The ball left Rachin Ravindra’s bat at an angle that should have ended his innings. Josh Tongue, the bowler who had been England’s most impressive performer in the early afternoon session, induced the drive. The thick edge flew low and fast to James Rew’s left. The Somerset wicketkeeper, on debut, dived. The ball hit his […]
The squad announcement landed. Charlie Dean’s name was not on it. The woman who will lead England at the T20 World Cup while Nat Sciver-Brunt nurses a calf injury, the woman who filled in impressively at the start of the summer, the woman who has played three Tests and is the white-ball vice-captain, has been […]
The last time Ben Stokes came back from a nightclub incident that threatened to end his England career, he walked out to bat at Trent Bridge. It was 2018. He had been cleared of affray charges following an incident outside a Bristol nightclub. The trial had consumed him. The verdict freed him. The next Test […]
Vice President JD Vance has spent the week defending the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, becoming the public face of an agreement that is broadly unpopular with his own party—only to be undercut by President Donald Trump, who joked he would blame Vance if the deal collapses, contradicted him on a key funding provision, and then […]
The tee times dropped. The calculations began. Rory McIlroy will hit his opening shot at the US Open at 12:52 BST on Thursday, playing alongside Ryder Cup team-mates Tommy Fleetwood and Ludvig Aberg in the morning wave. Scottie Scheffler, the world number one chasing the career Grand Slam, will wait until 13:14, grouped with defending […]
The ball would not stay on the 11th green. Rory McIlroy stood there on Monday, the wind gusting to 30 miles per hour, and watched as physics overruled architecture. The green was too fast. The slope was too severe. The ball rolled. It kept rolling. The forecast for Thursday is worse—gusts of 35 to 40 […]
The last time Graeme McDowell played a major championship, his son Wills was three years old. The boy would have no memory of it. The father would have no expectation of it happening again. Between 2008 and 2016, McDowell made 34 consecutive major appearances. The run ended. The invitations stopped. The sands of time, as […]
The last time Alex de Minaur and Denis Shapovalov faced each other with a trophy on the line, it was 2016. Wimbledon. The junior final. Shapovalov won it 4-6, 6-1, 6-3. They were teenagers then, still becoming the players they would eventually be. The match was a glimpse of the future. The future has arrived. […]
A year ago, he was outside the world’s top 800. He had never played a main-draw ATP Tour match. He had never contested a Grand Slam. He was a teenager with a famous name and an unknown game, the kind of player who appears on practice courts and is introduced as “the other Rafael”—the one […]
The first expletive arrived when Corentin Moutet described how he felt watching Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard save a match point with a 142mph second serve. The reaction was instinctive, the language unvarnished, the moment exactly the kind of raw, unfiltered emotion that live sports television craves—until it doesn’t. Jenny Drummond, the BBC presenter, asked him not […]
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