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In the current wild and fragmented landscape, there is comfort in the sport’s ability to bring hope and community

Next week in Caen, at a baseball practice ground, on a pitch made out of two pieces of chipboard with some carpet stapled on top, a cricket tournament will unroll. Nine teams of refugees, mostly based in Normandy, will fight it out over two days in a series of round-robin T5 tape-ballgames.

The battles will be fierce, the bowling often fast, with added jeopardy if the ball hits the not-very-well-disguised join between the two bits of chipboard. Chris Drew, a Guardian reader who lives locally, will umpire. “You watch county cricket and there is time,” he says via video call from France. “Time is one thing that you don’t have here. It is hit, it is whack, it is run, it is bowl – it is quite something. When they whack the ball, it stays whacked. There are no defensive shots.

“It’s all about having a good time. People being together who want to be together because we love the game. They leave everything else at the door. I never ask anyone where they come from or what their status is – it’s just about bringing a moment of happiness.”

The community spirit extends further. Teams do not yet know whether they will qualify for the knockout matches on the second day so players will bring tents, and many will camp in local gardens. “It’s all about mucking in,” says Drew. But there are limits. The bowlers will run in from one end of the ground so the houses lining one side of the boundary do not get peppered with unfamiliar flying objects.

That the players have equipment at all is largely down to another group of volunteers.Project Front Foot(PFF) are a registered charity that collects spare kits from clubs and redistributes it to refugee groups. For the first 10 years of its inception, PFF mostly worked in the Dharavi slum in Mumbai, providing equipment for the children living there. They changed tack shortly before Covid to provide for those closer to home – to Germany, where cricket clubs sprung up overnight with the arrival of 1.5m refugees, France, Portugal, Lebanon and London.

It is a labour of love for the project leader, Vic Mills, and his team. In September, they collect from clubs who have something to donate (often because of a change of sponsor), take three or four days going through it all, number it for customs – who post-Brexit need everything individually labelled – and store it in volunteer Tim Gill’s double garage until March.

Then they unpack it all again, refill the spread sheet, stock the van with the right equipment for the right clubs and get on the road in time for the beginning of the northern hemisphere cricket season. This year there were 48 bags and 13 boxes of clothing and equipment, plus a dozen bin liners of sportswear – more than 2,000 items. They included: 48 bats, 30 wicket sets, 86 pairs of pads, 123 pairs of batting gloves, 15 pairs of wicketkeeping gloves, 35 helmets and 74 caps and sun hats.

“We’ve moved up to the largest Transit that the boys feel confident enough driving,” says Mills. “Many of the county clubs have been extremely generous – with particular thanks to Steve Archer and the YorkshireCricketBoard and the Lancashire Foundation.

“These guys we’re delivering to have nothing, they haven’t got much money or practice kit. We’re finding a home for equipment that would otherwise go to the charity shop or landfill. With a lot of projects, very rarely does all the money allocated get to where it is needed; we can reassure people that we can find a home for pretty much everything.”

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On 4 April, the PFF van arrived in Caen and some of the bags were unloaded into another garage, this one belonging to Drew, before a celebratory barbecue for players and volunteers at the house of Caen CC’s president, Julia.

“[PFF] provide us with bats, with pants, with helmets, with jockstraps, everything you could want,” says Drew. “They, like Julia, who is absolutely fantastic, are heroes for providing something for the mental health of these lads.”

Have they had any feedback about the tournament three years in? “The teams want to come back, which I take as a positive sign. There’s a demand, there’s an enjoyment and we’re growing. I’m not saying everything’s perfect. It’s like every cricket club. Not everybody loves everybody all the time.

“But if you come along to the events, you respect everyone else there. The fair play, the spirit of cricket, and that goes outside the bounds of the cricket pitch as well.”

In the current wild and fragmented landscape, there is something comforting in the cricket’s ability to still bring hope and community, as well as grasping around for yet more dollar bills.

If you would like to donate to, or are a club with refugee cricketers who would like a kit donation from Project Front Foot please contact them onprojectfrontfoot@gmail.com.

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The South Africa captain talks about street cricket in Langa, adapting to new schools after a scholarship and why playing at Lord’s means so much

“There was always some sort of allegiance with Lord’s when we were growing up in Langa,” Temba Bavuma says of his childhood as a township boy living just outside Cape Town. Bavuma, the first black cricketer to captain South Africa, will lead his country against Australia in theWorld Test Championship final, which begins at Lord’s on Wednesday.

In the quintessentially English surroundings of Arundel, the 5ft 3in Bavuma looks as if he has gone back to being a kid in the dusty townships. “In Langa we had a four-way street,” he says, his face crinkling with the memories. “On the right-hand side of the street the tar wasn’t done so nicely and we used to call it Karachi because the ball would bounce funny. The other side was the MCG [MelbourneCricketGround] but my favourite section of the street was clean, and done up nicely, and we called it Lord’s because it just looked better. So, as a kid of 10, I already had that dream of playing at Lord’s.”

Bavuma is 35 and he has long carried a burden of responsibility. In 2017 he was the first black South African to be chosen as a Test batter and, six years later, he became even more of a pioneer when appointed captain. He has won eight and drawn one of his nine Tests leading the Proteas. He will soon discuss the odds South Africa haveovercome to reach the Test final, ahead of the economic powerhouses India and England, but we linger over the lessons of Langa.

The sidestreet nicknamed the MCG was favoured by the older boys. “I’d be playing against 15-year-olds who preferred it because it had a downhill, which helped them when bowling fast. That’s where my competitiveness comes from. Even at 12, you have to front up to the older guys. They’re not going to bowl any slower, or give you half-volleys, just because you’re younger.”

Danger, steeped in South African township life, loomed over those innocent games of cricket. People were murdered in Langa but, as Bavuma says, “during the day it was OK. It was more at night where all the action happened – if we can call it that. But Langa is rich in its sporting culture and it gave us that space where we found respect and support from the community.”

When he was “around 10” his prodigious talent meant he was offered a scholarship at SACS, one of South Africa’s most privileged white schools. “It was tough integrating within the system, learning and understanding the [white] culture,” Bavuma says, “but it helped that I came in as a cricketer. In terms of making friends, it was a bit easier. But I had to learn about discipline and etiquette, which are such big things in that culture.

“I also had to learn confidence. Can you imagine taking a child from the township into a system where, basically, everything is there. There were always doubts. Am I good enough to be here? Do I deserve this opportunity? I always felt the need to prove myself.”

Bavuma recalls being one of only three black boys at primary school and he would commute every day from Langa to the plush streets in the hushed shadow of Table Mountain. “As a kid you are quite ignorant,” he says when describing the jolting contrast. “You see things but it’s very hard for you to comprehend – even if the disparity is quite obvious. It would really hit me when SACS played against Langa. At that time Langa was strong in cricket and I would be playing against my friends that I grew up with in the township.

“I would be a SACS boy who’d been there two years. By then you know how to conduct yourself at lunch. You’re not going to dish up a big plate whereas my friends from Langa would have huge plates. We’d laugh about it but, when you think about it, the Langa boy would be wondering when is he going to get another opportunity to eat food like that?”

When his family moved to Johannesburg, Bavuma transferred to another prestigious school, St David’s, which has recently named its cricket ground after him. “By the time I went to St David’s I was one of the boys. I understood the whole culture and I was fluent and confident in English and my studies. But it took time.”

It also took Bavuma time to master Test cricket. He was thefirst black South African to hit a Test hundred, against England in January 2016. Seven years and two months passed before he finally reached his second Test century – 172 against West Indies in March 2023. The key difference was Bavuma had just become South Africa’s captain. In that role he has an average of 57.78 with the bat – after seven 50s and three hundreds. Before the captaincy his average was 34.53.

“You obviously grow in confidence,” he says of the improvement. “The added responsibility as well, getting pushed up the order, is something I thrived on. But most of all I just understand my game and I don’t try playing like anyone else.”

Michael Vaughan and others havequestioned South Africa’s presence at Lord’s– with the former England captain suggesting that Bavuma’s men face Australia “on the back of beating pretty much nobody” and “don’t warrant being in the World Test Championship final”. This sidesteps the inequalities that mean South Africa have played the fewest Tests in this current cycle.

Without the injured Bavuma they sent a skeleton squad to New Zealand, and effectively surrendered that series, as key players were required to play in a domestic Twenty20 competition that brought in desperately needed funds. They needed to win their last seven Tests in a row – beating West Indies away, sweeping a two-match series in Bangladesh and then winning four Tests at home against Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

South Africa looked imperious apart from the second innings of the first Test against Pakistan at Centurion. Chasing a modest 148 on a challenging wicket, Bavuma was top scorer with 40 but walked after thinking he had been caught. Back in the pavilion replays showed that he was not out. The Proteas collapsed to 99 for eight and it needed a nervy 51-run partnership between Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen toedge them to victory.

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It was the second time that Bavuma had walked at Centurion. “I thought I’d nicked the ball,” he shrugs. “I didn’t even refer it because maybe there was embarrassment at the shot I played. It was also instinct to just walk. I thought the bowler had gotten the better of me and I’d given away my wicket.”

Bavuma spent much of the ensuing run chase in the toilets: “I was locked in the bathroom, sulking at the shot that I played but also hearing the wickets falling. I was taking a lot of blame as it was a critical situation for the team. As the leader I wanted to take the guys over the line so I was dealing with lots of emotions. But I kept hearing the cheers and saw that KG [Rabada] and Jansen weren’t in the changing room. When I peeked out, they were still battling and we needed just 15 runs.”

South Africa then won their final match against Pakistan at Newlands by a crushing 10 wickets after Bavuma hit a century. Have the Proteas made a defiant statement by reaching Lord’s at a time when Test cricket is slanted against teams outside the big three? “Yes, definitely. We want to continue staking a claim as one of the top cricketing nations but we can’t compete from an economic point of view. The only way we can compete is on the field. Obviously we would love to go the whole way and win because for us to be seen as an attractive nation we’ve got to keep being competitive.”

If South Africa defy expectations, would becoming Test champions be the most significant achievement in their cricket history for, despite coming close in World Cups, they have blown past opportunities? “I believe so. We shouldn’t forget that Graeme Smith’s team were World No 1 in 2012 but there wasn’t a Test championship then. In the last couple of years we have been knocking on the door. We get into finals, semi-finals and we’ve been relentless in pursuing something that’s been elusive to us – which is silverware. We’re going to keep knocking on the door and, at some point, it has to open.”

Bavuma acknowledges the size of his team’s task against the much more experienced Australians. Batting against their formidable attack means that there is little respite. “That’s always the hardest thing about playing against Australia. It’s no different now facing [Pat] Cummins, [Josh] Hazlewood and [Mitchell] Starc. You need to be on top of your game against those guys.”

When Iinterviewed Bavuma previouslyhe admitted that he struggled more against Cummins, his captaincy counterpart, than any other bowler. “Yes, he’s relentless,” he says now. “He’s on that length and keeps coming at you. He’s very, very competitive.”

In his most recent Test innings, Bavuma scored 106 against Pakistan in January but over the past 18 months he has struggled with elbow and hamstring injuries. He insists he feels fit again, and scored an unbeaten 58 against Zimbabwe in a rain-affected friendly in Arundel last week, but concedes that the vast knowhow and depth of Australia will test his young team.

“When you assess their strengths, that experience is obvious. They’ve also played a lot and been successful in English conditions. Some of our guys still need to go through that. But that so-called inexperience from our side can also be a strength. The biggest thing with our guys is not to burden them with anything and keep encouraging them to have confidence in the way we’ve been doing things.”

Bavuma regards the last time that South Africa played Australia,in a series defeat in 2022-23, “as a turning point in my career. That tour was tough for the team. Personally, I managed to get runs but it was inconsequential. I’ve always been confident in terms of absorbing pressure, but that series made me understand that it’s important that you exert pressure and how you go about that. I realised it was a lot about fronting up.”

He was made Test captain after that humbling loss to Australia and his influence and his stature has grown considerably since then. But the responsibility bearing down on Bavuma, the little pioneer, is more intense than ever. “It doesn’t get easier,” he says wryly. “People keep pushing those levels of expectations and you’ve got to find a way to get mentally stronger. But I’m doing that and I’m still enjoying the game.”

