ASHES & EAGLES
2021 is rammed with sporting goodies at the crease, on the course and court. In the second part of our series, we lay out the tantalising treats that are (hopefully) in store
CRICKET BY PAUL NEWMAN CRICKET CORRESPONDENT
CRICKET’S administrators have never really believed i n the concept of less is more and they will not be holding back in their attempt to make up for lost time i n 2021. This year, all being well, will be chock-a-block with mouth-watering goodies.
The highlights of the red-ball and white-ball years come in quick succession in October and November for England, when Eoin Morgan will attempt to become the f i rst captain to hold the 50- over and Twenty20 World Cups at the same time, before Joe Root seeks the Ashes at the third time of asking under his captaincy.
Both could be within reach. Morgan’s white-ball machine is as dynamic and ruthless as ever, as we saw in the 3-0 Twenty20 series win before the abrupt halt to England’s South African tour, and they will head to India among the favourites.
Remember, they came within a freak last-over assault by Carlos Brathwaite on Ben Stokes of winning the l ast Twenty20 World Cup, also in India, and are a much stronger team now with the experience of that dramatic 50- over triumph at Lord’s behind them.
Whisper it but Root’s Test side are well placed to repeat the f abled Ashes s uccess of Andrew Strauss’s team ten years ago, too. Okay, they have lost 5-0 and 4-0 amid bitter recriminations in their two tours of Australia since then, but this is an emerging England Test side under a captain who has grown into the job.
Crucially, in Jofra Archer, Mark Wood and hopefully Olly Stone, they have the extra pace they will need in Australia and in Stokes a talisman who would desperately love to make up for missing the last Ashes tour in the aftermath of his Bristol implosion.
A note of caution. There was a reason England planned to rotate their fast bowlers last summer before Stuart Broad made himself undroppable and Jimmy Anderson made it clear he, too, was far from finished.
And that reason is they know they will be beaten again if they go into the Ashes with an attack of Anderson, Broad, Chris Woakes and any available spinner, even Adil Rashid. They will need the X-factor on Australian pitches that Archer and Wood can provide. Both need to be in the side in Brisbane in November.
Before those twin jewels there will be plenty to keep England busy. Tours of Sri Lanka and India are followed by a packed international summer with visits by Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and probably New Zealand if England fail to qualify for the first, and almost certainly last, World Test Championship final at Lord’s in June.
Not to mention a full domestic programme featuring a county championship of three conferences plus a Bob Willis Trophy final. And, the ECB insist, the delayed introduction of their controversial new Hundred competition.
Then comes a white-ball tour of Bangladesh before an historic first visit to Pakistan in 16 years for two Twenty20 matches en route to India for the World Cup.
So it is little wonder England have already said they will build in rest periods for their multi-format players even though, rest assured, those top stars will not be resting come the Indian Premier League in April.
However busy England are in 2021, any suggestion they should put their feet up rather than cashing in on the IPL is sadly dismissed as old-fashioned and unworkable. Never mind. There is much to look forward to this year — hopefully with fans in attendance.
GOLF BY DEREK LAWRENSON GOLF CORRESPONDENT
NO NEED to look far to find the undoubted highlight of what promises to be a compelling golfing year to come. As if the four majors and an Olympic gold medal on offer are not enticing enough, September will bring a rare bonanza.
Not only are the Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup being staged in the same year, they are taking place in the same month.
We might mourn the reasons for this rare confluence but let us hope by then the pandemic will have slipped down the agenda, full-capacity c r o wds are permitted, and we get to savour the best of what the men’s and women’s game has to offer.
The Solheim will be up first at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, where the Americans are sure to be fired up after being on the wrong end of a Medinah-style miracle in losing at Gleneagles last time.
Then, a little over 400 miles away at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, the Ryder Cup will finally be staged, with all the signs being that we will be exceedingly glad by then of the 12-month postponement. What a fascinating match it promises to be, with a formidable array of young talent on view. And Lee Westwood.
How good it will be to have the Masters back in its rightful place in April, although how many patrons will be allowed through the forbidding gates is a matter f or conjecture. Enough, one suspects, for the roars through the pines that were so badly missed in November to be back.
The last time the US PGA Championship was staged at Kiawah Island was also an Olympic year. Rory McIlroy will certainly be hoping it proves a lucky omen. He was at his imperious best in the summer of 2012. While the London Games were transfixing a nation at home, he added to the feelgood mood with glad tidings from abroad, winning by a tournament record margin of eight shots.
Tiger Woods will be similarly upbeat about the return of the US Open to the scene of one of his most astonishing successes. In 2008 at Torrey Pines, near San Diego, he really did win the title on one leg, and while having to play 91 holes at that. Once the epic had finally ended, he disclosed that he had battled on, against all medical advice, with a torn anterior cruciate ligament and a fractured fibula. He was not seen again for eight months.
Will this be the year we finally see a home winner of The Open? It is encouraging that two of the last four winners of the Claret Jug at next year’s venue, Royal St George’s, were from the UK: Scot Sandy Lyle in 1985 and, last time out, Darren Clarke from Northern Ireland in 2011.
Breaking into the world’s top 50, improving on that stunning sixth-placed finish on his Open Championship debut, adding to the first European Tour victory secured in 2020 — and making a charge for the Ryder Cup team — will all be i n the sights of Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre. Who doesn’t turn 25 until August.
As if all that is not enough to whet the appetite, there is also a Curtis Cup, a Walker Cup… and no fewer than nine European Tour events being staged in the UK.
It is going to be some year.
TENNIS BY MIKE DICKSON TENNIS CORRESPONDENT
THE ETERNAL fascination of the battle between youth and experience will define tennis in a gradually revived 2021.
Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams are threatened by what should be a more sustained assault than in recent years, and not all may survive it. It would be far from astonishing if at least one of Federer, Williams — and possibly Andy Murray — decides this is the year to walk off into the sunset after a glorious career.
So stand by for SW19 to become a vale of tears when Wimbledon returns f rom the sabbatical forced upon it last summer.
Just the fact that the tournament happens will be e motional e nough, and it definitely will go ahead bar some horrible variant emerging in this Covid crisis. An educated guess is that this might be at around half capacity, but hopefully greater.
While the Australian Open has shifted back three weeks in a calendar reshuffle, the working expectation among the game’s rulers is that the tournament schedule will be happening as planned from mid-April onwards, the start of the European clay campaign.
By then, we should have seen f urther c hall e nges to t he established order f r om the younger generation.
In the vanguard on the men’s side should be Dominic Thiem, Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas. In the women’s, there should be Naomi Osaka, a hopefully r e s t ored Bianca Andreescu and the discovery of 2020, Iga Swiatek.
Experience, however, teaches us to be cautious when it comes to attempts to dislodge the male Big Three.