He won like a champion. How I love to write those words. I find them full of meaning, as if, as I typed them, I was getting close to the deepest secret of sport. “He had a fence in hand over his nearest rival, but he had no need of it. Instead, he won like a champion . . .”

Now, there is an argument for saying that a champion is champion, regardless of how he wins it. “You think I’m not a champion? Look on the scoresheet.” Which is fair enough. But being a champion is not quite the same as being like one, is it? Although I think you’ll find that Jenson Button gives us an argument here. After his barnstorming start to the season, he decided that winning like a champion is not for him, resolving to win the title by stealth.

Last weekend he was fifth and said that it felt like a victory. Not to us, Jenson, but you do it your way. So, as the Japanese Grand Prix unfolds this weekend, Button will be attempting to take another few tiptoeing steps towards his title. Well, good on him.

He has waited so long, why not wait a little longer?

Insolence, thy name is Eric

As Liverpool take on Chelsea at Stamford Bridge tomorrow in their apparently eternal battle to become the Barclays Premier League’s champions of choice, we are entitled to wonder what it is that they both lack. It has come to the point when they both seem to be waiting for Manchester United to fail, rather than trying to acquire the quality that inevitable champions possess in bucketfuls. It is a quality that pretenders only pretend to have — and when it comes to squeaky-bum time, they generally find that pretending don’t butter no parsnips. It comes down to the insolence of champions, a natural talent for seeing the rest of the human race as second-best.

It is a quality you see in Roger Federer, in Sir Steve Redgrave, in Usain Bolt, in the great All Blacks rugby union, Brazil football or Australia cricket teams — that really rather unlovable quality of not only feeling but actually being superior to everyone else. How on earth do you acquire it? Can you go out and buy insolence? As a matter of fact you can. Sir Alex Ferguson did. Called it Eric.

Pakistan on verge of amazing greatness

Pakistan are the most fascinating team in world cricket at present. Rows that would inflict scars that last for decades in most organisations are but daily business in Pakistan cricket.

A player can be loved and hated, a hero and a villain, a captain and an ex-captain and a captain again, all in the space of a few weeks, or even days. And now Pakistan cricket is facing its biggest test — the question of basic survival after the atrocities in Lahore. No one will go to Pakistan and risk a repeat. Pakistan must come to England next summer to play their cricket. It’s enough to make any team despair; any team but Pakistan. They have always thrived in trouble and now, they find in trouble a sense of power and purpose.

But never mind bloody survival, they are actively prospering. They won the World Twenty20 this year and today they play in the semi-finals of the Champions Trophy against New Zealand. If they can win this competition as well, it will be the most remarkable achievement in team sport this year.