In his only other Test at Lord’s, in 2017, Bavuma scored 59 in the first innings but England won by 211 runs. “My memories are not good from the team’s perspective as Moeen Ali bowled us out in the second innings. But this game against Australia at Lord’s is different. Remembering all that Lord’s meant to us in Langa, this is definitely one for me to enjoy and to embrace. It will be a highlight of my career.”

The former Sky/Ineos road captain, now a directeur sportif with Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale, answers your questions

If you could become a GC rider for one attempt at winning the Tour, which rider from the current peloton would you choose to be your road captain, and why?Fergus

I can only comment on Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale and my previous team, Ineos. Until you work with a road captain and hear them on the radio, you don’t know how good they are. On my current team it would be Stefan Bissegger, and from Ineos Ben Swift. What I value is their directness. They’re both quite blunt: ‘Let’s not mess about, if you’ve got something to say, say it.’ They’re brave with their calls, clear and precise with instructions, not afraid to put their necks on the line. One thing a lot of people don’t realise with cycling is that the radio quality is terrible. You’ve got to be short, sharp and direct. If there’s any sitting on the fence, you’re fucked.

Do you think cobbles have a place in modern Grand Tours? The addition of the Montmartre sector in the final stage of this year’s Tour de France has the potential to be decisive if the GC is tight.Sam Johnson

No. I’m a bit old-school, I don’t think it has a place. I’ve seen the likes of Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas, Egan Bernal and Brad Wiggins, how they prepare for a Grand Tour. They sacrifice everything, they live on top of a volcano, do everything right, to go to this Grand Tour and be in the best physical condition possible. I think there’s too much risk, there’s too much on the line. As an armchair fan, yeah, great excitement: cobbles and gravel. But for that individual the risk is too high – and for the race. If you lose one of those GC superstars it’s got a knock-on effect. Let’s say you have a cobbled stage on stage five, and you’ve got Pogi [Tadej Pocagar] and [Jonas] Vingegaard. You should have two weeks after that of rivalry between two great riders, two great teams. But one of them crashes on stage five. What you’ve gained on one day of excitement, you lose in the next two weeks.

Do you think riders are too guarded around journalists now? Don’t we need to keep newcomers excited and intrigued about the sport?Hannah Nicklin

One hundred per cent agree. Any sport needs characters. When you look at the past, some of Cav’s [Mark Cavendish’s] interviews were great. There were a few less fucks given back in the day. Peter Sagan, some of the stuff he did: spraying his moustache green, mad celebrations and interviews. But the big downfall is social media. It’s terrible. It’s hostile. If people give a flamboyant interview and put their neck on the line, they open themselves up to get destroyed. People are so cautious and nervous. How many interviews do you hear where they say – ‘It was a great race, my team are very strong, it means so much to me to win this race.’ It’s like, Christ, mate, give me something else. There are people on Twitter [X] who simply aren’t worth listening to. They’ve got an opinion, cyclists see it, and it gets them down. People who write genuine hate and threats don’t realise they are talking to a human being. The sport needs people to show emotion.

A few years ago, I saw a couple of your Sky teammates stopped at a cafe in a mountain village (Isola village) while out on a training ride. Where is your favourite training ride cafe?Rooto

It’s a little cafe down on the Côte d’Azur, below Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Every time I went there, I ordered the same sandwich that wasn’t on the menu. ‘Can I have this, that and the other.’ They ended up naming the sandwich after me. It’s still on the menu: The Luke Rowe panini.

Have you encountered riders, or specific race situations, where you’ve been particularly surprised by another rider’s intelligence – or perhaps a noticeable lack thereof?Mikkel

I see things daily that blow my mind. As a DS [directeur sportif] there’s one basic rule of the convoy: do not pass the cars on the right-hand side. As a DS you only look in your left mirror, and if anything happens, you swing right. I see riders going up the right of the convoy and I wish I could say to them: ‘Mate, I’m not being a dickhead, but go up the left. You’re risking your life.’ Up the right is the death zone. In pro cycling the only ‘certificate’ you need is your legs – but there should be a sit-down test for stuff like that.

What’s the conversation like in the peloton; professional pleasantries, work talk about the task at hand, or salacious gossip?David Alderton

Racing used to be a lot slower and more relaxed. You’d say: ‘We’ll have a chat when the break goes, mate.’ And you’d genuinely have a catch-up and a chinwag. Now the racing is too fast to talk. The last years of my career I talked to nobody. I just tried to keep my head down and save every bit of energy I could. I used to try and lighten the mood sometimes, and say a stupid comment as I passed someone. But 90% of the time it’s work, not pleasure.

Are you good mates with Geraint Thomas, or was it purely a working relationship?David Thomas

I’ve known Geraint for 25 years. More. We grew up three, four kilometres from each other. We’ve done some great stuff together and what you see is what you get. He’s genuinely a good friend of mine.

What do Ineos need to do over the next five years to build a great team again?Paul Harnett

Take a step back and reassess. The short-term answer is go out and buy the next superstar, that could be a short-term fix. They were so successful because as one GC rider’s prime was coming to an end, the next one was coming through. They would invest heavily in the next one and it worked very well. If they want to be the No 1 GC team, they need to think about the No 1 GC rider in 2028, 2030. Who is he? Where is he? Is a current pro? Is he an amateur? That’s what you’ve got to be looking at. Who is that individual? You can make a great team but if you haven’t got that one individual, you’re fucked.

When you look back at all the other teams you’ve ridden against, which one makes you think: ‘That’s a team I could happily have ridden for, they were so good’?Mike Jarrey

Saxo Bank-Tinkoff. That was one of few teams that approached me during my career when [Alberto] Contador was at the helm. I spoke to them briefly, but when it came to negotiation, it was clear I was going to stay. They noticed I could have done a job. It would have been a cool option, they are classy team, always had nice bikes, nice equipment, big leaders. They had Contador, [Peter] Sagan. Michael Valgren was there in his prime, a good friend of mine. That’s the only point in my career I considered it [leaving Sky/Ineos]. If I could ride for any team past or present it would be HTC-Columbia. A big part of that would be to ride with Cav. I only rode with him in a trade team for one season and after that, many times for GB and stuff. But I loved riding with and for Cav. HTC had a lot of guys I got on well with. They had a great dynamic on and off the bike.

