Paul Collingwood: Beating Australia no longer enough to satisfy England

Paul Collingwood, who became England’s leading one-day run-scorer during the win against Australia in Cardiff on Thursday, believes that the side now hold supremacy over their oldest rivals and can beat any team in the world.

Ricky Ponting, the Australia captain, claimed that “bragging rights” remained with the touring team despite conceding the Ashes to England last year and losing the World Twenty20 final in May. England also hold a 2-0 lead in the NatWest Series going into the third game at Old Trafford tomorrow.

It is a sign of England’s rise that beating Australia is no longer enough, according to Collingwood, who said: “If you look at their record over the past year or so they still have that air of invincibility because they have not lost many games, but we are the better side at the moment.

“We are in a great position to win this series, but we would not just be happy with that. We want to be the best one-day side in the world and win the World Cup next year. We are confident we can beat any team in one-day cricket, not just Australia.”

Collingwood was taken unawares during his innings of 48 at the SWALEC Stadium in Cardiff, when the public address man told the crowd that Alec Stewart’s aggregate of 4,677 runs had been overtaken. “A few Australians were even more surprised than me,” Collingwood said. “Going past Alec’s runs . . . it is all a bit surreal at times.

“I went into that match thinking, ‘I need to start playing well again. I need a bit of confidence.’ Then came that announcement and I thought to myself, ‘Why do you worry so much?’ It is always a battle. What goes on in your head is far more important than anything with your technique.”

That no England batsman has yet hit 5,000 runs when a total of 57 players from other countries have reached the landmark is testament to the relatively low status that the one-day game has carried in this country and the volume of matches elsewhere. Even Andy Flower, the team director, scored 6,786 runs for Zimbabwe.

Collingwood was chatting to Graham Gooch, the part-time batting coach, about this broad issue recently. “In Graham’s day they played three one-day internationals each summer,” Collingwood said. “Now we play three in a week.” This season, England are committed to as many as 13 50-over matches.

Only if Twenty20 squeezes out the longer one-day game will Collingwood’s guess that a good number of England batsmen will overtake his aggregate prove incorrect. Perhaps in a decade’s time, Eoin Morgan will be saying: “In Colly’s era they only played a couple of Twenty20s a year — now we play two a day.”

Collingwood revealed that he underwent two injections in his left shoulder during his rest from the Test series against Bangladesh. He has suffered intermittent pain since dislocating the joint in 2003, but said that he is fit to bowl, even though Andrew Strauss has yet to call upon him in the series.

Source:The Times

Daring Lleyton Hewitt not ready to be the forgotten man

Asked last week to nominate the young British player who most epitomised the attitude required to succeed, Andy Murray said Liam Broady, of Stockport.

The 16-year-old was asked if he would mind hitting for an hour yesterday with Rafael Nadal, the world No 1. “Awesome,” was young Broady’s reaction to the tutorial. John McEnroe has also been trading leftie blows with him this week, offering coaching tips into the bargain.

Broady bears the appearance of a young Lleyton Hewitt, the blond hair, the cap worn backwards and the look in the eye that suggests he is going to make the most of all that he has in the desire to succeed as a professional.

That he was born in the same town as Fred Perry adds to the fascination of the story. That his family does not conform to the strictures preferred of the LTA gentry stirs more piquancy into the pot.

Hewitt has never been a conformist. He has got to this stage of his career by staying loyal to his reactionary roots, a tough-as-old-boots kid whose parents brooked no argument and who still plays every match as if his life depends upon it. He sets Tennis Australia folk on edge, but where would tennis in Australia have been without him to keep it in the mind’s eye this past decade?

On Centre Court yesterday, Hewitt defeated Gaël Monfils, of France, 6-3, 7-6, 6-4, a match defined by the 2002 champion’s refusal to let one of the more volatile characters in the game break the levels of concentration that are his hallmark.

For two sets, Hewitt served out of his skin, dropping just six points before the second-set tie-break, from which he extricated himself after netting three forehands. The Frenchman then became ragged himself. Hewitt took the set with a delightful backhand volley that must have tested his dodgy hips to the utmost.

