HOT OR NOT: Groves proved how far talent and perseverance can take you

It’s Hot or Not time again as Sportsmail’s Riath Al-Samarrai reveals what’s been making him feel warm and what’s been leaving him cold this week. 

HOT 

GEORGE GROVES

A superb career came to an end this week and even Carl Froch had warm words for him. Eventually, anyway.

Not many fighters earn four cracks at a world title but it is a measure of Groves’ talent and perseverance that he did, and it was nothing less than marvellous when he finally won one.

It is a measure of George Groves’ talent and perseverance that he finally won a world title

KYLE WALKER 

It hasn’t been his best season but the other day he put out one of his finest tweets. If you haven’t seen it, it was a caption on that Harry Maguire picture that did the rounds during the World Cup and poked a bit of fun at Liverpool.

It was funny and it was harmless. The fact he felt the need to quickly take it down points to how joyless football can be.

Kyle Walker’s tweet after Liverpool v Leicester was funny and should not have been deleted

LEBRON JAMES

He missed 17 games with a groin injury but back he came for the LA Lakers against the LA Clippers on Thursday night.

The outcome: 24 points, 14 rebounds and nine assists in a 123-120 overtime win. Not bad for a 34-year-old, and not bad at all for one who rates himself 80 per cent fit!

LeBron James missed 17 games with a groin injury – but he has returned with a vengeance

NOT

BRYSON DECHAMBEAU

The American takes a mind-boggling amount of time over his strokes, so you wonder why he doesn’t afford his brain the same courtesy.

This week, floating on a hefty pile of appearance money to play in Saudi Arabia, he declared: ‘It’s amazing what Saudi Arabia and the European Tour are doing.’ Amazing. That’s one word for it.

Golfer Bryson Dechambeau recently made some ill-advised comments about Saudi Arabia

MAURIZIO SARRI

A visionary, a setter of trends, a man brave enough to stick with something that isn’t working. All admirable – but he said on Friday he won’t ever change, and at Chelsea that will be a problem sooner rather than later, on current form.

Sarri saw moments of promise and progress in a 4-0 defeat at Bournemouth. His notoriously twitchy employer will only have seen a 4-0 defeat at Bournemouth.

Maurizio Sarri says he won’t change, despite Chelsea losing 4-0 at Bournemouth this week

KEATON JENNINGS

Dropped as opener for the second Test and it was hard to argue, even in the absence of anything meaningful in the first innings from his replacement Joe Denly.

As Nasser Hussain pointed out in these pages, Jennings is super against spin and offers precious little against pace — 31 runs across two innings just isn’t good enough.

It was hard to argue against Keaton Jennings being dropped by England in the West Indies