Broad thumps the pad and wheels into one of his celebrappeals, not even looking at the umpire – bad move. It’s not given and it’s umpire’s call on impact, so not out.
OMG. Another tough chance, and this time he can’t hold on, low to his right. A big escape for Steve Smith.
Continue reading...When the England brains trust held Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad back at the Gabba under a belief they might work their magic under lights in Adelaide, it is fair to assume – although perhaps we cannot be certain – the scenario envisaged was not the pair trying to eke their team past the follow-on mark with the bat.
Yet here they were, England’s two most decorated seamers united out in the middle and Mitchell Starc bounding in with a hard, new, pink Kookaburra ball in hand. The specialist batsmen above them had earlier produced their latest heinous collapse, the crowd was up, the famous Edwardian scoreboard on the grass hill read 220 for nine and the deficit was 253 runs. The gulf felt greater to be honest.
Continue reading...A long-serving coach in Gabon is facing claims he raped, groomed and exploited young players, the Guardian can reveal.
Alleged victims claim that Patrick Assoumou Eyi – known as “Capello” – abused boys in his previous role as head coach of Gabon’s under-17 team and in his current role as technical director for La Ligue de l’Estuaire, the country’s highest league. One former player who was coached by Eyi said that the coach would lure alleged victims to his home, which he called the “Garden of Eden”.
Continue reading...A carefully crafted sense of stability around English football began to crumble on Monday night as record positive tests and the possibility of more postponements confirmed the return of Covid‑19 as a threat to the game.
Forty-two Premier League players and officials tested positive for the virus in the seven days that ended on Sunday, a record since testing began and more than three times the 12 of the previous week. Manchester United are among the teams hit, with the club on Monday closing the first‑team area their training centre for 24 hours and delaying travel to London as they waited for a decision from the league on whether their match against Brentford on Tuesday can go ahead.
Continue reading...Max Verstappen celebrated winning his first Formula One world championship with victory at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but only after huge controversy, that still leaves his title in some doubt.
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes are angry at a win they felt had been unfairly snatched away and which remains under debate with Mercedes intending to appeal against the stewards’ decision and the option of taking their case to the court of arbitration for sport. The Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, has made clear his intention to oppose any attempt to strip his driver of the title.
Continue reading...“Here we are then,” tweets Guy Hornsby, “finally a season for the ages after so many dominant Merc years. I love Lewis, but even he’d have wanted more of a challenge. I really hope we don’t get a clip, puncture, limp to the pits and all over. Head says Max, heart says Lewis. Yikes.”
It’s a funny thing about sport that some of the best ever are best remembered for the ones they lost – Muhammad Ali 1971, Australia 2005, Roger Federer 2008. But otherwise, it’s tricky – you’d probably prefer to be Verstappen, given he’s in pole, but Hamilton’s car is quicker. And, of course, the big unknown is whether the changes to the circuit will make overtaking easier.
Continue reading...Albert Benaiges, the former head of FC Barcelona’s youth system and the man who was credited with having discovered Andrés Iniesta, has been accused of sexual abuse of children in his charge over 20 years, accusations the 71-year-old strongly denies.
According to an investigation carried out by the Catalan newspaper Ara, more than 60 witnesses have come forward to detail his actions when he was a PE teacher at a school in the Les Corts neighbourhood of Barcelona during the 1980s and 1990s. One former student has made a formal statement to the police and others are expected to follow.
Continue reading...After a breakdown in the broadcasting of the first Ashes Test normal service eventually resumed. England’s meek collapse on the fourth morning in the face of a rejuvenated Australian attack condemned them to a nine-wicket defeat and a 1-0 series deficit heading into the pink ball encounter in Adelaide.
As Marcus Harris and Marnus Labuschagne finished off a target of 20 runs in 25 minutes after lunch, the latter striding in after the fall of the promoted Alex Carey, it subjected England to their 10th defeat in their last 11 Tests, handed Pat Cummins a first victory as captain and restored the Gabba’s status as Australia’s fortress.
They may have lost to India on the ground back in January, but England? This was a seventh victory over the old enemy in their last nine encounters in Queensland as part of an unbeaten Ashes record that stretches back to 1986. ‘Gabbattoir’ references have thankfully been light over the past week but it still deals in butchery.
Continue reading...Driven by his league title failure as a player, Aston Villa’s head coach has become a compelling prospect as a manager
There is an interesting, and no doubt very common phenomenon called parasocial interaction. This is where people feel they have an intimate, reciprocal relationship with a famous person, a belief that by consuming images of that person, by thinking about them, the mirror becomes a two-way glass; that they can see you too.
We all get this to some extent, right down to the entry-level version where you glimpse a famous person in the street and, as you walk past, automatically say hello-all-right-how’s-it-going-bro-safe-see-you-later-ha-ha-ha-be-lucky-how’s-Tanya, because obviously you must know them, and then five paces down the road realise it was Howard from Take That.
