Twenty20 love that money can’t buy

How nice it will be to watch England play West Indies in a Twenty20 cricket match without witnessing an act of hideous, unintended insensitivity, as if someone had described the woman you love as “a good lay”. Allen Stanford was, and no doubt still is — although he has other things on his mind now — baffled by the outbreak of squeamishness that his promotion gave rise to, when England played Stanford’s All Stars for a million dollars a man to the winners.

Stanford, like the England and Wales Cricket Board, which was crass enough to go along with the deal — and, it must be said, the England players themselves — failed to realise that the England cricket team mean rather more to their core audience than a marketing opportunity.

It will, then, be a pleasure to watch the game in Trinidad tomorrow without the moustache, the canoodling and the money. It will be a game of cricket in which both teams are trying to win for the simple joy of winning. Sport, in other words. It’s what your television is for.

Home is where the hurt is? We shall see

There are times in life when absence of pain is as near as we can get to pleasure. We reached this stage some time ago with the England rugby union team and when they play France at Twickenham tomorrow afternoon few people will be entertaining serious hopes of watching Our Boys teaching the French a thing or two about running rugby.

All my ambitions for the team have turned to negatives: no yellow cards, no generous concession of kickable penalties, no endless passages of time when England are trying to find their own ball — even when they cheat they can’t obtain quick ball — and, above all, no witless tactical kicking.

I can’t bear to see Martin Johnson, the team manager, marching into a press conference with a face like, as one of my colleagues summed it up, a smacked arse. Johnson’s pain is too much to bear. I’m thinking of becoming French for the afternoon: sing La Marseillaise and sit back hoping for feats of artistry and brilliance.

That would be the best thing an England match has brought so far this season, anyway.

Two-way battle that is coming to the four

Fourth being the new first, we must keep our attention on the vital stage of the Barclays Premier League season. I suppose one down from a bronze medal is a stone medal and it is for this most desperately coveted award that Arsenal and Aston Villa continue their struggles this weekend.

Arsenal meet Blackburn Rovers today, while Aston Villa play Tottenham Hotspur tomorrow. It’s a weekend during which serious questions will be asked of both clubs — whether Villa have the temerity to rearrange the traditional top four and whether Arsenal have the bottle to hold on to their place among the elite and their Champions League place.

When matches are played for these dizzyingly high stakes, it is normally the team least conscious of them that pull it off. Whether you choose to shout for established might or upstart ambition is a matter of temperament, but certainly we can look forward to some overwrought and emotional football.

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