Prop Iosefa-Scott agrees new Exeter deal to 2027
Exeter prop Josh Iosefa-Scot has signed a new two-year contract with the club. The 28-year-old tight-head has made 69 appearances in all competitions since his move from Waikato in the summer of 2021. The England-qualified New Zealander has been called up to the national 'A' squad this season.He missed the end of last season with a toe injury, but has established himself in the Exeter side over the past few months."He's grown as the season's gone on, he's up and running now and at the moment he's our first-choice tight-head," director of rugby Rob Baxter told BBC Sport."He's a big guy with lots of potential, but he's a good rugby player as well."He's going to be one of those guys who I'd like to think will be a cornerstone of what we're trying to achieve."Baxter believes Iosefa-Scott, who also had a spell with Highlanders in Super Rugby, has the potential to force his way into the full England squad in the years ahead. "I would like to think in the coming seasons we as a club and the squad we have, and his performances, will merit him being looked at in the future," he said."In the past players have come to us and they've been so far outside international recognition it's scary - even tight-heads like Harry Williams and Tom Francis came to us as tight-heads out of the Championship."They were both capped by England and Wales by the time they finished their career with us, and that's what you can do."If you can build a good squad and you can perform well together everybody starts to thrive and everybody starts to look good and people can end up with caps."What will help Josh get a cap is if we can become a good team within the Premiership."
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Telegraph
37 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Farokh Engineer: I crashed the car as George Best and I were chatting up a blonde
The difficult part about writing up an interview with Farokh Engineer is choosing where to start. Do you go with one of his stories about George Best, Denis Compton, Sir Donald Bradman, Muhammad Ali or Sir Alex Ferguson, to name just a few of the sporting legends we chat about? Or how about this one. 'You know Pele once slept in that room?' he says pointing at an upstairs window of his detached house in Cheshire. 'I met him at a dinner in Stoke organised by Gordon Banks. He was playing Mere Golf Club the next day, which is right next to my house, so I said: 'Come over and stay.' 'My wife took him up a cup of tea in the morning, he was very nice. Then we played golf with Bobby.' With Bobby? 'Yes, Bobby Charlton.' It was a throwaway anecdote at the end of nearly two hours packed full of stories tumbling out of the 87-year-old Engineer, fuelled by regular cups of coffee brought to us in the garden by his wife Julie, and with their toddler grandson running around, playing at our feet in the warm sunshine with the family dog. Engineer made the north-west of England his home almost 60 years ago when he joined Lancashire as one of county cricket's pioneering overseas players and the dash and twinkle in the eye have not dimmed with age. True, two new knees and an upcoming heart-valve operation would make hooking Wes Hall off his nostrils a little more difficult these days than in 1967 when he almost made a hundred before lunch for India against West Indies. 'No helmet and just a pink plastic box that wasn't going to do anything,' he says about that innings. 'I loved fast bowling. The quicker they came, the quicker they went, that was my theory.' Indian players were paid 50 rupees a day back then for facing Hall and Charlie Griffith. The mind boggles at what Engineer, the first Indian poster boy of cricket who oozed flair and panache, would earn now in the IPL as an opening bat and keeper. 'Sachin Tendulkar once told me: 'If you were playing today, you would be by far the highest earner.'' Engineer played 46 Tests between 1961 and 1975 and appeared twice in the Rest of the World XI series against England in 1970 that later had Test status withdrawn. He was at Lancashire between 1968 and 1976, signing alongside his great friend Clive Lloyd. In a golden era of domestic one-day cricket, Engineer won the Gillette Cup four times and the Sunday League twice. 'I know he wears glasses but sign him and you won't regret it' 'I recommended a player called Clive Hubert Lloyd, actually I was talking to him only yesterday, and Cyril Washbrook was the chairman of cricket at Lancashire and he said: 'But Farokh, he wears glasses.' I just said: 'Mr Washbrook, I know he wears glasses but you sign him and you won't regret it.' And he was my room-mate for over 10 years and we had a great partnership. We travelled everywhere together and, oh, gosh, I don't know how we're still alive; we were both party animals. 