The Times - 15 November 2023

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 51 Register Civil servant who investigated the MPs’ expenses scandal Sir Thomas Legg Page 52 “Art makes me do what it wants me to do,” Picasso once said. Over a long career spanning more than 75 years it was a dictum Joe Tilson often quoted. Whether making paintings, sculptures or installations, Tilson’s abstract art exploded in a joyful riot of colour, his vibrant works co-opting the geometric abstractions of mazes and spirals and exuding a confidence that enveloped the viewer in their high spirits. As a contemporary and friend of David Hockney, Richard Hamilton and Peter Blake in the 1960s, he helped to define pop art as a multicoloured statement of the sense of freedom and possibility after the buttoned-up, dour greyness of Britain’s postwar period. Yet pop art took up perhaps only half a dozen years in his career before he moved on. By 1972 he had left behind the giddy excitement of swinging London and moved to an old rectory near Chippenham in rural Wiltshire, where he began to use a wider variety of natural materials, including stone, straw and rope. His pop imagery disappeared at a stroke, never to return, replaced by references to the cycles of the seasons and the four elements, his emphasis on communion with nature and the timeless themes of classical mythology. The move reflected a rejection of consumer society and his embracing of a back-to-nature hippy ethos of self-sufficiency, most famously portrayed in popular culture at the time in the television sitcom The Good Life. The themes he espoused in his art during the 1970s were to prove prescient of the ecological concerns, which did not become mainstream until several decades later. Yet at the time it seemed to some that he had taken a step back from the cutting edge. “Dropping London life was obviously the worst career move I could have made. Clearly, the thing to do was to stick with pop art and become famous and rich,” he said. “Instead of which we decided to go to the country, and become unknown and poor.” He was being more than a little disingenuous in his claims of poverty and obscurity, for he was rare in maintaining a consistent profile decade after decade. His 95th birthday this year was marked by retrospectives at not one but two of Britain’s top-rank galleries, and his paintings and prints can be found in the collections of the Tate and the V&A in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and countless other museums across Europe and North America. Even Boris Johnson as prime minister had a set of Tilson’s Nine Muses prints on the wall of his Downing Street flat, although the artist did not appreciate the endorsement. “What a joke. He’s a complete phoney,” Tilson complained, adding that Brexit had “plunged the art world into deep shit”. At his fluid best, his work seemed to come from an instinctual and emotional place rather than being over-intellectualised. Expanding on Picasso’s dictum, he suggested that great art was “not a choice that you yourself make … it just springs out of thought and feeling. Your hand moves and these things appear. And then you think, ‘Christ, did I do that?’ ” At the same time as his move to Wiltshire, he acquired a second home in the Tuscan hills near Cortona, where he lived for several months a year. He had spent two years studying at the American Academy in Rome in the 1950s and it was the start of an all-consuming love affair with Italy that encompassed its culture, artistic heritage, architecture, landscape, language and food. He also owned a home in Venice. “In Italy they have huge respect for artists, whereas in England, it’s ‘oh, dodgy chancer f***ing artists!’ ” he noted with his tongue only half in his cheek. Honoured with exhibitions by Italian museums and galleries, he was elected a member of the National Academy of San Luca in Rome. Having represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1964, he was still exhibiting at the city’s annual event in his nineties when he was commissioned in 2019 to make an installation for the Swatch Pavilion. Despite his protestations about British philistinism, he was hardly a prophet without honour in his homeland, where he was elected as a senior Royal Academician, whose work was celebrated with a 2002 retrospective at the RA. One of his best-known works was a brightly coloured wooden relief he made in 1961 titled For Jake and Anna, Christmas and which looked like a Boris Johnson had a set of Tilson’s Nine Muses in his Downing Street flat Obituaries Joe Tilson Printmaker, sculptor and stalwart of the British pop art movement whose vibrant works are found in museums around the world pile of playroom building blocks, pre-dating Carl Andre’s infamous brick installations. Asked how he thought his art would be remembered by posterity, Tilson professed no interest. “There’s nothing you can do about the meaning of your work,” he said. “So much depends on chance. Life’s life. I just take it the way it comes.” Joseph Charles Tilson was born in London in 1928, the son of workingclass parents, Ethel (née Saunders) and Frederick Tilson. He decided he wanted to be a painter at the age of eight when he won a prize in a London county council competition to design a road safety banner. When he told his parents of his youthful ambition his father replied: “Rubbish. You’ll get a proper job!” At the onset of the Second World War the family decided to emigrate to Canada. Passages were booked and tickets paid for but when the ship before the one the Tilsons were due to take was torpedoed, they decided to stay, and remained in London throughout the Blitz. When his father insisted that he learn a trade, at 13 he was sent to the Brixton School of Building, where he spent two years learning plastering, painting and decorating and masonry before he went to work in a factory making tables. It was an apprenticeship that was to have a profound and practical impact on his later art. Called up for National Service in 1946, he spent three years in the RAF. He dismissed it as “wasted time” but at least came out of it with “a demob suit, a hat and a further education and training grant”, which he used to enrol at St Martin’s School of Art. On graduating in 1952 he spent another three years as a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Art, where he came to know two painters who, like Tilson, were to become important figures in the pop art movement: Richard Smith and Blake, who was to become best known for creating the cover for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. After two years in Italy, he returned to Britain as a married man in need of a more reliable income than painting offered. Between 1958 and 1963 he taught at St Martin’s, where his students included Gerald Laing, who was to establish himself as another prominent figure in the pop art movement. Tilson was also a visiting lecturer at King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne, where he was a colleague of Hamilton, and his teaching later took him to the School of Visual Arts in New York. All the while he was developing his own signature style as an artist whose work was decoratively appealing, bold in its construction, lusciously colourful, Tilson in 1966. He decided to become a painter at the age of eight. Above, Cut Out and Send, a 1968 collage and screen print, and below, Ziggurat 7 (1966) playful and intelligent. Sociable and with an irresistible charm, he became a linchpin of the emerging pop art scene and artists and writers alike were drawn to the informal gatherings held by Tilson and his wife at their home. He is survived by his wife, Jos, the daughter of the abstract artist Alistair Morton. The pair met when she was studying sculpture in Milan. They married in Venice in 1956 and before returning to London lived for a while in a fishing village in Catalonia, where they were visited by Blake. Tilson is further survived by their son Jake, an artist and graphic designer, and daughters Anna and Sophy, who was married to the singer Ian Dury until his death in 2000. One of his most iconic works, A-Z Box of Friends and Family (1963), came out of his role as pop art’s unofficial master of ceremonies, bringing together a disparate group of artists into something resembling a unified movement. Each panel of the work was contributed by other artists, including Frank Auerbach and Eduardo Paolozzi as well as Hamilton, Hockney and Blake. During his pop art phase he drew on the semiotics of the age of mass media. His 1969 series titled Transparency: The Five Senses, for example, appropriated the slick, airbrushed photographic imagery of corporate advertising as seen in glossy magazines, while his leftwing political beliefs resulted in a group of vast, collage-based screen-printed paintings featuring such revolutionaries as Che Guevara, Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh. If the choice of subjects was obvious or predictable it was precisely because the images were already in the public domain and imprinted on the retinas of his target audience that he wanted to use them. As his artistic preoccupations switched in later years to “the eternal rather than the ephemeral”, he looked back on some of his earlier work with a certain regret. “I bear full responsibility for the rot: pop art and its involvement in consumerism — I wish I hadn’t done it,” he said. Art, he came to believe, was nothing less than a religion and should not be adulterated by more earthbound concerns. “Like becoming a monk, you give your life to it and it possesses you day and night, all the time.” Joe Tilson, artist, was born on August 24, 1928. He died on November 9, 2023, aged 95

52 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Register Professor Nick Crafts Economic historian known for his radical reinterpretation of the Industrial Revolution and his impressive approach to betting Many old-time City traders used to discreetly tuck the Racing Post inside their copy of the Financial Times. Nick Crafts, who wore lightly his epithet as the most distinguished British economic historian of his generation, proudly read both — he was as likely to be found studying equine form over a pint of real ale as he was debating the minutiae of the global economy. Indeed, he developed a betting system so successful that at one time he was banned by every bookmaker in Oxford. His reputation was based on his 1985 book, British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution, which attacked the orthodoxy that industrialisation dramatically lifted the nation’s growth rate. “I was accused of taking ‘industrial’ and ‘revolution’ out of the industrial revolution,” Crafts said. “By the standards of earlier times, the growth rate then was a remarkable advance, but by recent standards it was more stumbling.” He argued that the British economy was already well advanced by the early 18th century, before industrialisation began, thanks partly to an early transition into what he called capitalist farming driving many smallholders to the cities to find work. He paid tribute to the role of railways and canals, but noted that steam did not become costeffective until the 1840s. When Crafts was attached to the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1970s he encountered the academic tide then sweeping the United States in cliometrics, the application of economics and mathematics to history. He became one of the discipline’s first European advocates, establishing an annual Quantitative Economic History conference in Britain. Crafts enjoyed lecturing to audiences old and young, calling them punters and peppering his theses in his nasal accent with self-deprecating jokes that lightened his often statistics-heavy arguments. After a lecture on the gold standard, he said: “The punters didn’t like that one. They never do. But you can’t say you have studied economic history if you don’t know how the gold standard worked.” His politics were centrist, even though he regarded 1945-79 as a disastrous period and praised the 1980s economic recovery, claiming that he had at different times voted for the three main political parties. He often bet on the outcome of individual constituency election contests. Crafts took a market-based approach to the racetrack that appealed to his mathematical bent. He avoided steeplechasing in favour of flat races, and backed horses where the odds had dropped most in the week before the race, as an indicator that the cognoscenti were placing their money. He reckoned he could make 7 or 8 per cent a year on that basis, but he rarely if ever visited a course. Nicholas Francis Robert Crafts was born in Nottingham in 1949, the son of Alfred and Flora Crafts, both teachers. Nick had a sister, Rosemary, a civil servant, who died five years ago. Crafts attended Brunts Grammar School, Mansfield, which put him forward for entry to Cambridge as the university was encouraging applications from state schools. He read economics at Trinity College, and came top in the 1970 Economics Tripos. While a student, he met Barbara Daynes in Mansfield when rain stopped play in a cricket match that he was taking part in. They married in 1969 and had three children. Rachel is managing partner of a pay and rewards consultancy, Helen is a private chef, and Adam a van driver. They all survive him. As soon as he graduated from Cambridge he became a lecturer in economic history at the University of Exeter. In 1974 he was invited to be a visiting assistant professor of economics at Berkeley. On returning to Britain in 1977 he spent nine years as a fellow and praelector in economics at University College, Oxford. After a spell at the University of Leeds, he was appointed professor of economic history at the University of Warwick, where he stayed from 1988 to 1995. He then moved to a similar position at the London School of Economics but eventually returned to Warwick in 2005. In addition to writing many papers he edited his 2009 Ellen MacArthur lectures in Cambridge into a book, Forging Ahead, Falling Behind and Fighting Back: British Economic Growth from the Industrial Revolution to the Financial Crisis. In 2014 he was appointed CBE for services to economics, and last year, despite failing health, he became president of the Royal Economic Society. His dedication to his subject was such that even after retiring in 2019, he took a part-time professorship at the University of Sussex so that he could continue teaching and researching. Professor Nick Crafts CBE, economic historian, was born on March 9, 1949. He died of sepsis after a lengthy illness on October 6, 2023, aged 74 Crafts, bête noire of Oxford bookies Email: [email protected] Legg at home in 2010. He reviewed the claims of 752 past and present MPs For 36 years Sir Thomas Legg laboured in relative anonymity in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, a courteous, conscientious old-school civil servant and stickler for probity who rose to become permanent secretary. His attitude to public service was summed up in an obituary of a colleague, Hume Boggis-Rolfe, that he wrote for The Guardian and could well have applied to himself: “His complete and unaffected devotion to duty, and unswerving personal integrity, made him an inspiring leader by example. Gladstonian in his economies great and small, he kept a desk-drawer full of old pieces of paper and string for reuse, so that public funds should not be wasted.” Yet a decade after Legg’s departure from Whitehall the former mandarin achieved unexpected notoriety. In 2009 the MPs’ expenses scandal erupted. Legg was asked to review expenses paid to MPs for their second homes between 2004 and 2009. In February 2010 he published a 241-page report which called parliament’s expenses system “deeply flawed” and ordered 392 MPs to repay a total of £1.3 million. At one end of the scale he ordered Barbara Follett, a Labour minister, to repay £42,458. At the other he asked Mike Gapes, a backbencher, for 40p. Many MPs were outraged, and accused Legg of changing the rules retrospectively. Sir Paul Kennedy, a judge charged with hearing their appeals, reduced the demands made of 44 of the MPs by £185,000, saying it was “damaging, unfair and wrong” that payments agreed by the Parliamentary Fees Office should later be regarded as “tainted”. Critics also noted that Legg’s investigation cost £1.1 