Before he played in this year’s Australian Open, where he lost in the fourth round to Roger Federer, Hewitt knew that he had to go into hospital for a second hip operation, something he kept from everyone except those nearest and dearest. Typical Hewitt, that.

He did not last more than a couple of rounds in any tournament between then and the French Open, where he took ten games in three sets against Nadal — and that takes some doing. That belief was endorsed in Halle, Germany, the week before last, when he became only the second man in eight years to defeat Federer on grass.

Roger Rasheed, who coached Hewitt for three years before they had a falling-out and is now trying to get the best from Monfils, bore the look of a worried man before the match. He recounted that every time Hewitt came back through the gates of the All England Club, he “was like a kid in a candy store”. And where better than Centre Court to counter someone whose play varies from pearl drop one minute to marshmallow the next.

Source:The Times

Highclere dream factory scales heights

If your business is selling a dream, a little evidence can be persuasive. Harry Herbert had all such material to hand this week, as he launched seven new Highclere Thoroughbred syndicates on the back of an unprecedented three winners at Royal Ascot.

Herbert has managed the prestigious Highclere brand since its inception in 1992 but these are heady days. “We took 50 people into the Ascot winner’s enclosure last week and you can’t buy that experience,” he said.

Plans for the winning horses are taking shape, with Harbinger set to run in the King George, Approve in the Gimcrack and Memory at Newmarket’s July meeting. But Herbert is now selling shares in the yearlings he will seek to buy at the upcoming autumn sales and dispatch to some of the ten trainers on the Highclere roster.

“It’s not easy to keep attracting new owners,” he said. “That’s why success at Ascot was so important. It’s a very public thing — if you have a share in a runner there, all your friends and family will know about it, good or bad.

“We’ve had some amazing times, notably with Lake Coniston and Petrushka. A couple of years ago, we had an Ascot double with Collection and Colony but this year was better.”

Herbert fronts a slick operation that appeals to a surprisingly wide range. “With Highclere, our celebrity element does help. When people see Liz Hurley and Sir Alex Ferguson involved, they might look at us more closely,” he said.

Such inspection reveals that this is not the exclusive enclave of the wealthy that many imagine. Twenty shares in the Masquerade syndicate, which owns Memory and another horse, cost less than £12,000, all training fees included. “We probably created the image ourselves, because we are a luxury goods product,” Herbert admitted. “There are still people who think it’s a private club for the posh but we’re getting over that now. We have a terrific cross-section and horses bond people together.”

Mike Tindall, the England rugby international, has a share in Theology and was on the phone from Australia after his run in the Queen’s Vase at Ascot. “I had to tell him he’d been beaten a nose,” Herbert said. “But he’s keen and calls a lot when he’s away on tour.”

Jeremy Noseda, trainer of Theology, has been chosen to handle a horse in a new Highclere syndicate — 20 shares in a single horse at £6,950 each. Though it is called The Starter syndicate, it is not entirely for newcomers — the name relates to a Spy cartoon hanging in the Jockey Club Rooms, the base for fortnightly Highclere dinners through the spring.

With 19 wins and £369,000 in prize money banked, Highclere are heading for a record season. That would be assured if Harbinger repels Workforce, his Derby-winning stablemate, in the King George. “I’m about to chat it through with Sir Michael Stoute,” Herbert said. “Unless he has a compelling reason not to run, we will go there — it’s the sort of race we are all in this for.”

Source:The Times

Michael Schumacher’s return heads for dead end

Michael Schumacher’s much-heralded return to Formula One could end after only a year, according to reports in Valencia in the build-up to tomorrow’s European Grand Prix.

Although Mercedes GP said last night that there was “absolutely no truth” in the report that dissatisfaction with — and criticism of — the seven-times world champion’s performances had culminated in the team apparently courting Robert Kubica from Renault, an Italian website said that the Pole, 25, had been offered a three-year retainer from 2011, with an option for a further two years.