'My friendship with George Best grew at that time too because he had just come over from Ireland.' George Best, was he a star by then? 'No, nor was I really. Time and again I used to leave him at midnight and say, 'George, come on, time to go' and he would say 'Rooky', that was my nickname because Farokh was too difficult for an Irishman to say. He would say: 'No, you go home.' He would go to bed at 2-3am and the next day score goals; genius. 'My best story with him was that I had this car sponsored by Quicks, a Ford garage near Old Trafford. I had a red Ford Escort – Lancashire colours. After training, I said: 'Come on, George, I will give you a lift in my new car.' We were passing through Stretford and stopped at the traffic lights. George started chatting up this blonde next to the traffic lights. He was Rogue No 1, I was Rogue No 2. We were having a giggle and then I started the car and went straight up the arse of the car in front. I had taken my eyes off the road. I said to the driver: 'Sorry my fault, but after all you don't see many blondes in Bombay.'' A hearty laugh follows that one. Despite the stories of a life that belongs to a different era, you just know Engineer would love playing now. Not once does he imply it was better in his day and he is hugely complimentary towards the current India team, now in England and preparing for the first Test at Headingley on June 20. But despite his allegiance to India, Lancashire is in his blood, and he speaks with as much pride about the Red Rose as playing for his country of birth. 'The club have been great to me. They have named a suite at the ground after me, what an honour. The people of Lancashire have been so kind, too. I was caught speeding twice by this young cop, and both times he let me go. 'My dad would kill me if I gave you a ticket,' he said. 'I'm feeling great for 87 but so many of my colleagues have been dropping like ninepins. Peter Lever just died and so I'm very grateful to God for life. I've always lived my life. I've always enjoyed my life. I've never just existed, and even at this age I'm active.' 'I was a bloody lunatic' Engineer ran a textile business in Manchester after retirement and was an ICC match referee for a while and briefly worked for Test Match Special, where he thinks he encountered racism for the only time in his long life in England. 'I thought I was doing well. Fred Trueman, Brian Johnston and Christopher Martin-Jenkins were really for me but there was one person who always put me down. And I just wondered, was it racism? I never experienced any racism on the field. 'I don't know the ins and outs of what happened at Yorkshire but Bumble [David Lloyd] was accused of being a racist in all that. I'm telling you, there's not a racist bone in Bumble's body. I know, because he was my team-mate for many years.' Engineer is an ambassador for Veterans Cricket India, run by his businessman friend Anand Nair, that holds tournaments all over the world for age groups from over-40s upwards. The Brylcreem boy of India in the 1960s can still pull in a commercial deal. 'They used to like it because I batted in a cap and so my hair was out. Palmolive and other companies offered much better money, but my contract was with Brylcreem and it was prestigious because of its history with Compton and Keith Miller.' There is a symmetry to the Compton association. A seven-year-old Engineer was in the stands at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai when Compton played in a Ranji Trophy match in 1945. 'He had just taken a fresh pack of chewing gum out and he saw me among the huge crowd, and he said: 'Would you like a chewing gum?' I was too nervous to say yes or no, and he just tossed it to me, and I caught it. 'Oh', he said, 'good catch.' And when I got to know Compo later, I said: 'I used to worship you.' That was one of the advantages of coming to England and playing county cricket. I met all my heroes. I was a voracious reader of cricket books and I used to read all their life stories – Compton, Godfrey Evans, Len Hutton.' Engineer was a keeper who would go for every catch, and dive around despite his size, which was bigger than the average keeper at the time. He kept to the great Indian spin quartet of Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwath Chandrasekhar and Srinivas Venkataraghavan, and to Brian Statham at Lancashire. 