West Indies teams of the 1980s were
adored, even when they were slaugh-
tering everything in their path. Chris
Cowdrey tells the story of captaining
England in the last Test against the
Windies in 1988 at Headingley with the
series lost. He walked out for the toss,
immaculate in his whites and England
blazer, down the pavilion and out to
the square in almost total silence. As he
stood waiting, he became aware of an
excited murmur round the ground, fol-
lowed by wild applause as the capacity
crowd stood to hail a man sauntering
out in plimsolls and tracksuit bottoms.
It was Viv Richards. And that’s what
being popular is all about.
Brian Clough’s brilliant Notting-
ham Forest teams were admired as
well as loved, as was their irascible
manager. The players were pretty like-
able too. As for modern football, David
Beckham was the last really popular
player. In tennis, Roger and Rafa are
more loved than Andy and Novak.
We admire and fetishise the ceaseless
power and skill of the All Blacks, but
I am not sure we love them. We cer-
tainly loved Jonny Wilkinson, but we
merely admire Owen Farrell.
It’s a tricky one, and that is why the
epic between Rose and Garcia was so
uplifting, not least for the great sports-
manship they showed to each other.S
ergio’s fiancée used to be a pre-
senter on the Golf Channel, which
has had a busy few days. An eagle-W
hat a treat to be Sergio
Garcia. Not only have you
just won your first major
and trousered a small fortune, you are
also loved by all and sundry without
exception; not least by your absolute
corker of a fiancée, the sensational
Angela Akins, who looks like she
should be from Malaga, but is actually
Texan. Sergio and Justin Rose, his
play-off rival at the Augusta Masters,
are two of the most popular sportsmen
around. The scenes of rapture as the
18th-green crowd leapt to their feet as
one when Sergio holed his final birdie
will stay with me forever. But winning
and being popular don’t always go
together.
Don Revie’s Leeds were pretty suc-
cessful, but almost universally loathed.
Alex Ferguson’s Man United played
some of the best football we will ever
see and cleaned up every trophy going,
but loved? Ferguson was admired
and not much more. Jose Mourinho is
a proven winner all over Europe, but
popular? Come off it. Aussie cricket
teams are never liked, no matter how
great their players. Yet the magnificent
eyed viewer spotted that Lexi Thomp-
son had replaced her ball a few inch-
es away from her marker at the ANA
Inspiration tournament in California.
He phoned up and Lexi got a four-
stroke penalty which cost her the title.
There was a general chorus of sympa-
thy for Lexi and a consensus that TV
viewers can cry foul in the privacy of
their own front rooms but beyond that
they should shut up. But golf is played
over a vast area and is therefore vul-
nerable to undetected mistakes and
cheating, so marshals need all the
help they can get. I saw the Thomp-
son incident and her ball was some
way from the marker. The four-stroke
penalty was too severe, but it didn’t
look too good.E
arly days for the cricket season,
but why on earth are Alastair
Cook and Joe Root sitting out the
opening games of the County Cham-
pionship? Cook is injured apparently.
Hmmm. Surely these guys want to
get a bit of mileage into those chunky
cable-knits of theirs. Moeen Ali was
a studio expert for the Indian Pre-
mier League and Jonny Bairstow
popped up at the Masters. We have
eight players at the IPL, seven first-
class —Woakes, Stokes, Buttler, Mor-
gan, Roy, Billings and Jordan. I love
the IPL but this getting silly. Shouldn’t
some of them be turning out for their
counties at home? It’s not as if our last
Test series went that well.Q. My aunt lives in a small
market town with narrow roads
and limited parking. A neighbour
opposite acquired a large and
gruesome camper van and
parked it right outside her front
door. The neighbour was polite
enough to ask, and my aunt
was polite enough to say that,
of course, it was no problem. A
year later, the van is still parked
there. Not only is it ugly, but it
is a huge inconvenience, given
that the space outside her house
is permanently out of use for
both her own car and for anyonevisiting (e.g. me). Personally, I
want to have it crushed it into
a small cube and leave it on the
neighbour’s doorstep, but my
aunt has begged me not to say
anything, for fear of upsetting the
delicate ecosystem that is a small
market town.
— C.L., London SW18A. Your aunt (or you) must tell
her neighbour that she is having
a builder in and will need the
space outside for heavy goods to
be brought in and out ‘on and off
for a few months’. This should jolt
them out of their complacency
and make them decide on the
camper van’s future.Q. Two of our daughters board
locally but often come out for
Sunday lunch with friends. We
love having them, but these girls
consistently ignore verbal andwritten requests that no wet
wipes should go down the loo.
Consequently, we regularly have
to call out expensive plumbers.
When confronted, they always
say, ‘I didn’t think just one wet
wipe would make any difference.’
But only last Monday ‘just one
wet wipe’ caused a problem
that cost £160 to resolve. We can
hardly strip-search them before
they go to the loo. Your advice?
— R.G., Calne, WiltsA. The sale of non-biodegradable
wet wipes now needs to be
criminalised. In the meantime,
you can remove them from
the equation by installing an
increasingly fashionable outdoor
composting toilet. From the piles
of ordure generated, wet wipes can
be removed with garden sticks.Q. I read this week that MichaelBond’s Paddington Bear was
modelled on his own father —
‘He was a very polite man. He
always wore a hat when he went
out, in case he met a lady he
knew’ (so he could raise his hat).
I too am a gentleman of the old
school and like to raise my hat if I
meet females of my acquaintance
while out. However, one of these
is part of a lesbian couple. Her
companion apparently dresses
in a butch way. Should I raise my
hat once or twice? I wouldn’t
wish to risk being ‘no-platformed’
at the local golf club prize-giving.
— M.T., Ledbury, HerefordshireA. Since those of an offence-
taking age are too young to
interpret the gesture, it would be
safest to raise the hat twice.Write via the editor or email
[email protected]Spectator Sport
What makes
players popular?
Roger Alton
The golf epic
between Rose
and Garcia
was uplifting,
not least for
their great
sportsmanshipDEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED