Cook slips to first-class fail March 22, 2015 ENGLAND Test skipper Alastair Cook marked his return to first-class cricket with an uninspiring score of three while representing the MCC against Yorkshire in the domestic season’s curtain-raiser in Dubai yesterday. The 30-year-old was trapped LBW by ex-England seamer Ryan Sidebottom in the third over of the day, although did last longer than his former [...]
Refs’ chief in plea for video March 22, 2015 REFEREES’ chief Mike Riley has called for English football to adopt video technology to enable officials to make more accurate decisions, following the controversial sending off of West Brom’s Gareth McAuley. West Brom manager Tony Pulis made a similar plea after referee Neil Swarbrick mistakenly dismissed McAuley instead of team-mate Craig Dawson early in the [...]
England have shown World Cup winning potential, insists Carling March 22, 2015 FORMER captain Will Carling insists England’s ultimately forlorn Six Nations title bid showcased snapshots of the quality needed to dismantle any opponent during this autumn’s World Cup. Stuart Lancaster’s side finished as championship runners-up for the fourth successive year after falling tantalisingly short of holders Ireland on points difference, despite dispatching France 55-35 on a [...]
Last-gasp Sarries dispatch holders Exeter to claim LV=Cup silverware March 22, 2015 SARACENS match-winner Ben Spencer insists the club’s underpinning unity came to the fore as his side secured the LV=Cup with a last-gasp 23-20 victory over defending champions Exeter at Franklin’s Gardens yesterday. Scrum-half Spencer, who received his first career yellow card shortly before the break, slotted over a last-minute penalty after two tries from full-back [...]
Schmidt revels in title tension March 22, 2015 IRELAND coach Joe Schmidt believes the manner of his side’s heart-stopping Six Nations triumph will prove a sizeable investment, despite causing short-term palpitations. Holders Ireland claimed back-to-back titles for the first time since 1949 after beating Scotland 40-10 at Murrayfield, a points differential which England ultimately failed to overhaul against France. Schmidt said: “It was [...]
Manchester United win means Liverpool must make history to qualify for Champions League March 22, 2015 With Manchester United taking home three points from their trip to Anfield, Liverpool will need to make a small slice of Premier League history if they are to qualify for next season’s Champions League. Thanks to two Juan Mata goals and Steven Gerrards’ rapid red card, Louis van Gaal’s side inflicted a first league defeat [...]
Theatre review: The Broken Heart ensnares gut and mind March 20, 2015 Sam Wanamaker Playhouse | ★★★☆☆ What a piece of work the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is. In little over a year, it has become a priceless gem in London’s theatre crown. While the Globe deftly cycles through crowd-pleasing Shakespeare, the Playhouse breathes life into his relatively neglected contemporaries and successors, writers who often vocalise present day concerns [...]
Art review: Borderlands March 20, 2015 Gallery for Russian Arts and Design | ★★★★☆ Contemporary Russian and Ukrainian artists come together to reflect on the military conflict in eastern Ukraine and what it might mean for the future of the region. Artists from Kiev and Moscow have used video, photography and sculpture – including a brick rendering of the recently redrawn border of [...]
Film review: Mommy March 20, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Consider this sequence in Mommy. Steve, a hyperactive teen fresh out of a correctional facility, walks sulkily down a corridor behind his mother Diane. Cut to a point-of-view shot – presumably Steve’s – of Diane’s bum wiggling as she sashays along. In one neat edit we learn many things about this [...]
Theatre review: Stevie is too bloated, too stiff and too long March 20, 2015 Hampstead Theatre | ★★☆☆☆ At the end of the Piccadilly Line, in a spindly fortress made of words, sat Stevie Smith; poet, secretary, inscrutable figure on the peripheries of the literary establishment. Smith lived her entire life within the confines of a padded melancholy. She was comfortable there, and productive, producing over twenty volumes of [...]