'I was a bloody lunatic. I used to go for second-slip catches. I just thought, whatever a wicket-keeper can reach with his gloves on is the wicket-keeper's catch. When Jack Bond was captain at Lancs, the first slip was called Butlin's, you know, you go to Butlin's for a holiday because you never got a ball. 'I covered a huge area, and I enjoyed it. That was my domain. I wanted to keep wicket to Brian Statham, such a nice man. He said publicly if I was behind the stumps throughout his career he would have finished with twice as many victims. I said: 'George [Statham's nickname], you must have been drunk when you said that.' Because he had Godfrey Evans, who was my hero. 'In those days English bowlers used to pick the seam, it was almost allowed, with the result that Statham's inswinger when it pitched middle and off, coming in, I used to charge down the leg side because I would get so many leg-slip catches which were four runs before that. I got a couple of stumpings off him down the leg side. When the ball was not carrying I would stand up to the stumps. 'We were in the Cayman Islands once with Fred Trueman. It was past his time.' Engineer now breaks into his very good Trueman impression. ''I'm the quickest bowler in t'world.' And anyway I got a couple of stumpings off him. 'Stop it', Fred said. 'People will think I'm a slow bowler'. Legends of the game 'These people, just legends of the game. I'm so lucky… Chandrasekhar, Prasanna, Bedi, Venkat. The other three were pretty easy to keep to but Chandrasekhar was very interesting to keep to because he bowled about 62mph. Normally he spun the ball viciously both ways, without knowing himself which way the ball was going three quarters of the time because he was a polio victim, his wrist bent a bit further. 'Time and again he bowled a batsman with a googly and I said: 'Chandra, you tried to bowl a leg-spinner there, didn't you?' And he'd say: 'Yeah, yeah.' He was a very humble man. And I think he was the greatest spinner in the world. I could read him because I saw him grip the ball and saw the way it left his fingers. I saw it in the air and off the pitch. For me, it was like a split-second computerised effect because I could read him.' Engineer feels that '99 per cent' of modern keepers have technical problems. 'In T20 you can get away with a batsman who can keep but not in Test cricket. You've got to have a proper keeper, not a backstop. I've watched modern keepers and they get up too soon. They snatch the ball, which is OK standing back. Some people only half-squat. I found you had to be right down, so it was much easier to stay low to go for diving catches or catches that don't carry. It is much easier to come up than to come up and go down again – you lose a fraction of a second. So when they are playing [in the] sub-continent and the ball is lower and slower, they struggle.' Keeping was in Engineer's blood. He describes his childhood growing up in Bombay with his older brother Darius, who was a good club cricketer, and how keeping to him for the first time opened up his path in life. In the evenings after school he would throw a soft ball against a corrugated wall so it could bounce in any direction, and try to catch it. 'I went to Don Bosco School and my best friend was Shashi Kapoor, who would go on to be one of the great Bollywood actors. We were sitting on a bench in class yapping away one day when suddenly I saw this huge wooden duster hurled 100 miles per hour at us by the teacher. I'm telling you, he should have been a cover point for India. I think he would have hit the stumps every time. 'Instead of getting the hero roles he would have ended up in horror movies' 'Anyway, I saw this duster hurtling straight toward his [Kapoor's] face, and suddenly my sixth sense kicked in, I just stretched my hand out and caught the duster literally an inch from his face. I used to tease him that instead of getting the hero roles in films he would have ended up in horror movies if I hadn't caught that duster.' Engineer is still celebrated when he goes back to India every year, often when a birthday party is held in his honour. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award by the BCCI during the first England Test in Hyderabad last year but his links to Mumbai have faded. He sold his house on trendy Cuffe Parade years ago. 'I sold it for tuppence, and today it is probably worth about £40 million. The Ambanis live next door. I never imagined property would just go sky high all of a sudden. So, yeah, whenever I see that property, I feel a bit sick.' While we are chatting, Engineer's wife is searching for a Baggy Green cap given to him as a gift by Bradman, which excites the photographer but is somewhere in storage. Instead he poses with a silver bat awarded for being top run scorer in a series against England. There is a quote from Bradman on the back of Engineer's autobiography that describes him as one of the 'game's great ambassadors on and off the field'. The respect was formed during a tour to Australia. 