million, which was only marginally less than the sum he wanted to recoup. Even Legg admitted he was “slightly mortified” by that. Leaders of all the three main political parties ordered their MPs to pay up as requested, and although Legg gave no press conferences and made no public statements he did send every MP a letter of explanation. Because the rules were opaque he had based his rulings on “fundamental principles of propriety”, he said. He had rejected claims for expenses that were first wife, Patricia Dowie, with whom he had two daughters, Lucy, who became a musician, and Isobel, a psychotherapist. The marriage collapsed in the early 1980s when she had an affair with an impoverished, guitar-playing student. In 1983 he married again, this time to Mary-Lou Jennings, the daughter of another documentary film-maker who had been a Labour councillor in the 1970s and secretary to various Labour MPs including Tony Benn. In 1962 Legg joined the Lord Chancellor’s Department, which was responsible for the judicial system in England and Wales until it was merged with the Department for Constitutional Affairs (now the Ministry of Justice) in 2003. He rose rapidly through the ranks. A passionate European, he helped to draft the legislation required for Britain to join the European Economic Community, forerunner of the European Union, in 1973. By 1989 he was permanent secretary, overseeing 25,000 staff, 500 courts, the Public Record Office and the Land Registry. He was knighted four years later. “I would assess myself as having a quick and active mind but not a very profound one,” he wrote. “Having encountered over the years some of the few people who really do have firstclass minds, I would rate myself towards the front ranks of the second class.” Within six weeks of his retirement in 1998 Sir Robin Butler, then cabinet secretary, asked him to investigate whether Tony Blair’s government knew that Sandline, a private military company based in Britain, had breached a UN arms embargo by selling arms to Sierra Leone’s newly deposed president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. He unearthed a litany of mistakes and misjudgments by Foreign Office officials, but cleared its ministers of actively conniving to breach the embargo. The Conservative opposition called his report a whitewash. The government evidently did not see it as that, slipping it out on the day of a cabinet reshuffle so it received less media attention. Legg latterly served as chairman of the London Library, and as deputy chairman of the Imperial College Healthcare Trust. He also enjoyed lively discussions over lunch at the Garrick Club, and remained involved in public affairs. In 2000 he led a parliamentary inquiry into the excessive costs of building Portcullis House, the parliamentary office building next to the Palace of Westminster. He concluded that “serious mistakes” were made in the awarding of contracts. He served on the Audit Commission, and as an independent member of the House of Commons audit committee, and by the time that the expenses scandal broke in 2009 he had been warning for several years that the system was ripe for abuse. After a lifetime of near-anonymity in Whitehall Legg suddenly found himself in the spotlight as he reviewed expenses claims of 752 past and present MPs. Few expected him so robustly to reject their defence that they had acted within the existing rules, and to judge them by his own high standards. In the midst of the inquiry he married his third wife, Maggie Wakelin-Saint, whom he had met through his health trust work. She died in 2013. In April this year, although bedridden, he married his fourth wife, Elizabeth Thompson, a lawyer whom he had met during his civil service days, in a humanist ceremony in his Hampstead flat. Sir Thomas Legg, civil servant, was born on August 13, 1935. He died of kidney failure on October 8, 2023, aged 88 extravagant or luxurious, that did not represent value for money, that were not necessary for the performance of parliamentary duties or that were not “above reproach”. He imposed a limit of £2,000 a year for cleaners, and £1,000 a year for gardeners. Legg, an unassuming man who disliked publicity, paid a price for being the scourge of so many politicians or, as The Guardian put it, “the most unpopular man in Westminster”. As the thrust of his investigation became clear, a tabloid newspaper revealed how, aged 73, this apparent “pillar of decency” had abruptly left his wife after 25 years of marriage and moved in with another woman. With characteristic understatement, Legg wrote in his memoirs: “The atmosphere in which I had to do this job wasn’t all that agreeable.” Thomas Stuart Legg, commonly known as Tom, was born in London in 1935, the oldest of four siblings. His father, Stuart Legg, was a pioneering documentary film producer who joined the National Film Board of Canada shortly before the Second World War and made films rallying support in North America for the battle against fascism. (He had also, reportedly, once been the “fag” of Anthony Blunt, the future Soviet spy, at Marlborough School.) Legg’s mother, Margaret, was the left-leaning daughter and granddaughter of lawyers. She preferred New York City to Ottawa, where her husband was based, so her eldest son was educated at Horace Mann prep school in New York until the family returned to Britain in 1948. There he attended Frensham Heights, a progressive coeducational private school in Surrey. He did his National Service as an officer with the Royal Marines, serving in Malta and north Africa, then read history and law at St John’s College, Cambridge, spent two years in chambers and was called to the Bar in 1960. The following year he married his He became known as ‘the most unpopular man in Westminster’ Sir Thomas Legg Permanent secretary at the lord chancellor’s office who went on to head an inquiry that led to the reform of MPs’ expenses

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 53 Register Births CLAYDEN On 8th November 2023 to Anna (née Pasiecznik) and Hugh, a son, Angus Christopher, brother to Aneurin. Deaths BEAMISH Lavinia Catherina (née Colquitt) passed away on Sunday 5th November 2023 after a sudden illness, aged 65 years. A wonderful and loving wife to Victor, stepmother to Charlie and Leonora and also devoted to Emily and Arthur aged three. Service in Baldarroch Crematorium, Crathes, Aberdeenshire, on Monday 20th November at 2.30pm, to which all friends are respectfully invited. No flowers please. She was taken too young with a happy future and so much love still to give. A tragic loss. CONNOLLY Nicholas John died peacefully on 12th November 2023, aged 91. Beloved husband, father and grandfather. DUNN Ian McCulloch died peacefully in Arthur Rank Hospice on 5th November, aged 80. Devoted husband of Sandra, younger brother of Alastair and twin to Struan. Private burial followed by a thanksgiving service at All Saints’ Church, Haslingfield CB23 1JF, on Tuesday 21st November at 1.30pm. FERGUSSON Nick on 6th November 2023 suddenly at home. Much-loved brother of Belinda, Donald, Susanna and Ben and adored uncle of Celina, James, Harry, Maddie, Annie, Kate and Emma. Service at Perth Crematorium on Tuesday 28th November at 10.30am. All welcome. No flowers please. Inquiries to 01250 876400. FRIMSTON Agnes Mary died suddenly on 17th June 2023, aged 35. Inquest noon, 30th November 2023, Poplar Coroner’s Court. The family would welcome friends and relatives to attend. HOLME David, aged 81, died after a short illness on 1st November 2023. Beloved husband of the late Rosemary, loving father of Andrew and Julia, and devoted grandpa to Emily, Lottie, William and Charlie. Funeral service to take place at St Andrew’s Church, Cobham, on 24th November at 2pm. Family flowers only. Donations, if desired, to Cancer Research UK. Inquiries to James and Thomas Funeral Directors, Mill Road, Cobham KT11 3AL, 01932 862009. MAIN Mrs Jane of Broad Haven passed away on November 6th at home surrounded by love. Beloved mother of Gordy and Jen and adored Granny to Nina, Rosy, Nesta and Tegwen, and much-loved mother-in-law to Fred and Fran. She will be deeply missed. In lieu of flowers, if desired, donations may be made to Médecins sans Frontières, RNLI Little and Broad Haven branch or the Paul Sartori Foundation. Funeral on Saturday November 25th, 1.30pm at St Mary’s Church, Talbenny, and afterwards in Little Haven. All inquiries to Roy Folland & Son Funeral Directors. (01437) 763821. AND Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Matthew 16.17-18 (AV) Bible verses are provided by the Bible Society Births, Marriages and Deaths 020 7782 7553 newsukadvertising.co.uk Frank Borman Jack StewartClark writes: Your obituary about Frank Borman (November 10) reminds me of an incident, which shows what a creative and thoughtful man he was. In the autumn of 1969, both of us attended the AMP (Advanced Management Programme) at the Harvard Business School. One day I received a short letter worded as follows: “Dear Jack. If you have a son or sons please let me know — Frank Borman.” I obeyed. A week later my pigeonhole contained a large envelope addressed to my son. Inside was a photograph of the Earth taken from the moon with the following (approximate) words: “To Alexander, with very best wishes, your friend. Frank Borman.” zine, and was an enthusiastic debater and actor. Thorn also tolerated some of my rebellions, giving me special permission to stand as a Liberal Party candidate in the 1966 mock elections even though in theory I did not reach the required minimum age and later humouring my relentless campaign against compulsory attendance at school chapel services. I doubt that these aspects of my education would have been fostered as strongly without the remarkable leadership of John Thorn as headmaster. A few years after leaving Repton, when a student at Oxford, I was walking in the market when the two of us physically collided. After we had both checked for bruises he grinned and said: “Still causing trouble, Bradley?” John Thorn Jonathan Bradley writes: John Thorn (obituary, November 13) was headmaster at Repton School when I was a pupil there in the 1960s. He first taught me English when I was about 14 years old. Sitting cross-legged on a table at the front of the class, he would ask us to read aloud from Eliot’s The Waste Land or from recent poems of Larkin or Hughes and comment on them. When our young brains struggled with this rich literary fare he would explain clearly and brilliantly. Each of us had a nickname, in my case Averroes, the medieval Andalusian polymath. I had no idea at first who Averroes was, but it was an ingenious way for Thorn to make me go to the school library to find out, even if I did not become a polymath as a result. His lessons were absorbing and fascinating and I remember them to this day. During the rest of my school career I was conscious even then that Thorn was a reformer with a view of public school education that was at variance with that of some of the older teachers who seemed to be living still in the 1940s. He encouraged excellence and achievement in any aspect of our school lives, including music, drama and creative writing, as well as the relentless sport that had previously been so dominant. These changes gave me a lifeline. As a schoolboy whose only goal ever scored in soccer was an own goal, and whose cricketing prowess reached no further than the House 4th Eleven, I was saved from ignominious failure because John Thorn and my equally enlightened housemaster Dyfri Rees encouraged me to try other pursuits. I entered for the school poetry prize that I then won, in due course edited the school magaLives remembered @ evening attended a Dinner in Rochester Cathedral and was received by His Majesty’s LordLieutenant of Kent (the Lady Colgrain). St James’s Palace 14th November, 2023 The Princess Royal, Patron, the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK), this afternoon attended the Tenth Anniversary Transport and Logistics Safety Forum Conference at the National Memorial Arboretum, Croxall Road, Alrewas, and was received by His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Staffordshire (Mr Ian Dudson). Her Royal Highness later visited the new Institute of Shipbuilding course at City of Glasgow College Riverside Campus, 21 Thistle Street, Glasgow, and was received by His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of the City of Glasgow (Councillor Jacqueline McLaren, the Rt Hon the Lord Provost). The Princess Royal, Patron, the Royal Celtic Society, afterwards attended a Reception at Glasgow City Chambers, 82 George Street, Glasgow. Her Royal Highness this evening attended Interfaith Glasgow’s Scottish Interfaith Week Forum at Glasgow City Chambers. Court Circular LEGAL, PUBLIC, COMPANY & PARLIAMENTARY NOTICES To place notices for these sections please call 020 7481 4000 Notices are subject to confirmation and should be received by 11.30am three days prior to insertion The simple way to place your announcement in The Times. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. newsukadvertising.co.uk Join us for breakfast Listen to Aasmah Mir and Stig Abell on Times Radio, Monday to Thursday at 6am Buckingham Palace 14th November, 2023 Today is the Seventy Fifth Anniversary of the Birthday of The King. The King and Queen today officially launched the Coronation Food Project at South Oxfordshire Food and Education Alliance, Trident Business Park, Didcot, and were received by His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Oxfordshire (Mrs Marjorie Glasgow), Dame Martina Milburn and the Baroness Casey of Blackstock (Co-Chairmen of the Coronation Food Project) and Mr and Mrs Richard Kennell (Founders of South Oxfordshire Food and Education Alliance). Their Majesties toured the surplus food distribution centre which rescues surplus food and redistributes it to communities across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire and met members of staff and volunteers. The King and Queen viewed the packing stations and the food vans loaded for distribution, before visiting the allotment garden and the kitchen, and subsequently meeting supporters of the Coronation Food Project and those who use food larders and food banks. Their Majesties afterwards met representatives of the major United Kingdom supermarkets and food manufacturers who have agreed to join the Food Alliance. The King this afternoon held a Reception at Buckingham Palace to celebrate nurses and midwives working in the United Kingdom, at which The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were present. Kensington Palace 14th November, 2023 The Princess of Wales, Joint Patron, the Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales, this afternoon received Mr Jack Shonkoff (Director, Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University) at Windsor Castle. Her Royal Highness, Joint Patron, the Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales, this evening attended a Reception at the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London W8. St James’s Palace 14th November, 2023 The Duke of Edinburgh this morning arrived at Singapore Changi Airport and was received by the British High Commissioner to the Republic of Singapore (Her Excellency Ms Kara Owen). His Royal Highness, Vice Patron, Commonwealth Games Federation, carried out the following engagements. The Duke of Edinburgh this afternoon received Dame Louise Martin (President of the Commonwealth Games Federation) at Swissotel The Stamford, 2 Stamford Road, Singapore. His Royal Highness afterwards attended Meetings with delegates at Swissotel the Stamford. The Duke of Edinburgh this evening attended a Reception for the Commonwealth Games Federation at Swissotel the Stamford. The Duchess of Edinburgh, Patron, the Brendoncare Foundation, this afternoon opened Brendoncare St Giles View Care Home, 42 Quarry Road, Winchester, and was received by His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire (Mr Nigel Atkinson). Her Royal Highness, Patron, Rochester Cathedral Trust, this Birthdays REG GADD Happy 90th birthday from the whole family, looking forward to the next milestone and a telegram from Charlie. General announcement SEEKING COPYRIGHT HOLDERS, in relation to an academic project, the descendents of the following early-C20th British political figures: George J. S. Scovell, Frederick Guest, Charles McCurdy, Sir William Sutherland, Tom Barnshaw, Francis Willey, Colin Coote, J. W. Clarke, Mabel Pickering, Charles Jesson, Colonel G. Gunn, Frances Stevenson. Dr G. H. Bennett, Plymouth Univ. [email protected] Politics with no boring bits Listen to Matt Chorley on Times Radio, Monday to Friday at 10am Delve into the lives of the quirky and unorthodox A collection of Times obituaries Now available in paperback from bookshops as well as amazon.co.uk and thetimes.co.uk/bookshop School Notices QUEEN'S SCHOLARS The Queen’s School, Chester, is pleased to announce that, following the entrance examination, scholarships and the title of Queen’s Scholar have been awarded to (in alphabetical order): For 2023/2024: Daisy Anderton (The Queen's Lower School), Simrah Islam (Mountain Lane Primary School), Mia Latt (The Queen's Lower School), Josephine Tunnicliffe (The Queen's Lower School), Laura Van Vaerenbergh (Guilden Sutton C of E Primary School). Legal Notices

