TV Guide: Verstappen needs Suzuka winning feeling to reinvigorate title bid

Suzuka used to be the circuit where Formula One champions were crowned. The Japanese Grand Prix would always be near the end of the season and 14 titles were settled there, including 50 years ago when Niki Lauda, who had survived an awful crash in Germany, decided not to race in monsoon conditions, allowing James Hunt to snatch the title from him by finishing fourth.

In 2024, they moved Japan to April and it now concludes a three-race overture before a five-week break because of the cancelled grands prix in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Max Verstappen will be glad of the hiatus after grumbling about the new rules that create more overtaking. The Dutchman has won in Japan for the past four years but after coming sixth and retiring in this season’s first two races, he is 43 points behind George Russell in the drivers’ championship (Sunday, Sky Sports F1, 6am; race repeat at 10.55am).

An Arctic blast brought soft hail as far south as Devon last week so it must be almost time for the cricket season. Last year’s County Championship began on 4 April and at 11.03am a new record was set for the earliest pop of a Veuve Clicquot bottle by a right-handed opening drinker at Lord’s. That can be broken on Friday as Middlesex host Gloucestershire, while Nottinghamshire, the champions, travel to Somerset (matches on ECB.co.uk or county YouTube channels).

How odd to think that when WG Grace passed 1,000 first-class runs by the end of May in 1895, the season began only on 9 May. Grace was 46 at the time, three years older than Lancashire’s new red-ball captain, Jimmy Anderson, who starts his reign at Northampton.

Ben Duckett has decided to play for Notts this week and earn his England Test place after a ropey winter rather than joining the Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League. The new IPL season began yesterday and Will Jacks, after impressing at the T20 World Cup, will hope to start for Mumbai Indians against Kolkata Knight Riders, who will discover whether Cameron Green, the Australia all-rounder, was really worth the record £2.18m they paid for him (Sunday, Sky Sports Cricket, 3pm).

News of Bosnia’s equaliser reached the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday as James Dean Bradfield began This Sullen Welsh Heart. By the time they’d reached Your Love Alone is Not Enough and From Despair to Where, Wales were heading out of World Cup contention. With Northern Ireland losing to Italy, home interest on Tuesday, when the final Uefa qualifiers are played, lies in friendlies. England last played Japan (Tuesday ITV1, 7.45pm) in a World Cup warm-up in 2010, winning 2-1.

Photograph by IMAGO/ John Mallett/ Avalon