Booker prize winners, rap hits and Ryder Cups: interpreting the Ashes omens
History shows that surprisingly random factors can have an impact on whether England or Australia lift the urnContrary to what you may have read in some other publications, Josh Hazlewood’s hamstring injury is a massive boost to Australia’s hopes of victory in the first Test in Perth.The 34-year-old, you see, has proven beyond all doubt over an 11-year international career that he is a terrible hindrance to his team.Since the Tamworth-born terror made his Test debut in December 2014 he has played in 76 of Australia’s 107 Tests, of which they have won 39 (51%), while losing 24 (32%).Decent numbers, but it’s when you strip him from the side that they really thrive, with 22 wins (71%) and just five defeats (16%) in 31 games.His impact in the Ashes, if anything, is even more damaging: they have won 50% and lost 33% of their 18 games with him, but won 71% and lost just 14%, a single rogue game, of their seven without his malign presence.
In the last week of October, for the first time in 35 years, there were no rap songs in the Billboard Top 40.This is positive news for England, who have been rocked by the rise of rap: before Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang became the first such track to make the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1980 England had lost a trifling 38% of their Tests against Australia (and won 33%), but since then they have lost 50% and won just 27%.During the period of weekly rap-charting that started with Biz Markie’s Just a Friend hitting the top 40 in February 1990 their performances had been worse still, with defeats in a huge 55% of all Tests and a win percentage of just 26%.Perhaps the decline of rap can help Brendon McCullum get a tune out of the English at last.David Szalay’s Booker prize win continues a remarkable run for people with the letter Y in their names, after successes for Paul Lynch in 2023 and Samantha Harvey last year.
It is the fifth time there has been a Y-inclusive Booker winner in the year an Ashes series starts in Australia, after Stanley Middleton, joint winner in 1974, Thomas Keneally in 1982, Kingsley Amis in 1986 and Yann Martel in 2002.This tends to be a bad thing for England: on three of the previous four occasions they won one Test and thereby lost the Ashes either 3-1 or 4-1, with only their Amis-inspired success in 1986-87 to fall back on – Australia’s 75% win record in these years comfortably beats their all-time figure of 52%.There have been five occasions when a Y-inclusive author won the Booker in the year of an Ashes series in England – Roddy Doyle in 1993, Arundhati Roy in 1997, Peter Carey in 2001, Hilary Mantel in 2009 and Lynch.England have also won only one of those series, losing three and with only Mantel’s Wolf Hall bringing them any luck.Sign up to The SpinSubscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week’s actionafter newsletter promotionEurope winning the Ryder Cup is also bad news for England.
While the tournament was contested between America and the United Kingdom, British victory would signal English victory, both in 1929 (England won the Ashes in 1928-29) and 1933 (England won in 1932-33).For a while after it became a pan-European side the trend continued (Europe and England won in 1985, England in 1986-87 and Europe in 1987).But since then European success has landed England in the deep rough, with only 2010-11 (Europe won in 2010) switching things around.That apart Europe wins in years when Ashes series either started, ended or were played in their entirety brought Australia success in 1989, 1994-5, 1997, 2002-03, 2006-07, 2013-14 and 2017-18, while in 2023 England had to come back from 2-0 down to grab a draw.
WH Smith CEO quits after accounting error that wiped almost £600m off value
WH Smith’s chief executive has stepped down with immediate effect after a review found accounting failures in its North American division, prompting the travel shop chain to slash its profit outlook.Nearly £600m was wiped off the retailer’s market value in a 42% one-day share price fall when the blunder emerged in August. It came shortly after the sale of its high street business, which has since been rebranded as TGJones by its new owners.WH Smith shares climbed by more than 7% on Wednesday after Carl Cowling’s departure was announced, although they are still trading substantially below the levels seen before the August sell-off.Cowling, who had been group chief executive for six years, will be replaced on an interim basis by the company’s UK chief executive, Andrew Harrison, until a permanent replacement is found
Harvard to investigate Larry Summers’s Epstein ties as he exits OpenAI board
Harvard is set to launch a new investigation into its former university president and Bill Clinton economic adviser Larry Summers about his ties to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as it also emerged Summers has resigned from the board of OpenAI.The moves comes after Summers said he would be stepping back from public engagements after emails revealed the extent of his relationship with the late sex offender.A Harvard spokesperson confirmed to the Harvard Crimson on Tuesday night that a new investigation into Summers’s connections with the accused child sex trafficker was under way. The inquiry will also look at other university affiliates named in the documents, including Summers’s wife and nearly a dozen others. A Harvard spokesperson, Jonathan Swain, told the student newspaper that “the University is conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted
What is Cloudflare – and why did its outage take down so many websites?
The internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare suffered an outage on Tuesday, making many websites inaccessible for about three hours.Cloudflare is a global cloud services and cybersecurity firm. It provides datacentres, website and email security, protection from data loss and defences against cyber threats, among other things. It describes itself as providing an “immune system for the internet”, with technology that sits between its clients and the wider world that blocks billions of cyber threats daily. It also uses its global infrastructure to speed up internet traffic
Cloudflare says ‘incident now resolved’ after outage causes error messages across the internet – as it happened
The firm has just issued an update saying it believes the incident over.A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.I’ve just quickly tested several key sites which are loading again.Key sites around the world went down, some for a few hours, after a widely relied-upon Internet infrastructure company suffered an unknown issueThe outages took place in the early hours of US morning and during UK business hoursIt affected users of everything from Spotify, ChatGPT, X, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Canva to retail websites of Visa, Vodafone and Vinted and UK grocery chains Asda and M&S
Australia enter Ashes series with transition abruptly forced upon an ageing squad | Geoff Lemon
The Ashes may offer one cause for celebration, but this series will also see the Australian team host more birthday parties than Timezone in the 90s. New boy Jake Weatherald had his 31st a day before the squad was announced. Nathan Lyon turns 38 the day before the Perth Test. Beau Webster turns 32 just before Brisbane, Usman Khawaja will be 39 on day two in Adelaide, Josh Hazlewood turns 35 on the fifth day in Sydney, and Mitchell Starc will be 36 before January is out.For two or three years there has been mounting fascination with the age of this team and especially the bowling attack
Stokes wants to be one of ‘lucky few’ England captains to claim Ashes victory in Australia
Ben Stokes is aiming to become one of the “lucky few” England captains to claim an away Ashes victory as he called on his players to forget a 15-year barren spell in Australia and “create our own history”.After being shut out by the pandemic four years ago, up to 40,000 England supporters are estimated to be descending on Australia over the course of this winter. All are hopeful of witnessing an all-time classic and a change to the story after three winless Ashes tours.Stokes, ready to unleash Mark Wood and Jofra Archer when the series begins in Perth Stadium on Friday, is fully aware of the challenge: succeed and he will become just the sixth postwar England captain to do so after Andrew Strauss (2010-11), Mike Gatting (1986-87), Mike Brearley (1978-79), Ray Illingworth (1970-71) and Len Hutton (1954-55).“I have come here absolutely desperate to get home on that plane in January as one of the lucky few captains from England to have come here and been successful,” said Stokes, having named a 12-strong match day squad that includes Shoaib Bashir as the spin-bowling option
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Booker prize winners, rap hits and Ryder Cups: interpreting the Ashes omens