I much prefer watching the Giro and the one-day classics to the Tour, they’re much more unpredictable. Which races did you prefer to ride?Gerard Miller

The Tour and the Classics, for me. If you speak to Joe Bloggs and say – ‘What do you know about cycling?’ – I’m pretty sure they’ll say the Tour, and after that, the cobbled Classics. For me, they’re the biggest races, I think for the sport of cycling they’re the biggest races. Is the Tour the most exciting, or the Giro? It depends on your standpoint. You have the biggest riders at the Tour but you have more unpredictability at the Giro. This year’s Giro was one of the greatest Grand Tours I’ve ever seen. Not just because of the last day, I thought the whole three weeks was fantastic. But for me, it was the Classics and the Tour. They are cycling. As an athlete you want to race at the pinnacle, and that is the pinnacle.

Would you support your kids if they wanted to follow in your footsteps and pursue a career as World Tour riders?Andraz

Yeah, whatever they want. If they want to be a cyclist, I’ll back them. If they want to be a football player, I’ll back them. If they want to be a ballet dancer, I’ll back them. Whatever they want to do I’ll jump in head-first. But I wouldn’t steer them towards the sport, and I wouldn’t steer them towards any sport. I wouldn’t want to live my life through them or their success. They’ve got to be their own people, make their own decisions, choose their own route in life.

As you start your new career at Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale, what is one Ineos way of doing things you want to copy, and one thing you are happy to leave behind?Andy Delaney

One thing I prefer at Decathlon is the real human nature in the team. They really care about the individual and the person. Any staff member, any rider, they see as an asset and you’ve got to perform: but beyond that they pull back the curtain a bit and see the human behind. How are you as a human? How’s the family? And I love that. I felt loved and respected at Ineos. But more so with some staff … I think staff are treated better at AG2R. From the get-go I would never say a bad word about Ineos. There is no bad word to say. It’s a great organisation with great people. But I think the way Decathlon-AG2R treat their staff is another level up. The infrastructure is still the best in the world at Ineos. They’re not the best team but in terms of infrastructure they are pretty hot. The departments, how they distribute responsibilities, is world-class. There’s definitely learnings you can take.

What chances do you think there might be for a Welsh World Tour team? Wouldn’t it be great to have a Welsh team modelled on something like Euskaltel-Euskadi, for so long a symbol of Basque pride?Ed Gdula

Yeah, it would be fantastic. But there’s optimism v realism. You need a huge backer, a huge headline sponsor, if you want to operate at that level. Thirty, £40m, £50m [yearly budget] … if you want to be one of the best £60m, £70m. It’s a great question but I think a World Tour team is a little bit ambitious. Euskaltel-Euskadi is Pro-Conti, where the budget reduces drastically, and that might be possible. It’s finding the right backer, finding the person who wants to take the project forward. It’s something I’ve never really thought about and it would be incredible. In Wales you’ve got a core group of riders who could push it forward. I think Welsh people probably top the ranks of proudest people about their country. They’re such patriots.

Your old teammate Chris Froome got dog’s abuse when he was winning the Tour de France because of doping suspicions. Tadej Pogacar’s peformances are on another level completely. How does the peloton react to this?Simon Watkins

Froomey’s successes came off the back of a very suspect sport, off the back of theLance Armstrong thing, and the whole sport collapsed for a while. Shortly afterwards Froomey was king of the sport. Whoever was king post-Lance Armstrong was going to get destroyed. We had some hate off certain people throughout our time at Sky because we were the best. Now Ineos is not the best, I don’t think anyone suspects anything.

Why doesn’t Pogacar have so much hate? I think it’s because the sport is in the best state it’s ever been in. And I think this is largely down to the inclusion of the biological passport. It really has cleaned up the sport. I think it’s a very hard system to defeat or lie when you’re getting all your results continually plotted on a graph, and you can test positive just for an anomaly. When was the last rider who got caught or went positive in cycling? I can’t think of one in the past few years. When I started my career, every month there would be someone. The sport’s in a good place. Riders and teams can say it, but the proof is in the pudding.

Do you feel theSkytrainof the 2010s is wrongly put down these days as being one strong team putting a lid on the racing?Michael Baxter

It’s quite a harsh criticism because what we did was quite new. No team before or since managed to dictate a race the way we did. I think to have that strength in depth, that organisation, that belief in your teammates, that chemistry in the team was quite special and unique. I think there was some beauty in what we did. Was it particularly exciting to watch? No. Did it put a stranglehold on the race and stop a certain level of flamboyance and panache? It did. Guys were afraid to attack. We had the strongest leader, the strongest team, and were the most organised. We were hard to beat.

Is Lance Armstrong regarded as a genius, or hated among the modern peloton?Les Rowley

I can only talk for myself, and I sit somewhere in the middle. He ruined the sport, he cheated, he broke people’s hearts. I was gutted when I saw the news: I was a Jan Ullrich fan but I still loved Lance, and what he did was unforgivable. At the same time, and maybe this is me being a bit soft, he made hundreds of millions for charity. He went through cancer and still achieved greatness, despite taking drugs [PEDs]. Every single person in the world has been affected by cancer at some point, and he did a lot of good for that, so there’s two sides to it.

With the peloton seeming to get younger each year, what do you think to replacing the best young rider white jersey with a best old rider (say, over 35) grey jersey?Vic Baker

I think it’s got value: the white jersey is becoming outdated. Traditionally a rider’s peak was 28 to 32, now you’re seeing 21-year-olds winning Grand Tours. So it is becoming a little bit extinct, because riders are so good, so young. I’d be all for it. To replace the white with the grey would be quite cool. Any rider who’s performing at that level at 35 or above, you have to say chapeau, because they’ve done it for 15 years, give or take. That deserves a round of applause in itself. So I think a grey jersey instead of white has legs.

