Ball Games

I CATCH cricket fanatic Matthew Engel in Melbourne, Australia, just as he is about to retire for the night.

He has only been in Oz for 24 hours and some big-shot writers short of sleep would probably not have bothered to answer their mobile phones.

But the journalist and author, right, who hails from Herefordshire, is only too happy to talk about his recent appointment as Oxford University’s News International Visiting Professor of Media.

Mr Engel, a columnist for the Financial Times, will give four lectures in Oxford in January and February, entitled Please, mister, can we have our ball back? Sport, the media and the people.

“I’ve just arrived in Australia – you might have noticed the Ashes are on soon,” says Mr Engel, who has edited 12 editions of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.

“I’m going to be in Australia for the next few months and then I will be come back to the UK to give these lectures in Oxford.

“I’m very honoured to be chosen and I only wish my mum could have been around to see it.

“When I am here I will also be writing for the Financial Times on sport, and I will also be researching what I hope will be my next book, about Australia.

“I would be very flattered by any comparisons with the travel writer Paul Theroux, but people seemed to like what I did with my last book, Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain.

“It was a mixture of history, travel and attitude, where you travel to understand the processes of history.

“I’d love to be able to achieve something similar with a book about Australia but more than that I can’t say at the moment.”

When I ask the writer if his lectures will focus on the commercialisation of sport, he indicates that the term is too simplistic and, like the good professor he is about to become, explains where he is coming from.

“What I hope to go at is where the power lies within sport, particularly how sport and the media have developed, from the earliest days to modern times.

“What I have found is the way the power has changed over the years and what we have to address is where that rests now, with different forces contending with each other.”

The author says he was surprised by the appointment because he is not a graduate of Oxford University.

“I didn’t do very well in my Latin O-Level and ended up somewhere else,” he admits.

“But what I do remember is making school trips to the Oxford Playhouse to see people like Sybil Thorndike.”

In 25 years on The Guardian, the writer covered 70 different sports, from Olympics and World Cups to tiddlywinks and underwater hockey.

He also covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Gulf War, the death of Princess Diana, 9/11, and eight General Elections.

He adds: “I am honoured and delighted to have been appointed to this role, indeed somewhat astonished. But this is a fascinating subject and I am very much looking forward to sharing my enthusiasm.”

Mr Engel lives in the Golden Valley in Herefordshire with his wife Hilary and daughter Vika, halfway between Hay-on-Wye and Abergavenny.

His son Laurie died of cancer in 2005, aged 13, and Mr Engel’s collection of choice quotes from the great and the good, Extracts from the Red Note Book, helped to launch fundraising efforts.

The Laurie Engel Fund has raised more than £1m to build a new teenage cancer unit in Birmingham, where Laurie was treated, and the unit was officially opened by rock star Roger Daltrey in October.

Mr Engel was born in Northampton and educated at Carmel College in Wallingford, then Manchester University, where he studied politics, and at the London School of Economics.

The News International Visiting Professorship of Media was established in 1996, as part of a benefaction from Rupert Murdoch.

Previous professors have included Armando Iannucci, the writer of The Thick of It, and DJ Paul Gambaccini.

The four lectures will be open to the public. The first lecture is: Life and death? No, much more important than that. How sport turned into big business, big news – and a global obsession.

This will be held on Tuesday, January 25, at St Anne’s College.

The second lecture is: It’s the cat’s whiskers. How sport and the media developed together, from Mesopotamia to John Logie Baird. This will be held on Tuesday, February 1, at St Anne’s College.

The third lecture is: From Reith to wreath. The great days of sport on BBC TV. And how they ended. This will be held on Tuesday, February 8, at Green Templeton College.

The final lecture is: You are the earth and the Sky. How one man became the dominant force in the British media’s coverage of sport. Does that mean he controls sport itself? on Tuesday, February 15, at Green Templeton College.

* Matthew Engel will give four lectures in Oxford in January and February, entitled Please, mister, can we have our ball back? Sport, the media and the people