Let’s be honest about what actually matters first: Argentina open the inaugural Nations Championship against Scotland in Córdoba on Saturday 4 July, 9:10pm kickoff, and this is the Pumas’ moment to announce themselves on rugby’s newest and shiniest stage.
A new global tournament, a home crowd at Estadio Mario Alberto Kempes baying for blood, and Felipe Contepomi’s side knowing full well that a stumble in round one colours the whole campaign. This is the kind of fixture that should have the country’s full, undivided, religious attention. Scotland away wins are rare enough; Scotland at home in a tournament opener that the whole rugby world is watching for the first time is the sort of occasion Pumas fans wait years for. There will be that bloke in Lancashire who shouts at the TV, asking why Johnny Matthews is not selected; something to do with Sedgley Park Tigers RUFC and Everton FC.
Naturally, then, Argentina has scheduled it directly against the football.
Pity, for a moment, the Argentine sports fan this weekend. Not because anything is going wrong, quite the opposite. Everything is going right simultaneously, which is its own particular kind of hell. While the Pumas are out there trying to win rugby’s newest trophy, the football is determined to make sure absolutely nobody can watch them do it in peace. On the Friday evening, at 22:00 local time in Miami, Argentina face Cape Verde in the World Cup Round of 32; the defending champions against the unlikeliest fairytale of the tournament, a nation of half a million people who have somehow drawn all three group games and are now one win away from doing something genuinely deranged to the bracket. Which means that just as the party finishes for football, the rugby will kick off.
In the UK, it’s Rugby League’s “Magic Weekend”. The venue is Everton’s new Dockland’s Stadium. There will be plenty of Scottish and Argentinian rugby interest there; not so sure about Cape Verde!
And just as you’ve steadied yourself for that particular act of triage, somebody mentions Wimbledon is also happening. Of course it is. It’s always happening; that’s the cruelty of the calendar this year. And here is where the uncle in the corner, three glasses of Malbec deep, will insist there are Argentine brothers playing in this very tournament, and for once, the uncle is right, even if he gets the headline slightly wrong. Francisco and Juan Manuel Cerúndolo aren’t facing each other this fortnight; that particular nightmare scheduling clash has been spared the family for now. But it’s a fair thing to get excited about, because these two have form: back in 2021 they became the first Argentine brothers in forty years to play the same ATP tournament, and the first siblings since the Zverevs to reach back-to-back tour finals, and at this year’s French Open, with a flourish nobody could’ve scripted, they both reached the third round on the very same day.
This year Francisco is the senior partner, seeded 18th and opening against Spain’s Jaume Munar, while Juan Manuel drew the considerably tougher assignment of 22nd seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and went out in round one in three tight sets. But the real shock to anyone outside Argentina is just how many compatriots are also rattling around SW19 at the same time. There’s Tomás Martín Etcheverry, seeded 29th, up against Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego. There’s Sebastián Báez, taking on the awkward serve-and-volley problem of Jan-Lennard Struff. Thiago Agustín Tirante drew Fabian Marozsan. Camilo Ugo Carabelli faces Daniel Mérida. Román Burruchaga has been handed the unenviable task of opening against fifth seed Alex de Minaur. Mariano Navone meets ninth seed Flavio Cobolli. And veteran journeyman Marco Trungelliti, because Argentine tennis depth apparently has no ceiling, is in there too, against Martin Damm. Eight Argentines in a single Grand Slam men’s draw is the kind of number that makes commentators start using phrases like “production line,” and somewhere in that Rosario living room, someone is now trying to track all eight of them on a phone while also watching two other sports on two different screens, the rugby, somehow, still demanding to be the main event despite everything stacked against it.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the question someone always asks at this point in the conversation, usually the same uncle, usually around 1am: does Argentina even play cricket?
The answer, delightfully, is yes, though “play” is doing some heavy lifting. Argentina has fielded a national cricket side since 1868, when they took on Uruguay in what was the first official sporting contest between the two countries, predating the football rivalry by decades. They’ve been an ICC associate member since 1974, currently ranked somewhere in the low twenties globally, a fact that will surprise absolutely everyone at the table and be promptly forgotten by Tuesday. The single greatest fact in all of Argentine cricket history, however, is this: in a 1938 fixture against Chile, Argentina’s Alfred Jackson found himself bowling to and presumably sledging, his own brother John, who was playing for the opposition. Somewhere out there, an Argentine cricket historian is waiting for someone, anyone, to ask them about this at a dinner party, and tonight, reader, that someone is you.
So no, Argentina won’t be troubling anyone’s TV schedule with actual cricket this weekend; there’s no Test match lurking to complicate matters further, thankfully, or the country would simply cease to function as a society. But the uncle’s question isn’t really about cricket. It’s a desperate, half-joking cry for a fourth sport to somehow not also be on, because surely, surely, the universe wouldn’t be so cruel as to also schedule a Test series this same weekend.
It wouldn’t. It hasn’t. Be grateful for small mercies. You only have to find a way to give the Pumas the attention they deserve on their biggest stage yet, while also watching your country compete for World Cup glory and tracking eight different Argentine names through a tennis bracket, all while the family WhatsApp group descends into psychological warfare over the remote. Cricket can wait. Cricket, mercifully, always waits. The rugby, on the other hand, really shouldn’t have to.
