³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

If Eoin Morgan is intimidated by the prospect of making his Test debut, he is doing a good job of hiding it. Asked whether he has the patience to occupy the crease for four hours, his answer is simple: "I think so. I might get 400, but that wouldn't be a bad start."

We are at a sunny Lord's, two days before the start of another Test summer. Outside on the Nursery ground, the touring Bangladesh team are going through a series of fielding drills. Inside the indoor school, the man Nasser Hussain calls the most exciting England player to emerge since a certain is full of the joys of spring.

Morgan being Morgan, even when he goes on the defensive it is all about attacking.

Would he be worried about getting out to one of his famously unorthodox shots in a Test match at headquarters?

"Absolutely not," he responds. "I've played the reverse sweep millions of times. I've got out to it 10% of the time, but 90% of the time it's scored me runs. If it's going to score me a lot of runs, then absolutely I'll play it."

Morgan goes on the offensive for England

Read the rest of this entry

You are the best in the world by a huge margin. You haven't been beaten for six years, and you're the red-hot favourite for Olympic gold. And then you give it all up, not because injury, or age, or scandal, but simply because you don't find it fun any more.

There aren't many world-class athletes you can imagine doing that. Then again, isn't your average athlete. When she walked away from heptathlon, a few months before the Beijing Olympics, the philosophical won a rare victory over the physical.

"I cannot be what I am not," she says simply. "I was not enjoying it, and I have to feel it, to be myself.

"I cannot just go with the flow of everyone else around me. Then I would lose myself, and that's my biggest fear."

Kluft, at the peak of her powers, abandoned the event she had dominated for most of the decade, and took up another - the long jump - in which she stood almost no chance of winning a medal.

To the rest of the world it was a staggering decision. The Swede had won nine consecutive gold medals in major championships. Why throw away sporting immortality for a place among the also-rans? If you do have to quit, why not hang on a few months and go with another garland round your neck?

"If it's no longer fun, I cannot train the way I want to, and I cannot succeed the way I want to," she tells me.

"For me it wasn't 'stick with it and I will win'. I will probably lose, because I wasn't satisfied. I know what I am like, and I don't want to end up doing things because of other people are expecting me to do that. I don't want to lose myself in that way."

Read the rest of this entry

Nerves. Pressure. A race to win, a stomach doing loop-the-loops and a pack of prowling rivals to be seen off. How does a world-class sprinter deal with the drama of a big sprint showdown?

It's Sunday morning, the day of the . Some of the world's best athletes are gathered in a cloud-scraping hotel, counting down the hours until they race down a specially-constructed track on the .

The first to show is world heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis. Later we will talk to three-time world 200m champion Allyson Felix, Olympic 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu, double European 100m champion Francis Obikwelu and former world junior champion Mark Lewis-Francis. Oh - and , the second-fastest human being who's ever lived. I think we'll get our answer.

Read the rest of this entry

It's the sort of race that normally only takes place during pub discussions - v , over 150 metres, down .

. In one lane is the ; in the other, the . Who will come out on top? That's where the debate begins.

Read the rest of this entry

The coach is screaming at his star man. "You're a drama queen, Terry! Get up!" Lying on his back, chest heaving, the exhausted player rolls onto his side and sticks two fingers up in the coach's direction. "Man, this hurts," he winces, and pulls himself back into his wheelchair.

We are in the gym at , eyeball-deep in a series of brutal fitness tests with the GB wheelchair basketball team. The coach is - loud and laconic, cajoling and criticising his charges; the star player - buzz-cut, lots of backchat, fast and furious as a butcher's dog.

Murray has a roguish glint in his eye, and not only because of the beep-test he has stashed up his sleeve for the shattered Terry. In an attempt to highlight how fit the elite disabled players are compared to an averagely sporty man off the street, I have volunteered to join the day's session. "We're going to be doing a scientific experiment," Murray explains in his Aussie drawl, "to see if it's possible to drown a man in his own sweat."

Read the rest of this entry