'We were playing in Adelaide and I slipped over wearing rubber-soled shoes. Sir Don Bradman came into our dressing room and gave me a big telling off but invited me to his house for dinner. I had a date with Miss Adelaide that night, so I gave her number to one of my team-mates and told him to have a good time. 'I went to the Bradmans' house and just wanted a beer and a steak but they gave me carrot juice and a vegetarian meal, thinking that's what Indians ate and drank. Anyway, Sir Don gets out a projector and we start watching films of his innings. It is a bit odd, but he's Don Bradman. What do you say? He told me about this shot and that shot he played and said I was too flamboyant. As I left I gave him a gift and he went away and came back with a cap, his baggy green.' Engineer will be at Old Trafford for the India Test match in July. The struggles of his club this summer – coach and captain sacked and the team languishing in division two – have upset him. 'My heart bleeds. I can't bear to even open the papers. There is something radically wrong that needs to be rectified because Lancs are a great club. Bottom of the second division, I just can't believe it.' He thinks the retirement of Virat Kohli will help England but describes this India team as among the best to tour this country. 'They could probably pick two teams that would give England a run for their money.' A couple of weeks after our interview, I call to check on how the heart operation went. 'Yes, all good,' he laughs. 'I'm still alive and kicking.' The storyteller still has more tales to tell.
The National
38 minutes ago
- The National
Scotland's quickest-ever woman is back and ready to run fast
She was in constant, excruciating pain and even lying in bed was unbearably sore. It was quite a contrast for the Scot who, just a few years earlier, had established herself as the fastest Scottish woman in history and was, it seemed, on her way to becoming a truly world class sprinter. But just as she was peaking, the worst of luck struck Rees. In the summer of 2023, only a few months after setting a new Scottish indoor 60m record (she was already Scottish 100m record holder), Rees tore her hamstring. In itself, this would be a serious enough setback but more bad fortune was to follow, with Rees being diagnosed with arthritis in her pelvis which, it turned out, was the source of her crippling pain. Given her physical issues, it's perhaps no surprise that the Edinburgh AC athlete began to accept that her career as an elite runner may have been halted just as she was hitting her peak. 'This time last year, I really wasn't sure if I would ever compete again because I couldn't even walk without pain,' the 26-year-old says. 'I would go to the track to do rehab and watch people running and I just couldn't ever imagine that being me again. 'It was a really tough time because I was still turning up to training, but I didn't feel like I was in the sport anymore.' Rees admits that the prospect of hanging up her spikes for good was a 'constant thought' but it was watching the Paris Olympics last summer that persuaded her to give athletics one more shot. 'Last year, I became a 'normal person', not an athlete and I had a good time but when the Olympics was on television I thought, yes, I've had a fun summer but I want to give it another go because I still had a real drive to compete at major championships,' she says. 'Giving up would have been the easy option, and I think me a few years ago would have quit but I didn't want to reach the end of my career and feel like I hadn't given it everything.' A change of medication kick-started a recovery that saw Rees tentatively return to training and turn of the year went encouragingly smoothly, to the point that she felt able to dip her toe back into the world of competitive sprinting. Alisha Rees is Scottish women's 100m record holder (Image: Alex Livesey/ Getty Images) In the past two months, Rees has raced six times and while she's not producing the sort of times she was at her very best - her fastest time this season is 11.78 seconds in comparison to her Scottish record of 11.30 seconds - when she takes a step back she's able to appreciate the distance she's travelled since this time last year. 'It's strange being back competing, because you forget what it's like. Before my first race back, I couldn't sleep the night before because I was so nervous,' she says. 