The final day of May, and the final day of our abrupt (albeit appreciated) Oxford heatwave was the beginning of a new chapter in history for the Oxford University cheerleaders.

The Oxford Sirens, the University’s premier cheer squad, performed at the Kassam stadium last Wednesday in front of an audience in excess of 3,400. Supporting the London Welsh Rugby Club, the Sirens performed a routine which took them an intense ten days to devise and rehearse.

The cheerleaders danced and stunted to a complication of the Black Eyed Peas ‘Pump it’ and Rihanna’s ‘Turn Me On’ amongst the club’s notorious dragon mascot. The routine was performed prior to the match and during half time of the Championship final, rallying the crowd as the Exiles clinched their long-awaited Championship title.

‘It was an amazing opportunity to show people who wouldn’t usually watch cheerleading all the great things we can do!’ Steph Burrel commented. The flyer added, ‘I would jump at the opportunity to do it again as the atmosphere of performing in the stadium was electric.’

Suze Hawkins, biological scientist at Catz, is president of the 30-strong team, which accepts both male and females in the squad.  ‘As president, it took a lot of phone calls and emails to organise the event, and I’m so glad it paid off!’ Suze told the Cherwell. ‘I’m so proud of everyone’s commitment and hard work, it looked amazing, even the rugby fans loved it! I’m looking forward to more events like this, as well as competition season next Hilary with a whole new squad.’

Grace Lavelli, finalist and Siren’s veteran, describes the performance as being ‘a very different style of cheerleading to what we usually do’, the cheerleaders usually competing in competitions against other Universities and all-star squads. This year the Sirens have competed three times across the country, claiming a respectable fourth place at University Nationals for their level 3 co-ed routine in Doncaster.

The Sirens are delighted with the response. DPhil student and Vice-President Michelle Savage commented ‘the performance was a really fun and enriching experience and I’m really glad to have been able to share it with the Oxford Sirens. It really showcased what is possible to achieve given hard work and dedication.’

Tennis season is upon us, with the world’s sport media descending onto Roland Garros before the annual movement to Queen’s Club and then finally SW19. This meant Boris Becker had plenty to talk about, and was on sparkling form, when I spoke to him this past week after his talk at the Union. If this was anything to go by then BBC audiences are in for a treat when the blonde Bavarian graces living rooms around the country during Wimbledon.

Few know more, or are more qualified to talk about the world’s premier tennis tournament than Becker, of course. Along with two Australian Opens and one US, he won Wimbledon three times over the course of a jewelled career, most famously his first at 17. He’s disarmingly modest about this baffling achievement, saying of it when juxtaposed with what most people are up at the same age that ‘everyone has their own path’, which made me feel just a little better – perhaps the Arthur Ashe stadium beckons next year. The journey was a bit less monomaniacal than what most aspirant tennis players can expect these days: ‘I picked up my first tennis racket at the age of three, but I was lucky my parents allowed me to play football, basketball, and to cross-country ski. Only later, when I was 14, did I realise tennis was my number one sport.’

Even after this though, he had to persuade his school, which was fairly level-headed about the whole affair. He negotiated two years off to prove himself, and after this he had a meeting with the school officials. ‘I had won two Wimbledons, was number two in the world, and had a couple of million in the bank and still the director asked – are you sure?’ The whole thing must’ve been slightly surreal.

Becker isn’t sure why there haven’t been many recently able to compete at Grand Slam level at the sort of age he started out at – Nadal aside, they’ve been rare. ‘I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing that they start them so young now,’ he says, adding that to avoid the kind of career-shock described by David Foster Wallace in his piece ‘String Theory’ young players need ‘a supporting cast, family friends, to tell you you’re good but not great, and maybe you should finish school and have something to fall back on’.

For himself though he’s obviously glad he pushed on. ‘My best years were 1989 to 1991 – that was when I played my best tennis. I was used to the media attention and spent a lot of time and effort becoming a better tennis player.’ After these glory years he persevered. He doesn’t think there’s enough time in a modern player’s life to plan out an end-of-career strategy. But, he says, ‘If you have the character and courage to play it out, accept you’re older and that it’s OK to reach a quarter-final now, you don’t have to win, and not beat yourself up. I was able to do that, played less and less and worse and worse and slowly came down the rankings. A couple of wins still and the drug slowly left. It’s tough to do if you’re used to winning all the time, and then suddenly you’re 15th in the world, which isn’t bad! But you’re not number one anymore.’

