The River Of Dreams

Winning Wimbledon is not just a British obsession. Witness Novak Djokovic winning the title today and dropping to his knee's to literally taste the grass of SW19.

The post-match, on-court interviews really struck me this year. Usually, I do not care for the practise of immediately badgering a response out of an either elated or despondant sportsman; nothing interesting is ever said. Today, though, the candour with which both Djokovic and defeated Rafa Nadal spoke was genuinely uplifing. The Serb staded that Wimbledon had always been his dream, and that he thought he may still be asleep. So he sleepwalked his way through that final then?

Djokovic was often brilliant, sometimes inspired and always composed throughout the 4 sets. His play in the 2nd set in particular was the best tennis on display at this year's championships. He had tactics, targetting Nadal's backhand service returns and cross court game, and he executed them flawlessly. Combine that with his talented offensive game; something that has come on tremendously in the past half year. Before, I have stated that Andy Murray needed to get to Djokovic's level of consistency to have any chance of winning Grand Slam's. This view is now too harsh on Djokovic; his game is still consistency, but in a manner that nobody else in world tennis is now able to stand up to. He is now an overpowering force, as opposed to a reactionary one like Murray. His elevation to World Number 1 is undoubtedly deserved, and adds another interesting twist to the men's scene.

(Plus, his victory means that I predicted the winner correctly from Day 1. Which has literally never happened before.)

I give a great deal of praise to Nadal as well. I think that his foot injury was impeding him in the later stages more than he showed outwardly. However, without regard to any of this speculation, he was outplayed and beaten today. And he accepted it with the grace and humility of a real champion. We are truly fortunate to have tennis players and men of the calibre of Nadal, Federer and Djokovic. The crowd certainly knew this; the cheers for Nadal in defeat were if anything louder than for the victor. I was genuinely a little moved by his respectful behaviour and connection with the crowd. He will be back, and they will cheer him again.

GM

He Didn't Start The Fire

Vladimir Klitschko is certainly a good fireman, smothering David Haye's 'over-zealous' challenges with ease last night in Hamburg.



(For today only, my posts will be using Billy Joel songs as titles)

The Ukrainian's unanimous points victory can be considered a successful night's work. Ultimately, questions over Klitschko's ability to excite an audience were of less importance to him than shutting up ill-recieved challenges to his reputation. He put together yet another solid display of strategic boxing, and reaped the rewards. This still does not make him a thrilling boxer to watch, or even a particularly memorable one, but it reinforces once and for all the fact that he is a great talent nonetheless (seriously, he looks like that, and he still got with Hayden Panettiere. That certainly took talent).

David Haye can be a lot less pleased with how things went. Seriously, after all of that pre-fight hype, to lose on points in a foreign land is his worst case scenario. It has cost him his belt, and with it his shot at a lasting legacy.

I forgive Haye's brash behaviour in the leadup to this bout. It, by hook or by crook, got people interested in the match. I do not think that Haye is genuinely a jerk; he has merely recognised that playing the bad guy would be good for bigging up the event. Frankly, it is the way he earned the 50% of the total fight revenue he eventually secured. If he wants to tarnish his name for the sake of money, then that's his choice. It is at his doorstep, after all, not ours (as Brit's).



I do not, though, appreciate a fighter who does not live up to his word. Haye was more defensive than Klitschko for almost all of the 12 rounds. He demonstrated no ability to breach the Ukrainian's defences early on, or to deliver hits of real power, and failed to take risks as the fight developed. Surely he could see that, without an aggressive approach from start to finish, he was always prey to the judge's whims. All his slips and falls, whether tactical or otherwise, certainly didn't help his image in the scorers' eyes.

I fail to see exactly what Haye actually did during his months of training. Too often he threw horrible, full arm club swing hooks; rarely did he connect with any strong shots to the head. And even as the 12 round dawned, he still refused to take the risks needed to get his hits in. At some point he must have realised that Klitschko's defence wasn't going to crack; that should have been the time he decided to become more aggressive, and sacrifice some of his defensive solidity in order to land the punches he needed to.

