Australian athletics great Ron Clarke said countryman Kevan Gosper disqualified himself from becoming the next International Olympic Committee chief because he backed an Olympic boycott in 1980. He’s the best and most exciting fighter I’ve ever worked with.”
Given the mood of the day, he was never likely to say anything less.. In Kentucky, though, the procedure is legal, so long as it is administered more than four hours before the horse is due to race. If you’ve ever wondered why you’ve never seen a horse walk into McDonald’s and order a milkshake, some bizarre fallout over the last few days from the Breeders’ Cup has offered an answer. Private eyes, tubes up noses, a famous British trainer – this story has it all, and it may not have run its course just yet.

The villain of the piece, depending on your point of view, could be a pound of sodium bicarbonate dissolved in a litre of water, sugar and electrolyte, a mixture known to American trainers as a milkshake.

There are Wisdens galore, and an umbrella stand contains three autographed bats, including the Stuart Surridge blade with which Lloyd scored an unbeaten 214 in his second Test match, against India at Edgbaston in 1974.Alongside it is a bat autographed by the 1934 Lancashire and Nottinghamshire players, among them Cyril Washbrook and Harold Larwood Lloyd handles it as others would a Ming vase. His enthusiasm for the game, conveyed in an Accrington accent that makes George Formby sound la-di-da, is enormously infectious And he has a ready wit, too He nods at a battered old book “Cardus,” he says. “‘Apparently, the game’s been in total disarray since 1910.”Lloyd’s tenure as England coach – which included a memorable 2-1 series win at home against South Africa, England’s first five-Test series triumph for 12 years – ended messily. His employers, the English Cricket Board, were unwilling to guarantee his future, and since Sky were dangling a lucrative commentating contract, he left by mutual consent – a convenient phrase hiding a multitude of grievances His successor was the Zimbabwean Duncan Fletcher. Lloyd, admirably progressive in some ways, rigidly conservative in others, has always believed that England should be coached by an Englishman “I came out for [Jack] Birkenshaw. He’s a very dedicated and honest bloke and he’s won two County Championships at Leicestershire He would have been a very good choice. But obviously I wish Duncan all the very best.”Putting his experience where his mouth is, Lloyd has already given Fletcher a steer on a couple of players I invite him to expand on the role of the coach “You’re basically there to say `well done’ The senior players don’t need to be told how to prepare.

You just say `what do you need?’ and Fraser will say `I need to bowl flat out for two hours’, Gough will say he wants two or three 20-minute bursts, Tufnell will say he wants to bowl for half an hour then have a go at Stewart in the middle Or whatever. They know what they want.”And if they are going through a bad trot you show them a tape and say `this is you doing well’. At international level, if a batter is out of sorts, it’s not because his hands are the wrong way round It’s the feet and head not quite co-ordinating. Stewart was the top run-getter in the world for two out of three years, then suddenly it wasn’t happening for him. His head was dropping across outside off-stump and your head’s got to move wicket to wicket, not square leg to point.

So we’d work and work at that, but in a game it would still drop across Then he’d get a decent score but be quite lucky to survive Then he’d find a bit more fluency. And suddenly it would just click again…”The coach is also there to help pinpoint the opposing team’s weaknesses. When South Africa came to England, Mark Ramprakash twice caught the aggressive Daryll Cullinan at square leg, thanks largely to Lloyd’s homework “We knew he scored there, but he scores through the air. It was the same with [the former Australian captain] Mark Taylor. He went through an horrific patch, getting caught second slip to balls pitching leg and middle, and Dean Headley was perfect to exploit that. At the moment England think they’ve got the measure of [the South African left-hander] Gary Kirsten.