Spectator Sport | 18 April 2009

The good guys are having a good time right now. And it makes a change from the usual headline-makers. Look at Chelsea. Hiddink and the formidable Michael Essien apart, John Terry’s men are all steely-eyed, humourless ambition — it’s difficult to warm to them. And the McLaren racing team — ferocious, implacable in their resolve, so ruthless they think nothing of spying and lying. Just as hard to like, despite the obvious charm of Lewis Hamilton. So let’s celebrate nice things happening to some unlikely people. 

When Argentina’s Angel Cabrera, all scars, bulk and what looks like a daily intake of about 30 tons of nicorette chewing gum, putted in to take the Masters in Sunday’s small-hours play-off, anyone whose waistline is not quite what it was will have let their own belt out a notch in sheer relief. Cabrera’s scars, by the way, are from fist fights defending his turf in Cordoba, where he grew up after being abandoned by his parents.