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 57 Weather The Times weather page is provided by Channel Islands NORTH SEA CHANNEL IRISH SEA ATLANTIC OCEAN Aberdeen Glasgow Edinburgh Carlisle Newcastle York Manchester Liverpool Hull Llandudno Shrewsbury Nottingham Sheffield Norwich Cambridge Oxford Bristol Swansea Cardiff Plymouth Exeter Southampton Brighton London Londonderry Belfast Galway Dublin Cork Birmingham CELTIC SEA Orkney Shetland 23 Saturday 12 8 14 15 Aberdeen Aberporth Anglesey Aviemore Barnstaple Bedford Belfast Birmingham Bournemouth Bridlington Bristol Camborne Cardiff Edinburgh Eskdalemuir Glasgow Hereford Herstmonceux Ipswich Isle of Man Isle of Wight Jersey Keswick Kinloss Leeds Lerwick Leuchars Lincoln Liverpool London Lyneham Manchester Margate Milford Haven Newcastle Nottingham Orkney Oxford Plymouth Portland Scilly, St Mary’s Shoreham Shrewsbury Snowdonia Southend South Uist Stornoway Tiree Whitehaven Wick Yeovilton Around Britain Key: b=bright, c=cloud, d=drizzle, pc=partly cloudy du=dull, f=fair, fg=fog, h=hail, m=mist, r=rain, sh=showers, sl=sleet, sn=snow, s=sun, t=thunder *=previous day **=data not available Temp C Rain mm Sun hr* midday yesterday 24 hrs to 5pm yesterday Noon today 8 R 11.8 0.0 12 PC 6.4 1.2 13 C 0.0 2.2 6 R 2.8 0.0 13 C 10.6 ** 11 S 0.2 ** 11 PC 2.8 0.5 11 C 0.8 ** ** ** 0.2 5.5 11 C 10.8 ** 9 C 15.8 1.8 12 C 2.0 3.7 12 R 9.4 2.0 7 R 13.4 0.1 7 D 5.4 0.0 8 D 8.4 0.1 11 PC 2.0 ** 11 C 8.4 3.5 11 PC 2.0 3.7 12 C 1.0 0.0 12 PC 9.6 ** 13 C 7.0 1.8 11 R 28.6 ** 8 PC 2.6 0.0 8 R 21.8 ** 6 R 2.0 1.2 8 R 5.6 0.0 11 PC 0.4 3.5 12 PC 4.0 ** 11 C 10.6 2.8 9 C 10.8 2.7 12 PC 5.4 2.2 12 C 8.2 4.5 12 R 1.8 ** 7 C 7.2 ** 10 PC 0.4 3.5 7 R 1.2 0.0 10 R 7.2 ** 13 C 6.8 ** 12 C 10.6 ** 13 PC 1.8 ** 10 R 8.4 1.0 10 S 15.8 3.2 11 C 5.2 ** 12 C 9.8 4.2 8 R 14.8 ** 9 C 0.8 0.0 9 R 13.0 0.0 10 R 18.0 0.0 8 C 3.2 ** 11 R 5.0 2.9 The world All readings local midday yesterday Alicante Amsterdam Athens Auckland Bahrain Bangkok Barbados Barcelona Beijing Beirut Belgrade Berlin Bermuda Bordeaux Brussels Bucharest Budapest Buenos Aires Cairo Calcutta Canberra Cape Town Chicago Copenhagen Corfu Delhi Dubai Dublin Faro Florence Frankfurt Geneva Gibraltar Helsinki Hong Kong Honolulu Istanbul Jerusalem Johannesburg Kuala Lumpur Kyiv Lanzarote Las Palmas Lima Lisbon Los Angeles Luxor Madeira Madrid Malaga Mallorca Malta Melbourne Mexico City Miami Milan Mombasa Montreal Moscow Mumbai Munich Nairobi Naples New Orleans New York Nice Nicosia Oslo Paris Perth Prague Reykjavik Riga Rio de Janeiro Riyadh Rome San Francisco Santiago São Paulo Seoul Seychelles Singapore St Petersburg Stockholm Sydney Tel Aviv Tenerife Tokyo Vancouver Venice Vienna Warsaw Washington Zurich 26 S 14 SH 22 PC 18 B 29 PC 32 PC 30 SH 22 S 10 S ** ** 20 S 13 B 22 B 17 R 11 SH 14 S 12 R 19 S 26 B 30 ** 21 SH 31 S 16 S 7 B 20 PC 24 ** 32 S 12 PC 24 S 18 B 13 C 14 R 23 S 0 SN 20 PC 29 PC 17 PC 26 PC 15 DU 31 SH ** ** 24 S 27 S 18 M 16 PC 21 PC 30 ** 23 PC 15 B 24 S 21 PC 24 PC 15 B 21 C 30 B 13 B 31 PC 1 B 4 R 35 ** 11 S 22 B 20 PC 18 R 7 B 19 S 26 ** -2 SN 12 R 29 PC 10 PC 7 B 4 DU 32 PC 29 S 21 PC 18 PC 21 S 36 S 9 S 31 PC 31 B 0 SN 0 SN 25 S 26 PC 28 S 16 PC 9 PC 10 B 15 PC 11 PC 12 S 10 R Five days ahead Unsettled with spells of rain and showers, heaviest in northwestern areas of Britain Today Wet in Scotland and the north of England, mostly dry with sunny spells elsewhere. Max 13C (55F), min -3C (27F) Tides Tidal predictions. Heights in metres Today Ht Ht Aberdeen Avonmouth Belfast Cardiff Devonport Dover Dublin Falmouth Greenock Harwich Holyhead Hull Leith Liverpool London Bridge Lowestoft Milford Haven Morecambe Newhaven Newquay Oban Penzance Portsmouth Shoreham Southampton Swansea Tees Weymouth 02:00 4.3 14:16 4.3 08:05 12.7 20:24 12.6 11:46 3.5 --:-- -- 07:51 12.0 20:10 11.9 06:40 5.4 18:59 5.3 11:42 6.6 --:-- -- --:-- -- 12:14 4.0 06:06 5.1 18:24 4.9 01:00 3.5 13:27 3.6 00:19 3.9 12:34 4.0 11:08 5.6 23:27 5.5 07:03 7.3 19:22 7.4 03:21 5.5 15:36 5.4 11:56 9.2 --:-- -- 02:31 6.8 14:50 7.0 10:15 2.5 22:38 2.5 06:59 6.9 19:17 6.8 --:-- -- 12:06 9.2 11:53 6.6 --:-- -- 05:49 6.9 18:07 6.8 06:24 3.9 18:36 3.9 05:23 5.5 17:39 5.4 00:00 4.6 12:16 4.7 11:58 6.2 --:-- -- 11:25 4.6 --:-- -- 07:10 9.2 19:26 9.1 04:18 5.4 16:37 5.4 07:31 2.2 19:45 2.0 Synoptic situation A series of occlusions associated with a low-pressure system in the North Sea will bring spells of rain to northern England, central and southern Scotland. A ridge of high pressure will build across southwestern areas of Britain bringing largely dry weather with spells of sunshine to Wales, Ireland and southern England. Highs and lows 24hrs to 5pm yesterday Warmest: Swanage, Dorset, 13.8C Coldest: Cairngorm, -1.2C Wettest: Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire, 38.2mm Sunniest: Bournemouth, 5.5hrs* Sun and moon For Greenwich Sun rises: Sun sets: Moon rises: Moon sets: First Quarter: November 20 Hours of darkness Aberdeen Belfast Birmingham Cardiff Exeter Glasgow Liverpool London Manchester Newcastle Norwich Penzance Sheffi eld 16:25-07:22 16:52-07:25 16:45-07:00 16:54-07:02 16:58-07:00 16:40-07:24 16:45-07:08 16:41-06:49 16:42-07:06 16:33-07:09 16:31-06:48 17:08-07:06 16:40-07:02 General situation: Rain in northern England and central and southern Scotland. Sunny spells with the chance of a light shower elsewhere. Republic of Ireland, N Ireland: Sunny spells with the chance of a few light showers, especially during the morning. Gentle to fresh west or southwesterly winds. Maximum 12C (54F), minimum 1C (34F). London, SE Eng, Cen S Eng, E Anglia, E Mids, E Eng, Channel Is: Sunny spells with the chance of an isolated light shower. Moderate to fresh westerly winds. Maximum 13C (55F), minimum 0C (32F). Wales, NW Eng, W Mids, SW Eng, IoM: Sunny periods with the chance of a few light showers. Moderate to fresh west or northwesterly winds, becoming gentle in the afternoon. Maximum 13C (55F), minimum 1C (34F). NW Scotland, NE Scotland, N Isles, Moray Firth, Aberdeen: A cloudy and damp start to the morning. Through the day the cloud and rain will push south allowing some sunny spells to develop. Gentle east or northeasterly winds. Maximum 9C (48F), minimum -3C (27F). Lake District, NE Eng, SW Scotland, Borders, Argyll, Glasgow, Cen Highland, Edinburgh and Dundee: A cloudy day with outbreaks of rain, heaviest and most persistent across the Lake District, southwest Scotland and Argyll. Light to moderate west or northwesterly winds. Maximum 11C (52F), minimum 0C (32F). Tomorrow 9 7 10 13 Friday 9 7 9 12 Sunday 13 10 11 13 Monday 11 11 10 12 27 shower. Moderate to fresh westerly 21 29 Hull 32 Liverpoo 33 Edinburgh Newcastle 15 35 13 13 Orkney Shetland 9 8 11 11 10 10 8 8 7 7 8 7 11 12 12 13 9 10 11 10 10 13 eter 13 12 Norwich SEA Llandudno rk Hull F 95 86 77 68 59 50 41 32 23 14 5 C 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 -5 -10 -15 Wind speed (mph) Temperature 28 (degrees C) 34 Sea state Calm Slight Moderate Rough Flood alerts and warnings At 17:00 on Tuesday there were 98 fl ood alerts and 16 warnings in England, ten fl ood alerts and one warning in Wales and 13 fl ood alerts and no warnings in Scotland. For further information and updates in England visit fl ood-warninginformation.service.gov.uk, for Wales naturalresources.wales/fl ooding and for Scotland SEPA.org.uk Cold front Warm front Occluded front Trough LOW HIGH LOW LOW HIGH HIGH LOW LOW LOW HIGH 1024 1024 1016 1016 1016 1008 1008 1008 1008 1000 1000 992 A cloudy day with spells of heavy rain and showers, falling as sleet over the high ground of Scotland. Max 15C, min 3C Spells of rain spreading eastwards across the British Isles. It will turn drier with spells of sunshine in Ireland later. Max 14C, min -2C Partly cloudy with the chance of a few spots of rain in Scotland and northeast England. Dry elsewhere with sunny spells. Rain will push into the far southwest during the later afternoon. Max 12C, min -3C Spells of heavy rain in northern England, western Scotland and Ireland. Sunny intervals with a scattering of showers elsewhere. Max 13C, min 3C An unsettled day with showers or longer spells of rain, heaviest in northern areas. Max 12C, min 0C 07.17 16.11 10.09 16.59 11 LOW O n June 30, 1908, a group of golfers staying at a club house at Brancaster in Norfolk were astonished to see the night sky grow exceptionally bright. “The sky had the appearance of a dying sunset of exquisite beauty,” reported Mr Holcombe Ingleby in a letter to The Times. “I myself was aroused from sleep at 1.15, and so strong was the light at this hour that I could read a book by it in my chamber quite comfortably.” By 1.45am the whole sky was so bright that the birds began a dawn chorus. This was just one of many “bright nights” that have been recorded throughout history, first reported as a “nocturnal sun” by Pliny the Elder, army commander in ancient Rome 2,000 years ago. In modern times, bright night skies are drowned out by artificial lights. But last month Aaron Watson in Colorado reported a powerful glow at a remote location with no moon or any other light that could interfere with the night sky. “The landscape was softly illuminated. Nearby juniper trees made dark silhouettes against the glowing night sky. I could easily see my telescope and equipment,” Watson said on spaceweather.com. As the landscape grew in brightness, Watson recorded an intense green glow, “perhaps the brightest I have ever seen”. Bright nights are different from auroras and were a mystery for a long time. But in 2017 Gordon Shepherd at York University in Toronto gave a convincing explanation. He found these lights were an intense display of airglow, a diffuse and often green glow in the night sky created by oxygen in the upper atmosphere. During the day ultraviolet radiation from the sun splits molecules of oxygen into individual atoms but at night the atoms recombine and release energy, giving off a green glow. Occasionally large waves in the upper atmosphere circling the globe can be impacted by the weather, and when the peaks of some of these waves merge at a specific location they can create an intense airglow up to ten times brighter than a typical airglow. Speak directly to one of our forecasters on 09065 777675 8am to 5pm daily (calls are charged at £1.55 plus network extras) weatherquest.co.uk Weather Eye Paul Simons

a shoestring effort. “Heavens man, don’t throw that away,” he once said. “That’s my best piece of string. Had it for years.” Born in Birkenhead, Fernihough’s mother died soon afterwards and his father abandoned him, which is why he ended up with his adoptive family on the south coast. He studied chemistry and engineering at Cambridge. He scrimped for money, tuning engines for anyone and renting out his driveway by the Brooklands circuit to spectators. It seemed impossible that this “skint, obsessive boffin” could match the might of Nazi Germany at a time when Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, was addressing the sport’s governing body in Berlin. record, but by the age of Hitler, he was in the ascendancy. And Hitler made clear that they could not lose to the British again. All the German bikes were obliged to carry swastikas. In 1936 Henne, riding his supercharged BMW “egg”, with its dangerous closed canopy, took the record to 169.05mph. The British privateers had run out of money. The interwar speed duel between Britain and Germany had been won. Enter Fernihough. A thrill-seeker of the Roaring Twenties, he had competed in the TT road races on the Isle of Man but vowed never to return after a friend was killed in practice. He won grands prix but turned to the speed record, and it was, quite literally, T here is a grave not far from my house in Bournemouth. It belongs to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, and is positioned opposite the eponymous Wetherspoon’s pub that pays tribute via cheap beer and sticky carpets. The tomb gets pilgrims, but this week I found out that another figure who stitched together a remarkable story involving science and monsters is buried in a nearby cemetery. Eric Crudgington Fernihough gets a bland epitaph but this unknown hero was the cashstrapped eccentric who defied the Nazis and derailed Adolf Hitler’s propaganda machine with his derring-do and failing eyesight. Fernihough’s story has now been brought back to life by the motorsport writer Mat Oxley. His book, Racing Hitler, is a new boys’ own classic. It tells how an obsessive boffin with a cravat and “ridiculously baggy knickerbocker trousers” toiled away in a grubby Surrey workshop to build the motorcycle that would defeat the fascists’ speed project, and make him the fastest man in the world. To understand the significance, you need to know the age. After the First World War, Germany was suffering from hyperinflation. Bank notes were worthless enough for people to use them as toilet paper. The Treaty of Versailles meant Bayerische Motoren Werke, forever abbreviated to BMW, could no longer supply engines to Fokker squadrons once led by the infamous Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. (One of the fascinations of Oxley’s book is nuggets such as one of Von Richthofen’s victims being the 1911 TT motorcycling champion Oliver Godfrey.) Motorcycles were one way for BMW to diversify. The battle for the land speed record was ramped up when Hitler became chancellor in 1933. He knew that he needed his country to be mechanised and mobile by the time another war came. Hence the National Socialist Motor Corps was set up to give training in fixing cars and motorcycles, with a governmentbacked motorsport division. “Each victory and record proved Germany was modern, technically advanced and super brave,” Oxley writes. It was “perfect propaganda for creating the Fascist New Man”. The star of this assault on the twowheel land speed record was Ernst Henne, an orphan who had spent nine days in a post-crash coma in 1926. His obituary had been printed in a paper by the time he discharged himself from hospital, only for his horse to tip him on to the ice and knock him unconscious again. He duelled with the British rider Joe Wright for the Sport Meet the British boffin who bested Hitler’s sportswashing speed record Oxley says it is unclear whether BMW was financially assisted by the Nazi government, but Hitler’s motorisation programme brought them huge profits. Hitler liked motorsport for its noise, violence and propaganda benefits, and was in thrall to Ferdinand Porsche, the esteemed engineer and later an SS officer. But his enthusiasm had limits. One successful German-Jewish bike racer, Leo Steinweg, fled to the Netherlands when Hitler’s twisted ideology spread its tentacles and he spent years hiding in a cubbyhole. Finally, he was found and would die in Auschwitz. The British, though, refused to give up their challenge and Graham Walker, father of the TV commentator Murray, managed a British team to success in the coveted International Six Days Trial in Germany. Fernihough was also ploughing on with his homemade job. He learnt welding and panel-beating and lived off charity. There were setbacks, frustration and a run of flawed efforts, but by 1937 he was ready and headed for Gyon road in Hungary, where Henne had twice broken the record. That April, he lined up on his redesigned Brough-supercharged 998cc JAP. There was a problem when the wind damaged the prescription lenses in his goggles. Officials from the Royal Hungarian Motor Club watched. “Not a miss, not a stutter,” wrote a scribe for Motor Cycling. The mean time was 169.8mph. The margin was tiny, but enough. He had done it. He had one wobble at 170mph — “I recovered to laugh at the spectators who were still trying to scramble over the roadside banks out of the way of the crash they imagined was coming.” He held the record for only a matter of months before it went to Piero Taruffi, an Italian whose success was lauded by Benito Mussolini as further proof of fascist superiority. Henne then wrested the record back and Hitler trumpeted that achievement at the 1938 Berlin Motor Show. Fernihough recovered from a broken arm suffered in a race in Sweden, and was soon ready for another tilt. Hitler’s troops were pouring into Austria but Fernihough and a faithful friend drove their Ford station wagon through Germany, navigating Nazi rallies and fleeing Jewish refugees. One of those was Joe Ehrlich, who would build a successful motorcycle business in Britain and see his bikes win numerous grands prix. High winds curtailed that effort, but Fernihough had one last try. Two weeks later he was back on the Gyon road, back on his Brough, having risen at 1am. He got to the track at 3.45am and made the first run at 6.45am. “If it didn’t scare you stiff, it wouldn’t be right,” he said. Again, Fernihough reached unprecedented speed. One bystander estimated he got up to 180mph, but on the second run the bike wobbled horribly. There was no saving the spill and the stricken pilot was flung through the air, landing on a wall by a farm track. He fractured his skull and was declared dead at a nearby hospital. When the hearse, packed with ice for the trip home, reached Munich it was escorted through the city by BMW representatives, but there was no such fuss in Britain. Malcolm Campbell’s land speed feats on four wheels would be lionised and have him knighted, but Fernihough barely made the papers. Henne sent a wreath to “my chivalrous friend” and the head injuries the German had suffered in pursuit of the speed record meant he was declared unfit for military service in the war. He died in the Canary Islands in 2005, aged 101. Between a hospital and a bowls club, the grave in Boscombe makes no mention of what Fernihough did. “Killed in the service of Great Britain” was one magazine’s grander epitaph. A forgotten adventurer, but a story worth retelling. 6 Racing Hitler is available only from matoxley.bigcartel.com Motorsport was used by dictator to assert Nazi superiority – but Eric Fernihough had other ideas, says Rick Broadbent Fernihough was intensely superstitious. The black cat painted on his bikes led to his team being dubbed the Scalded Cats German racers including Henne, who beat Fernihough’s record, with Hitler in 1939 58 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 2GM 59 Racing Sport Results Football FA Cup first round replays Accrington (1) 1 Doncaster (0) 2 Pritchard 7 1,136 Westbrooke 67 Ironside 101 (aet; 1-1 after 90min) Burton (0) 0 Port Vale (1) 2 2,533 Massey 31, Cass 82 Derby (1) 1 Crewe (2) 3 Barkhuizen 3 6,439 Rowe 7, 21 Demetriou 65 Forest Green (4) 5 Scarborough (1) 2 Jenks 5, McAllister 18 (pen), Robson 30 Bunker 35, Omotoye 76 Wiles 41 Coulson 89 1,146 Grimsby (3) 7 Slough (2) 2 Pyke 7, 45, Rose 16 Gnahoua 65, 85 Hunt 81, Andrews 86 Dyce 20 Ogbonna 34 3,079 Horsham (0) 0 Barnsley (3) 3 Cadden 3 McAtee 10, 27 Salford (1) 4 Peterborough (3) 4 Tilt 4, 54 Knight 61 (og) Mallan 104 1,030 Randall 16 Mason-Clark 18 Collins 45+1 Clarke-Harris 120+3 (aet; 3-3 after 90min; Peterborough United win 5-4 on pens) York City (1) 2 Chester (0) 1 John-Lewis 5, 66 3,850 Glendon 71 Revised second round draw: Friday, Dec 1 (7.45): Notts County v Shrewsbury; York v Wigan (BBC Two). Saturday, Dec 2 (3.0 unless stated): Alfreton v Walsall (12.30; BBC One); Blackpool v Forest Green; Bolton v Harrogate; Cambridge United v Fleetwood; Crewe v Bristol Rovers; Gillingham v Charlton or Cray Valley Paper Mills; Maidstone v Barrow; Newport County v Barnet; Oxford United v Grimsby; Peterborough United v Doncaster; Stevenage v Port Vale; Sutton United v Barnsley; Wycombe v Morecambe. Sunday, Dec 3 Aldershot v Stockport County (2.0); Chesterfield v Leyton Orient (2.0); Eastleigh v Reading (1.30; ITV1); Wrexham v Yeovil (3.45; ITVX). Monday, Dec 4 AFC Wimbledon v Ramsgate (7.45; ITV4). Bristol Street Motors EFL Trophy: North: Group A Blackpool 2 Morecambe 1. Group C Carlisle 2 Harrogate 0. Group D Tranmere 0 Wigan 0 (Wigan win 6-5 on pens). Group E Stockport County 0 Bolton 2. South: Group A Shrewsbury 3 Walsall 2. Group C Stevenage 5 Crystal Palace U-21 2. Group G Reading 5 Arsenal U-21 2. Group H Newport County 0 Bristol Rovers 1. Vanarama National League: North Bishop’s Stortford 1 Tamworth 2; Brackley 2 Gloucester 0; Chorley 8 Darlington 0; Curzon Ashton 3 Blyth Spartans 0; Hereford 4 Banbury 1; Kings Lynn 3 Scunthorpe 1; Fixtures Football European Championship qualifying: Group I Israel v Switzerland (7.45, Puskas Arena, Budapest). FA Cup: First round-replay Cray Valley Paper Mills v Charlton Athletic (7.45). Women’s Champions League: Group D Real Madrid v Chelsea (8.0). Darts Aldersley Leisure Village, Wolverhampton Grand Slam of Darts. Snooker Toughsheet Community Stadium, Bolton Champion of Champions. Yesterday’s racing results Huntingdon Going: good 12.20 (2m 4f 145yd hdle) 1, Apologise (T Wynne, 9-1); 2, State Legend (12-1); 3, Celtic Fortune (13-2). 9 ran. hd, l. O Greenall & J Guerriero. 12.55 (1m 7f 171yd hdle) 1, Goose Man (G Sheehan, 5-1); 2, G’day Aussie (14-1); 3, The Geordie Ginge (8-13 fav). 6 ran. 11l, 2 l. Jamie Snowden. 1.30 (2m 7f 129yd ch) 1, Crosspark (Charlie Hammond, 15-2); 2, Special Acceptance (4-1); 3, Fairway Freddy (9-2). 7 ran. NR: Ballinslea Bridge. 1 l, 6l. N Kent. 2.05 (1m 7f 171yd hdle) 1, Dysart Enos (P J Brennan, 1-7 fav); 2, Parkin Fine (28-1); 3, Mary (14-1). 10 ran. NR: Cams Girl, Casa No Mento, Pip Away, Tintagel Queen. 7 l, 4 l. F O’Brien. 2.30 (2m 7f 110yd ch) 1, Dysania (S Bowen, 11-2); 2, Williamdeconqueror (15-2); 3, Brandisova (11-8 fav). 5 ran. NR: Captain Claude. Sh hd, 2 l. P Bowen. 3.15 (1m 7f 171yd hdle) 1, Moveit Like Minnie (Sam Twiston-Davies, 11-4 fav); 2, Liverpool Knight (6-1); 3, Imperial Bede (5-1). 7 ran. NR: Salsada. 4l, 2 l. N A Twiston-Davies. 3.48 (1m 5f 148yd Flat) 1, Dameofthecotswolds (Sam Twiston-Davies, 11-2); 2, Love Tree (6-4 fav); 3, Simply Belle (9-4). 9 ran. 2 l, 4 l. N A Twiston-Davies. Placepot: £243.50. Quadpot: £8.00. Lingfield Park Going: standard 12.10 (2m Flat) 1, Ask Her Out (Tabitha Worsley, 150-1); 2, The Glen Rovers (4-1); 3, By The Grace (9-2). 14 ran. Nk, l. R Rowe. 12.45 (2m hdle) 1, Celtic Art (Rex Dingle, 18-1); 2, Zambezi Fix (7-1); 3, Klitschko (2-1 fav). 6 ran. NR: Hidden Beauty. l, 6l. J Scott. 1.20 (2m 4f ch) 1, Oxygen (C Deutsch, 6-5 fav); 2, Mister Who (5-1); 3, It’s Easy (100-1). 9 ran. NR: Egbert, Grey D’alco. 2l, 9 l. Miss V Williams. 1.55 (2m 3f 110yd hdle) 1, Theyseekhimthere (S Bowen, 125-1); 2, New Order (13-2); 3, Land Genie (8-1). 10 ran. Nk, 8 l. W Greatrex. 2.30 (2m 7f 110yd ch) 1, Dysania (S Bowen, 11-2); 2, Williamdeconqueror (15-2); 3, Brandisova (11-8 fav). 5 ran. NR: Captain Claude. Sh hd, 2 l. P Bowen. 3.05 (2m 7f hdle) 1, Whydah Gally (Freddie Gingell, 8-1); 2, Halondo (7-2); 3, Fifty Ball (7-1). 5 ran. 2 l, 13l. Joe Tizzard. 3.40 (2m 7f hdle) 1, Shewearsthewellies (David Bass, 4-1); 2, Emotional Memories (22-1); 3, Gold Clermont (8-1). 8 ran. NR: Just Sophie. 3 l, 6l. Mrs L Hill. Placepot: £4,713.00. Quadpot: £160.70. Newcastle Going: standard 12.30 (1m 4f 98yd) 1, Carlos Felix (Brandon Wilkie, 25-1); 2, Peripeteia (3-1 fav); 3, Blue Hawaii (5-1). 12 ran. 1 l, l. Mrs Stella Barclay. 1.05 (7f 14yd) 1, Johnny Ringo (Ryan Sexton, 6-1); 2, Dashing Darcey (5-1); 3, Puella Law (5-1). 12 ran. Nk, 2l. Miss Lucinda V Russell. 1.40 (7f 14yd) 1, Venture Capital (S A Gray, 11-8 fav); 2, Fouroneohfever (100-30); 3, Wadacre Icarus (8-1). 11 ran. 2 l, 2 l. K A Ryan. 2.15 (6f) 1, Silvretta (P J McDonald, 2-9 fav); 2, Willow Baby (9-1); 3, Margot Robbie (12-1). 8 ran. 2l, 3 l. A M Balding. 2.50 (6f) 1, Pendleton (C Lee, 13-2); 2, Secret Guest (4-1); 3, Another Investment (4-1). 9 ran. l, l. Miss J A Camacho. 3.25 (1m 5yd) 1, Trais Fluors (Callum Shepherd, 7-2 jt-fav); 2, Rocket Rod (11-2); 3, Danielsflyer (15-2). 11 ran. NR: Sandret. ns, 1 l. Miss L A Perratt. 3.55 (7f 14yd) 1, Keep Me Stable (Callum Shepherd, 5-1); 2, Ratafia (11-8 fav); 3, Glory Call (25-1). 11 ran. NR: New Tycoon. Sh hd, 2 l. Miss L A Perratt. 4.30 (6f) 1, Lezardrieux (P J McDonald, 6-1); 2, Hurstwood (22-1); 3, Urban Dandy (16-1). 12 ran. 1l, nk. Grant Tuer. 5.05 (5f) 1, High Opinion (C Lee, 5-1); 2, Gowanbuster (9-1); 3, Nellie French (15-2). 12 ran. 1 l, nk. B Smart. Placepot: £58.40. Quadpot: £5.40. Wolverhampton Going: standard 4.15 (5f 21yd) 1, Second Collection (Rossa Ryan, 13-8 fav); 2, Gustav Graves (7-2); 3, Big Time Maybe (18-1). 9 ran. NR: Hard Nut, Toplight. Hd, hd. A W Carroll. 4.50 (5f 21yd) 1, Dreadpirateroberts (L Morris, 11-4 fav); 2, Doctor Vuby (100-30); 3, Reprised (11-2). 8 ran. NR: Blazes Boylan, Jungle Jim. 1 l, 1 l. A Watson. 5.25 (7f 36yd) 1, Debora’s Dream (A Keeley, 5-4 fav); 2, Galloping On (100-30); 3, Formidable Force (5-1). 12 ran. 1 l, 1 l. R Varian. 6.00 (7f 36yd) 1, Never Fear (J Mitchell, 15-2); 2, South Kensington (4-1 fav); 3, Falling For You (9-1). 9 ran. ns, 2 l. C Johnston. 6.30 (7f 36yd) 1, Intervention (A Rawlinson, 9-2); 2, Abbey’s Dream (25-1); 3, Showtime Mahomes (8-1). 12 ran. 1 l, sh hd. M Appleby. 7.00 (1m 1f 104yd) 1, Tiger Beetle (Rob Hornby, 7-2); 2, Master Of Combat (11-4 fav); 3, Hale End (10-1). 10 ran. Nk, 1 l. M G Rimell. 7.30 (1m 1f 104yd) 1, Bint Al Daar (Hector Crouch, 4-1 Co fav); 2, Borgi (4-1 Co fav); 3, Avon Light (8-1). 7 ran. NR: Abu Royal, Another Beautiful. Nk, l. K P De Foy. 8.00 (1m 142yd) 1, Boujee Gold (William Carson, 20-1); 2, Kenstone (6-1); 3, Hellavapace (100-30 fav). 10 ran. NR: Glory And Gold, Inexplicable. Hd, nk. A W Carroll. 8.30 (1m 4f 51yd) 1, Assembled (Rob Hornby, 7-1); 2, Pysanka (14-1); 3, Cornish Storm (11-10 fav). 11 ran. NR: Perthshire. 1 l, 1 l. M G Rimell. Jackpot: Not won. Pool of £1,524.69 carried forward to Kempton Park today. Placepot: £38.80. Quadpot: £19.80. Peterborough Sports 0 Boston 2; Rushall Olympic 1 Alfreton 1; Southport 1 Farsley 1; Spennymoor 2 South Shields 5. P W D L F A GDPts Tamworth...........18 11 2 5 31 13 18 35 South Shields.....19 10 5 4 35 20 15 35 Scunthorpe.........18 10 4 4 39 18 21 34 Spennymoor......18 9 3 6 30 28 2 30 Chorley.................17 8 5 4 28 17 11 29 Alfreton................17 8 4 5 31 22 9 28 Curzon Ashton..17 8 4 5 24 15 9 28 Boston..................18 8 4 6 19 18 1 28 Brackley...............18 7 6 5 24 16 8 27 Hereford..............17 8 2 7 19 20 -1 26 Warrington.........17 7 4 6 24 24 0 25 Southport............19 7 4 8 23 32 -9 25 Farsley.................18 6 6 6 18 23 -5 24 Banbury...............17 7 3 7 14 24 -10 24 Buxton..................18 6 5 7 28 20 8 23 Chester.................15 7 2 6 19 14 5 23 Blyth Spartans...18 6 5 7 25 24 1 23 Scarborough......16 7 2 7 19 21 -2 23 Kings Lynn..........19 5 7 7 23 31 -8 22 Peterboro Sports 19 6 4 9 19 27 -8 22 Rushall.................18 5 4 9 24 28 -4 19 Darlington...........18 3 5 10 15 41 -26 14 B Stortford..........19 4 1 14 17 38 -21 13 Gloucester..........18 2 5 11 13 27 -14 11 South Braintree 4 Welling 1; Eastbourne 0 Tonbridge 3; Maidstone 1 Dover 0; Worthing 3 Dartford 4; Yeovil 4 Farnborough 2. Postponed Hampton & Richmond v St Albans; Truro v Taunton; Weston-super-Mare v Chippenham. P W D L F A GDPts Yeovil....................17 13 2 2 37 19 18 41 Aveley..................18 10 2 6 27 19 8 32 Bath.......................17 9 4 4 35 22 13 31 Hampton & R.....18 9 4 5 29 24 5 31 Maidstone...........17 8 6 3 24 18 6 30 Chelmsford.........18 7 8 3 25 18 7 29 Torquay...............17 9 1 7 29 25 4 28 Braintree.............18 7 6 5 31 19 12 27 Worthing.............16 8 2 6 28 24 4 26 Tonbridge...........19 7 5 7 25 26 -1 26 Farnborough.....18 6 7 5 31 26 5 25 Dartford...............18 7 4 7 30 25 5 25 Chippenham.......17 6 6 5 26 25 1 24 H Hempstead.....16 6 6 4 21 20 1 24 Taunton...............16 6 6 4 20 20 0 24 St Albans..............17 7 1 9 22 26 -4 22 Weymouth..........18 4 7 7 19 27 -8 19 Eastbourne.........19 5 4 10 25 35 -10 19 Weston-s-Mare..16 5 3 8 20 29 -9 18 Slough..................16 4 4 8 28 30 -2 16 Truro.....................15 4 4 7 21 24 -3 16 Welling.................18 3 7 8 20 33 -13 16 Dover....................18 1 8 9 18 34 -16 11 Havant & W.........17 1 3 13 16 39 -23 6 Cinch Scottish League One Cove 1 Montrose 0. League Two Stenhousemuir 2 Peterhead 0. Under-17 World Cup: Group C Brazil 9 New Caledonia 0; England 2 Iran 1. P W D L F A GD Pts England 2 2 0 0 12 1 1 6 Brazil 2 1 0 1 11 3 8 3 Iran 2 1 0 1 4 4 0 3 N Caledonia 2 0 0 2 0 19 -19 0 Group D Senegal 4 Poland 1; Japan 1 Argentina 3. P W D L F A GD Pts Senegal 2 2 0 0 6 2 4 6 Argentina 2 1 0 1 4 3 1 3 Japan 2 1 0 1 2 3 -1 3 Poland 2 0 0 2 1 5 -4 0 American football NFL Buffalo 22 Denver 24. Darts Grand Slam of Darts Aldersley Leisure Village, Wolverhampton: Group stage (England unless stated): Group E D Chisnall bt S Buntz (US) 5-4; S Bunting bt P Wright (Scot) 5-3. Group F A Gilding bt H Muramatsu (Japan) 5-1; D Noppert (Neth) bt B Dolan (N Ire) 5-4. Group G M van Gerwen (Neth) bt M Kleermaker (Neth) 5-4; R Cross bt F Sherrock 5-2. Group H R Pietreczko (Ger) bt N Aspinall 5-4; D Heta (Aus) bt B Greaves 5-4. Snooker Champion of Champions Toughsheet Community Stadium, Bolton: Group two B Hawkins (Eng) bt L Brecel (Bel) 4-0; R Milkins (Eng) bt M Williams (Wales) 4-2. Quarter-final Hawkins bt Milkins 6-2. Tennis Nitto ATP Finals Turin: Green group: Singles H Rune (Den) bt S Tsitsipas (Gr) 2-1 ret; J Sinner (It) bt N Djokovic (Ser) 7-5, 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (7-2). Doubles S González (Mex) and E Roger-Vasselin (Fr) bt M González (Arg) and A Molteni (Arg) 6-4, 6-4; M Granollers (Sp) and H Zeballos (Arg) bt I Dodig (Cro) and A Krajicek (US) 6-4, 6-4. Blinkered first time: Kempton Park 4.25 Quiet Affair. 5.30 Aye Fred. 6.30 Believe You Me. 8.00 Autumn Angel. Kempton Park Rob Wright 3.45 Novice Stakes (2-Y-O: £3,672: 6f) (12 runners) 4.25 Nursery (2-Y-O: £3,140: 6f) (12) 4.55 Novice Stakes (2-Y-O: £3,672: 1m) (14) 5.30 Novice Stakes (Div I: 2-Y-O: £5,346: 1m) (13) 6.00 Novice Stakes (Div II: 2-Y-O: £5,346: 1m) (13) 6.30 Handicap (£4,187: 7f) (8) 7.00 Handicap (£6,281: 7f) (10) 7.30 Handicap (£7,731: 1m 4f) (14) Course specialists Kempton Park: Trainers C Appleby, 61 winners from 187 runners, 32.6%; R Varian, 70 from 297, 23.6%; J & T Gosden, 39 from 183, 21.3%; K P De Foy, 28 from 141, 19.9%; W Haggas, 38 from 207, 18.4%; R Beckett, 45 from 270, 16.7%. Jockeys James Doyle, 73 winners from 325 rides, 22.5%; B De La Sayette, 16 from 77, 20.8%; J Crowley, 56 from 280, 20%; O Murphy, 99 from 494, 20%; J Mitchell, 58 from 402, 14.4%; B Loughnane, 9 from 64, 14.1%. Newcastle: Trainers J & T Gosden, 22 from 70, 31.4%; W Haggas, 45 from 156, 28.8%; R Varian, 49 from 182, 26.9%; S & E Crisford, 14 from 59, 23.7%; A Balding, 27 from 115, 23.5%; A Watson, 38 from 179, 21.2%. Jockeys R Havlin, 32 from 133, 24.1%; Laura Pearson, 9 from 46, 19.6%; R Coakley, 5 from 26, 19.2%; Morgan Cole, 3 from 16, 18.8%; C Noble, 6 from 36, 16.7%; A Farragher, 4 from 25, 16%. Newcastle Rob Wright 2.30 Handicap (£3,140: 2m) (10) 3.05 Handicap (£3,140: 1m 4f) (12) 3.37 Handicap (£5,129: 1m 4f) (12) 4.15 Handicap (£8,208: 1m) (12) 4.45 Novice Stakes (£4,104: 6f) (7) 5.18 Handicap (Div I: £5,129: 6f) (11) 5.50 Handicap (Div II: £5,129: 6f) (10) 6.20 Novice Stakes (£4,104: 1m) (8) 6.50 Handicap (3-Y-O: £3,873: 1m) (10) 8.00 Handicap (£3,140: 6f) (12) Lee fund tops £50,000 A JustGiving fund-raising page for stricken jockey Graham Lee, organised by his daughter Amy, had drawn donations of over £50,000 for the Injured Jockeys Fund last night. The fund-raising page says: “The Injured Jockeys Fund is an incredible charity which will be there every step of the way for Dad’s recovery.” Lee, 47, who damaged his spinal cord in a fall coming out of the stalls in a race on Friday night, remains in intensive care in Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.