He doesn’t quite remember how the broadcasting gig came about, whether he was sought out or chased it up himself, but it’s been a source of happiness since. ‘I find it rewarding, I find it satisfying – it gives me my youth back. Walking through the ground talking about something I know pretty well, it’s a good feeling.’ Sharing a commentary box with John Lloyd and Tim Henman, he feels his experience gives him an edge, that ‘they’re great guys and I love commentating with them but they never won a tournament. Bottom line is that they don’t know what it feels like to hold a trophy.’ Apart from the commentary he spends his time these days either with his family or on the European Poker Tour. Having had a bit of fun with the outstandingly entertaining Mansour Bahrami and co on the Masters circuit, he decided it wasn’t for him.

Punditry keeps him pretty busy, however. His thoughts on the state of the men’s game? ‘Behind the top four I don’t see anybody! Where’s Berdych? I saw Tomic, but where is he now? Del Potro for a while but then he was injured out for a year. There is one guy from Canada, Milos Raonic, he’s young too and has a big game. Maybe him.’ He’s sure the summer should throw up some new candidates for the next big thing candidacy though – ‘Queen’s, Wimbledon, then the Olympics – it’s a summer of tennis.’ A summer of tennis that the marvellous Münchner will be looking over and analysing with interest, along with flirting with Sue Barker and ribbing John Inverdale. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hollie Avil’s painfully honest, and extremely brave, article in The Telegraph (22nd May) about her retirement from triathlon, at the age of just 22, reminded me of the power that poorly chosen words can have. In particular coaches’ insensitivity about, especially female, athletes’ weight.

Similarly it has been revealed in the media recently that Commonwealth heptathlon champion, Louise Hazel, and Jessica Ennis (now British record holder after her excellent performance in Gotzis at the weekend), have both been called ‘fat’ or ‘overweight’ by high-ranking figures within UK Athletics.

Fortunately for the state of athletics, Ennis and Hazel have shrugged off these second-hand comments. However for Avil, who was told in person by another coach at the Triathlon Junior World Championships in 2006 that she needed to watch her weight if she wanted to run quickly, the words hit more of a nerve. As she wrote in her article, ‘That comment planted a seed in my head that didn’t need to be planted.’

On its website, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) warns that ‘the healthy body image of some female athletes can suffer through sport’. Faced with the sight of incredibly lean and slight African athletes who win the majority of middle and long distance medals, it is perhaps no surprise that, as Hazel put it, ‘people think that you have to look like you are completely emaciated to actually be in physical shape’. Importantly though, and as Hazel goes on to say, ‘that’s not the truth’. Yes it is true that carrying less weight will, often but not always, enable you to run quicker – it’s just simple physics: it takes less energy and force to move a lighter weight than it does a heavier one.

Trying to lose weight, when already balancing the physical stresses of training at an elite level, is a dangerous game. As Avil found out, not eating properly or sufficiently impedes performance progression and often leads to injuries and illnesses, as the body struggles to cope with insufficient nutrition to fuel training and replenish the depleted energy systems, and consequently greater depression.

Eating disorders are frequently caused by a desire for ‘perfection’ and greater control; under the stringent control of governing bodies and training regimes this problem is even more prevalent. I know, I’ve seen many athletes, girls and boys, eating only one meal a day (even when training twice!) to get down to ‘racing weight’. I’ve even tried it myself in the past. It only provides, if any, short-term gains and can cause far more detrimental problems.

Body weight undoubtedly has an impact on sporting performance, but, excluding extreme examples, it should never be the first thing that coaches try to change about an athlete, and even then there are more helpful ways than off-hand comments or the insensitivity of labelling someone ‘fat’. In 2010 Chris Solinsky shocked many people when he broke the American 10,000m record and, in doing so, became the first non-African born runner to break 27 minutes. Perhaps more importantly, at 73kg he was heaviest person ever to do so – 9kg heavier than the 29 other athletes to have run that fast. Just as Avil and her friends joked that she ‘still had [her] big swimmer arms and needed the body fat to be buoyant’, Solinsky joked that his friends told him he’d broken the ‘fatty world record’.