Would you trade all the Tour de France victories you’ve contributed to – meaning the team wouldn’t have won any of them – for a personal win at either the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix?Simon Winster

Interesting one. You know what? I wouldn’t change anything about my career. I did some good stuff, I did some stupid stuff … I would like to think I did more good than bad. But no. It would be huge, but what I did in my career is what I did in my career. I’m very proud of being part of those Tour de France victories. I was a very small cog in a big machine but I played my role. I’m happy with what I achieved, happy to close the chapter. I look back and honestly, it sounds cliched, but I just smile. No regrets.

Road Captain: My life at the heart of the peloton by Luke Rowe is published byPenguin. To support the Guardian order your copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Comments by Sabalenka ignore the American’s ability to perform at her peak under the most difficult circumstances

Aryna Sabalenka was understandably devastated byhow her first French Open final unfolded. Having established herself as the No 1 player in the world and made such significant improvements to her game and mentality, she playedsome of the best tennisof her career in Paris en route to the final. Sabalenka felt she was ready to tackle all obstacles. With her crushing defeat against Coco Gauff in the French Open final after three difficult sets, she found out she was not.

Her expression of that disappointment, however, was one of her least impressive performances of the year. During the trophy ceremony, with Gauff sitting metres away, Sabalenka’s insistence on repeatedly lamenting her “terrible match” was awkward enough. But in her press conference, after having a short amount of time to cool off, Sabalenka tripled down.

Gauff had won not because of her incredible level, she said, but because of her own mistakes off easy balls. How had her opponent made life difficult for her? By her framed shots magically landing in the court. Had Iga Swiatek reached the final, she concluded, the Pole would have won.

Nothing Sabalenka said was rooted in reality. Over the years, Gauff has built herself into one of the toughest players on the tour. She is the best defensive player in the world, which she pairs with her improvisational skills, intelligence and discipline. Between her phenomenal two-handed backhand, her potent first serve and an improving forehand that is perfectly suited to clay courts with its heavy topspin, Gauff also has more than enough weapons to hold her own against the best in the world. The American makes it incredibly difficult for any opponent to play their best tennis against her, which is why Sabalenka has repeatedly struggled to do so.

Under pressure from the 27-year-old in tough, windy conditions that could have easily exposed her own insecurities behind her serve and forehand, this was an immense fighting performance from Gauff, and an impressive victory. She is the first woman in history to win herfirst two grand slam titlesfrom a set down, with both victories coming against Sabalenka. Gauff is now a multiple grand slam title winner at 21 and ranked No 2 behind the Belarusian. This is no fluke.

After her victory, Gauff reflected on her difficulties before her first grand slam final at Roland Garros in 2022. Before that match, aged 18, she had been consumed by doubts and anxiety, unable to even breathe and questioning whether she would ever be able to handle the occasion. She learned from those lessons and has evolved into a formidable competitor who performs reliably well in the biggest moments. She now has 10 wins and three defeats in finals, a supreme record. Even after losing two WTA 1000 finals in Madrid , Gauff managed to save her best performance for the biggest final of all. Great champions thrive under pressure.

By contrast, Sabalenka is still trying to exorcise old demons. As a three-time grand slam title winner and one of the most successful players of her generation, she has handled herself extremely well in some matches, but under the right circumstances against the wrong opponent she still struggles to contain her emotions. Instead of dismissing the challenge posed by an opponent who has outplayed her in the two biggest matches they have contested, she could learn from the example set by one of her closest rivals.

On the path to this title, inspiration sprung up for Gauff in unexpected places. The night before the final, she was absent-mindedly scrolling on TikTok when a video of the Olympic 200m champion Gabby Thomas appeared. Thomas was explaining to a reporter how she had used written manifestations to aid in her quest for gold.

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Upon watching the video, an inspired Gauff sprung into action: “I was like: ‘I have this hotel notepad. I’m gonna write it as many times as I can fit on this, and I’m done.’ So I did it that night, and I was just looking at myself in the mirror, and I was telling myself, just trying to seal it in my brain so I had that belief.”

On a small piece of paper, Gauff had written a short sentence eight times: “I will be theFrench Open 2025champion!”

As the tournament concludes with Carlos Alcaraz retaining his French Open crown and Coco Gauff claiming her second grand slam title, we take a look at some of our favourite images from Roland Garros

Mon 9 Jun 202508.00 BSTLast modified on Mon 9 Jun 202518.54 BST

Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

Photograph: Andy Cheung/Getty Images

Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

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Photograph: Julien de Rosa/AFP/Getty Images

Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters

Photograph: Julien de Rosa/AFP/Getty Images

Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters

Photograph: Lisi Niesner/Reuters

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Photograph: Xavier Galiana/AFP/Getty Images

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Glitzy Euro squad launch helps the feelgood factor but there are still questions over squad harmony, strength in depth and player welfare

Music thumping, quick transitions, a host of celebrities and inspirational words. There’s nothing like an England squad announcement video to get you in the mood for a major tournament. “I hope you can feel it from the streets to the stands, the summer is in the safest hands,” the poet Sophia Thakur tells us, exactly one month out from England’s first game of Euro 2025 against France.

The slogan is “It’s time to go again” and the squad is announced by a host of big names, from Maisie Adam, Daisy May Cooper and Keely Hodgkinson, to David Beckham, Alex Scott, Bukayo Saka and Harry Kane.

Is the Lionesses’ title defence in the safest hands, though, how strong are those hands andhow much damage has the last week of turmoil done?

Sarina Wiegman’s 23-player squad is pretty much what many expected; Lauren James is winning her battle to be fit and ready, according to the manager, Lotte Wubben-Moy and Esme Morgan have received the nod in defence and the youngArsenal forward Michelle Agyemang is the wildcardpick.

There are gaps, though. Looking down the list there is a lack of experience in goalwithout Mary Earpsand there are only five named midfielders for the month-long tournament in Switzerland and one of those is Georgia Stanway, who has played only an hour of football since December (45 minutes against Spain on Tuesdayevening and15 minutes against Portugalon Friday night).

“We have to announce it as strikers, midfielders and defenders, but you can move players around, into different positions,” said Wiegman. “So it looks like there’s not much depth on paper, but in the team we have enough depth in midfield.”

That is true. James can operate at No 10, the captain Leah Williamson and Manchester United defender Maya Le Tissier can operate in the deeper midfield role that Phil Neville also tried Lucy Bronze in, and Lauren Hemp can play more centrally if needed. However, it is hard to look at those possible shifts as anything more than emergency moves given the weakening that would take place in the positions those players would be vacating.

