ON THE BALL

Brian Viner sings the praises of modern sport.

THE lament that things aren’t what they used to be is often heard in this modernday England of ours. Buses, trains, music, hedgerows, politicians, pubs, sitcoms, newsreaders, common civility – spend long enough in any gathering and at least one of them will be cited as evidence that things have gone to pot.

Sport gets the same rap. Money is destroying football; it’s an abomination that Test cricket isn’t on terrestrial telly; rugby union has forsaken its integrity; steroids are everywhere.

I’ve heard it all and, for that matter, said it all. Yet perhaps we should try celebrating what we have.

I started going to football matches in the mid-1970s. Hooliganism was in its grotesque prime, pitches were often quagmires and standing on the terraces was a weekly exercise in survival strategy.

I first went to see Test cricket aged 10 in 1972. While it was less dangerous to life and limb, the rate of scoring was funereal, and if you

happened to miss a rare moment of explosive action, there was no big screen on which to watch it again.

In 1978 I queued for hours to get into Wimbledon, then for hours more to get a standing-room spot on Centre Court.

By the time defending champion Björn Borg overcame the gigantic American left-hander, Victor Amaya, who had the temerity to take him to five sets in the first round, I was almost as hot and sweaty as they were.

On Centre Court now, everyone gets a seat. There’s a retractable roof to deal with the rain and the quality of tennis is almost immeasurably better than it was a generation ago. Ball and racquet technology, combined with improved standards of fitness, has changed everything.

Moreover, we are coming to the end of the sport’s golden age, the era of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, and of Sir Andy Murray giving us what, in 1978, would have seemed about as likely as England’s football team winning that year’s World Cup, for which they didn’t qualify: namely, a Wimbledon men’s singles champion.

English football, too, is for the most part a more exhilarating spectacle than it used to be. Lighter balls and boots, and beautifully manicured pitches, have a lot to do with that.

As for rugby, we can bemoan how those skinny quicksilver wingers of yore have been replaced by thundering human battering-rams, men who 40 years ago would have been considered goliaths even as second-row forwards, but this year’s World Cup in Japan will be a festival of excellence unlike anything we could have imagined back then. The spectator experience has made giant strides forward.

In the sweltering summer of 1976 I went with friends to golf’s Open Championship at Royal Birkdale on the Lancashire coast.

We paid £1 for a flimsy cardboard periscope – conspicuously sponsored by Benson & Hedges. So even though I was there, it was largely through two artfully angled mirrors that I watched the young Spanish sensation, 19-yearold Severiano Ballesteros, go so thrillingly about his business.

You won’t see forests of periscopes when this summer’s Open unfolds at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland. They’ll have tiered stands everywhere, not to mention a vast tented village with shops, restaurants and even banks.

The consumer is king these days. When I was a boy, consumers at sporting events were treated like cattle. So much so at football matches that we used to moo, by way of humorous protest, at the way mounted police officers would herd us along the terraced streets around the stadium.

So, while I endorse most whinges about the way sport in England has evolved, it’s important to acknowledge the areas of progress.

England is the cradle of sport. We gave the world football, cricket, both codes of rugby, tennis and much besides. Though I’ll let our northern neighbours take the credit for golf.

But England is where most of it began, back in that extraordinarily productive Victorian age. So, however our international teams might be faring at any one time, England will always be, at least in my slightly partisan estimation, the most significant sporting country on earth.

And we still punch well above our weight. If you think of Wimbledon, Lord’s, Twickenham, Wembley on Cup Final day, the Cheltenham Festival and Royal Ascot, there’s absolutely no doubt that we still do sport better than anyone else.

“Standing on the football terraces was a weekly exercise in survival strategy”