John Best has classic vision as Inler shows pace and power on gallops

Kent trainer has live candidate for 2,000 Guineas and believes that he has strong team for the months ahead

Seven days have passed but John Best remains entranced. He is still in awe of the gallop completed by Inler, who warms up for the Stan James 2,000 Guineas at Leicester today week.

“It was an exceptional piece of work,” the trainer said. “I have always thought he is very good, but it shocked me and everyone else who saw it. I feel that we have an exceptionally talented horse on our hands.”

A few of those have passed through his Kent stable - notably Kingsgate Native, winner of the Nunthorpe and Golden Jubilee Stakes. Yet Best does not hesitate to place Inler in that league. “His work was as good, if not better, than what we saw from Kingsgate Native,” he said. “I feel he will possibly be a better horse than Kingsgate Native over six furlongs.”

Inler's 2,000 Guineas odds have since tumbled but that gallop introduced a note of caution in Best's mind. The horse whose sole start saw him win a six-furlong Newmarket maiden in October might almost be too fast“My one concern is whether a horse with his pace will stay a mile,” Best said of the Red Ransom colt. “His pedigree says that he will, but you just wonder. Even if he doesn't get it, he will be a very good horse between six and seven furlongs. I'm convinced of that.”

In that respect he will be none the wiser after Inler runs next week. The Leicester race is over six furlongs, the only conditions event of its kind that Best could find. He said: “I'd like to run him over seven, but the Leicester race gives us just over three weeks to the 2,000 Guineas, which is ideal.”

It would be refreshing to see Inler lining up with a genuine chance against the sport's superpowers at Newmarket. Best has saddled one previous 2,000 Guineas runner, Hurricane Spirit, a 100-1 chance who fractured his knee when unplaced behind Cockney Rebel three years ago. Inler, however, promises much more.

Nor is the colt his only intended runner. Elspeth's Boy is being prepared for the classic after he defied odds of 33-1 in a Wolverhampton maiden on his debut in November. “We did almost nothing with him before that run,” Best said. “He had none of the preparatory work we put into Inler and has been slower [to come to hand], but he's moving well. We're hopeful that he'll make it and the owner is keen to have a go.”

Best is relishing the challenge of getting the best from a team of 85 horses he believes is his strongest yet. “At this time of year I'm usually wondering how we are going to win races with badly handicapped three-year-olds,” he said, “but there are some nice prospects. We come up with at least one good one every season but this year we could have more.”

Two he nominates are Kingsgate Choice and Agent Archie, the latter a winner at Goodwood in September. “I feel he is listed class at least, but he has an attractive rating so we'll start him off in a handicap,” Best said. “I just hope I can keep them all in one piece. Sir Mark Prescott once said that horses spend their time trying to kill themselves while we try our hardest to keep them alive, and he is absolutely right.”

Inler is owned by Harry Findlay, which raises an intriguing possibility. In normal circumstances Findlay would balk at running another horse against Denman, yet should Inler fail to stay a mile his natural target will become the six-furlong July Cup, the objective for Denman, the Australian sprint star who has joined Godolphin for a European campaign.

For now, however, Best is reluctant to entertain the prospect. “Inler was certainly not stopping when he won over six furlongs at Newmarket,” he said. “I am sure he would have stayed seven furlongs last year, and it's not much further to go the mile in the Guineas.”

If Best's assessment of Inler's natural ability is correct, the speed his colt shows may simply reflect his class. Top-class milers are a match for all but the finest sprinters; it would be of greater concern were Inler seemingly short of pace in his work.

It is also encouraging that Inler's preparation has been flawless. “So far everything has gone as we wanted,” Best said. “With any horse, you have got to be fit. You can't hold back. The 2,000 Guineas is his main aim and we have cracked on with it.” Both horse and trainer are straining at the leash.

Sport in brief: Northants lose Virender Sehwag

Cricket Virender Sehwag, the India batsman, will not be allowed to play for Northamptonshire this summer after a U-turn by his national board.

Northamptonshire signed the opening batsman for their Friends Provident t20 campaign and were in celebratory mood last week after the Board of Control for Cricket in India gave the official go-ahead, only to change its mind after reviewing the India team’s calendar.“Now we have to rethink and we are seeking the possibility of bringing alternative potential match-winners to supplement the fine squad that we have,” Mark Tagg, the Northamptonshire chief executive, said.