These types of positional changes are not something that Wiegman has experimented with to any great extent. That said, the loss of Keira Walsh to injury and unexpected switch to a back five for England’s final World Cup group game in Australia in 2023 was hugely successful and brought an air of unpredictability to an increasingly predictable team.

Theretirement of Fran Kirbyand Earps andwithdrawal from selection of Millie Bright, all for their different reasons, has taken a hefty chunk of experience out of the squad and rocked the narrative around the Lionesses in the past week.

In 2022, the air of unity around the home Euros was strong. Players, staff, the public, the media all sang from the same hymn sheet. In 2023 the vibe at the World Cup wasn’t quite as harmonious, theplayers’ dispute with the FA over bonusestaken public, such was their frustration at a lack of progress.

This time thebonuses issue has been resolved, but the abrupt departures of Earps, Kirby and Bright just over a month before the tournament, despite the big differences in their nature, has left question marks over squad harmony.

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After the announcement of the 23-player squad, Wiegman was dismissive of any suggestion of friction in the camp, laughing off any mention of a possible crisis.

“That is not the case,” she said. “We know what’s going on in the team. There’s competition going on in the group, and I hope there’s competition going on. We’re going with this 23 to the Euros now and I feel very comfortable with this team, very happy with this team and I’m very excited. For me, it doesn’t feel like a crisis at all.”

Crisis may be way too strong a word, but the sky is definitely a little less blue and a little more overcast over England. Why did Earps not want to stay and fight, or at least usher the next generation through a major tournament? How did we reach a point where Bright’s mental and physical health have been so eroded that she has had to step back? There is work to be done here. A holistic approach to player welfare must be a priority.

Wiegman was praised by players for her straight-talking approach and for providing clarity on positions and strategy when she first came into the head coach role in the run-in to the Euros in 2022. It is inevitable, though, that that approach will be potentially fractious when the news is less good.

“For me, it’s really important that I am honest and that I treat people in the right way,” said Wiegman. “Sometimes you have very good news, sometimes you don’t have good news, I don’t go around the bush about that. I just give the message, I can’t control how people respond to that. I just hope they have clarity and we can move on.”

The nature of the conversations between Earps and Wiegman, or Kirby and the manager after she was told she would not be going to Switzerland, or how aware Wiegman was that Bright was struggling will remain, of course, unknown. Now, though, it is time to move on. The impact on the defending champions of the last week will only show come the end of July.

Britain’s performance in the Olympics and Paralympics has been transformed, but UK Sport must produce results on its promise of ‘social impact’ from that success

Sighs of relief accompanied theappointment of Prof Nick Webborn as chair of UK Sportafter a lengthy delay and rumours of existential threats from Whitehall’s latest quango bonfire. It is a tricky time to take over as sport hangs in limbo without a strong advocate at the cabinet table as impossible funding and policy decisions are being made.

At the same time, attitudes and expectations towards public bodies are changing as social needs and demands change. The need to justify the benefit to society of funding those who are world class at their sport is greater than ever. Arguably, there can be no organisation more suited to taking on difficult questions and reaching new heights than the agency that funds and masterminds Olympic and Paralympic high performance. So what’s top of Webborn’s in-tray?

There is always the need to check in with the vision, the purpose, theraison d’être. Set up in 1997 after Great Britain won one gold medal in the Atlanta Olympics, UK Sport’s mission was to ensure Team GB produced performances commensurate with the nation’s size and potential with consistent funding to create a world-leading system. In short, to become world class. It was unacceptable to finish 36th in the medal table and no longer a reasonable strategy to rely on outlier athletes to win largely through their own efforts. The best athletes from that point on would receive the best technical, physiological and medical support in return for medals.

The system worked beyond the wildest dreams of its architects, Sue Campbell and Peter Keen, who had never imagined reaching tallies of29 gold medalswould be possible at a single Olympics. Mind you, nor had they envisaged the cultural abuses that might accompany a newfound focus on medals above all else.

Over recent years, UK Sport adjusted its strategy to the aim of “winning well”, but leaders and coaches complain this remains poorly defined, while the clarity of medal expectations still dominates. A mantra of “medals and more” was introduced though this seemed largely to emphasise that medals came first and the rest was rather vague and secondary.

Bringing teeth to what “winning well” looks like – after checking whether the phrase still has credibility across theelite sports world, its athletes, coaches, leaders – feels essential for steering high-performance sport through its next phase. It is interesting to note the energy and passion the Australian system is putting into bringing this phrase to life.

There was a clear and striking vision in 1997 that fitted the wider social context – a different vision is needed for a very different era. The next issue in the in-tray may help. UK Sport has been talking more about increasing “social impact”. Recent organisational changes at UK Sport led to the social impact team being reduced and merged into the communications team, but this area needs to have greater substance, and less rhetoric, to seriously explore what “lasting positive social impact” could come beyond the Olympic and Paralympic medal table.

UK Sport’s strategy refers to “the powerful platform sporting success has to inspire and effect lasting positive change for individuals and society”. Those deeply invested in the current system or who have excelled through it fully buy into this. Yet serious evidence of this happening at scale is hard to come by. Recentresearchshowed that any minor uplifts in the form of increased physical activity or subjective wellbeing during London 2012 fizzled out once the event had finished. The narrative that Olympians inspire the next generation is often fuelled by stories that are told energetically, while on a larger scale, evidence shows that young people are often more inspired by a teacher or local coach than an Olympic champion who is simply too distant to relate to.

In these tumultuous times, it is surely essential to explore how money spent on medals and “inspirational moments” could produce something deeper and longer lasting. Webborn brings vital relevant experience as chair of the British Paralympic Association, which has set a social impact strategy through to 2032 with clear ambitions to improve access to sport and help break down societal barriers for those with disabilities.

Here’s hoping Webborn and his team have insights into how to be more effective than in the past. Sport doesn’t have a great record on changing the lives of disabled people for the better, a point Tanni Grey‑Thompson has been vocal about for years.

