How Vegas became a sporting hotspot

Anyone know the Hindi for schadenfreude? Who could have seen that coming: certainly not your correspondent, who had invested some time ago in India to win the Cricket World Cup. Not to be, sadly, and the red-hot favourites were given an absolute pasting in their own backyard by a team of unfancied Aussies who had lost both their opening games of the tournament.

It certainly disproves the Samson theory of sporting excellence: in days of yore a sportsman’s luxurious mullet (look at rugby’s Mickey Skinner, or football’s Frank Worthington and Stan Bowles) often meant a similar lush on-field display. But Travis Head – no longer sporting his bushy 1970s porn star ’tache – put paid to that notion with a match-winning ton as well as a stunning piece of athleticism in the field to catch Rohit Sharma, India’s captain, who could scarcely believe what he saw.

India’s strongman Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t strike me as someone with a rip-roaring sense of humour, so it was pleasing to sense his fury as his national side choked at the end – and in a stadium named after him to boot.