All in all, I am just glad I didn't pay to watch this.

(To be fair, the intro's, featuring Lennox Lewis and George Foreman, were pretty sweet)

GM

Better Still, Until They Go Wrong

Fantastic - a perfect subject worthy of continuing our little "From Russia With Love" dialogue! Manchester United completed the signing of young Spanish goalkeeper David De Gea this morning to take their summer spending to around £50 million. There is also talk of them pinching Samir Nasri off Arsenal before the start of pre-season training, which will set them back at least another £20 million (incidentally, Arsenal are screwed next season - will patience with Arsene Wenger finally run out?). Fergie's intentions are clear - having been totally outclassed by Barcelona in the Champions League final last month, he needs to build the next golden era, cementing their place at the top of the English game and creating a team able to compete with Messi et al (and Real Madrid for that matter).

With De Gea, Phil Jones and Ashley Young, you undoubtedly have talented footballers worthy of wearing the red at Old Trafford. But are they actually an improvement to the current United side, which, whilst comfortably champions this year, are nowhere near the best that Ferguson has had at his disposal over the years? With De Gea, his hand has been forced. Edwin van der Saar, the best since Schmeichel, has finally retired having seemingly been playing football my entire life. He simply refused to go away and generally continued being excellent all that time. Thomas Kusczak and Anders Lindegaard could never dream of matching up to his standards, let alone those of the Great Dane. De Gea is a young pretender, with a big frame and superb reflexes making him an excellent stopper in one-on-one situations. Having just won the European U21 Championships with Spain, he is essentially the new Iker Casillas. But at half van der Saar's age, will he command both the penalty box and the language essential for boring through Rio Ferdinand's thick skull in the same way? Time will tell of course, but Fergie has put a lot of faith and cash into the long-term investment. My gut instinct tells me that there will be the odd clanger, but De Gea will be No.1 at Old Trafford for the next 10 years. By which time Fergie will be dead. Put money on it now - new signing still to be at United when manager dies. Good odds guaranteed.

Jones and Young are the ones that confuse me a touch. I just cannot see where the upgrade is despite the fact that they are most certainly amongst the best of the young English talent at the moment (which in itself says a lot). It is clear that Blackburn's struggles last season were primarily caused by their lack of attacking flair, so sought after was Jones, along with his defensive partner Chris Samba, who is currently being courted by Arsenal. Again, he has all the physical attributes to be a success, but is the centre of defense really somewhere that needed strengthening? Are Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic not the best all-round centre-backs that United have ever had? Would it not have been wiser to have invested in some full-backs who don't perpetually get caught out of position by any winger with a bit of pace and nous? Certainly, Ferdinand's body is on it's way to packing in altogether, so I suspect Jones will get some game time next season, but is mainly one who will come into his own in the future - another who could be at Old Trafford for a fair while. But his arrival will not be the difference between Champions League runners-up and winners.

Which brings us finally to Ashley Young, signed for that tantalisingly frustrating fee of "undisclosed". Just tell us OK, it makes life a lot easier when calculating team's net gain/loss in transfer fees during the close season (it gives me a break from calculating bowling averages etc). Who has he been signed to replace? Certainly not Paul Scholes, who liked to sit deep and distribute - Young is much more pacey and reliant on trickery in his creativity. Much has been made of the number of assists he created for Aston Villa's frontmen (known for the most part as the Darren Bent Show in 2011), so perhaps Fergie views him as a man to keep the chances coming for Rooney and Hernandez. But what about the investments made recently in Antonio Valencia, who looked resurgent on his return from injury, and Nani, who despite falling out of favour towards the end of the campaign was the Fans' Player of the Season? Perhaps he will play off the front two - but then what was the point in extending Ryan Giggs' contract for another year? To keep him out of trouble (Graeme will represent me in court)?

