless medals for sailing in atrocious conditions with howling winds and 2 metre swells – just like the Solent on an August Bank Holiday. The road cycling was conducted in stair-rodding rain, lethally slippery roads and less that brilliant visibility - ditto. Mercifully, the temperatures have been on the chilly side, the rain has fallen with not a swelteringly hot clear blue sky and lack-of-oxygen-due-to-altitude day in sight. Just how we like it.

I have always thought that the UK’s lack of sporting prowess has always been due to a lack of proper weather. Major sporting events are always held in countries where it is consistently hot, humid and windless. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the challenge? Brits need to battle the elements more that they need to battle their opponents. It is why we are at heart an exploring, sea-faring nation.

Most of the UK’s premier sport, football, is played in freezing, rain-drenched conditions that are prevalent in our winter. If the Football World Cup was played at Scunthorpe on a miserably wet, muddy November day rather than a humid latin summer’s day when it’s 35C in the shade, we would win hands-down. I’d love to see the Brazilians play their silky skills game in those conditions.

So, an end to all boring hot, dry venues please. All international sporting events should now be held in countries where the weather is extreme and unpredictable. That would even up the chances a bit!

As a postscript, I note that some things never change. Post-event interviews with competitors from most of the major nations comprise a tediously well-rehearsed, almost robotic stream of PR speak. Brits on the other hand, waffle on about all sorts of things in a daze of ‘Gosh, have I really won something’ giddiness. Somehow, it is wonderfully reassuring that there’s a real person in there somewhere rather that a trained-to-the-point-of-oblivion android. You can’t have it both ways.

When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease...

Summer has finally deigned to show its face here in the UK and the cricket season is in full swing. Ahh cricket! Another of those games that we gave the world and then they turn up on our doorstep and beat the pants off us (see also – European Football Championships). Except New Zealand.

I’ve always been a bit of a cricket devotee, I was coached for a year or so at school and subsequently played for the school team as a middle order batsman and occasional wicket-keeper. My career ended at about age 16 when sport became terribly uncool but I then reverted to watching it on TV – before it was gobbled up by Satellite Channels. I remember with real fondness all those black and white Test Matches from the 1960s which featured names such as Dexter, Graveney, Boycott, Edrich, D’Olivera, Snow and Underwood. It was a period when England would get regularly battered by the West Indies in the form of fast bowlers Hall & Griffith and then hit all round the ground by Sobers, Greenwich and the rest of them. Happy days!

Cricket is a unique sport for many reasons and each of those reasons shows why it could only have been invented by the English.

It is the only sport that is played over 5 days. This means that a potential spectator is not limited to attendance at a certain time on a certain day and has a choice of dates. It also means that someone seeing play on say, day 3 will not see the beginning nor the end of the game. This is in compliance with the English attribute that says that ‘taking part is more important than winning’. Which is why we never win anything.

It is the only sport that revolves around meals, especially Tea. This is absolutely paramount. No English sportsman likes to go without his grub and to stop for Tea at 4.00 pm is entirely civilised. Pity nobody else takes our lead on this. All sports should stop for Tea at four!

It is the only sport that incorporates the weather into strategy and tactics. We all know that the English are obsessed with the weather, so why not make it part of the sport? It’s entirely logical that play should stop when it rains or when the light is so bad no one can see the ball, but is also logical that varying degrees of cloud cover, early morning moisture, pitch condition, wind direction and all sorts of other atmospheric factors should form part of the captain’s thought processes when directing his troops. It also means that when we play in the West Indies, Australia and India when it is just hot all the time we invariably lose.

It is the only sport where a draw is declared due to insufficient duration of playing time. I know that the concept of a draw is alien for you Yanks but just take a deep breath and think how satisfying a non-result can be when both sides have given their all. It is the classic English compromise and can be followed by a nice cup of tea!

The Final Move

And now for something completely different...chess! Those of you who don’t follow the machinations of the chess world will probably not have noticed that Bobby Fischer, former World Champion, recently died of kidney failure aged 64.

This is a matter of great sadness for me as he is the person who was almost solely responsible for sparking my interest in the ancient game. I played for my school team and was invited to play for the second team at St Albans Chess club, but that was about the limit of my competitive career. And it was all down to Bobby. This is his story.

Following World War II, the World Chess Championship was re-started in 1948 and immediately the title was hijacked by the Soviet Union via winner of the 6 player match, Mikhail Botvinnik and it remained in their grasp for 24 long years whilst their own almost interchangeable champions came and went (Tal, Botvinnik again, Petrosian and Spassky).

It was not until 1972 that the young American upstart, Robert J Fischer, a Grandmaster at 15, arrived on the scene to thoroughly upset the applecart and to thrill the young me into taking up chess. At Reykjavik, Iceland, the precocious Fischer took on the might of the Soviet machine and won, thus scoring a direct hit in the cold war and breaking the stranglehold of Soviet domination.

But he didn’t take the easy route. He lost the first game with an horrendous blunder and then forfeit the second by sulking in his hotel room complaining about playing conditions and failing to turn up. Thus after two games it was Spassky 2, Fischer 0. But then he turned it on and won 7 of the next 19 games (lost 1 and drew 11) and thereby the match with a combination of stunning chess and a series of complaints about everything from playing conditions to alleged cheating that had the tour organiser at breaking point. These days it would be called ‘gamesmanship’ but you had to feel sorry for his opponent, Boris Spassky, a likeable player, who was thrashed at the board and worn down by the constant barrage of paranoia from Fischer.

Predictably, Fischer grew more anti-social and more paranoid. He failed to contest the 1975 match against challenger Anatoly Karpov and was stripped of his title, thus handing it back to the Russians for a further 32 years (Karpov then Gary Kasparov and Kramnik) before the Indian Vishy Anand finally won it back last year.

In the meantime, Fischer went on the run, living in any country that would have him whilst spitting bile at the USA and finally ending his days in Iceland – scene of his greatest triumph. A tragic end to one of chess’s tortured yet undisputed geniuses.