Continue reading...Alexia Putellas is our new No 1 with another five Barcelona players in the top 10 of our joint list with the Offside Rule Podcast
Continue reading...Here comes Patrick Cummins in his green blazer, and the crowd breaks out into applause as he walks to the middle for the first time.
I’ll tell you what, I didn’t see Broad warm up with the others, he was hanging out with Bairstow, who isn’t playing.
Australian Open organisers say ‘all players, participants and staff’ must be vaccinated as Djokovic, who has not revealed his vaccination status, is included in tournament draw
Tennis Australia has hit back at suggestions it is seeking to exploit a “loophole” in border entry rules so unvaccinated players can compete in the upcoming Australian Open, as it included Novak Djokovic in the draw for the January grand slam.
Djokovic’s inclusion in the tournament draw, which was released on Wednesday afternoon, followed intense speculation about the world No 1’s ability to enter the country.
Continue reading...Beijing dismisses no-show and says American officials had not been invited in the first place, as other countries consider their positions
China has reacted angrily to the US government’s diplomatic boycott of next year’s Winter Olympics, as more countries said they would consider joining the protest over Beijing’s human rights record and New Zealand announced it would not send representatives to the Games.
Chinese officials dismissed Washington’s boycott as a “posturing and political manipulation” and tried to discredit the decision by claiming that US diplomats had not even been invited to Beijing in the first place.
Continue reading...The International Tennis Federation has said it will not cancel any tournaments in China over concerns for Peng Shuai, because it does not want to “punish 1.4 billion people”.
The ITF – the world governing body for the sport – had been facing calls to join the Women’s Tennis Association in suspending all tournaments in China over the government’s refusal to provide assurances of Shuai’s wellbeing.
Continue reading...British driver says he had ‘nothing’ to do with sponsorship deal with company linked to Grenfell fire
Lewis Hamilton has distanced himself from his Formula One team’s partnership deal with Kingspan, an insulation company linked to the Grenfell Tower fire, saying he had nothing to do with the decision.
He also cast doubt on Kingspan branding remaining on his Mercedes car.
Continue reading...Sponsorship deal with Kingspan sparked furious backlash from the Grenfell community
Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes Formula One team is facing growing pressure to scrap a sponsorship deal with a firm that made combustible insulation on Grenfell Tower, after the government threatened to change advertising rules.
The racing team’s deal with Kingspan will mean the logo of the firm that made some of the foam boards used on the tower will be emblazoned on the nose cone of cars driven by Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas starting at this weekend’s Saudi Arabia Grand Prix.
Continue reading...Unprecedented disorder at the Euro 2020 final was a “near miss”, with deaths and life-changing injuries only narrowly avoided, according to an independent report into events described as a “national shame”.
Lady Louise Casey published her 129-page review on Friday into the incidents that overwhelmed Wembley stadium on 11 July. While she concludes that primary blame for the mass of public disorder must lie with the protagonists, there is also blame for both the FA and the police, whom she says were too slow to respond to trouble that began early in the day.
Continue reading...F1 champion will race carrying branding of company that made combustible boards used on tower
The seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton is facing protests from Grenfell survivors over a “truly shocking” sponsorship deal that will see his racing car emblazoned with the logo of a firm that made combustible insulation used on the tower.
Kingspan has been named as an official partner of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team, for which Hamilton is the star driver, and its branding is set to feature on Hamilton’s car starting at this weekend’s Saudi Arabia Grand Prix.
Continue reading...The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has announced the suspension of all tournaments in China amid concerns about the safety of the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, following weeks of a high-profile row with Beijing over the player’s wellbeing.
“With the full support of the WTA Board of Directors, I am announcing the immediate suspension of all WTA tournaments in China, including Hong Kong,” said the WTA chairman, Steve Simon, announcing the decision in a statement on Wednesday.
Continue reading...The governing body is pushing to make the game more welcoming for women – but is change happening fast enough?
Towards the end of the Queen’s Gambit, the Netflix show that helped supercharge the new chess boom, Beth Harmon crushes a series of top male grandmasters before beating Vasily Borgov, the Russian world champion. Fiction, though, remains sharply separated from fact. As Magnus Carlsen was reminded before starting his world title defence in Dubai last week, there is not a single active woman’s player in the top 100 there is not a single active woman’s player in the top 100 now that Hou Yifan of China, who is ranked 83rd - is focusing on academia. The lingering question: why?
For Carlsen, the subject was “way too complicated” to answer in a few sentences, but suggested a number of reasons, particularly cultural, were to blame. Some, though, still believe it is down to biology. As recently as 2015 Nigel Short, vice president of the world chess federation Fide, claimed that “men are hardwired to be better chess players than women, adding, “you have to gracefully accept that.”
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