What I'm getting at is that I don't believe that Young is any better than any of those players. At Villa, he was the big fish in an ever shrinking pond. They no longer had ambitions for trying to break the top four and were more content with life in the top half. It's a move that will suit the player's ambitions more than it will suit United. In all likelihood, Nani, in my opinion the best of the current attacking midfielders, will be moved on to accommodate Young in the starting XI, with no further use for Park Ji-Sung's industry either. And I see no net gain from this for United and so I question why it was necessary to splashed out so many undisclosed millions on a man who will not be capable of singlehandedly lifting them above Barcelona in the European pecking order.

United have stated their intentions by splashing the cash so far this summer. However, the personnel they have brought in will not immediately give them their wishes. Now if they could get Nasri on the other hand...
RM

Sex Differences

(Before we start; Ryan, I use a lighter)

Wimbledon has now reached the stage where most of the matches are interesting. So far the tale of the tournament has definately been the discrepancy between the men's and women's tournaments. Basically, all the pre-tournament men's favourites are winning, while all the woman's favourites have already lost.

This year's opening rounds have gone by fairly anonymously. There has simply not been a memorable match to talk about in the early stages. Going back only as far as last year we had the Federer-Alejandro Falla near-upset and the Isner-Mahut physiology-defying encounter. No such excitement occurred this year.

Now that we are in the latter stages, though, things have started to pick up. We lost Robin Soderling, Stanislas Wawrinka, Gael Monfils and Andy Roddick before the 4th round, and last year's runner up Berdych fell soon after. We now have a quarter final lineup featuring Feliciano Lopez, Mardy Fish and young Bernard Tomic competing with the big favourites. Nadal's 'will it-won't it' injury might make the final stages even more interesting, and could provide Andy Murray with an actual, quantifiable chance of reaching the final. My tip is still Djokovic but, frankly, let's just see what happens.

The women, in stark contrast to the men, have been fucking up all over the place. The consistency in the women's game is terrible; witness Li Na, with the best form entering the championship and with the French Open in the People's trophy cabinet, crashing out early. Both Williams' are gone, proving that experience and testosterone can only take a rusty player so far. And daft old Caroline Wozniacki, upon finding out that her route to a first Grand Slam was wide open, promptly got herself beaten as well. It's looking very much like Sharapova and Azarenka will be competing in the final, but with the sheer random nature of this year's results, I reckon it is just as likely that Virginia Wade comes down from the commentary box and wins the damned thing herself.

GM

Known Knowns

Yes I've been incredibly lazy in the last few weeks - the second and third Tests were such damp squibs that I simply didn't bother to cover them and all the other Wimbledon coverage, a classic Canadian Grand Prix and some ludicrous transfer rumours have simply passed me by. But then I am on holiday. So I'm over it.

Regarding Graeme's analysis of Saturday's T20, the highlights of which I caught on my way back from Istanbul (I resisted the temptation to ask a man in a suit if he had a match), he felt that someone with a little more experience in cricketing matters needed to analyse where it all went wrong. So here I go:

Michael Lumb and Craig Kieswetter were the openers in the Caribbean World Cup victory last year. Since then, Lumb has been injured and overshadowed domestically by his Hampshire opening partner James Adams. To my mind, Bell should be in the side in his place - I have a very vested interest in Kieswetter, who offers that extra dimension with the gloves as well as a superior technique. But, like Lumb, he goes hard at the ball early doors. You can only really afford one opener to do that. Bell, in the form of his life, should have been there to help his less experienced colleague to keep his head.

Suranga Lakmal did not bowl shit. Thissara Perera did. Sri Lanka are a much better one-day outfit than they are a Test unit. As a unit, with the wiles of Malinga and Jayasuriya, they gave England nothing. The only man in the XI who is not worthy of selection is Luke Wright, who is an all-rounder in that both his batting and bowling are equally mediocre at best. Rather than looking at it as an inherent problem in English T20 cricket, let's just say they had a real off day. And I actually thought Jade Dernbach bowled pretty well. Even if his name is horrendous.

