More sport than you can shake a stick at

I spent my first day off since arriving in England doing mundane things, but amid the chores I found time to watch my first whole rugby match on television. It took a while to figure out how teams score - though not as long as it took me to work the washing machine - but at 13-0 even I could tell the Lions were getting whipped by the Springboks. They fought back superbly, though, losing the game 26-21 after having trailed 26-7 at one stage. It made for pretty absorbing viewing, but I am yet to get used to the stop-start nature of rugby, as opposed to the flow football has.

The Lions' first Test against South Africa dominated newspaper coverage and male conversations on the tube in the lead-up to Saturday, but it's a pretty heavy-duty weekend for other sports too. Horse racing fans have Royal Ascot, and followers of Formula 1 are waiting to see whether Jensen Button, the home favourite, will continue his extraordinary run of wins (six out of seven so far) for Brawn GP at Silverstone. It's the German, Sebastian Vettel, in the Red Bull, though, who took pole position for Sunday's race.

And then there's the cricket - two World Twenty20 finals at that. The women's match starts awfully early - 10.30am on a Sunday - too early for most people to make their way to Lord's after late-night shenanigans, if the activity at Covent Garden last night was any indicator of how London spends its Saturday evening. It should build up during the day, however, as the men's game kicks off at half three. And though a lot has been said and written about England's indifference to the Twenty20 format, we've had good crowds at most games in this tournament.