'But it's so good to be back. I know it will take time to get close to where I was before, but it's very hard to be patient. 'I've got faster nearly every time I've raced, though, and I do believe that by the end of the season, I'll be in a position where I'm happy with how I'm running.' There will, Rees hopes, be further improvement in her performance within the coming weeks, which will lay the foundations for a strong performance at the British Championships in August, which is where her injury issues began two years ago. She is, however, reluctant to set too many long-term goals - her injury issues make it impossible to know just how her body will cope with the stresses and strains of elite-level sprinting - and so her focus remains on appreciating her health and fitness and any success on the track will be a welcome, and well-deserved, bonus. 'I'm enjoying the sport again, which is so nice because last year it was a very unenjoyable time,' she says. 'I'm happy to be turning up at training and able to do the sessions, so I'm feeling good. 'There's the Commonwealth Games next year but this time, I'm in a very different position from where I was a year out from the 2022 Commonwealth Games. 'Obviously, I would love to target an individual spot in the team next year, but at the moment it's hard to know if that's realistic or not because I've still not raced much. 'There's also the chance to go for a relay spot, which would be amazing too, because a home Games will obviously be amazing. 'The goal for this year was to get back racing and I've already hit that target so it'll be nice to see where I can go from here.'
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Annabel Croft: ‘I don't want to be a professional widow but I'm not ready for another partner'
Annabel Croft, one time girls' Wimbledon winner, tennis commentator, pundit and Strictly semi-finalist, recently found a piece of English homework from when she was eleven in 1978. It was entitled 'What I Would Like to Do'. She had picked up a tennis racket only two years earlier, during a family holiday in Spain. In the ensuing decade, little did she know that she would become Britain's brightest young female tennis star. 'I would like to be able to… win Wimbledon,' she wrote. 'Before I get to [sic] old, I would like to dance on stage… before I am to [sic] old I would like to get married because if you are too [sic] old you cannot have children… Also, your husband protects you.' This afternoon, we are sitting at the kitchen island in Croft's six-bedroom neo-classical home, designed by her late husband Mel Coleman twenty five years ago. The house, part of a gated estate in Kingston, is a short drive away from the grass courts of Wimbledon. When Croft was selected for the main draw there at the age of 15, she was the youngest to play there for 95 years. In 1984, a month before her 18th birthday, she won the girls' junior title. It's hard to square that Croft is now 58-years-old – 59 next month. She doesn't look that different from the press cuttings of thirty-five years ago, which are stacked up in the hallway as she prepares for a 28-date speaking tour about her life this September. She does a lot of walking and yoga these days, as well as playing tennis – and it shows. Wearing a Me+Em brown linen jumpsuit and mules, she has a baked-in tan (she founded her Annabel Croft academy in Portugal, which Coleman oversaw until he died two years ago). Her famous mane of hair, always tied back in a high pony or plait when she was the Raducanu of her day, now cascades around her shoulders. The French Open is on in the background. 'That was incredible,' she says after Aryna Sabalenka catches out Coco Gauff, before the ultimate glory was claimed by Gauff, who Croft is rooting for to win Wimbledon. Croft spent the first ten days of this year's Roland Garros commentating for BBC Radio Five Live. Tomorrow, two of her three children, Amber Rose, 30 (six months pregnant) and Charlie, 29 (about to get married), are coming over for lunch to watch the men's final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, a game that lasted 5hr 29 mins; the second longest in grand slam history. Her youngest daughter, Lily, 26, lives in Dubai. This week, Croft is getting ready to begin commentating at the HSBC Championships at the Queen's Club, as women's events return there for the first time since 1973. Ten members of the women's top 20 will be playing, including Katie Boulter and Emma Raducanu. When I ask if she has 'special interests', she murmurs about Alcaraz and Raducanu, the former for being so utterly brilliant, thought of as the new Nadal, the