Many athletes are able to see the funny side of body composition differences, but words can hurt. With great power comes great responsibility: coaches must do the best for their athletes, training partners must support each other,

There’s a pile of things that undergrads don’t appreciate about being undergrads: how easy it is to impress girls in their late teens, hangovers that only last a morning, and embarrassingly tolerant junior deans.

Another of those underappreciated things is getting to play team sports with a group of people you know and, usually, like. When I was working full-time, I missed the camaraderie and banter of a sports team more than almost anything else about uni life. Cracking jokes with colleagues about how you dominated that half-three meeting with a well-timed jest about fourth quarter earnings is far less entertaining than recounting your devastating right-foot step or sparkling footwork at the batting crease.

If you’re working a real job (i.e. not HR, advertising etc) it’s nigh on impossible to slink out of the office early enough to train with a team. Bosses, in my experience, rarely respond well to being told that your goal-kicking is sub-par but that you have been watching Carter YouTube clips all day and feel that you can iron out some technical shortcomings if you could just leave the office at 5.02pm to work on them.

And so, given that I was coming to Oxford after three or four years of unpleasant toil in the grim service of capital, I was pretty excited about college rugby this year. And it was excellent – I played with a great group of guys, we won some games, we drank beer, went on the occasional crew date (Oxford Brookes netball – you were magnificent). Sport is also one of the few ways that grads and undergrads get to interact and that, in itself, is worth the time investment.

However, there were a few things that are a little idiosyncratic about college sport, particularly when one is a little older. I’m sure I was just the same as an undergrad, but memory dims when surveying one’s old foibles and so the following stood out.

I’ve never seen so much aggrieved bleating at referees in my life. It’s not just that some lads disagree with a decision, but more that they are genuinely appalled that someone had the temerity to penalise them. If I was a college rugby referee I’d issue a lot more yellow cards and probably a couple of sharp backhanders.

It’s very sensible, but I was a bit devastated that playing sport for your college didn’t make you a bigger deal around the quad. As an undergrad, all the young ladies in Australia would come out to cheer the college 1st XV and you couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a hero. A gender theorist would no doubt correctly point out that this was patriarchal conditioning and to be deplored, but it was nonetheless excellent if you were the recipient of said conditioning. Oxford girls are probably smarter and spend more time around gender theorists, alas. They realise that college sport is played at an abysmally low standard. I staggered up to a girl at an early bop and announced I was the fly-half for the college team and was therefore a big deal. She replied that she wasn’t sure whether she should feel more sorry for the team or me. While it stung a little at the time, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Well played, you’ll go far.’

There don’t appear to be a lot of tough blokes at Oxford. One lad hurt himself and started crying, coming across the field weeping and looking, I presume, for some sort of emotional sympathy. I did the only polite thing and looked away in embarrassment and mild disgust. Alas, this type of behaviour is not atypical.

There’s not much inter-team banter or sledging in college sport which, to my mind, removes at least half the fun. An afternoon is always more satisfying when you impugn the ability, breeding or mother of a rival. Perhaps the English are too polite for the fairly basic repartee pursued by Australian cricket players and that may well be a good thing, but a silent cricket game does drag somewhat. There’s a legendary story that circulates between Australian postgrads about an Aussie bowler who made an undergrad batsman cry by asking whether he had crossed the threshold into manhood and developed pubic hair (the fact that he cried is probably a good indication as to whether he had). While this is all horribly crude, it is nonetheless immensely humorous at the time and justifies writing off six hours to play mediocre cricket in marginal weather.

Age is, indeed, wearisome and I am broken for days after a game of sport. As such, after- match drinks are more for pain-killing than for any social interaction. Undergrads should respect the longer recovery time required for battle-scarred veterans and fetch drinks for them at every opportunity.