Higgins reaches last 16

Snooker John Higgins, who begins his defence of the World Championship title at the Crucible in a little over two weeks, beat Fergal O’Brien 5-3 to reach the last 16 of the Sanyuan Foods China Open in Beijing yesterday. Ding Junhui pleased the home crowd with a 5-3 win over Gerard Greene. Marco Fu, of Hong Kong, beat Bjorn Haneveer 5-2 and Neil Robertson beat Mike Dunn by the same score.Sky entry confirmed

Cycling Team Sky have been formally included as one of the 22 teams in this summer’s Tour de France. Bradley Wiggins, the triple Olympic champion, will lead their challenge. The Englishman finished fourth last year behind Alberto Contador, of Spain, who will again compete for Astana. Lance Armstrong, the seven-times Tour winner who finished third last year with Astana, will lead Team RadioShack.

Crews on the water

Rowing The crews for the Xchanging Boat Race on Saturday each had two outings yesterday. Cambridge had a gentle technical paddle and practised starts, while Oxford went for a series of three-minute bursts in choppy conditions. Cambridge have tinkered with their crew recently but Chris Nilsson, the head coach, said that they had “moved on pretty well since Saturday and are in exactly the right shape”.

Williams optimistic

Golf Tiger Woods will be judged by his form rather than taunted for his extramarital affairs when he returns to action at next week’s US Masters, according to Steve Williams, the player’s caddie. The New Zealander said yesterday that the crowd at Augusta National would be too respectful to barrack Woods. “I think they will be very happy to see Tiger playing at Augusta where he’s been successful,” Williams said.

New alliance formed

Bowls Encouraged by Sport England, and the chance of obtaining funding, four governing bodies have formed the Bowls Development Alliance (BDA). The bodies — Bowls England (flat green outdoors), the English Indoor Bowling Association Ltd, the British Crown Green Bowling Association and the English Short Mat Bowling Association — represent more than 400,000 participants at 7,500 venues.

Source:The Times

Jenson Button refuses to be distracted by the ultimate prize

Jenson Button hung around a while in Melbourne today to bask in the warm glow of victory as fans queued to get the autograph of the winner of the Australian Grand Prix. Nice to be loved, although Australia’s home-grown favourite was not so sure.

Mark Webber not only dashed the hopes of a nation with his erratic drive on Sunday, which included wrecking Lewis Hamilton’s race on the way, but then gave his countrymen a bit of a kicking while they were down.

Webber branded his homeland “a nanny state” when asked his opinion of police who impounded Hamilton’s road car after he was stopped for smoking his tyres on a public road. Webber, Formula One’ straightest talker, pulled no punches on his way to riling government officials.

“I think we’ve got to read an instruction book when we get out of bed - what we can do and what we can’t do,” he said. “It’s certainly changed since I left here. It p****s me off coming back here, to be honest. It’s a great country but we’ve got to be responsible for our actions, and it’s certainly a bloody nanny state when it comes to what we can do.” Well, perhaps Webber had good reason to be, as he put it in somewhat earthy Australian terms, p****d off as his Red Bull team threw away the chance of victory yet again, leaving the door open for Button to sneak through to a celebrated win.If Button’s victory was typically unspectacular, with Hamilton and Fernando Alonso producing the fireworks, it had the experts drooling. Sir Jackie Stewart, the three-times world champion, dropped by the McLaren hospitality suite late on Sunday night to tell Button he had produced a performance in the mould of truly great champions.

“That was a drive that Jim Clark [double Formula One world champion] or I would have been really proud of,” he said over a hearty handshake. High praise indeed.

Button continually bats away any suggestions that he could make himself Britain’s first back-to-back world champion but there was no doubt the thought was swimming around his mind yesterday as he absorbed the acclaim. Multiple champions are rare commodities and only Clark, Stewart and Graham Hill among British drivers won more than one title.

“You want to retain your title — only 30 per cent of drivers do it,” Button said. “But it’s never easy, especially fighting against these exceptional drivers. It would be an achievement to win back-to-back titles with two different teams - but we can’t write that story yet. We don’t come away from Melbourne thinking we can win the next race easily. It’s not like that. We have a long way to go, so we are going to work on it and I hope this win has spurred us all on.”

Button had earned a day off today and he indulged in familiar rituals, repeating the routine of this weekend last year when he won the first race of the season on the way to his maiden world championship: coffee at the same restaurant by the beach in Melbourne’s St Kilda suburb on Sunday and dinner in his favourite Japanese restaurant with Jessica Michibata, his beautiful girlfriend.

Button can’t remember the rituals he went through in Malaysia, where he also won last year, but you can bet he is rooting through his 2009 Filofax for ideas before he flies to Kuala Lumpur late tonight.

