As folk who read my sports related blogs might gather, I have been a keen fan of a wide range of sports, following sporting events at the highest levels and back in the day modestly participating in several.

The participation aspect is not there anymore due to my physical frail condition and as a spectator enthusiasm has waned for assorted reasons beginning with my antipathy toward commercialisation.

As for this summer, now half way through, it began for me with the European Football Championship held in Germany. I found myself watching more games than I had expected and not being overly impressed with what I saw. As an England fan, I was pleased they got to the finals, albeit with a good deal of luck, but in the end were defeated by the best team in the tournament – Spain. What struck me was the amount of public interest, making me think that Orwell was right. While there were good individual English performances, I felt overall the team, e.g. the likes of Kane and Bellingham, under performed. At the end its manager, Gareth Southgate, stood down. His proud record stands for itself, although I disliked his wokeism.

I remain a keen cricket fan and felt when it came to the T20 World Cup, some exciting cricket was played with the two best teams, India and South Africa, making it to the finals, with India crowned as worthy champions. Always it is good to see good sport played in the right spirit and underdogs like Bangladesh doing well. Then there are the test matches with England performing credibly in the first two tests against the West Indies who I don’t rate that highly, with the big test being the series in the coming winter, in Australia.  

Wimbledon proved an added attraction with the cream rising to the top as one always hoped it would. Barbora Krejcikova held off Jasmine Paolin in the women’s final and the young pretender, Carlos Alcaraz, convincingly overpowered a true hero of mine for his longtime stickability against the odds, Novak Djokovic, in the men’s. It seemed to me that some good tennis was played with some heroic performances seen but yet again British hopes were thwarted.

There are other sporting highlights of course in sports like rugby and golf but these are what captured my attention and it has proved a pleasant distraction from the current craziness on the world stage. There have been many standout performances and despite a natural cynicism offers good reason for enjoying as a spectator. We now stand on the eve of the biggest sporting highlight of them all – the 2024 Paris Olympics, with much to look forward to. One hopes for more sporting excellence and teams taking part in the right spirit.