Undergrads here are so desperately academically earnest. If you skip a Cuppers cricket semi-final to make a tutorial you are letting down a long and distinguished line of sportsmen who have scraped through Oxford with borderline thirds and sound batting averages

There are many more aspects of college sport that are worthy of comment, but time and space forbids. Don’t take it for granted, belittle your opponent at every opportunity, and remember that once you leave Oxford and commence full-time work, someone will ask you whether you miss college sport and you will reply, as did Wodehouse’s Mike, with ‘[A] nod. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, “So, you’re back from Moscow, eh?”’

On the kind of summer afternoon that will stick long in the memory, the Blues edged Cambridge in a last-over thriller in Varsity 20/20, putting on a real show for the handsome crowd before they returned to the library (or to quaff more Pimm’s).

Cambridge captain Richard Timms won the toss and chose to bat, with Tom Elliot getting stuck in during the power-play overs before Rajiv Sharma had Timms caught behind by Westaway in the fifth over with the score on 36. From here, for the next ten overs Oxford managed to put the brakes on Cambridge, who were constrained to around a run a ball, bringing up the 100 in the 15th over. Credit for this must go to Owain Jones and Freddie Fox, who applied pressure in the crucial middle overs, with Jones picking up danger man Elliot for 37 to a good catch from Fox, and Fox himself then getting amongst the wickets trapping the dangerous Ansari LBW for four.

From then on, Cambridge began to score more freely, with Jon Evans and Matt Hickey putting on 44 unbroken runs towards the end of the innings, including 25 off the final two overs to drag Cambridge to 151-5 off their 20 overs, a score that seemed around par on good wicket, when the pressure of batting second in a big game is taken into account. The Oxford attack on whole performed admirably, with Agarwal, Jones and Fox all economical.

The Oxford openers set about the run chase with vigour, with the first over seeing Sharma dispatch Matt Hickey for six, and Oxford flew to 28-0 off three overs, cashing in on the fielding restrictions that limited the number of men Cambridge could have protecting the boundary. However the fall of Sharma, for a swift 21, caused the run rate to slow, with Oxford behind the required 7.5 runs per over, reaching 49-1 off eight overs. As in the Cambridge innings, good bowling after the early power-play overs had passed, particularly from left-arm spinner Paul Best, piled the pressure on the batsmen as the runs began to dry up.

The pivotal moment came when Oxford captain Ben Williams was dropped on the boundary. Williams immediately capitalised on this second chance, launching a six in the very next over as he and Sam Agarwal began to open their shoulders and put the Cambridge attack to the sword. The pair added 53 runs between the tenth and 15th over, setting up a thrilling run chase with Oxford needing 32 runs off the final 30 balls.

When Williams was bowled by Elliot Bath one run short of his half-century, the result seemed once again to be hanging in the balance, especially when Jones fell at the end of the 17th over to leave Oxford still 14 runs short of victory with two overs left. The large crowd, evidently well-oiled thanks to making the most of the refreshments stands, vociferously cheered Agarwal as he brought up his third consecutive Varsity 20/20 half-century, and it looked like he would see Oxford home, with seven required for victory off the final over.

With four runs off the first two balls of the 20th over, Oxford looked to have it in the bag until disaster struck and Agarwal was caught on the long-off boundary for a finely crafted 61 off 54 balls. With Ben Jeffery on strike, Oxford the equation was simple: three balls left, three runs needed, as a nervous crowd watched on. Jeffery was less concerned however, as he launched the very next ball for an enormous six over the leg side boundary, sealing victory in an emphatic fashion and cueing a pitch invasion from his team-mates. No-one failed, but credit to Agarwal for and Williams, whose swift 91 stand set the stage for the tense finale and meant that with wickets in hand, the Oxford middle order were able to swing freely during the tense finale.

Oxford coach Graham Charlesworth paid homage to the extremely high standard of cricket on show, and stressed the importance of the victory, given the psychological boost it will give the Blues in winning the first Varsity match in the lead up to the One Day and Four Day games.

As the only taste of Men’s Varsity cricket on offer in Oxford this year, the game certainly did not disappoint. With an extremely high standard of cricket on show, and the magnificent weather no-doubt helping to swell numbers, the Blues can go on with confidence after proving that they have the temperament as well as the ability to close out tense matches on the big stage in front of a large crowd