| Barney Ronay: Time was right for Flintoff's farewell The popular Lancastrian all-rounder will be sorely missed, and not just by English cricket fansFarewell, then, Andrew Flintoff. England's greatest cricketer who people actually liked (even in other countries: an astonishing, almost baffling feat for an England cricketer) has now retired from "all forms of cricket". This will hopefully include not just batting, bowling and catching with brilliance, but also Flintoff's most recent form of cricket, which has amounted to not actually playing any cricket at all but instead appearing on game shows where people shout angrily with laughter and a boisterous host intones scurrilities to choreographed jeers while an ineffable nimbus of futility descends across your living room like Lancashire drizzle.His retirement is a great shame. Along with everyone else, I loved Flintoff's carelessly chucked about moments of greatness: the era-kickstarting 95 at The Oval against South Africa in 2003, after which he romped off waving his bat and forgetting to look haggard and tortured at missing a hundred, instead appearing genuinely wowed by the first visible spike of his own periodically outsized Flintoff greatness. I also enjoyed, perhaps even a little bit more, his ridiculously studious and pronounced forward defensive shot, a shot that could almost be described as sarcastic, the bat a neurotically tiny balsa-wood plank in his vast grip.Flintoff's retirement was also a source of more widespread unease this week, dovetailing as it did with talk of some kind of fundamental problem with our other great stubbled, rambunctious English colossus, Wayne Rooney. Rooney, it has been suggested, may have entered a chronic cycle of decline. He may be growing truncated before our eyes, his career already fading, thickening and beginning to stop. This is an extremely upsetting idea and one we should resist. All sports people have a tipping point after which they begin, tangibly, to end, but I believe Rooney is still some way short of this.For a start, Flintoff has been hobbling his way round a valedictory farewell lap for some time now, his career ensconced in what we might call the Roadrunner Years, a modern sporting phenomenon where from a distance it is quite clear you've already gone skittering out over the edge of the cliff, legs pumping, held up by nothing more than fame-momentum and celebrity ballast. This is the main reason sports people don't go away as much as they used to. Even with their powers in decline, they linger and pad and fill, their floppy-limbed, cadaverous bodies still powered relentlessly forward into battle by their own highly motivated PR machinery. This is not necessarily a good thing. Assailed on all sides by spin and vested interest it is more important than ever to make a clear distinction between things that are actually, properly over – albeit still hanging about the place making comebacks and doing interviews – and those that are simply in recess, but still worthy of our urgent interest.David Beckham, for example, is over. Famous but over. Talented but over. Over with an agent. Andy Murray is not over but perhaps repeatedly attempting to bully him into winning a grand slam is over. The Lampard-Gerrard "conundrum" is over. The England football team are over. England, generally, is over. Cars are over. Small, very expensive organic chickens with pretend-homemade plastic packaging are over. The phrase "properties of this quality very rarely come on to the market" is over. Twenty20 cricket is over. Opening up a pretentious high end coffee cart in the East End of London, growing a straggly beard and talking in a sniffy voice about the quality of your roast is over. Telephones with wires are over. In fact, pretty much everything is over apart from China, pornography and multiplying legions of sub-KFC fried chicken outlets called Chicken Shed and Chicken Bungalow and Chicken Loft.Plus of course Rooney: Rooney is not over. Flintoff's retirement may have come with an earned sense of relief from his creaking knees, those unreliable hinges and cranks. But Rooney still pulses with angry vitality, still carrying with him the imprint of his career high with England at Euro 2004, the Croatia defence scattered like late-night kebab salad brushed angrily to the pavement, tongue lolling like a length of prime luncheon meat, seeing in front of him only the engorged and pulsing flower of the goal between its vulvic posts and demonstrating, in effect, tremendous quality from the young lad.For Rooney, the enemies of promise are more diffuse, and not solely confined to tabloid entities known as Rooney Hooker and Rooney Threesome Girl and even Rooney Hooker Dad. There is also expectation: the fact that we now look for, and expect to find inveterate decline beneath the star-burnish.If Flintoff's retirement is a reminder of anything, however, it is of the sadness that comes at the end of a career fraught with terribly addictive headline highs and lows. Maybe it might act as a reminder too. Just give us five great years, and then a few more of stately decline. After which he can simply give up and spend the rest of his days wrestling pleasurably with his appetites.twitter.com/barneyronayWayne RooneyAndrew FlintoffCricketBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Tigers slugger Cabrera shut down for season By 2010-09-29T17:14:17ZCLEVELAND (AP) -- Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera is done for the season.... hosted.ap.org |
