Timeless drama of Championship race in league of its own - Michael Calvin

THE LAST WORD

The fever was in the streets. It was as if nothing in the world matters except for this game.

With those words, the novelist David Halberstam, one of the great observers of North American sport, began a classic book, The Summer of ’49. It was a study of a baseball pennant race between two storied clubs, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, and a paean to a more innocent age.

Constant swings in fortune seized a nation’s imagination to the point of obsession. Players were mythologised because of their strengths and cherished, despite human weakness. The Red Sox team beaten on the final day of a 155-game season entered legend alongside their conquerors.

Football is a game of different rhythms and rituals. The Spring of ’15 may never be immortalised with such grace and insight, but the intensity and unpredictability of this season’s Championship deserves to be remembered for generations.

Manager Eddie Howe has led Bournemouth to the Championship summit six seasons after they almost dropped out of the league (Getty Images)

Two games remain, and four teams are competing for automatic promotion with the desperate ardour of lovesick suitors. Four more are scavenging for play-off places. Margins are miniscule. Dramas unfold day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. This is football, as it should be.

The race features the thrust, parry and counter of Olympic fencing. It requires the boxer’s courage in rising from the canvas. Supporters, in a state of high anxiety, become participants rather than observers. Storylines are compelling and personalities rich in promise.

The relative sterility of the Premier League, a theme park frequented by foreign tourists and decorated by plastic flags, is marked. Manchester City’s indifferent defence of their title has highlighted flaws in individual and collective character, but the Championship demands moral fibre.

The division makes managers, though it can break them, since desperation for progression ensures the average tenure is less than a year. Sean Dyche set the tone for unlikely achievement last season, getting Burnley promoted on a relegation budget.

Aitor Karanka's Middlesbrough are third only on goal difference (Getty Images)

Eddie Howe, his predecessor at Turf Moor, is modern, inclusive and hugely impressive. He has a relentless work ethic, being the first man in to work at 6.30 each morning. Emotionally intelligent in the mould of Brendan Rodgers, he has taken Bournemouth to the brink of the top division for the first time in their 125-year history. Due diligence is being rewarded in the boardroom, as well as the dressing room. Norwich City discovered Alex Neil through a database of Europe’s top 250 young managers. Metrics suggested he was in 35th position, abnormally high for someone of his age, 33, and experience, at Hamilton Academical.

Friday night’s defeat by rivals Middlesbrough at Carrow Road was only his third loss in 20 matches in charge. Aitor Karanka, his opposite number, oversaw a defensive performance which would have done justice to the guile and grim determination of his mentor, Jose Mourinho.

Slavisa Jokanovic, Watford’s fourth manager of the season, makes Avram Grant seem like Russell Brand, but his success in galvanising an essentially rootless team, created by a ruthless business model, has defied those of us who doubted him.

Kenny Jackett, understated and universally respected for the clarity of his coaching, is restoring Wolves to former glories. Mick McCarthy is doing similarly for Ipswich Town. Steve McClaren’s rehabilitation has been completed at Derby County. Mark Warburton, who will leave Brentford regardless of whether he achieves successive promotions because of philosophical differences with an owner who wants recruitment dictated by analytics rather than instinct, will be a prime candidate in this summer’s managerial market.

Emerging players of the quality of Benik Afobe, Ben Gibson, Patrick Bamford, Alex Pritchard, Troy Deeney, Calum Wilson and Tyrone Mings will flourish in the Premier League. Promoted clubs usually struggle, but the poisoned chalice is worth a minimum £100m. For the fans, these are the days of their lives. The fever is in the streets, and it is contagious.

We must stick with Cook

A Twitter troll named Kevin Pietersen is expected to play Second Division county cricket today. His apologists, augmented by mischief-making opportunists like Michael Clarke, Australia’s captain, will campaign for his England recall, whatever the outcome.

Meanwhile, in the real world, 4,000 miles away in Grenada, Alastair Cook will be steeling himself to captain his country in another critical contest. Ludicrously, England have only three days to prepare for Tuesday’s Second Test against the West Indies.

Cook needs a century, soon. His confidence is low and his problems have been compounded by the use in the Caribbean of cheap cricket balls, which swing like boomerangs for the first 15 overs before adopting the characteristics of a brick.

Sudden, catastrophic loss of form is sport’s greatest fear. David Duval was the future of golf, and declined to the point of invisibility. Fernando Torres was a world-class striker until Chelsea paid £50m for him.

I fear for Cook, not because of his ability to address technical flaws, or because he lacks the strength of character to ignore constant sniping, but because those who run English cricket are politically inept and prone to panic.

Their nerve will be tested in the coming weeks. If Cook is prevented from leading England in this summer’s Ashes it will be shameful, and counter-productive.

Hingis’s last hurrah

Martina Hingis had it all, five Grand Slam titles by the age of 18. She has twice retired, and was banned for two years for testing positive for a metabolite of cocaine. Yet hers is a story of hope and redemption.

Now 34, she played her first singles match for eight years yesterday, for Switzerland against Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanksa in the Federation Cup.

The result was of secondary importance, since her appearance qualifies her for next year’s Olympic Games. Partnering Roger Federer there, in the mixed doubles, would be a fitting way to find the closure she craves.