Almaty Express and Darryll Holland carved a small entry in racing's annals yesterday when winning the first race in front of a paying crowd at Great Leighs.

Essex took a place in the quarter-finals of the Friends Provident Trophy yesterday with a point from their cancelled match against Sussex at Hastings.

Readers with fond memories of Newell's long innings as the pop poet of this parish will be delighted to find not just biting satirical verse but lyrical, reflective and personal pieces here – a range as broad and bracing as the East Anglian marshlands he adores. Buffs will tick off echoes (Larkin, Betjeman, Kipling, Auden...) but he's his own – Essex – man, cussed and tender and just a bit mystical, too. Germaine Greer (yes, really) warmly salutes him in her preface. He deserves it.

Alastair Cook's preparations for the first Test received a setback yesterday when the England opener dislocated the little finger on his right hand during Essex's four-day game against New Zealand. Cook, hoping to get much needed practice before 15 May, sustained the injury when he dropped a sharp catch offered by Daniel Vettori, the New Zealand captain, while fielding at fine gully an hour before the close of play.

When you are rooted to the bottom of the league table, with eight defeats in your last nine games and just five wins all season, survival becomes a relative concept. A deserved win over local rivals Ipswich thanks to two Scott Vernon goals meant that Colchester rejoiced in a victory which staves off the inevitable relegation by one week at least.

Transcendent is a word that lends itself well to the music of the Anglo-Irish band Flook, who won the Best Group gong at the BBC Folk Awards in 2006. In an intimate concert for the sixth-formers of St Martin's School in Essex, the evocative musical talents of the band were well appreciated, as was their willingness to converse with the audience about their influences.

When this fixture was postponed in January due to a waterlogged pitch Colchester may have envisaged celebrating a final floodlit match at Layer Road on a balmy spring evening. Instead the landmark fixture took place in near freezing temperatures, and the Essex club saw what little hope they have of avoiding relegation all but disappear into the night.

Plans to double the size of the UK's third busiest airport are to face opposition from six local authorities representing 3.2 million people.

Michael Todd was a very modern British chief constable who infused the bureaucratic demands of police management with his own particular charismatic leadership style. He will be most remembered for his highly visible, hands-on approach and his at times controversial media-friendly manner. His colleagues in the police service will remember him for his energy, personal touch and for helping to restore local public confidence in "the job". They will also remember his contributions to national policing strategy in his capacity as a Vice-President of Acpo (the Association of Chief Police Officers).

Blimey! I've come a long way since then. Well, more of a circle really. Essex, Shoreditch and back to Essex. "Oi, you! Naked!" they used to shout at me back then, when me and the missus (sorry, the Lovely Jules) used to live in that flat.

Northampton and Saracens yesterday had their international ticket allocations cut as Twickenham continued its campaign against the black market.