Mark Lewis-Francis eases into semis with fastest 100m in five years • Golds for Scott and Walton, Goddard, Dykun and Folwell• Illness hinders Halsall, who takes bronze in 100m freestyleEngland won 12 medals in Delhi today, but for a tedious amount of time the conversation around the camp was all about the state of the track at the JLN Stadium. Work went on late last night to repair the damage done to the surface during the opening ceremony.At the end of it all the track was just fine: good enough for Mark Lewis-Francis to record his fastest 100 metres for five years, 10.15sec, in the opening heat. Minutes later, when the second heat was recalled by the starter, the stadium announcer said: "There had been some confusion and trouble at the start." That could well be the motto for the entire Games.It was the intense heat and humidity that were the real problems for the British athletes. "It's like hell out there," said Lewis-Francis, after easing through the second round in 10.20 and securing a spot in Friday's semi-final. The huge swarms of moths drawn to the stadium by the floodlights did not help.Over at the SP Mukherjee aquatics complex Fran Halsall was also suffering. The "Delhi belly" she had complained about after winning gold in the 50m fly had got worse, and she was disappointed to finish with a bronze in the 100m freestyle, her specialist event. "I had nothing to give today," Halsall said, "and I couldn't stand up after the race. I don't know why I put myself through it sometimes." She left quickly, apologising as she went but explaining that if she stayed she was worried she would vomit on the reporters.Gemma Spofforth was also disappointed with her medal, a silver in the 100m backstroke, but then she is the world champion at the distance. Having led until the final 15 metres, where she let Australia's Emily Seebohm past her, Spofforth complained that she had been confused by the markers. "I don't even know what you call that finish, it wasn't a finish at all, and I hate coming second. We were talking before about how you couldn't see the flags and I thought: 'Yeah you can, what's the problem?' But then I couldn't see the flags at all. I missed the 15m one and then just got my head down, but it wasn't enough."The women who took bronze in the 4x200m freestyle, Jo Jackson, Rebecca Adlington, Emma Saunders and Sasha Matthews, were far happier. There was also a relay silver for Scotland, with Andrew Hunter, David Carry, Jak Scott and Robbie Renwick coming in behind Australia in the 4x200m freestyle. The cyclists Jenny Davis and Charline Joiner also took silver for Scotland, in the team sprint.The one British swimmer who did win gold was James Goddard, setting a new Commonwealth Games record in the 200m backstroke. Goddard last won the title in 2002. "Back then I was the youngest on the team, today I'm the oldest," he said. "I didn't think about the medal coming into the event, experience has taught me that, I just targeted a time."Goddard's was one of four golds that England secured today.The most entertaining of them was that of Myroslav Dykun in the 66kg Greco Roman wrestling final. Dykun, as his name suggests, was not born in England but arrived from Ukraine seven years ago. His was England's first wrestling medal in 24 years, and was won with impressive ease. Like Goddard, he may just have been concentrating on targeting a quick time – it took him 40sec to tie Canada's Jack Bond up into a knot and pin him.In gymnastics Luke Folwell won the all-round individual competition, with Reiss Beckford taking silver, and at the shooting arena Steven Scott and Stevan Walton set a new Games record as they won gold by one shot in the double trap pairs.Not one of them was nearly as happy as Zoe Smith was with her bronze in the 58kg weightlifting, though. Smith is only 16 and has had to take three weeks off school to come to her first major international meet. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry." It was the first weightlifting medal ever won at the Games by an English woman, and surely the first of many for Smith.Commonwealth Games 2010AthleticsSwimmingRebecca AdlingtonAndy Bullguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Tiger Woods says he's finding peace, getting used to new life Tiger Woods says he is more at peace with himself than at the start of his season, and he is hopeful his year will not end without a victory ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Canada pole for Hamilton ALTHOUGH Lewis Hamilton broke the Red Bull stranglehold on 2009 pole positions yesterday, he did it by taking a tyre gamble that could backfire today. timesonline.co.uk |