60 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Sport Cricket World Cup “I was so calm at the start of that over. I took a drink, towelled myself down. I said to Pat [Cummins]; don’t worry, it’s done this over. That might sound arrogant, but I knew I had the short boundary, I knew Mujeeb [Ur Rahman], I had played an entire IPL with him, faced most of his overs that night and I knew I didn’t have to get it in the middle of the bat to hit a six. I knew I had it.” In the lead-up to his team’s semi-final against South Africa, Glenn Maxwell spoke to Fox Cricket in Australia about his remarkable double hundred against Afghanistan a week or so ago. Like most of the best limited-overs “finishers” over the years — Michael Bevan of Australia and England’s Neil Fairbrother spring to mind — it was his clarity of thought and ability to think calmly under pressure that stood out, as well as the striking unorthodoxy of his play. By common consent, Maxwell is responsible for the outstanding performance of this tournament, and possibly now for the most outstanding innings in the history of the ODI game. One of the challengers for that title, Sir Viv Richards, was in Mumbai this week and was happy to admit that his own unbeaten 189 against England at Old Trafford in 1984 would have to take a back seat to Maxwell’s outrageous innings. Comparisons are complicated, highlighted by the realisation that what seemed stunningly unorthodox four decades ago — backing away and hitting fast bowlers such as Bob Willis straight for six — is commonplace now. Richards is the greatest batsman I have seen, but even he, the Master Blaster, could not have envisaged some of the one-legged punts that Maxwell produced at the Wankhede to defeat Afghanistan. Yet, reflecting on the past seven weeks, and looking at the line-ups for the semi-finals today and tomorrow, is to be reminded how much of an outlier Maxwell’s innings has been. For the most part, the leading teams have been powered by what might be called gold-standard, orthodox quality. The make-up of the teams from any of the four semi-finalists would not look out of place in a World Test Championship final, never mind a 50-over World Cup final. True, each team may accommodate a maverick or two: Maxwell, for Australia; for India, Suryakumar Yadav prowls the middle order looking to create mayhem in the final phase of the innings; likewise, South Africa’s Heinrich Klaasen, the most improved T20 batsman of the past two years, and the equivalent for New Zealand is the effervescent Glenn Phillips. But all are insulated, and given further licence to express themselves, by the five-star quality around them. ODI formats. That places stress on the resources at his disposal, but there is no question that the requirements for ODI cricket are closer to Tests than T20. So it is no surprise to see some of those who played in the Ashes be given first opportunity to help revitalise the ODI team. Come on down Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope and Ben Duckett, alongside those fast bowlers — Josh Tongue, John Turner, Brydon Carse and Gus Atkinson — who have also been identified as key to reclaiming the Ashes in two winters’ time. While it is true that the group stage was characterised by largely one-sided games, with the Australia v New Zealand match in Dharamshala and South Africa’s nerve-shredding win over Pakistan exceptions, there can be little doubting the outstanding quality of much of the cricket on show. There is an age-old debate to be had here, between entertainment seen only through the lens of India’s top order? Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli, the same trio that will face England in the five-match Test series in the new year. David Warner, Travis Head, Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne are at the heart of Australia’s batting challenge, as they were in the Ashes in the summer. Who better to fend off the threat of India’s outstanding bowling attack than Devon Conway, Rachin Ravindra and Kane Williamson, a top three with techniques to match. The same might be said of the bowling. Jasprit Bumrah and the Mohammeds, Shami and Siraj, offer a real test with the new ball, while Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja balance the attack perfectly. Trent Boult and Tim Southee have taken the new ball for New Zealand’s Test team for years, while Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc were central to Australia’s Ashes challenge. England’s failings can be analysed in this context. Too much was expected, perhaps, of those who excel at the shortest form of the game, such as Liam Livingstone and Sam Curran, and there was too little to show from their best players — Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and, until close to the end, Ben Stokes. The new-ball attack paled in comparison to those who have made the semifinals, less an attack when they began in Ahmedabad than a hopeful defence. It was interesting to hear Rob Key, in his comments after England’s exit, say that when he first came into the job he envisaged the identity of his red-ball and white-ball teams diverging, whereas now he thinks they are converging, as the best players prove themselves across the five-day and Forget fireworks, Test class is key for the final four Mike Atherton Chief Cricket Correspondent, Calcutta England’s best Test players, such as Root, pictured, and Bairstow failed to perform Virat Kohli Age: 35 Test avg: 49.29 (8,676 runs) ODI avg: 58.44 (13,677) Pat Cummins Age: 30 Test avg: 22.94 (239 wkts) ODI avg: 29.09 (136) India v New Zealand Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai, today, 8.30am TV: Sky Sports Main Event/Cricket Radio: 5 Live Sports Extra Sky offers Hindi commentary for both semis and final Sky Sports will make UK television history this week when they offer Hindi commentary for both the semi-finals and the final of the Cricket World Cup (Elizabeth Ammon writes). The British broadcasters have reached an agreement with Star Sports to share their Hindi feed and it will air on Sky Sports Arena for both today’s semi-final between hosts India and New Zealand in Mumbai and tomorrow’s second semi-final between Australia and South Africa in Kolkata. The final on Sunday in Ahmedabad will also be aired in Hindi on Sky Sports Mix. This will be the first time that cricket fans in the UK and Ireland will be able to watch the game in Hindi on Sky Sports. All three matches will air their Englishlanguage commentary as usual on Sky Sports Main Event and Cricket. The Star Sports Hindi commentary team includes legends Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri, plus former players Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh and Irfan Pathan as well as the South African spinner Imran Tahir. While India does not have a national language, with more than 300 officially recognised, Hindi is the most widely spoken in the country and indeed the fourth most popular in the world after Mandarin, Spanish and English. The final this weekend will also be broadcast free-to-air in the UK on Channel 5 after a deal was struck with Sky Sports to share the rights for the match.

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 61 Sport close finishes and entertainment by dint of excellence. Predictions for the two semi-finals? It is hard to look beyond the team of the tournament so far, India, and the team who know their way around tournaments better than most, Australia. But, for the first time in more than seven weeks, these cricketers arrive at a ground knowing that one bad performance will mean they are eliminated, and that adds a delicious element of uncertainty to both games. We can all remember that nagging sense of dread before an important exam. The revision and the mocks have gone well, but what if, despite all the perfect preparation, you simply have a bad day when it really counts? Despite the goldstandard cricket they have played so far and the five-star quality that peppers their team, that is the worry and the knot in the stomach that millions of Indian supporters will be waking to this morning. Of the rest of the old guard, Jonny Bairstow counts as one of England’s greatest white-ball players, but the evidence since his horrific leg injury is that, physically, he will never be the same again. He should play in next year’s T20 World Cup but thereafter concentrate on Test cricket, and maybe some T20 franchise opportunities. So too the great Joe Root, although he will not, of course, be in the T20 World Cup squad. He turns 33 next month and could conceivably make 2027, but, as with the jettisoning of James Anderson and Broad in the 2015 ODI reset, one day he may recognise the benefits of focusing on Test cricket. We can surely assume that Ben Stokes, Mark Wood, Chris Woakes and Ali are done in this format. While Dawid Malan is 36 and had a fine World Cup, he and Bairstow just did not click as an opening partnership, simply because Bairstow craved the aggressive lead of Roy or Alex Hales that he had always had. When Rob Key, the managing director of England men’s cricket, said that England had “lost their identity”, this was where the mislaying began and was at its most obvious. Not until that final match — and a powerplay of 72 without loss against Pakistan — was a sufficient tone set against decent opposition. who can star? zak crawley Crawley batted at No 3 against Ireland recently, but I would like to see him open with the ultraaggressive Phil Salt (Will Jacks should push Salt as well as, with his off spin a valuable ally, vie for the No 7 slot with Liam Livingstone, who has become a one-trick pony hitter and needs to reacquaint himself with the art of batting). ollie pope Pope can become Root’s replacement at No 3. Bizarrely the 25-year-old has not scored a List A century (he has played 31 matches), nor indeed a T20 hundred, but he has made a better fist of Pope and Ahmed can lead one-day revival this position in Test cricket than many want to give him credit for, and he oozes talent, as well as the audacity to improvise. There are those who will justifiably propose Warwickshire’s Sam Hain, so prolific that he has a List A average of 57.76, and having made 89 on England debut against Ireland, for this role. But it is understandable why England want to find out whether Pope — like Crawley and Ben Duckett, who should slip in at No 4 — can successfully bring his Bazball Test exploits to the ODI game. rehan ahmed When Trevor Bayliss took over as England head coach in 2015 one of his non-negotiables for the ODI side was a wrist spinner who could turn the ball sharply both ways, and Adil Rashid duly filled that role quite superbly. Ahmed’s googly is probably more potent than his leg break but at 19 he should now be given the extended chance to be Rashid’s successor. Bayliss also said initially that he wanted to play two spinners, and, while that did not always transpire, it will be interesting to see if Mott and Buttler want to do that in attempting to balance their team, with the side I have selected (see panel) admittedly light on bowling and asking Jacks to bowl his full quota. Sam Curran is the obvious allrounder at seven, allowing another bowler at eight. harry brook You look at the impact that New Zealand’s Rachin Ravindra, at 23, has had on this tournament when he might otherwise not have played but for an injury to Kane Williamson, and you imagine what Brook, 24, might have done had things panned out differently. He may need some careful management as a threeformat international player, but he must be a constant in this side from now on. I am not so sure about the talk of him being captain, mind. gus atkinson What is the perfect make-up of an ODI bowling unit? The three givens are probably a wrist spinner, a leftarm seamer (Curran, if he can rid himself of the constant variations that make him such a force in T20, or Reece Topley, if he can be less readily a subject in The Lancet) and an out-and-out fast bowler (Jofra Archer, who probably already has shares in that aforementioned medical journal, or Brydon Carse). But that would be to forget how important a bowler like Liam Plunkett, a bang-it-into-thepitch wicket-taker in the middle overs, was to England in 2019. Atkinson could be considered the genuine paceman, but it is more likely that he will fill the Plunkett role, and do so very well too, given his easy, rhythmical action, with Josh Tongue and John Turner as admirable alternatives. After a calamitous World Cup, attention turns to next one – and big changes are on the way, says Steve James Y ou do wonder how the new-broom squad selected for the tour to the West Indies next month might have fared had they been picked en masse for this calamitous World Cup campaign for England. Yes, saying they could hardly have done any worse is the easy and pithy response, but in truth when it was decided to reunite most of the gang that had won the trophy in 2019 there were few dissenting voices. And bringing back together more of that successful band — in other words retaining Jason Roy as the fearless, up-and-at-’em opening batsman — might have been wiser. However, that is all done now and it is time (even if it seems to be doing so with indecent haste) to look to the next tournament, with an important halfway staging post of a Champions Trophy in 2025. So, how many of this squad destined for the Caribbean can play significant roles in the 2027 World Cup? Most of them, I would venture, simply because the majority of the golden generation must now move on. It was magnificent while it lasted, as England reinvented not only themselves but one-day international batting as a whole after the 2015 World Cup, but Father Time waits for no one. who stays? Only Jos Buttler, Harry Brook and Gus Atkinson from the side who defeated Pakistan on Saturday. I might even have considered replacing Buttler as captain — while, of course, retaining him as T20 skipper (England have had three captains before when in 2011 Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook and Stuart Broad were in charge of the three different formats), but there is no obvious young alternative — although that is something Matthew Mott, the head coach, will want to rectify in the coming years, possibly by handing Zak Crawley some experience in the position, as he did against Ireland in September. Buttler has leant heavily on his deputy, Moeen Ali — it is so difficult for a wicketkeeper to keep making the long journey to his bowler to communicate and there is logic in the opinions of those advocating this as reason enough for England to look away from Buttler for a captain — and naming a youthful vice-captain immediately would make sense. But Buttler is a towering giant of the white-ball game and England must now rebuild around his batting. That he batted in the last ten overs of an England innings only once in the World Cup — in the final game against Pakistan — defies belief, and we can safely presume this was merely a blip at a bad time before the real Buttler returns. Salt, inset, and Ahmed, right, can both be a key part of England’s future My team for 2027 Zak Crawley (Kent, age at start of next World Cup: 29) Phil Salt (Lancashire, 31) Ollie Pope (Surrey, 29) Ben Duckett (Nottinghamshire, 32) Harry Brook (Yorkshire, 28) Jos Buttler (Lancashire, 37) Will Jacks (Surrey, 28) Sam Curran (Surrey, 29) Rehan Ahmed (Leicestershire, 23) Gus Atkinson (Surrey, 29) Jofra Archer (Sussex, 32) Brydon Carse (Durham, 32). Tim Southee Age: 34 Test avg: 28.98 (370 wkts) ODI avg: 33.70 (218) Quinton de Kock Age: 30 Test avg: 38.82 (3,300 runs) ODI avg: 46.03 (6,767) South Africa v Australia Eden Gardens, Calcutta, tomorrow, 8.30am TV: Sky Sports Main Event/Cricket, Radio: 5 Live Sports Extra