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Understanding the need to move on from Olympians showing medals in school assemblies, UK Sport launched a pioneering programme,“Powered by Purpose”, to support athletes to become agents of change for causes they care about, enabling them to use their platforms and role-model status for good effect beyond winning medals, while also bringing to life the theory that flourishing athletes perform better and more sustainably when there is a wider meaning in their sporting journey beyond the scoreboard.

It is a great move but this is social impact one stage removed, effectively outsourcing it to a few athletes without UK Sport holding itself accountable beyond medals. The question for Webborn is how could UK Sport use its innovative talents and peerless determination to explore what lasting social value could come from those medals.

There are no existing solutions as it hasn’t really been tried. The past 28 years have proved that medals can be won without much lasting positive social change. The challenge is to prove that the same or greater levels of performance can be achieved in a way that brings greater positive outcomes for others. That will require a different mindset and belief that says winning matters but is not enough on its own; and it will require a whole different set of impact-focused skills within the organisation.

This will also require a different and much more integrated working relationship with its sister organisation that looks after grassroots sport, Sport England, to learn from their ongoing experiences (and failures) about how sport can be an effective tool for social change.

But what an opportunity for UK Sport, which exists to dare to make the impossible possible. UK Sport’s stated purpose and mission is to create “extraordinary moments” over the next decade. Webborn’s challenge and opportunity is to use the funding and talents of the country to create something much longer lasting.

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Jacob Bethell’s pure talent puts him in high demand, but Shoaib Bashir is the real freelancer in cricket’s deeply confusing world

Bruised skies, sun through clouds, dualism, life in death. Welcome to the bloom of another England Test Match summer, the summer, this time around, of Bethell and Bashir. But of Bethell first because he’s the easy bit.

The battle for Jacob Bethell is of course just beginning. Everyone wants a piece of England’s most thrillingly talented young cricketer. The broadcasters are frothing. The papers want to know whose shirts he wears. Actually the papers don’t really care. Maybe the Daily Telegraph wants to know this at a push. But Bethell is still kind of perfect right now, a future-bomb, all promise and new things, in a sport that is always desperate for these.

Even the words “Jacob Bethell” sound hopeful, the name of a wise young hobbit or a courtly medieval blacksmith. The look is good: Matt Dillon eyes, jaw, shoulders, bleach blond hair for the white ball months, but now puritanically dark for the Tests because he knows where his off stump is and Respects The Game.

This is the wider promise of Bethell. He seems to express some idea of order, a chance to make sense of a deeply confusing cricketing world, out there standing on a hill in Tatooine, twin suns sinking behind him, bringing balance to the force.

The fact Bethell is yet to score any kind of hundred is key to this. Ideally he will never score a hundred, because while this feels hot, progressive, titillating, it is also totally fine because of the shapes and the orthodox mechanics. Bethell has the modern sex-stuff, the slogs and the dinks. He also has check drives and a perfectly aligned defence. He left the ball a lot in New Zealand and people got husky and brave and pretended to have things in their throat.

In this context having Bethell in England’s Test match top five feels like a weapon of reactionary consensus. The logic goes: I like Jacob Bethell, and therefore I also understand and feel comfortable with modernity and new things.

You might worry that this image of Jacob Bethell is conjured out of need, a way of making rock and roll acceptable to the squares, like a record company has manufactured a fake punk band with a lead singer called Dave Dangerous, who actually do good old-fashioned tunes you can hum along to.

Of course you like Jacob Bethell grandad. But can you handle a jazzed-up 14-year-old who plays the kung fu uppercut to every ball? Can you handle an impact No 8 and left-arm filth-master called Yooskens Van De Wild (answer: no)? The point is, we have a golden hobbit with a high elbow. And maybe the world is still good.

There is no sense of blame here. No one should feel bad about being unable to navigate this state of format-confusion, because cricket is basically an insane landscape now, dying but furiously alive, stocked with talent but criss-crossed with illusory pathways.

Virat Kohli wins the IPL then rages about the primacy of Tests. People in England and Australia still prefer the dying stuff, no matter how hard the hard-sell. Even writing a newspaper column about Test cricket feels a bit subversive. Fine, but will anyone notice it on the internet? (Answer: yes but make sure you get Matt Dillon in high up for the SEO.)

And by now even the cross-format Player Of Hope is probably an illusion. The best versions, Kohli, AB de Villiers, David Warner, tended to come from that generation where you still had time to learn hard technique then expand from there. Whereas these days the world is a deeply confusing place for a talented young cricketer.

Jake Fraser-McGurk, for example, came grooving on to the scene looking like a hoverboard pilot, all shape, hands, mullet, talent, but averages 14 since last year’s IPL and has now taken a step back to try and remember what cricket actually is. The most recent Unity Player for England, Jofra Archer, was ruined by having to bowl 42 pointless overs in one innings in New Zealand and is now basically a collection of broken china wheeled out on to the field on a trolley every six months.

It seems likely Bethell will be able to exist across this world because he is just pure, fluid, fungible talent. For now it is probably more interesting to talk about Shoaib Bashir, who was also picked in England’s first Test squad this week, who is also 21 years old, and who is the exact opposite of Bethell, the opposite of the unity player, a mono-format, old-tech red-ball bowler, out there plonking away on his harpsichord and just hoping somebody wants to listen. Can he have a future too?

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There are plenty of cricket watchers who won’t approve of the Bashir selection. He hasn’t earned it on hard county numbers. It feels very Baz, very boys club. Bashir was picked initially off a social media clip, picked on release point, height, arms.

Do England even need a spinner? And is Bashir good enough if they do? Answering this must be balanced against lousy county figures, against 50 Test wickets, the fact at his best he gets both dip and rip, the fact Stokes actually seems to enjoy captaining him and understand how to do it.

But the idea he is some favoured princeling also doesn’t really stand up. Bashir ground his way up through the Surrey age groups, hard-working, totally focused, but basically out of of time because Surrey didn’t have any real interest in orthodox right-arm spin. He didn’t take the message, didn’t go away, took every trial he could.

And now he’s out there engaged in one of the strangest of Test careers, proving himself at England level to earn the step down to county cricket, with no parachute or pathway, just the current summer and if he’s lucky an Ashes gig where he might well end up a cautionary anecdote or a youtube clip with laughter emojis next to it.