While rumours and gossip are part and parcel of pitlane life, speculation about Schumacher’s future has been rife and the 41-year-old is an increasingly forlorn figure. He returned to the sport on a three-year contract this season, having delayed his initial comeback because of a neck injury.

Schumacher’s frustration, however, has become increasingly evident. He has not made the podium and his best position has been fourth in both the Spanish and Turkish Grands Prix. It was in Canada two weeks ago that the professional criticisms started.

Increasingly, he has the look and manner of a champion who cannot understand his inability to recapture his glory days. This week he railed at suggestions that he is not the force of old. “I don’t think there are many guys around the world who, at 41, come back after a three-year break and compete at this high a level,” he said.

“I’ve not lost my knowledge of driving. I know what I’m doing and I think I do it to the best I can. When I won 91 grands prix and seven championships, I was thinking then about how I can improve, as I’m doing now.”

Nico Rosberg, who was quickest in yesterday’s first practice session, defended his team-mate, as did Nick Fry, the Mercedes chief executive.

“From inside the team we see things in a totally different perspective,” Fry said. “We’re very comfortable with Michael’s performance and I can’t see any reason why he won’t come good.”

But Lewis Hamilton, the McLaren driver who leads the drivers’ championship by three points and is going for a hat-trick of wins, has suggested that time has moved on more quickly than Schumacher, who was only eleventh- quickest after the second practice session, may have appreciated.

“His commitment is the same as always,” Hamilton said. “But it is so challenging, so close, it is very difficult to outdo the youngsters that have the hunger that he had when he started.”

Now or never for the ‘golden generation’

England expects. Even that two-word affirmation carries more than an echo of the military past that sadly seems to permeate so much discussion before a World Cup encounter with Germany, but it is true. England expects.

The players expect, too. The nucleus of thirtysomethings and late twentysomethings within Fabio Capello’s squad has never, in the players’ lifetimes, known anything but misery at the hands of German opponents in the knockout stages of leading tournaments, from the early memories of the 1990 World Cup to the Euro ’96 defeat that came as many of them were taking their first steps towards stardom. But they maintain that, in the unlikely setting of Bloemfontein tomorrow afternoon, it will be different.

It would not be hard, on the basis of performances in this World Cup, to dismiss England as dysfunctional no-hopers and Germany, with the beguiling young talents of Thomas Müller and Mesut Özil, as one of the top four teams in the tournament, along with Argentina, Brazil and Holland.

So why does it feel, after England scraped into the knockout stages with downbeat draws against the United States and Algeria and a fairly prosaic victory over Slovenia, that this is England’s turn to overcome Germany?

Joe Cole predicted something similar the other day, saying pointedly that “I feel this is our time”, and it was an attitude reinforced yesterday by David James as the goalkeeper shrugged at the mention of Özil, apologised to a German journalist that his “name-recollection skills are next to disgraceful” and proceeded to declare:

“I genuinely think we’re going to win because I think we’re a better team than Germany.”

A better team? This is highly debatable, given that Capello’s side have hardly resembled a cohesive unit since a resounding 5-1 victory over Croatia last September, whereas a young Germany team have developed the “Teamgeist”, or spirit, that comes from having six members of the squad that won the European Under-21 Championship in highly impressive style in Sweden last summer.

England were the team they beat in the final — Özil running the show during a magnificent 4-0 victory — but only two players, Joe Hart and James Milner, have made the step up to Capello’s squad.

There are plenty of reasons to be fearful for the long-term future of England, with Capello reflecting the reluctance of many Barclays Premier League managers to make any commitment to blooding young talent.

Capello’s 23-man squad is the oldest in this World Cup, with an average age of 28 years and six months and with only six players under the age of 27. By contrast, Joachim Löw, the Germany coach, has named a squad with an average age of 25 years and three months, with 18 of their 23 players under the age of 27 — among them the Bayern Munich trio of Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski, who have a combined total of 221 caps.