62 2GM Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Sport Golf Rory McIlroy yesterday warned that even a deal between the PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund might not lead to peace in golf’s enduring power struggle. The prospects of June’s framework agreement between the two sides — plus the DP World Tour — being set in stone by the initial end-of-year deadline are slim. A number of private equity firms are also keen to invest in the new commercial entity, but whether the Saudis feel that would dilute their influence remains to be seen. McIlroy — the world No 2, who is assured of lifting a fifth European Order of Merit title in Dubai this week — sits on the PGA Tour’s policy board, which met in Florida this week to receive updates on potential investors. “I think if you were in the middle of it [negotiations], you would see that there’s a path forward,” he said in Dubai. “It’s just no one on the outside has any details, right? Loose lips sink ships so we are trying to keep it tight and within walls. “Even if we get a deal done it doesn’t mean that it’s actually going to happen. That’s up to the United States government and whether the Department of Justice think that it’s the right thing to do or whether [it’s] anti-competitive or whatever. Even if a deal gets done it’s not a sure thing.” First defeat for Djokovic since Wimbledon US government could block peace deal, McIlroy warns Should the PGA Tour opt to exclude the Saudis, after making such a seismic U-turn to announce a partnership in the first place, it would lead to more conflict and a whole new level of acrimony. The US Department of Justice is investigating the partnership because agreements that quash competition are not permitted. It is why the parties have been stressing this is not a merger. Alas, the original press release called it just that, and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s suggestion in June that it was good “to take a competitor off the board” remains a potentially disastrous own goal. A memo from Monahan to players yesterday stated that dozens of investors had been interested and some were “significant formal proposals”. Some are still being considered but he added that an agreement with the PIF and DP World Tour remained the priority. There are also plans for a player equity ownership scheme in the new for-profit PGA Tour Enterprises. Last month the head of Endeavor, the parent company of WWE wrestling and UFC, said its investment bid had been turned down. Sportico reported the deal stalled on financial terms including a $25 million (about £20 million) annual service fee. Fenway Sports Group, the owners of Liverpool FC and the Boston Red Sox baseball team, have admitted they have had “conversations” with the PGA Tour, but so far their investment extends only to a team in McIlroy and Tiger Woods’s indoor TGL simulator league, which launches in January. The initial framework agreement stated that the PIF would have the right of first refusal on any new capital raised. At that point the PGA Tour was in grave trouble, with Monahan admitting the battle with PIF-backed LIV Golf had become unsustainable with the organisation dipping into $100 million of reserves to bump up prize pots as well as spending $50 million on legal fees. McIlroy, who is playing in the seasonending DP World Tour Championship this week with enough points to guarantee winning the Race to Dubai, said: “The faster something gets done the better.” He is one of six players on the policy board. Curiously, another is Patrick Cantlay. In an interview with the Irish Independent last weekend, McIlroy admitted referring to American Cantlay as “a dick” as tempers boiled over at the recent Ryder Cup in Rome. “My relationship with Cantlay is average at best,” he said. The honesty is welcome, at least by all journalists, but Cantlay may wonder whether McIlroy should abide by his own “loose lips” warning. To add to that particular intrigue, Cantlay has just been named as part of the Atlanta Drive Golf Club in McIlroy’s TGL project. Asked what he hoped TGL would bring to golf, McIlroy said: “Younger people. That’s the future of our game — to get younger generations involved and have them somehow relate to our game. I think there’s a place for it to maybe get people excited about watching a different version of the game.” Golf has been dominated by money talk ever since LIV arrived with £100 million contracts but McIlroy, who has bought a house near London and plans to make it his main base in a few years’ time, said he wants some of the funds to trickle down. “I think the professional game has never been stronger or healthier from a financial standpoint, and there’s never been a better time to be a professional golfer, but that’s five per cent of what golf is. We are talking about this investment coming into the top level of golf, but I think it also needs to go into the R&A and USGA and for them to increase participation.” This will all cause more frustration at LIV Golf which has long been claiming that it is appealing to a younger demographic and that it invests in local communities wherever it goes. It also does gimmicks and fancy team names. Beyond the politics and squabbles, McIlroy has been a consistent challenger in big events this year. “Probably give it a seven out of ten,” he said of his 2023. “I had two wins and I had my best-ever Ryder Cup [but] I’ll rue that miss at LA [he was runner-up at the US Open].” Next year it will be a decade since he won his fourth and most recent major. The record gap is 11 years. He talks a good, sometimes spicy game too, but after saying there was “no better place” to make a living than the PGA Tour, there was a telling note of weariness as he contemplated whether clarity was coming any time soon. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said. Dig in. DP World Tour Championship Jumeirah Estates, Dubai Starts tomorrow, 7am TV: Sky Sports Main Event/Golf Rick Broadbent McIlroy with Irish rugby great Johnny Sexton during the pro-am event held before the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, which starts tomorrow Tennis Stuart Fraser Tennis Correspondent Novak Djokovic’s 19-match win streak has come to an end at the hands of the talented Jannik Sinner. The 22-yearold Italian produced a stunning performance to see off the world No 1 over the course of three enthralling hours at the ATP Finals. Inspired by the passionate home fans in Turin, Sinner rose to the occasion and held his nerve to close out a 7-5, 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (7-2) win in the group stages. It is the first time he has defeated Djokovic after falling short in his three previous attempts. Djokovic, 36, showed signs of irritation with the partisan crowd of 12,000, occasionally gesturing towards them in a sarcastic manner as if he was asking for more noise. At one point towards the end he moved his arms around in the air as if he was a musical conductor. Sinner’s clean ball-striking ultimately won the day, though. It looked as if the world No 4 might let the match slip out of his hands when he lost the second set after coming within three points of the finish line, but he quickly picked himself back up for the decider and overwhelmed Djokovic with his aggressive groundstrokes to claim the biggest win of his career. “It means a lot to me,” Sinner said. “When you win against the world No 1 who has won 24 grand slams, it is obviously at the top. I am very happy.” This is the first time Djokovic has lost a match since he was edged out by Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set Wimbledon final in July. He can still qualify for the semi-finals in Turin with a win over Hubert Hurkacz tomorrow. The world No 9 from Poland was an alternate for the ATP Finals but he will replace Stefanos Tsitsipas, who has withdrawn from the event with injury. inside today Man is arrested for alleged manslaughter after the death of ice hockey player Flintoff set for part-time stint Flintoff is still expected to travel to the UAE with the Lions this week for a three-week training camp and will then join up with Matthew Mott’s limitedovers senior team in the West Indies next month. It is also possible he will spend time with the Lions and the Test team in India in early 2024. He is likely to take over from James Foster, the former England wicketkeeper, whose coaching contract with the Superchargers was not renewed after the men’s team finished bottom of the standings last season. The team’s management board, which contains executives from Yorkshire and Durham, has been in discussions with Flintoff about taking on the role for next summer. His appointment could be confirmed by Friday. Flintoff has not spoken publicly since the crash, other than when he awarded Tom Hartley his international cap during the one-day series against Ireland in September. But those close to him, and the players who have been working with him, have spoken about his renewed passion for cricket and his desire to “give back to the game”. continued from back

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 63 Football Sport the family emigrated to Canada, where he was scouted by Bayern. Irankunda’s family — he has seven siblings — were eventually resettled in Adelaide after leaving Tanzania. His talent was first spotted by Swarv Kania, the under-tens coach at Parafield Gardens, when Irankunda was playing football in the park with his two brothers. “He would have to be the best kid I have ever seen,’’ Kania told Code Sports. “He would take on the whole team and score.’’ Irankunda joined Adelaide in 2021 after catching the eye of the club’s assistant coach, Airton Andrioli, during a trial match in which he scored from outside the box before being substituted and throwing his shirt at the ground in front of his coach. His talent was unquestionable, although concerns lingered over his temperament, with early incidents where Irankunda would lose concentration or arrive late to team meetings. Irankunda has been booked in the A-League almost as prolifically as he has scored. There are some cautionary tales. Garang Kuol was another recently vaunted Australian prospect who signed for Newcastle United in January, aged 18, but has struggled while out on loan. Yet it reveals much about Irankunda’s precocious ability that the only person considered capable of preventing it flourishing is himself. “I’ve definitely had a few hard conversations with him,” Craig Goodwin, the former Adelaide captain, told the Sydney Morning Herald. “I think there’s no limit to what level he can achieve, just so long as he puts in the work, has the right attitude and does the right things. Then he’s going to reach the very top.” E uropean clubs have become accustomed to scouring further afield for the next potential superstar, but few will cover as much ground as Bayern Munich’s latest signing, Nestory Irankunda. The prodigious 17-year-old winger, who has joined the German champions for a reported £3 million fee from Adelaide United, was born in a refugee camp in Tanzania after his parents fled wartorn Burundi and will now join Harry Kane and friends in July at the conclusion of the A-League season. “I’m happy to be heading to one of the best clubs in the world — it’s a real dream come true,” Irankunda said. “I’ve worked hard to try to make my family proud.” Irankunda is considered arguably the most exciting prospect in the ALeague’s short history and possibly a transcending figure for Australian football. He made his senior debut aged 15 and has scored nine goals in 38 league appearances for Adelaide United, each of which was followed by a variety of cartwheels and backflips. A blisteringly fast and direct dribbler, he possesses an extremely powerful shot that has allowed him to beat goalkeepers from unusually acute angles — an opposition player was left sidelined with a concussion for almost two months after blocking one of Irankunda’s attempts last season. “The power, the skills, never in my life at his age have I seen a player like him [except Lionel] Messi,” Javi López, who spent 13 years with Espanyol before joining Adelaide in 2020, said. The club’s manager, the former Crystal Palace forward Carl Veart, has not delved quite so deep into the hyperbole that swirls around all footballing prodigies, but did concede that Irankunda will often have “three or four-minute spells when no one [in training] wants to go near him”. European clubs had long caught wind of Irankunda’s promise, with Bayern registering their interest this year after impressive cameos against Western United and Melbourne Victory. Several other clubs made approaches but Adrian Griffin, Irankunda’s agent, said Bayern’s record of developing young players was a crucial factor. “We have had Nestory on our radar for some time,” Jochen Sauer, Bayern’s director of youth development, said. “He is extremely fast, good at dribbling and finishing and with power towards the goal. We are convinced of his potential and that he will take the next steps with us.” Griffin highlighted the full back Alphonso Davies as a player who thrived at a young age after joining Bayern, and there are similarities in his and Irankunda’s remarkable backstories. Davies was born in a refugee camp in Ghana after his parents fled civil war in Liberia before ‘He’s the best kid I’ve ever seen’ Nestory Irankunda, 17, was born in a Tanzanian refugee camp – now he is a Bayern wunderkind, writes Tom Kershaw Irankunda became a star at Adelaide after his family moved there from Tanzania; he signed a deal with Bayern, inset, this week Díaz reunited with dad after kidnap ordeal Luis Díaz is in line to face Brazil tomorrow after an emotional reunion with his father, who was held hostage by a Colombian guerrilla group for almost two weeks. Díaz, the 26-year-old Liverpool winger, is back in his native Colombia for international duty and was pictured embracing his father for the first time since his terrifying ordeal. Luis Manuel Díaz, 58, was captured at gunpoint by Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) with Cilenis Marulanda, his wife, near their home town of Barrancas. Marulanda was rescued within hours but Luis Manuel was kept as a hostage for 12 days. During that time, his son came off the bench to score a last-minute equaliser against Luton Town in the Premier League, celebrating by revealing a T-shirt with a message in Spanish that read: “Freedom for Dad’’. He then started in the 3-2 Europa League defeat by Toulouse on Thursday, the same day that Luis Manuel was released. Colombia face Brazil tomorrow evening in a World Cup qualifier and Luis Amaranto Perea, their assistant manager, said: “We’re happy because his dad is now home and he’s fine . . . thank God everything turned out well. “We never doubted about Luis Díaz [playing] but it was important for us to talk to him and to know what he was thinking. The emotion that he might have been feeling was very important, but he always told us that he wanted to be here. “But we had to wait to decide what exactly the situation was to continue doing what was best for our team. Everything is now fine, so let’s see what happens.” Díaz’s father spoke on Sunday for the first time since he was rescued, surrounded by family members near the Colombia-Venezuela border. “It was a lot of horseback riding, really hard, a lot of mountains, a lot of rain, too many insects,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep peacefully, it was very difficult, almost 12 days without sleep.” Colombian police said they arrested four suspects after investigating the kidnapping, while the head of the ELN has admitted it was a “mistake” to capture Díaz’s parents.