There is a kind of category mistake here. Franchise cricket will tell you it’s the opposite of the old, safe grind. In reality that life is its own kind of treadmill, a blur of colour, noise, content, flown from one bubble to the next, a comfort zone of junk cricket, fireworks on top of fireworks.

Bethell can play in this world as long as he chooses now. Opportunities will thrust themselves into his hands. But Bashir is the real freelancer here, a cricketer struggling to bloom in a living, dying major sport, for whom every ball matters, every off-break this summer a referendum on his own future. It is by far the more perilous of these two paths. Do or die, in a thing that we’re told is dying. It feels like actual, high-jeopardy sport.

Either way the Test grounds will be full again in June and July. Jacob Bethell under bruised skies scratching his way to 17 in two hours against a rampant Jasprit Bumrah: this is basically the sporting summer, a perfect little square of light, a sense of old stuff working, like noticing that bees still exist.

But perhaps there might still be a place too for specialists, for twin codes, for an off-spinner who gives it a straight rip, who provides a note of quietly artful variation, who could no longer have a career once Stokes retires; but who is also doing something a little wild and brave out there, walking the finest of lines, and whose fate is in many ways the more gripping.

Organisation’s former president has no regrets over what was lowest grossing film in US history when released a decade ago

There are movies that bomb at the box office. And then there is theFifabiopic United Passions, starring Tim Roth, Sam Neill and Gérard Depardieu, which was hit with the cinematic equivalent of a thermonuclear strike when it opened in the US 10 years ago this week.

You might remember the fallout; the fact it took only$918 (£678) in its opening weekend, making it the lowest grossing film in US history at the time, and the stories detailing how two people bought tickets to see it in Philadelphia, and only one in Phoenix, before it was pulled by distributors.

Then there were the reviews. “As cinema it is excrement,” Jordan Hoffman wrote in the Guardian. “As proof of corporate insanity it is a valuable case study. United Passions is a disgrace.” Admittedly, there was never going to be a good time to launch 109 minutes of soft-sheen history and propaganda about Jules Rimet, João Havelange and Sepp Blatter. But when14 Fifa members were indicted on corruption chargesjust days before the $26m (£19m) film’s US release, the film became a byword for hubris and excess. Only in Russia, where it made £140,000 at the box office, did it muster any sort of audience. Although what they made of Neill’s attempt at Havelenge’s accent, which veered wildly between Brazil, New Zealand and Ireland, is anyone’s guess.

The 10th anniversary seemed like the perfect time for me to grit my teeth and watch United Passions for the first time. I also hoped that those involved might have got over their collective embarrassment and would be prepared to talk about it. Was it really the worst sports movie in history? Worse than Rocky V? Or the Love Guru, which starred Mike Myers as a bearded Indian whose task, in thewords of the Observer’s then critic Philip French, “is to counsel a black ice-hockey star whose wife has run off with a French Canadian goalkeeper known as “Le Coq” for the prodigious size of his membrum virile”.

Having watched it, I can say that United Passions really is right up there. The script feels like it was written by a 2015 version of ChatGPT that has been programmed to hate the English, who come across as universally pompous. The dodgy stuff in Fifa’s history is danced around, or ignored. And some of it is so cringey it makes you gasp. At one point, for instance, Blatter expresses his fears over the 1978 World Cup in Argentina because the military government is murdering its opponents. “Who cares,” Havelange replies. “During the World Cup they only dream of one thing, that ball. Because football brings consolation to all tragedies and sorrows!” That is the same Havelange who took millions in bribes and kickbacks from Fifa’s deals withthe marketing company ISL.

In fact, United Passions is so comically awful the Internet Movie Database gives it 2.1 out of 10, a ranking so dismal it would qualify for its worst 100 films of all time list if it had the 10,000 votes needed to qualify.

When the film came out Roth, who plays Blatter, admitted: “This is a role that will have my father turning in his grave,” before confessing he did it only to put his kids through college. You can fault his performance, but not his honesty. A decade on, however, few others want to revisit it. The publicist sent me a lovely email but didn’t remember many specifics. An ex-Fifa employee jokingly referred to the film as a “blockbuster” but had only vague memories of its genesis. Fifa, meanwhile, didn’t want to comment.

The only exception? Blatter himself. When I spoke to his official spokesperson, Thomas Renggli, he asked me to fire over a few questions. A day later, he came back with the replies. “Obviously the movie was not a success,” Blatter, who turns 90 next year, told me. “A movie about Fifa is always controversial, so for me it was not a surprise that the opinions were so different in Russia and in the US.”

Blatter also insisted that the concept of United Passions had not come from him and, contrary to internet rumour, he had not tinkered with the script to make himself the hero. “The idea came up after there was a small movie called Goal,” he said. “And in this environment, the Fifa management brought up the idea of producing a big movie. It was definitely not only me behind it. And concerning my part in the production, I was only an adviser. I was not involved in the script.”

Which is just as well, because it is bad. Really, really bad. A few minutes into the film, for instance, Rimet tries to get Football Association bigwigs to join Fifa while speaking to them at half-time during a game. “Our boys are two goals down gentlemen!” Rimet is told. “There are things much more important than life and death. There is football. And at half-time things are deadly serious!”

Blatter also insisted he was OK with how the film turned out, but Renggli told me that there was befuddlement when it was shown to Fifa employees before its premiere at the Cannes film festival. “We were all sitting there in this big auditorium and everybody was thinking, ‘what do they want to tell us with this film?’ To me it did not make sense at all.”

There are some, of course, who think Fifa will be making another expensive mistake in the US this weekend when it launches its 32-team Club World Cup. The early signs are not positive, with tickets for the opening game between Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami and Al Ahly going for $55 – 16% of the original asking price of $349.

There are also concerns with player welfare, given the increase in the number of games and Blatter, who was recentlycleared of fraud by a Swiss court, is not a fan of the tournament, or next year’s expanded 48-team World Cup. “Havelange once told me that I made a monster when I created this wedding between TV and football,” he told me. “But now it’s all too much. There are too many games. And too many teams in the tournaments. Sooner or later, we will have 128 teams, like in a tennis grand slam.”

And whatever you think of Blatter, or indeed United Passions, it is hard to disagree too much with those sentiments.