Britain's Most Extraordinary Week in Sport: From Stokes to Silverstone, What We Just Witnessed

[Jackson79]

British sport just delivered one of the most concentrated and genuinely significant weeks in living memory and it deserves acknowledgement as a whole rather than just as a sequence of individual events. Between Monday June 29 and Saturday July 5 the following happened: Ben Stokes played his final Test innings and walked off to a standing ovation from both teams at Trent Bridge. England Women won their T20 World Cup semi-final and qualified for a Lord's final against Australia. England men came from a goal down in the 74th minute in Atlanta to beat Congo DR 2-1 through two late Kane goals and advance to the World Cup round of 16. Wimbledon began with Alcaraz and Raducanu both absent through injury. George Russell won the Austrian Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix weekend starts Thursday. The Women's T20 World Cup final, Vitality Blast Finals Day and British Grand Prix qualifying all fall on the same Saturday.

This is not hyperbole. The combination of cricket historic farewell, two national teams in simultaneous knockout stages of global competitions, a major Grand Slam beginning with significant British story arcs, and an F1 championship race at Silverstone does not have a precedent in the living memory of anyone who follows British sport seriously. Individual weeks have had one or two of these elements. This week had all of them simultaneously.

The Wonderwall singalong between England players and supporters in Atlanta at midnight British time, the guard of honour for Stokes at Trent Bridge, the Wyatt-Hodge fifty that sent England Women through, the Bad Bunny-Djokovic photograph at SW19 - individually each of these is a sporting moment. Together they constitute something that, when described to someone who does not follow sport, sounds like an invented television drama rather than the actual events of one week in British cultural life.

Ben Stokes: England captain to retire from international cricket after New Zealand serieswww.skysports.com

[Cached Stephen]

These weeks happen once in a generation in British sport and are usually only identifiable in retrospect. The remarkable thing about this one is that it was identifiable in advance. Every element was known by Monday morning and the week delivered on every narrative promise