The week in sport
The hardest-working Euros players, Lennon & Duckworth, the Tour gets pedalling, book of the week, and Who Are Britain's Best Cyclists?
Hello, Goodbye
When studying at the University of Liverpool in the early Sixties, Frank Duckworth lodged at Menlove Avenue. His landlady was Mimi Smith who, at the time, was bringing up one John Lennon, her nephew. “I’d never heard of the Beatles”, said Frank. “He’d was playing nights at the Cavern Club. I heard him play a few chords in his bedroom occasionally”. Frank finished his physics degree and PhD in metallurgy and went on to devise the Duckworth-Lewis method, used to calculate which team has won a rain-affected game of cricket. Duckworth died on June 21st, aged 84.
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Do you think that some of the players at the Euros look knackered? Football Benchmark has looked at five players, from the main European leagues, and calculated their playing minutes *before* they started the Euros.
We asked Pitch’s sports book expert Jade Craddock what we should be reading this week. Jade says, “Anyone getting caught up in the seeming doom and gloom around Team England at the Euros can find some serious perspective in former Afghanistan women’s captain Khalida Popal’s My Beautiful Sisters, a hard-hitting memoir of life as a female footballer under the Taliban.”
The Tour kicks off on Saturday. Starting in Florence, taking in the Pyrenees and the Alps, it makes its way through 3404 kms (2115 miles) of hills, hollows, bumps and borrows. Here’s Pitch’s Bluffer’s Guide. It’s all you need to know in one easy read…
QUIZ. As the Tour kicks off, can you name the 10 best British cyclists ever?