latter because her trajectory has been so uneven, yet her promise never diminished. It has been two years since Croft did the splits on Strictly, reaching fourth place, dancing with the energy, stamina and natural skill that must initially have surprised both her partner, Johannes Radebe, now one of her best friends, and the judges. It felt like every step was imbued with the emotion of her personal tragedy. Mel Coleman died at Kingston Hospital in May 2023, just 12 weeks after he was diagnosed with Stage four colon cancer, which had spread throughout his body; 97 per cent of his liver was covered with tumours. Her husband of 30 years, they married in 1993 two days before her 27th birthday but they first met when she was just 21; she was in Sri Lanka making a TV show about learning to sail – Coleman was part of the sailing crew. She shows me an old VCR tape: 'The moment I first met him and shook his hand is captured right here.' Then, Coleman was an America's Cup and Admiral's Cup sailor, before switching to investment banking. Not long after meeting him Croft made the decision to retire from tennis. She was 21, ranked 24th in the world but had become tired of the tennis life, of hanging around in motels trying to scrabble enough for the bus fare to the next tournament: 'I knew I didn't want to live my life as a tennis player until I was 30. I was emotionally intelligent early on to have worked that out.' Sensing the happiness to be found in normal life off the circuit, and given, by then, she was something of a household name, she moved into entertainment: 'There wasn't a Sky TV, or Eurosport so I couldn't move straight into commentary. I had to find other ways to make money.' 'You can't sit back and wait for things to come to you' She began doing pantomime: 'I needed the panto to give me confidence. If you force yourself into uncomfortable places you suddenly realise it's not as terrifying as you thought.' Immediately after her retirement in 1988 she took over from Anneka Rice on Channel 4's Treasure Hunt. 'I was always someone who thought you can't sit back and wait for things to come to you. You have to make things happen. No one gets up in the morning and thinks 'I'm going to help Annabel today.'' 'We grew together,' she says of Coleman. She gestures around the house, and points outside to the tennis court: 'The court was the first thing we put in.' When Coleman died, the couple had been in the process of planning their retirement, selling this house and relocating down the road to a smaller one. Every night, at bedtime Coleman told her he'd miss her until the morning: 'I didn't know I had an incredible marriage, but I did,' she says. She is composed. Her grief is not as raw as it was after Strictly, now it 'comes in rain showers, but they are getting less – and then it's gone.' 'You know he died of sepsis?' she asks me. The cancer had spread – he eschewed the opportunity for chemo for a better quality of life, and it's thought a tumour perforated on a flight back from Portugal. On his return, he was admitted as an emergency. His death was as sudden as his diagnosis (both, she says, badly handled by Kingston Hospital). By July – 'literally within a few weeks [of losing him] I was on the phone to my agent. He said ' I've signed you up to Strictly. You're giving an interview tomorrow because they are announcing it.' I don't know what I would have done without being busy. I would have sunk.' Strictly, she says, saved her – it also gave her Radebe – 'we are bonded for life'. He calls her all the time. Sometimes they talk for two hours. 'He's part of the family now,' she says, and shows me a picture of him lined up with her children: 'Look! He's wearing Mel's sliders there.' Her 1978 A4 homework is on the table in front of us. 'Nice ideas,' her English teacher wrote. It's as though Croft foretold her life, minus the tragedy. 'But there is so much to be positive about,' she says. By September, she will be a grandmother and she has properly rediscovered dance. During the tour, she will dance on stage: 'I don't want to be a professional widow. I understand that a lot of people can identify with what I've been through, but I don't want grief to define me. 'I've wondered whether I went down the wrong path' 'People say I have been so generous with my emotions, but I have always been like that. Strictly was so helpful to me. I realised how much I loved dancing and I've wondered whether I went down the wrong path [with tennis] when I might have been a dancer instead.' Two years on from Strictly, she is in the process of downsizing: 'I mean, it's too big!' she says, 'it's ridiculous. I'm rattling around here. The house has served its purpose.' She is clearing three decades of family life, including Coleman's possessions, his clothes and shoes. The family baby grand which sat in the hallway for twenty-five years has already gone. She's gravitating towards her eldest daughter (and her imminent grandchild) in Battersea, near enough to her friends and to Wimbledon. 