Even though his McLaren is not the class of the field, he has somehow taken a victory and good enough points in the first two races of the season to get himself into third place in the world championship, while Sebastian Vettel, the fastest man so far this year, has scored a big fat zero after two breakdowns while leading. That alone is encouragement.

“Vettel had the quickest car but they [Red Bull] weren’t able to make the most of it and didn’t get points,” Button pointed out. “We are picking up points when we don’t have the quickest car and hopefully we will get to a point when we are as quick or quicker.”

Malaysia was the scene of one of Button’s finest, if weirdest hours, when the 2009 grand prix was stopped midway in a torrential downpour and he was awarded half points for leading. Another deluge is on the cards on Sunday but Button will not worry. He is as calm as he was on Sunday when he snatched victory from under the noses of Red Bull’s Vettel and Webber — and he needs no nanny to tell him how to win again in Malaysia.

Source:The Times

Stephen Harmison puts his hand up for England recall

Sheikh Zayed Stadium (second day of four): Durham, with eight second-innings wickets in hand, are 304 runs ahead of MCC.

This same game last year marked the start of the circus surrounding Michael Vaughan’s forlorn attempt to return to Test cricket, giving Mitchell Claydon a brief moment of fame when he removed the would-be returning hero. That Claydon happened to be an Australian merely added to the poignancy.

Stephen Harmison is now in roughly a similar position. Another Ashes series is approaching and the big man wants his place back. The odds may be against him, as they were all along with Vaughan, but he made a rather more effective start yesterday with two wickets in an impressive new-ball spell.

Generating pace and establishing a generally good line, Harmison nipped one back to remove David Sales leg-before and then tempted James Taylor to fish outside off stump, having almost taken an edge two balls earlier. Although a second spell proved more expensive, Harmison had at least made an early point.

It was easy to feel sorry for a weary MCC as they collapsed to 162 all out. Again, they spent the hottest part of the day in the field before Durham declared on 459 for nine. Even then, the scorecard flattered the home side — if we can so describe MCC 3,400 miles from their true home — because Dawid Malan took four cheap wickets late on.Will Smith, the Durham captain, did not enforce the follow-on despite a first-innings lead of 297. A bristling Steve Kirby responded with wickets with his second and third balls, but Durham could still take great encouragement from performances of Ben Stokes and Scott Borthwick, the latest youngsters to emerge through their academy.

Kyle Coetzer extended his stay to 521 minutes and 172 runs before missing a full toss from Malan, but more talk among the loyal band of Durham members here centred on Stokes, an 18-year-old all-rounder who starred for England Under-19 over the winter and marked his first-class debut with a stylish fifty.

The left-hander, who left his native New Zealand at the age of 12, edged a Steve Kirby no-ball to second slip on nine, but played some neat shots straight and lofted Dean Cosker confidently over long-on before succumbing when he attempted one shot too many against James Middlebrook.

Comparisons are unhelpful, but when Stokes later strangled Alex Gidman down the leg side, courtesy of a brilliant catch by Phil Mustard, it was easy to think of another all-rounder who briefly played for Durham, held back nothing with the bat and enjoyed the knack of taking wickets with bad balls. His name would only burden Stokes.

MCC lost Scott Newman in the second over and the slingy Callum Thorp returned after tea to end the joint resistance of James Foster, with a fine return catch, and Malan, who had batted within his limitations. Borthwick, 19, then went through the tail with a mix of leg breaks and googlies to finish with four for 27.

Behind the scenes, Dave Richardson, the ICC general manager (cricket), met John Stephenson and Fraser Stewart, from the MCC, to discuss the pink ball experiment. Richardson believes that a day/night Test is at least 12 months away and has asked for scientific research into the best colour contrast between ball and sightscreen.

“What we want to do is make sure we try to co-ordinate all of the different projects happening now,” he said. “Manufacturers are doing their own things, some national cricket boards are doing their things, MCC is doing something. What we want to try to do is make sure we take a co-ordinated approach.

“Manufacturers are saying, ‘You tell us what you need and we’ll develop it for you’, but we don’t know what we need. The first step has to be the scientific approach, to go to these research guys and get them to tell us what we should be asking for. We need to establish scientifically what makes sense, pink, orange or what.

“At the moment, the data collected is all very much on a hearsay kind of basis — what did the wicketkeeper think, what did the fielders think, what did the TV guys think and so on. That is helpful and progress is positive, but before we think of that, we need to establish the science that makes sense.”

