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DUBAI: An India-Pakistan cricket match is always a blockbuster but emotions will run even higher in Sunday’s Asia Cup clash between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who engaged in a four-day military conflict earlier this year. Even before the clashes in May, which nearly escalated into a full-blown war, bilateral cricket ties had been suspended. The arch-rivals now play each other only in multi-team tournaments. Political relations have deteriorated further since the clashes, with several former Indian players urging the Board of Control for Cricket in India to boycott what will be the first meeting between the teams since the recent hostilities.…
RYAN Crouser of the US competes in the men’s shot put final during the World Athletics Championships on Saturday.—AFP TOKYO: Sporting excellence returned to Tokyo on Saturday as the opening day of the long awaited World Athletics Championships delivered on every front. Records were smashed and world titles defended, with some surprise wins keeping the night exciting for a sold out stadium that stood empty during the Covid-hit Olympics four years ago. The most predictable win of the night went to American Ryan Crouser, who won his third consecutive world title (22.34m) and became the only man to do so…
MISANO ADRIATICO: Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi won Saturday’s sprint at the San Marino Grand Prix after championship leader Marc Marquez crashed out of the lead on Ducati’s home turf as the Spaniard failed to finish on the podium for the first time in sprints this season. An aggressive Marquez had elbowed his way through from fourth on the grid before overtaking polesitter Bezzecchi halfway through the sprint to take the lead. But six-time champion Marquez, who had won 14 sprints this season, made a rare mistake in the final sector to crash out of the lead, gifting Bezzecchi his first sprint…
The Indian team sheet will not bear the names of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja while Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan, the architects of arguably Pakistan’s most famous win over India in a T20 match, will be watching the match as mere spectators. It usually doesn’t take much for a Pak-India cricket match to be a fiery affair. Even in times of relative calm, just the dormant history of decades ago used to be enough to get the blood boiling and shape the on-field narrative. So with the two nations set to meet each other in the Asia…
KARACHI: Salman Ali Agha didn’t flinch. He knew exactly what to say. “There’s no such message to the players,” he responded when asked at the Asia Cup captains’ press conference if he had instructed his men to keep their cool against India on Sunday — their first meeting since the brief armed conflict between the two countries in May. “My players are more than welcome to show aggression whenever they want,” Salman went on. “As far as it remains within the field.” It was a breath of fresh air for Pakistan cricket fans — both casuals and diehards. Honesty, assertiveness…
KARACHI: Salman Ali Agha didn’t flinch. He knew exactly what to say. “There’s no such message to the players,” he responded when asked at the Asia Cup captains’ press conference if he had instructed his men to keep their cool against India on Sunday — their first meeting since the brief armed conflict between the two countries in May. “My players are more than welcome to show aggression whenever they want,” Salman went on. “As far as it remains within the field.” It was a breath of fresh air for Pakistan cricket fans — both casuals and diehards. Honesty, assertiveness…
SOUTH AFRICA TOUR OF ENGLAND, 2025 The series is currently levelled 1-1 © Getty A “farce”, as Harry Brook rightly called it, at soggy Sophia Gardens on Wednesday. A hurricane of English runs at sunny Old Trafford on Friday. And here we are with a decider on our hands at Trent Bridge on Sunday. Or maybe not. The weather forecast (see below) suggests the only decision that will be made is when to call the game off. That would be a shame. As much as England deserve the chance to clinch the men’s T2OI series in the wake of their…
DULEEP TROPHY, 2025 South Zone still trail by 233 runs with eight wickets in hand. [Representative pic] © BCCI/IPL South Zone have a massive task ahead of them in the Duleep Trophy final after Central Zone finished with a mammoth first innings total of 511 that gave them a lead of 362 in the first innings. Resuming at 384/5 on the third day, overnight batters Yash Rathod and Saransh Jain continued to keep South Zone at bay. Saransh, who had already picked up a five-fer with the ball, went on to bring up his fifty and at the other end,…
BCCI AGM Ganguly will be participating in the AGM. © BCCI Apart from regular names like Sourav Ganguly (CAB), Jaydev Shah (Saurashtra), Arun Singh Dhumal (HPCA) and Rajeev Shukla (UPCA), most other members who will participate in the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are usual suspects. Harbhajan Singh, of course, stands out as an outlier of sorts in the elite list of state representatives for the general body meeting. As reported earlier, he will represent the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) at the AGM, sparking intense speculation about his prospects as a…
If measured purely on finishing position, last summer would have appeared a backwards step for Tasmania. Having reached the Sheffield Shield final the previous season, they slipped to fifth in both men’s competitions in 2024-25. But as the saying goes, success isn’t always linear, and wins and losses didn’t tell the full story for the Tigers last season.Mercurial allrounder Beau Webster broke into the Test team and had an instant impact, producing defining hands against India, South Africa in the World Test Championship final and West Indies to help Australia to a 3-0 series sweep. Spin recruit Matt Kuhnemann also…