64 V2 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Sport Football the end when we’d all grown up and we rotated it more. But I actually love being in goal.” Just as his brothers keep an eye on him, so Gallagher helps his new teammate Cole Palmer. “He’s a top, top player and he’s got a call-up and I’m sure he’ll be brilliant.” He feels for Raheem Sterling, again omitted from the England squad. “He’s a top player and a top guy and he’s been brilliant for Chelsea this season. He’s very determined. “At Chelsea you want to challenge for titles and in the Premier League — we’re not quite there yet. We’re aiming for top four, we’re definitely progressing as a team. With England to win the Euros is the aim.” Gareth Southgate spoke to Gallagher, Palmer and the rest of the squad before training yesterday, impressing on them the need to beat Malta on Friday and North Macedonia on Monday for Euro 2024 seedings. “They’re really important to get in a higher bracket of teams,” Gallagher said. Being a seed would mean England definitely avoiding hosts Germany and favourites such as France and Portugal. “He explained that to us this morning and it makes sense.” Ezri Konsa was driving on the M1 in the pouring rain, imagining being sprawled out in the Dubai sunshine, when his mobile phone rang. It was Sunday night, after Aston Villa’s victory over Fulham, and the voice on the other end of the line sounded familiar. It was Ruth Corry, the senior men’s team operations manager at the FA, whom Konsa knew from his time with Charlton Athletic. “Me and the missus [his partner, Ronni] were talking about having a little break,” he said. “Two minutes later Ruth called me and she said, ‘I hope you have got no holidays booked,’ and I said no — but I did — and she told me I was in the squad. “I know Ruth really well. I worked with her at Charlton so she was really excited for me as well. Then I got a call from the gaffer [Gareth Southgate]. He was just congratulating me, telling me Konsa puts holiday plans on ice to seize England chance that I should come and enjoy myself, get to know the lads and go from there. “It didn’t really sink in until I got home. The missus was crying a bit, she was more excited than me! I’d rather be here anyway [than on holiday].” Opportunity now knocks for Konsa, 26, and it matters little that it has taken injuries to John Stones and Lewis Dunk to bring him into Southgate’s squad for the Euro 2024 qualifiers against Malta and North Macedonia. A World Cup winner with England Under-20 in 2017, his senior call-up comes after the most consistent spell of his career. It remains to be seen whether he will be granted minutes. But with Jude Bellingham and Levi Colwill pulling out of the squad yesterday because of shoulder injuries, England are a tad depleted. Rico Lewis, another new face, has played at left back for Manchester City and the 18-year-old provides an alternative to Kieran Trippier. Paul Joyce A sign of Conor Gallagher’s burgeoning sense of belonging at elite level was the sight of him standing over Manchester City’s prostrate Rodri at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Gallagher, Chelsea’s high-octane pressing machine, was certainly not standing on ceremony against a Treble winner who came fifth in the Ballon d’Or vote. Gallagher’s confidence and form with Chelsea has made him even more established in the England squad, and hopeful of an 11th cap against Malta or North Macedonia in the final Euro 2024 qualifiers. It has brought him the captaincy at Chelsea on occasion and confirmed why he is keen to extend a contract that expires in 18 months. “I’m sure that will get sorted out, everyone knows Chelsea is my club and I love playing for them,” Gallagher said after England training at St George’s Park yesterday. No other player in Europe’s top seven leagues has won possession in the attacking third more times than Gallagher’s 20 this season. He is revelling playing this more advanced, pressing role for Mauricio Pochettino. “The manager understands what I’m best at,” Gallagher, 23, added. “Pressing is one of my better attributes.” Reminded of his 81st-minute challenge on Rodri, Gallagher said: “It was nothing malicious. I love the challenge of playing against the best midfielders in the world. It’s always good to test yourself and see how you can perform against them and Rodri is one of the best in the world.” Josko Gvardiol pulled Gallagher away from Rodri but the Chelsea striker Nicolas Jackson promptly stepped in, protecting Gallagher. “We have each other’s back,” Gallagher said. “Our togetherness is great.” When Reece James and Ben Chilwell are absent, Gallagher takes the captaincy responsibility. “I love when I get to wear the armband. Reece and ‘Chilli’ are captain and vice-captain so whenever I get the chance it’s an honour, a really proud feeling. It gives me more confidence and shows how the manager thinks of me.” Pochettino has picked three England internationals as captains. “He understands that it’s Chelsea, it’s an English club and you have to be English speaking,” Gallagher said. “Also ‘I feared for Chelsea place but Reece has been one of Chelsea’s best players in recent years when he’s been fit and he’s come through the academy, so he got the armband. You could say Thiago Silva [should be captain] but everyone knows he is a leader that doesn’t need an armband, he’s still a massive leader on the pitch himself. Being an English club and Reece being the brilliant player he is, it is a pretty good decision.” It also showed what Pochettino thinks of Gallagher when he kept the Englishman on against City while withdrawing his £100 million-plus midfield players, Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo. Gallagher has responded to the challenge of such high-profile arrivals. “It’s what comes with being at a top club like Chelsea, one of the best clubs in the world over the last 20, 25 years,” he said. “In a way I was excited. But I needed to make sure I was ready to show the manager I was still good enough to play and need to work as hard as possible to stay in the team. Training and playing alongside midfielders worth £100 million-plus is good and shows where I’m at as well.” He admits he did fear for his place when Fernández and then Caicedo came. “Of course. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. When top players come in your position, you think you have less of a chance.” Gallagher was close to leaving Chelsea in the summer. “It was a crazy period in terms of ins and outs at Chelsea and I had conversations with the manager. He expressed that he liked me as a player and I was in his plans and I was really happy with that.” As well as Pochettino, Gallagher takes inspiration from Frank Lampard, his former manager at Chelsea, and John Terry, who congratulated him with a “brilliant mate” on Instagram after the City game. “I’ve been very lucky to be able to speak to those guys. John and Frank I’ve looked up to growing up being a Chelsea fan and them being two Chelsea legends. They understand what the club expects. Probably more so Frank because he was my manager last season and I spoke with him more and he’s helped me a lot.” Having three midfielders as brothers also helps. Jake, 30, is at Maidstone United (and previously England C, the non-League national team) and his twin Josh is Raynes Park Vale manager. Dan, 26, was formerly of AFC Wimbledon and now Dorking Wanderers. “All my brothers playing non-League keeps me grounded,” Gallagher said. “They tell me if I’ve done something well or if I haven’t. They have a great understanding of the game even though they’re playing at a lower standard.” He acknowledges it was highly competitive in the garden growing up. “It was nuts. It’s helped me to become the player I am today. They just chucked me in goal. They gave me the goalie gloves and just battered balls at me. I only got out of goal towards England v Malta Friday, kick-off 7.45pm Wembley Stadium TV: Channel 4 Radio: talkSPORT Harry Kane, Phil Foden and Palmer prepare for England’s game against Malta on Friday Gallagher, 23, is now a regular member of the England squad Conor Gallagher felt his time at club could be over until talks with his coach, writes Henry Winter

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 65 Sport Aaron Ramsdale has “lost his smile”, according to his father, who has criticised Mikel Arteta for dropping the 25-year-old this season and turning him into a “cup goalkeeper”. Arsenal signed David Raya on loan from Brentford in the summer and Arteta initially suggested he would rotate the pair. However, Raya, 28, has started the club’s past eight Premier League games and all four Champions League group matches so far, leading Ramsdale’s father, Nick, to say the way the decision has been taken is “wrong”. Ramsdale has been told his place in the England squad will be in doubt if the situation continues. He has been restricted to two Carabao Cup tie appearances in the past two months, although he is expected to start against Brentford in the league next week as Raya is ineligible to play against his parent club. Nick told the Highbury Squad podcast: “Aaron’s lost that smile, and it is difficult. It really is difficult to see him now I’m a captain’ Ramsdale has ‘lost his smile’, says dad there and we all keep saying, ‘You need to keep smiling.’ “Aaron is going to be the cup goalkeeper, and David Raya is going to be the main man unless something happens, an injury or a sending-off. Aaron’s got to live with that and he is living with that even though he’s not been told it, by anybody. You’ve got to give the guy a chance, for God’s sake. Even though the way it’s been done, in my eyes, it’s been wrong and we can talk about that, but it’s the decision.” Ramsdale’s father said his son did not have an inkling that the club would sign a goalkeeper and that while supporters have seized on Raya’s mistakes, they do not help the team’s goal of winning the league. “We have to get behind David Raya,” he said. “He is part of the family now, whether it is only until June next year. It will be longer in my eyes. We can’t lose what we got last year, the feeling at the club. I and the family will put [our] feelings aside. “Let’s say that Aaron has been hard done by, that is fair enough, we all agree on that. The end goal is winning the Premier League. It is not fair on Raya. “Singing Aaron’s name when [Raya] makes a mistake is not good for anybody. It makes me feel really happy but for the result of the club, it is not conducive to us winning the Premier League and Champions League. Whether Aaron is here or not here, or on the bench or not on the bench, we are all Gooners.” Ramsdale has admitted he is “suffering and hurting” after losing his spot. In May he signed a new contract until 2026, worth more than £100,000 a week. He would be open to leaving in January, although his options are not obvious, given his wages and desire to play for a big club. Gary Jacob Ramsdale has had to make way for Raya at Arsenal Hayes named US Women coach Emma Hayes has been named the head coach of the US women’s team, becoming the world’s highest-paid female football coach. The Chelsea manager, 47, will take charge of the four-times world champions at the end of the season, only weeks before the team play in the 2024 Paris Olympics in late July. “This is a huge honour to be given the opportunity to coach the most incredible team in world football history,” Hayes said in a statement last night. “The feelings and connection I have for this team and for this country run deep. I’ve dreamt about coaching the US for a long time, so to get this opportunity is a dream come true. I know there is work to do to achieve our goals of winning consistently at the highest levels.” The financial terms of Hayes’s contract were not made public, but US Soccer plans to pay her the same as Gregg Berhalter, the head coach of the men’s team, who earned £1.3 million, including a £245,000 bonus, in 2022. She succeeds Vlatko Andonovski as the permanent head coach. He resigned after the team were knocked out in the last 16 of the World Cup this summer, their worst showing at the tournament. During 11 years at Chelsea, Hayes has won 14 major trophies, including six Women’s Super League titles. She reached the Champions League final in 2021, when they were beaten by Barcelona. Chelsea travel to play Real Madrid tonight in their opening group game of this year’s tournament. Ifab: Referees quit over fear of abuse higher level, with trials in more senior football. Players may not worry so much about getting a yellow card for saying something inappropriate to a referee, but it can make a big difference if they know it means a tenth of the match off the pitch. “There is also a lot of interest from different stakeholders for the idea where only the captain can approach the referee in a fair way. Players approaching in an aggressive manner simply cannot be tolerated any longer. “We have even seen on a number of occasions where players deliberately go behind a referee with others coming in front of him so he cannot get away. “If only the captain can approach the referee, then afterwards he or she can explain to their team-mates what has happened. This has worked well in other sports such as rugby and basketball.” An FA survey after the first two seasons of the sin-bin pilot showed a 38 per cent reduction in incidents of dissent, with 72 per cent of players, 77 per cent of coaches and 84 per cent of referees wanting to continue with the trial. Brud said there was a global problem around behaviour towards referees by players, coaches, supporters and, in junior football, parents. Drop-out rates of referees after one season have been flagged as a big concern. “It starts at the top. What the football idols do in a match, kids and adults in amateur football will copy the next day,” Brud added. “There is a big problem with retaining referees or motivating people to start refereeing. They see what is happening on the pitches, they feel the abuse and are in fear of assaults. “We need to protect the integrity and image of the game and help referees to manage improper behaviour better. “There are testimonies even from referees in youth football about how they suffer with anxiety before matches, being unable to sleep, because they are worried about being abused, both verbally and physically. In some countries a large proportion of young referees are dropping out after their first couple of years.” Referees wearing body cameras as a deterrent to misbehaviour is another trial being carried out by the FA at grassroots level, and Brud said the results have been “very encouraging”. Webb backs VAR as audio released of Gordon goal The refereeing chief Howard Webb has backed the match officials who awarded Newcastle United’s winner against Arsenal — a goal that led the north London club to claim there had been “unacceptable refereeing and VAR errors”. Webb, the chief refereeing officer of Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), said on the Match Officials: Mic’d Up programme, shown on TNT Sports and Sky, that the process around Anthony Gordon’s goal was correct and the split in opinion that followed showed it was right that the VAR did not overrule the referee. There were four elements looked at by Andy Madley, the VAR: a possible push by Joelinton on Gabriel; whether the ball had gone out of play earlier in the move; a possible handball by Joelinton; and whether Gordon was offside. The possible push caused the most controversy, and audio of the conversations between Madley and Stuart Attwell, the referee, during the 1-0 win at St James’ Park, broadcast for the first time, revealed the VAR saying: “I don’t see a specific foul on Gabriel. I see two hands on his back but I don’t see anything of a push that warrants him flying forward like that. We are confirming the on-field decision of goal.” Webb said: “I think the talks we’ve seen after, the opinion that is split across a lot of analysis, would suggest that was a correct non-intervention because of the subjectivity.” The Premier League’s independent Key Match Incident panel agreed with the decision to award the goal but said match officials made mistakes in not sending off Arsenal’s Kai Havertz, for a challenge on Sean Longstaff, and Newcastle’s Bruno Guimarães, who struck Jorginho’s head with his arm. Webb also accepted that the VAR should have overruled a penalty awarded against Wolverhampton Wanderers for a challenge by Hwang Hee-chan on Fabian Schär in the 2-2 draw with Newcastle on October 28. Martyn Ziegler Chief Sports Reporter continued from back

66 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Sport Rugby union for a comparable offence. Patiently he has to point out the bunker system upgraded Cane’s yellow to red, a detail lost amid the rush to hurl opinion. Barnes is a big fan of the bunker, in part because it avoids endless replays of bad incidents. “We have an amazing sport, but what we don’t want is to really advertise that sometimes things go wrong and people get hit in the head.” The game moves on faster and referees are freed from some of the pressure. What Barnes would change is having ex-players and former coaches on bunker panels. “To give it more credibility but also to understand it’s bloody hard work,” he says. He expects further experimentation given that many collisions are accidental yet lead to red cards. Under discussion is the “orange card” trialled in Super Rugby in the southern hemisphere in which a player sits out 20 minutes then has to be replaced. “So the player is punished but the team only for 20,” Barnes says. “There may be a flip-side that it encourages someone to go out and nobble an opponent. I don’t think instances we see of foul play are intentional, but would it encourage it? “Or do you put everyone on report like in rugby league, ten minutes off then sanction them off-field and make that harsher to change behaviour? Or the cricket model of bad behaviour bringing match-fee fines?” His book is full of criticisms of authority — Barnes says he was axed from the 2009 Six Nations simply for using first names when speaking to players — but believes World Rugby got one important thing right at the recent World Cup by refusing to comment on individual performances other team does with 15 different clips. Do we want a game of perfect decisions or one that flows? The best games I’ve refereed over the last 12 months didn’t stop. But then you can’t heavily criticise the officials for not getting everything. That ties in with whether we want 15 versus 15 or do we carry on going hard around sanctions around head contact? That’s not to say we take player welfare lightly, because my kids play rugby and I want it to be as safe as it can be. “These are things sport needs to reflect on, which it always should do at the end of a World Cup cycle. First, what type of game do we want? Football is grappling with this too.” As both sports lurch from one strategy to another — in rugby’s case with legal threats around player safety — referees are left to steer a path and then take the blame. As Barnes points out, it is still written that he showed the first red card in a men’s World Cup final to Sam Cane, the All Blacks captain; that he ruined the showpiece occasion and showed inconsistency given Siya Kolisi, the victorious South Africa skipper, received only a yellow ‘My wife and kids got threats. Coaches need to realise their words have consequences’ not be overturned by the TMO protocols of the time, led to years of abuse from Kiwis. It is, frankly, ridiculous what we subject officials to. No wonder, as Barnes explains, they form a brotherhood which spans sports — almost like a support group. He talks regularly to Howard Webb, who oversees refereeing in the Premier League. He is friends with Anthony Taylor, one of football’s top referees. On the day we chat, he has been exchanging messages with Richard Illingworth, the English umpire at the Cricket World Cup. They swap ideas about use of technology, thinking under pressure and, inevitably, compare the scrutiny and the stick. Barnes has had his fill even if, necessarily, he grew a thick skin. “You kind of get used to the general criticism, ‘You’re crap, you can’t do your job,’ ” he says. “But it doesn’t sit well when you start to get threats. And as soon as your family are brought into that, it becomes really personal. Over the past year, and maybe this is just because my wife has let me know about it now, it’s threatening her and the kids on her professional email and that’s simply not acceptable. It puts a strain on your relationship. If your wife is getting abused and your children threatened then she is rightly asking, ‘Why are we doing this?’ ” He has heard the notion that it comes with the territory. “I think it’s wrong for anyone to say to a victim, ‘You shouldn’t be on social media.’ That’s not good enough. Society has to be better than that. People have to stop threatening and abusing each other.” He wants the big-tech corporations to do much more to make individuals register and be identifiable. He wants those who make threats to be barred from buying tickets, banishing them from the sport. “It is going to take government, social media companies, governing bodies,” he says. “And if I can help I will try.” That mission is one part of Barnes’s future alongside his legal practice for Squire Patton Boggs; a former criminal barrister who now works in government investigations and whitecollar practice. At the World Cup in France, he would go every Wednesday to the Paris office. “The other referees would be playing golf,” he says. “But it was my release from rugby.” Barnes wants to continue straddling both professional worlds. He has spoken to the RFU about continuing in some capacity. Various clubs employ referees to help the coaching staff navigate the game’s endlessly complex rules, and he has had approaches. But he is also drawn to using his experience to assist other sports. He talks regularly with Webb, particularly about VAR, which Barnes describes as a “dirty secret” given the lack of transparency in communication. He was struck by the failings of the process when he was invited to Brentford v West Ham United this month. “West Ham scored to go 2-1 up, everyone jogging back, fans in the corner going mad. Lovely atmosphere. Then it pops up on the screen, ‘VAR check, potential handball’. And I was like, ‘By who? Where? In the buildup? By the scorer?’ I looked at my watch wondering if it would be 20 seconds and it was 2½, three minutes, and the crowd gets restless. It wasn’t until I got home to watch Match of the Day that I knew what happened.” Barnes accepts rugby’s TMO system is in need of its own improvements, particularly to make sure fans in the stand hear as much as those at home, and knows Webb is an advocate for more communication. In a season in which VAR has attracted more criticism than ever, he is insistent that the round-ball game should not give up. “Football is, what, two or three years in? We are 20 years [in rugby]. They are still evolving.” “People have short memories,” he adds, recalling the endless carping of managers pre-VAR. His tips are a return to the initial idea of rectifying only clear and obvious mistakes, and to bring the game together — managers, players, pundits — in agreeing a strategy. “What does the game want?” he asks, not just of football, but rugby too. It is a big question and Barnes is fascinating on the push and pull that comes with trying to answer it — administrators torn between entertainment and safety, coaches wanting a flowing game but not if it means missing out on penalties. Stuck in the middle of this tension are the referees. “The owners and chief execs say we need entertainment, bums on seats and less stoppages. The trouble is that you put coaches in a room after a match and they show you the 15 incidents you got wrong, then the Wayne Barnes speaks to Matt Dickinson about handling abuse and his vision for future of refereeing W ayne Barnes reflects on a refereeing career of two decades, five World Cups, a record 111 Tests and a ludicrous amount of idiotic abuse which has included threats against his family via his professional email. Given that Barnes is a lawyer, that seems a particular form of stupidity. “People sending threatening messages to a lawyer on a legal practice email, ” Barnes ponders. “I just can’t help thinking that’s odd.” His plea for the authorities to take action when criticism turns to foul abuse and then death threats has been heeded, albeit on the other side of the world. Barnes reveals that police in Australia are investigating sinister messages to one World Cup official and his wife. “It looks like someone will get a knock on the door soon,” he says. “World Rugby should be championing that: if you threaten referees, players or coaches we will report you and this is what can happen.” Abuse, and its effects on family, relationships and morale, forms an important part of our chat but Barnes wants to make clear this is not the reason he recently announced his retirement aged 44. As he says, it has been a long run given he started as a teenager. He wants to expand his legal work. He had been talking to the RFU about stepping down long before he finished at the pinnacle, by taking charge of last month’s World Cup final between South Africa and New Zealand. The man from Gloucestershire blew his final whistle without losing his gratitude for being in the thick of world-class sport or a love for a game he still hopes to serve. But there is no avoiding that one of the game’s top officials — “the best referee in history,” Stephen Jones wrote here recently — also opens his new autobiography, Throwing the Book, with the depressing reality. “Someone told me I was shit at my job the other day,” he writes. “I suppose it was better than being wished a slow and painful death, which happens occasionally. Or someone calling me the third most evil man in the world, just behind Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, because I failed to spot a forward pass.” That is a reference to New Zealand’s quarter-final defeat by France in 2007, his first World Cup, where one wrong call, which could Barnes says the abuse put a strain on his relationship with his wife, Polly fall into the trap of ‘That It’s a struggle to stay in the moment — we can “ went wrong, I’ll even it up’ Ofiicial leader Most Tests as referee 111 100 72 70 69 Wayne Barnes (England) Nigel Owens (Wales) Romain Poite (France) Jonathan Kaplan (South Africa) Craig Joubert (South Africa)

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 2GM 67 Sport compares the donning of a wig and robes to his referee uniform; maintaining an illusion of control and clarity in the heat of the moment. “It’s a mask to an extent, you are performing in both,” he says. With his vast experience — 17 Six Nations tournaments, ten Premiership finals — and his independence of thought Barnes will make an excellent mentor to the next generation. He thinks they need it. He helped to set up the International Rugby Match Officials association to give them a voice. “If governing bodies stuck up for us, there would be no real need for a referees’ union,” he writes in his book. He wants officials of the future to feel more empowered to allow a game to flow even as they work with technology — and, given control of rugby, would rule that the benefit of doubt should go to the attacking team. “People say that isn’t consistent. It is consistent if you are attacking,” he says. Barnes has definitely officiated his last big game, though adds that he is due to referee football for one of his kids’ teams after our call. “[Being football] I will probably get more shit from the sidelines than at the Stade de France,” he says, laughing. Somehow he has made it to the finish line with a sense of perspective and humour. If only the same could be said for many of those critics. 6 Throwing the Book — The Strife and Crimes of a Rugby Referee by Wayne Barnes with Ben Dirs is published today by Constable, £25. or decisions. “A promise before the tournament from the people there to protect us,” he says. Football finds itself in difficulty over this. Webb has tried to open up about errors but then finds a manager such as Mikel Arteta seemingly demanding one every week. As Barnes says: “Who decides which decision warrants an apology? Which decisions do you go public with? Social media might tell you one thing, the amount of vitriol from a coach something else. As soon as you do it once, how do you decide where to draw the line?” Judging from the amount of criticism, it never seems to appease anyone. “People in responsible positions, governing bodies, coaches, need to realise their words have consequences.” He cites the example of Taylor being mobbed at the airport on his way back from the Europa League final, whipped up by a nasty outburst from José Mourinho, the Roma manager. Barnes received death threats from South Africa after Rassie Erasmus, the Springboks’ director of rugby and a serial offender, stirred up abuse after a defeat by France last year. Erasmus received only a twomatch ban while Barnes and his family had to deal with the fallout. I wonder how he manages to set these difficult instances aside. Barnes explains that in the Tupperware box in which he carried his whistles, there was a note to self: “Referee the present not the past.” Following the advice of a mentor, he would write “reset” on his hand. “That’s the work I’ve done with a sports psychologist around those moments when you start thinking ‘I wonder what the coach will think about that’ or ‘I wonder how that will be reported’ or ‘I wonder what my selectors think’. Your mind is playing tricks, you are in the red zone. “That’s the struggle to stay in the moment and the best referees are able to do that, but we can all fall into that trap of ‘that went wrong, I’ll even it up’. I read Steve Peters [the sports psychiatrist] and that chimp idea, wanting to belong to the pack. It makes total sense. You go to the Millennium Stadium, 78,000 people wanting Wales to win, and it’s very easy to belong to that pack. But that is the art of refereeing — to stay in the moment, to reset.” His background as a barrister helps. It taught him he was never going to be chasing professional popularity. He Erasmus’s detailed criticism of Barnes prompted attacks on social media Barnes finished his career making big calls in the World Cup final Vow to fix ‘toxic, bullying’ WRU The Welsh Rugby Union has been condemned as unfit for purpose, toxic and having a bullying working environment in which employees lived in fear, according to an independent review. The review was commissioned in February after the resignation of Amanda Blanc as chairwoman of the Professional Rugby Board, and an investigative programme by BBC Wales that raised claims of sexism, misogyny, homophobia and bullying at the WRU caused a public outcry. An intimidating and poisonous culture was unearthed in interviews with more than 50 witnesses, many of whom were frightened to speak out in case their identities were revealed. The report found that many of those spoken to had suffered burnout, anxiety and mental health issues in an environment that was described as “unforgiving, even vindictive”. There was also found to be widespread infighting and incompetence in the running of the governing body, which lacked the “appropriate skills to run a £100 million business” and was “unsure on its feet, allowing problems to develop and with a tendency to manage the problem rather than the underlying issue”. Richard Collier-Keywood, the new WRU chairman, reaffirmed his board’s pledge to adopt all 36 changes suggested in the review conducted by Dame Anne Rafferty, the former Court of Appeal Judge. The review stated: “The work environment had elements of bullying and discrimination and was experienced as toxic by some employees. They found working at the WRU stressful, with a sense of powerlessness and even fear. “The governance of the WRU long failed to put in place secure systems managed by those with appropriate skills to run a £100 million business. The WRU’s governance undermined its efforts to fulfil and balance the roles and responsibilities of both a national sporting body and a large business.” Top of the list of changes for the WRU from Dame Rafferty and her panel is the appointment of an oversight body, to which the WRU will now report quarterly for the next three years. Another key element to the reforms is implementing a “fit and proper person” test for anyone voted on to the WRU council and board, as well as greater transparency, and aligning the WRU clearly and publicly with inclusion and diversity. Reform of the financial support to clubs is also recommended, along with greater investment in the women’s and girl’s game. The whole horrors of the claims made against the WRU in the BBC Wales programme in January, which centred around the former head of women’s rugby at the union, Charlotte Wathan, are investigated in the review. But the most damning part of the report are the two contributions from Blanc. Her resignation speech and letter of resignation are included and made very difficult reading for Collier-Keywood and the WRU’s incoming chief executive, Abi Tierney. Blanc, the UK government’s Women in Finance Champion, said she had heard one Council member say “women should know their place in the kitchen and stick to ironing — men are the master race”. Blanc also claimed the recruitment process in 2020 for the chief executive at the time, Steve Phillips, “was not undertaken in line with good governance”. He left in January with a severance package of £480,000. Tierney will take over in January when she leaves her posts as director general at the Passport Office. “We will take what the review has found to heart and not only fix the issues identified, but also build a culture and values that we can all be proud of,” Tierney said. “Because of the pain we are going through now, and with gratitude to those who have spoken up and made us listen, we will become better.” Sale hoping Curry will be playing before Christmas by South Africa that Bongi Mbonambi, the opposition hooker, had called him a “white c***”. He received a torrent of hate via social media in the days that followed, while World Rugby deemed there was “insufficient evidence” to take any action against Mbonambi, who denies the allegation. Curry injured his hamstring in January which ruled him out of the Six Nations Championship and damaged an ankle leading up to the World Cup. He was sent off just three minutes into England’s opening match against Argentina. Curry had been hoping to return to club action for Sale against Newcastle Falcons on Friday but the hip problem has made that impossible. Sanderson said: “Tom has seen a specialist in Harley Street for an assessment. He came into training and was all right until we did any intensity and he stiffened up and it took a while to free him up again. There are some chronic micro tears in his labrum [cartilage in the joint] and one or two of them may be from the World Cup. “I don’t think anyone who plays and trains like Tom does is ever going to be devoid of an Achilles’ heel — in the metaphorical sense. Something is going to give at some point and then it is about how you manage it. This is not tragic or career-ending by any extent. “We will put Humpty Dumpty back together again and we will see him soon enough — hopefully by Christmas — and then we will take the long-term effects of this as we find them. “Whatever the future treatment, we have to be strategic and we spoke about that. It could be rehab over a couple of weeks or a lot longer depending how much wear and tear there is.” Meanwhile, Jonny May has been cited for “reckless or dangerous play” during Gloucester’s 45-27 defeat by Bath last Friday, when he made headon-head contact with Ollie Lawrence. May’s case was being heard by a disciplinary panel last night. continued from back Curry is unable to play for Sale due to a hip problem Rob Cole

Times Crossword 28,761 across down Yesterday’s solution 28,760 Check today’s answers by ringing 0905 757 0141 by midnight. Calls cost £1 per minute plus your telephone company’s network access charge. SP: Spoke 0333 202 3390. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 T R A N S V A A L S A P I D A I E N I E L R R E T R A I N T O N N A G E I Q A I O N A F I C H U L O G A R I T H M F H A I A A E S M A C K E R O O A G A R R E E U B E H E I R A B S T A I N E R O S C L R E E L I M O U S I N E I C T U S I A T S D T P D E T R O I T G N O C C H I A I U I A N O T Y A C H T C O R N E I L L E 1 Pass through edges of thoroughfare packed with partygoers (8) 5 Front component removed from funny eyepiece (6) 10 Ignoring the odds, tell couple to run off together (5) 11 Bird — a crow, say — possibly eating spiders at first (9) 12 Cultured Liberal taken in by long set of policies (5,4) 13 The best European diet (5) 14 Gentleman left ring burning for some meat (7) 16 Thick slice of bread I put safely back (6) 18 Family-friendly car in close to immaculate condition (6) 20 Exasperated PA losing head in front of journalist (7) 22 After knocking back ten, was the boss tipsy? (5) 23 Every single carriage fitted with extremely snazzy, comfy seat (4,5) 25 Shelter to use here in a storm (9) 26 Festivities drag in the end, unfortunately (5) 27 Bearing in mind love liberates hearts (6) 28 Unruly individual crude after drink? Indeed! (8) 1 Step required to break lock and gain unlawful entry (8) 2 Grieve endlessly following a romantic affair (5) 3 Terribly nervy when on date, sometimes (5,3,3,4) 4 Piece of bagel placed in dry container (7) 6 You almost succeeded locating obscure novel (5,3,2,5) 7 Current facility supporting large debt (9) 8 Welsh chap inviting me in for chips and dips for two (6) 9 Valuable things like TVs? (6) 15 Tough soldiers not speaking about the final part of WWII (9) 17 One horribly sad year, it seems to me (1,4,3) 19 Joke always largely upset square (4,2) 20 Author mostly concerned with having no luxuries (7) 21 American city gift stores selling tat, primarily (6) 24 Tolerate everything that hurts! (5) y(7HB7E2*OTSNNM( |||+[!.' Newspapers support recycling The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2020 was 67% This was Puzzle Three in the Qualifier at the Times Crossword Championship, where 85 contestants solved it correctly Martyn Ziegler Chief Sports Reporter Football’s lawmakers are to consider trials of sin-bins for dissent in professional competitions and adopting rugby’s rule where only the captain can approach the referee, as part of a drive to tackle misbehaviour. The International FA Board (Ifab) is holding its business meeting in London in a fortnight and dealing with “participant misbehaviour” is seen as a priority, with fears that referees are being driven out of the game by abuse and assaults. Trials of sin-bins have been taking place for four years in English grassroots and junior football, where players have to leave the pitch for ten minutes if the referee judges that their words or actions are dissent, and have generated widespread support. One Ifab board member told The Times that the next step could be trials in professional leagues. Sin-bins would be used only for dissent at this stage. Ifab will also consider adopting the rule in rugby where only a team’s captain can approach referees. That would go further than the change in the Premier League and EFL this season, where if there are two or more players around a referee they risk being booked. There have been 88 bookings for dissent this season in the Premier League. The only player to receive a second yellow card for dissent is Oli McBurnie for Sheffield United against Tottenham Hotspur in September. Sport 2GM Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Flintoff to get Hundred job Elizabeth Ammon Curry suffers new injury woe Chris Jones Andrew Flintoff is the favourite to be appointed the head coach of Northern Superchargers in the Hundred next summer. It would be Flintoff’s first formal paid role in cricket since suffering serious injuries in a car crash in December while filming for the BBC series Top Gear. The former England all-rounder made a return to the game in the summer, when he was hailed for the impact he made as a mentor to England’s white-ball teams, as well as to the England Lions and England Under-19. The position with the Superchargers is likely to be only for the duration of the five-week tournament, plus some additional days, including the player draft in March, which would allow Flintoff to continue his work with England and the development teams. Tom Curry is battling a hip injury that could keep him out of action until Christmas in the latest setback of a difficult year for the England flanker. Alex Sanderson, the Sale director of rugby, was yesterday informed of a specialist’s verdict on Curry’s hip problem. It is feared the condition could become chronic and require management for the rest of his career. Sanderson, however, insisted that the club “will put Humpty Dumpty back together again” as they sort out a treatment and rehabilitation plan for the 25-year-old, who earned his 50th cap in the third-place play-off win over Argentina at the World Cup. Curry hit the headlines in France after complaining to the referee Ben O’Keeffe during the semi-final defeat Plan for dissent sin-bins Lukas Brud, the chief executive of Ifab, told The Times: “We have identified participant misbehaviour as a major problem for football and it will be the main topic for Ifab for the upcoming years. We are looking at what we can do either via the Laws of the Game or recommendations and guidelines for additional measures. “Sin-bins for dissent have worked well in grassroots football, and some believe these could also be tested at a Football’s lawmakers want clampdown on players’ bad behaviour to attract new referees Tears of joy as Luis Díaz is reunited with his father Liverpool forward sees father for first time since his kidnap ordeal in Colombia. Page 63 Matt Dickinson talks to Rugby World Cup final referee Wayne Barnes ‘I got wished a slow, painful death’