Seventies Swingers Shade the Fearsome Foursome

Mike Selvey wrote last week that England's current quartet of fast bowlers is our best ever. I would not dream of disagreeing with a man who took four for 41 at Old Trafford in 1976 to dismiss Clive Lloyd's great West Indians for 211. (Unfortunately we were bowled out for 71 and lost the match by 425 runs.) But it is too good a challenge to ignore.

As we used to have the odd decent spinner and it was an MCC rule that at least two should be played in a "balanced" attack, it's pointless looking back further than the 1970s for fast-bowling quartets. But inspired by the example of the all-conquering West Indians (Roberts, Holder, Garner, Marshall - gulp), all that changed in the Age of Botham. What about this quartet from the Wellington Test of 1978 - the pace of Bob Willis and Chris Old, the swing of Ian Botham, and the metronomic, hit-the-deck seam of Mike Hendrick? Admittedly, we did lose that Test, but that was the batsmen's fault, all out for a meager 64 in the second innings. At Perth the following winter, Botham, Willis and Hendrick were joined by the left-armer John Lever, this time successfully, and the four that beat Australia at Headingley in 1981 - Willis, Old, Botham and Graham Dilley - also proved a formidable unit. They did most of the batting in that Test too.

Unfortunately, the Age of Botham was followed by the Age of Pringle, and things went rapidly (or not) downhill. By the time West Indies had hammered them in 1988, England were perming four from Dilley, Phil DeFreitas, David Capel, Gladstone Small, Paul Jarvis, Neil Foster - and, of course, Derek Pringle. It was a bleak period, so give thanks for our present fearsome foursome. But I reckon the quartets from the late 70s and early 80s stand comparison. And with Botham in his swinging prime they might even shade it.

Putting G8 at the summit

Middlesbrough's chairman Steve Gibson has said he will not stand in the way of Steve McClaren becoming the next England manager. Er, great news. I know very little about football, put off by the histrionics that mar a mildly diverting game (eg tomorrow's "grudge match"), but I notice that Boro are 16th in the Premiership, hardly a recommendation.

McClaren is an ungenerous 5-1 for the England job with Coral. So where is what we shrewdies call the value? Guus Hiddink is 10-1, ridiculous for a man who already coaches two teams; Ruud Gullit an exotic 125-1; Stuart Pearce a less exotic 8-1. Ottmar Hitzfeld (a best-priced 50-1), Felipe Scolari (33-1) and Giovanni Trapattoni (66-1) are names to conjure with and must all have chances. But there is one outstanding candidate, an Englishman who has inspired us before on the world stage. At an eye-watering 250-1 Paul Gascoigne's the man for me, possibly in a dream double with Charlotte Church, who is a tasty 1,000-1 to be the new Wales rugby coach.

Not league nor union but unity

"If you're in a hole, stop digging" is good advice, so why am I ignoring it? My remarks last week about rugby league produced a torrent - OK, a rivulet - of emails accusing me of anti-northern bias. "What Mr Moss thinks is humor simply descends into tabloid cliches and harks back to the Eddie Waring era of media condescension towards league," fumed Graham Griffiths of Bury. "Moss is obviously from a pro-union background and has failed to understand that league has evolved from union and bettered itself," wrote Leanne Paul. Bettered itself? Now who's being condescending?

Paul thinks the two codes should be given equal media coverage and then fight a duel to the death. She is convinced league will win. But the more logical solution is that they should merge. Union has adopted many of the attributes of league - fitness, speed, very short haircuts, the absurd number of substitutes. A century after the great schism, let's devise a unified set of rules, pool the best players and end these crazy arguments, not least to save me from my enemies in the north.

Casualties of the sell-by date

The death of Jackie Pallo left me misty-eyed for the wrestling on ITV's World of Sport. It seems several centuries ago, yet amazingly ended only in 1988, when all those household names - Big Daddy, Mick McManus, Kendo Nagasaki, Giant Haystacks - were consigned to oblivion. Sports (or, in wrestling's case, "sports") are mortal too. Pedestrianism - in essence competitive marathon walking - was pre-eminent in the early 19th century; speedway could attract more than 60,000 to Wembley after the second world war; American football was a brief obsession in the yuppified 1980s. Where are they now? No sport should take its popularity for granted. It's a Darwinian struggle for existence (see the battle between the rugby codes) and there will be casualties.

Frank Keating returns on March 7