Finally Broad - I will defend him by saying that selection decisions are not made by him alone. But he must stopping bowling short deliveries all the time. Yes, he does bowl a very good bouncer but by persisting with it the element of surprise is lost and you can be lined up and dispatched. As he was here, along with the very average looking Chris Woakes (Tim Bresnan would have played if fit - but Woakes is young and needs to learn how to control the new ball better. His time will come again). And you cannot position yourself at fine leg as a captain, especially in T20 when you need to be constantly changing your fields. I've done it myself for half an over and felt totally isolated from the decision-making process and so swapped myself back into the ring. This was a chastening debut for him. But he may learn.

Or he may not...
RM

Confronting My Known Unknown's

The month of June is principally a holiday month here at BtC. Suffice to say that not much gets done when one of our writers is on a well-deserved holiday, chasing the sun in exotic lands, and the other has just finished working God knows how many days in a row in a demeaning 'job' and has just mustered the effort to write something tonight. I'm sure you won't need too much help working out who is the happier of the two of us just now.

(To give you an insight into the immediate future of the blog, after a brief holiday of my own in July, Ryan and myself will both be back at the helm together, ready to once again give our usual combined 200% committment to Beyond The Cliche.)

This blog prides itself on consistantly covering as many sports as possible, and while Ryan and I can both write copiously about some things, there are a few topics that one of us clearly knows more about than the other.

This would be fine for 90% of the year, when we are both around to cover for each other. Sadly, as mentioned, we are currently in the 10% of the year that leaves me attempting to write about motor sport and (deep inhalation of breath) cricket.

So Sebastien Vettel has shown up the doubters who had started to predict the end to his dominant form with a strong win in Valencia. Other words to describe his performance would be canny, controlled and well thought-out. In other words, boring. To be truthful, it wasn't much of a watch, and I couldn't stay with it until the end.

The finishes of Mark Webber and Jenson Button were more interesting though. webber's 3rd place puts him equal to Button points-wise, and these two will be the closest challengers to Vettel from here on out. Not that this challenge will be particularly fruitful though; the German's 77 point lead equates to a lofty lead. Vettel will have to screw up at least two races and watch Webber or Button claim back to back wins to be in any way anxious.

On to cricketing matters. This will actually be the first time I have ever written about the sport in any capacity, so I am as interested as you about how this will pan out! Let's enter the Twilight Zone...

I've been given an easy topic with which to debut my cricket journalism; England's T20 performance against Sri Lanka. Ryan has already talked about the Sri Lankan's visit; this game in Bristol was a stand alone 20 over outing which seems to me to be no more than padding for the tour.

The main point of interest here was the captaincy of Stuart Broad, leading England's T20 side for the first time. Basically, he didn't do that well. I should probably write a bit more than that, shouldn't I?

The 9 wicket loss can certainly be described as a hiding. It really demonstrated the weakness of the English batting order. Broad's deployment of Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb to open things up, ignoring the better form of Ian Bell, failed when both men were retired quickly. Kevn Pietersen and Eoin Morgan worked out well together, punishing some shit bowling from Suringa Lakmal and Thisara Perera, but their dismissal led to the prompt collapse of English resistance. Bell in the middle order could have prevented this, but Broad chose to fit more options with the ball into the side. This didn't really help much though.

Chris Woakes and Jade 'Why mum, why' Dernbach were beaten up, and Broad failed to lead by example. With everyone else failing to threaten, Graeme Swann stayed on trend and contributed nothing either. Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara easily led the Sri Lankan's to their modest target.

This loss was partly down to bad luck; Kieswetter and Lumb leaving the party so quickly pretty much screwed up England's mindset, but their selections were both probably justifiable given their County form. The capitulation of the middle and lower order is of more concern though, and needs to be analysed by someone who knows more about cricket than I do. All I can say with certainty is that it really didn't work.

But hey, it was only one meaningless game, just as this is the only one time I'll need to write about cricket this year. It was just there to fill the void.

GM