Durham: First Innings
M J Di Venuto st Foster b Middlebrook 131
K J Coetzer lbw b Malan 172
*W R Smith c Newman b Middlebrook 13
D M Benkenstein b Cosker 41
I D Blackwell c Sales b Kirby 13
B A Stokes c Newman b Middlebrook 51
†P Mustard not out 23
S G Borthwick c Sales b Malan 0
C D Thorp c and b Malan 0
M E Claydon c Gidman b Malan 0
Extras (b 4, lb 9, nb 2) 15
Total (9 wickets dec; 138 overs) 459
S J Harmison did not bat.
Fall of wickets: 1-181, 2-203, 3-295, 4-330, 5-411, 6-457, 7-457, 8-459, 9-459.
Bowling: Lewis 12-3-34-0; Murtagh 19-2-91-0; Kirby 20-7-48-1; Middlebrook 35-4-118-3; Gidman 11-3-36-0; Cosker 29-6-77-1; Malan 6-1-20-4; Taylor 6-0-22-0.

Second Innings
*W R Smith not out 4
S G Borthwick c Foster b Kirby 0
D M Benkenstein lbw b Kirby 0
I D Blackwell not out 3
Extras 0
Total (2 wickets; 4 overs) 7
Fall of wickets: 1-0, 2-0.
Bowling: Murtagh 2-1-4-0; Kirby 2-1-3-2.

MCC: First Innings
S A Newman lbw b Thorp 0
D J Malan c Borthwick b Thorp 41
D J G Sales lbw b Harmison 4
J W A Taylor c Mustard b Harmison 0
*A P R Gidman c Mustard b Stokes 29
†J S Foster c and b Thorp 26
J D Middlebrook not out 11
T J Murtagh c Benkenstein b Borthwick 21
J Lewis c Di Venuto b Borthwick 0
D A Cosker b Borthwick 1
S P Kirby b Borthwick 13
Extras (b 4, lb 8, nb 4) 16
Total (45.5 overs) 162
Fall of wickets: 1-1, 2-6, 3-6, 4-41, 5-102, 6-103, 7-132, 8-132, 9-142.
Bowling: Harmison 9-2-37-2; Thorp 10-7-25-3; Claydon 10-3-31-0; Stokes 4-0-14-1; Blackwell 8-2-16-0; Borthwick 4.5-0-27-4.
Umpires: B Dudleston (England) and R T Robinson (England).

Source:The Times

Jose Mourinho: I don’t like Italian football

José Mourinho has fuelled the growing rumours that he will return to English football this summer by describing himself as dissatisfied with life in Serie A and admitting that he misses the English game.

“It is a simple situation, I am happy at Inter but unhappy with Italian football,” the Inter Milan coach said yesterday before his team’s Champions League home tie against CSKA Moscow tonight.

Asked why, his explanation was frank: “Because I do not like it and because it doesn’t like me.”

Earlier, Mourinho had said, with typical modesty: “I miss English football and English football misses me, there’s no doubt about that, but right now I’m thinking only about Inter.“At Inter I’m very busy with the league, the Italian Cup and the Champions League. These occupy all my thoughts, preparing games and analysing them.”

Mourinho left Chelsea in September 2007, after twice winning the Premier League.

He won the Serie A title in his first season with Inter, 2008-09, but his relationship with fans and media has not clicked in the way it did in England and he evidently feels underappreciated in Italy. A return to England has long been rumoured.

The most plausible English destinations for Mourinho would be Manchester United, Manchester City or Liverpool. Sir Alex Ferguson seems as entrenched as ever in charge of United, although — presumably — he cannot carry on indefinitely. While Rafael Benítez’s position at Anfield is hardly secure given the team’s form, it seems improbable that Mourinho would want to move to a club without the funds to make a large-scale investment in the transfer market. Manchester City could certainly offer that.

Carlo Ancelotti is under pressure at Stamford Bridge after losing to Mourinho’s Inter in the Champions League this month, but will probably not be sacked after a single season in charge, while Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, is not likely to reappoint a man whom he parted with after a personality clash.

It was not the only piece of plain-speaking from the Portuguese yesterday. He questioned CSKA’s right to be in the competition after Alekei Berezutski and Sergei Ignashevich, the defenders, were provisionally suspended for testing positive for a banned substance after a group-stage game away to Manchester United in November.

They were given one-match bans, which they had already served, after they were merely found to have taken a cold medicine that had not been reported by the club’s doctors.

Mourinho, though, feels less forgiving than Uefa. “There’s something grey about CSKA’s progress in the Champions League,” he said. “If two players go to an anti-doping control and a substance is found that’s not allowed in the Champions League, there’s something grey.”