'Mel had always wanted a water view [because of his sailing] and I do too because it will connect me to him.' Croft grew up in Farnborough, Kent, in a comfortable home with two siblings, an older brother and a younger sister. Her parents, James, a chartered surveyor, and Susan, a housewife, were 'keen tennis players' but neither of them coaches or professionals. They had a tennis court in the garden but it was at a Spanish hotel tennis tournament that she caught the bug. Her mother then started driving her 20 minutes to Park Langley tennis club in Beckenham, dropping her off 'with 50p in my pocket for the cost of my lesson, a packet of crisps and a drink of squash, and I'd stay there all day. It was forehands on a Monday, backhands on a Tuesday, Wednesday was volleys, Thursdays serves and then playing points.' She shows me a collection of childhood log books with scores: lists and lists of tennis partners – mostly boys – whom she organised into being her opponents. But she'd play anybody, often 'wily old dogs'. What is telling about this is the extent of her drive. 'I'd have charts up on the fridge. It totally came from me. It should always come from the child. I met one of those boys recently and he said 'I used to love coming to you because you always bossed us around and set all the drills. You organised everything.'' As she started to hit a different league, she missed more and more school: 'My dad was always writing requests to the head mistress to ask for time off: 'Annabel won't be there on Friday, Annabel will miss this week for a tournament'. Slowly I dropped subjects until I was just down to maths, English and sport. I once sat a geography test, turned over the page and realised I didn't know a single thing.' At fifteen, she moved to Houston, Texas for five years to train with a coach, who was the mixed doubles partner to Billie Jean King.'I travelled around the world six or seven times – that was my education. But it's so gladiatorial. It's like a boxing match.' She plays me an audio clip of a match with 'an American girl' at the Albert Hall, with Des Lynam commentating: 'I'd had hypnotherapy before that'. She suffered badly from nerves. Would a sports psychologist have helped her? Made a difference to your longevity? I ask: 'I don't think so. I knew myself.' She is adamant that she made the right decision to retire. Today, there is an added pressure: Raducanu has recently had to deal with a creepy superfan who was evicted the Dubai Tennis Championships, 'but [sadly] that comes with the territory,' says Croft. 'There's way more security now, but what has changed is the birth of social media. Tennis players today, if they lose matches, get abuse from betting people who are going to lose a lot of money on somebody's match, and then they start attacking the player. That is a lot of stress and pressure. I wouldn't have been able to take that.' Her life in retirement was about pushing on, pushing through the pain barrier in a different way: 'Sometimes I'd be on the floor with a panic attack [with speaking engagements] but it was Bear Grylls who gave me the best advice. Mel is godfather to his first son. He said 'Annabel, don't try to be somebody you are not.' Perhaps it is because she is, as she says, 'a naturally sunny person' that she has fared so well on mainstream television. She shows me a tabloid from 1988 where she's on the front page wearing a bikini, publicising her role in the Channel 4 reality show Survivor, which involved a group of people attempting to survive on a deserted island. There are photographs in Hello – it's easy to forget how famous she was back then. 'I want to simplify my life' I can see why she invites such love and loyalty: 'My oldest friend from when I was seven often comes to stay with her husband.' Her children have gathered around her. Her son Charlie phones her every day during his coffee break: 'They are always asking 'what are your plans, who are you having dinner with? Come and join us!'' But she's a very long way from thinking of another partner, 'I can't think about it at the moment. I just really can't.' 