Sir Vivian Richards came to watch me play cricket the other day. That’s the sort of sentence you wait a lifetime to write. What’s more it’s true. Sort of. I haven’t been able to say anything like that for ten years, just a few days before the Rugby World Cup final in Sydney in November 2003. I was at a screening at the National Film Theatre of a nautical epic called Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany. Afterwards there was a Q and A with the actors. After a series of standard questions about the cinematography and suchlike, I put my hand up.
‘A question for Mr Crowe, please. Who does he think will win the World Cup final on Saturday, England or Australia?’
‘Are you being serious?’
‘You bet.’
Crowe launched into an extremely well-informed analysis, concluding that it came down to the differing strengths of the two front fives and that, on balance, England’s shaded it.
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