'I want to simplify my life, maybe go on walking holidays and be close to family to help. I don't have a driving ambition anymore [but] I am probably kidding myself when I think I would be happy if I just did nothing. If there is one message I have in my tour, it is do something that makes you happy because you never know what is round the corner.' Coleman was an investment banker for about 18 years, commuting on the tube and sitting behind a desk, but he was 'a free-spirited yachtsman' whom Croft says should never have had an office job: 'I used to call him Crocodile Dundee.' The white van they converted into 'Vannabel' for camping holidays sits on the drive: 'It's a difficult one. I don't know what to do with it.' Coleman's treatment during his illness has left its mark. The delivery of his diagnosis was blunt, but it was his end-of-life care that was truly horrific. The news of his imminent death was broken to Croft and the family callously by a nurse, as Coleman lay within earshot. This time, it was Croft who wanted to protect him, the 6ft 4in towering man she nicknamed 'Mr Incredible', who only three months earlier had been entertaining everyone, able to fix everything in the house. The lack of kindness in this worst moment was incomprehensible to her. She says 'I have had several meetings since and I've received an apology from the hospital.' She still finds it hard to discuss: 'It's such an awful subject. We don't need to talk about it now. Maybe sometime over a glass of wine.' Mercifully, she says, in the 12 weeks leading up to Coleman's death, both of them had been supported by Dr Isabella Cooper, a biochemist specialising in mitochondria, leading a team of cancer researchers at Westminster Hospital. Through a strict ketogenic diet (based on eliminating sugar, low carb, meat heavy) Dr Isabella Cooper reduced the tumour coverage on Coleman's liver from 97 per cent to 70 percent. It appeared that his new diet was holding the disease back, before the sepsis set in: 'I'm at peace with the fact that Mel died with hope, rather than no hope.' Croft says. 'Isabella gave us so much hope. She was the only person who gave Mel hope. And if one positive thing can come out of losing Mel, I would love to give a platform to her work.' She still talks to Cooper every day and now follows a mostly sugar-free diet. She opens her fridge to show me streaky bacon without sugar additives and smoked salmon with no hidden sugars: 'I have a huge appetite,' she says. You've got to be kidding? 'Oh yes! I ate the same amount as Mel.' 'But I have a very high metabolism and my children say to me 'slow down'.' There is something very old school about Annabel Croft, much like Wimbledon itself. This month Croft will again be part of the BBC's commentary lineup at the tournament. Shortly after Strictly, she appeared at the Princess of Wales' trophy presentation, interviewing the Wimbledon winners. 'The standards at Wimbledon are incredibly high,' she says. 'Everything is immaculate, from the manicured plants to the seating to not a cable being out of place.' However, this year will be the first tournament without human line judges, replaced by AI-powered cameras: 'I'm torn. I'd rather have the correct line call if somebody's Grand Slam is riding on a bad call [from a judge]. People do have less attention span and it will speed tennis up, but the line judges are full of personality and it makes tennis entertaining.' I can't draw her to express a view on the thorny issue of trans women competing in female categories. 'I'm not in a place where I want to attract unwanted aggression towards me.' But I can tell she does have views, 'Maybe if I'd retired I'd express a view. I do think there isn't enough debate anymore – or humour. Certain subjects have been shut down, we have not been allowed to debate them.' Croft is a big fan of TCW (formerly called The Conservative Woman) the online magazine and podcast created by her friend Kathy Gyngell to defend freedom of speech and challenge Left-liberal thinking: 'I adore her. She is a woman who will stand up for what she believes in. She is the brightest woman I have ever met. I admire her courage.' Courage is a good word for Croft too – and resilience: 'Ooh I should use that word more.' In the space of two years, she has gone from not knowing how online banking works – 'Mel did all of that' – to being able to take the back of the tumble dryer to fix it: 'I remember seeing him do it. When it broke down, I went and got his tool box.' Water streamed through the roof shortly after he died – she dealt with that. She can pump up a car tyre as well. 'Mel's watching over me and teaching me a lot. I probably would have gone my whole life never doing these things had Mel been around. But I can do it all now. I've learned I can do things on my own, things I didn't ever think I could.'
