‘I made mistakes on TV, he made his on a field’: Panesar strikes back at Smith’s Mastermind jibe

Steve Smith, Australia’s acting captain, has confirmed his team for Friday’s opening Ashes Test – but his team announcement was overshadowed by an extraordinary verbal attack on Monty Panesar after the former England spinner suggested Ben Stokes and his touring team should try to upset him by rehashing the infamous sandpaper ball-tampering controversy of 2018.Smith insisted the comments “didn’t really bother me”, but apparently demonstrated the opposite by raking over Panesar’s notoriously miserable appearance on the TV quiz Mastermind in 2019.Panesar later hit back at Smith, saying on BBC Radio 5 Live: “I’ve had some great moments for England and I’ve had shockers, and he’s had some great moments for Australia and he’s obviously had a very big shocker in South Africa. We’ve both made mistakes. I made mine on a quiz show, he made his on a cricket field

Silly point or square leg: how well do you know your way around a cricket field?

Cricket is full of jargon. Someone can be out for a duck, fooled by a doosra or fielding in the gully. If you are listening to a game on the radio, it can be difficult to interpret the vocabulary – silly, short, square etc – used to identify the positions of the fielders.Test how well you know cricket positions with the quiz below.For each question, place the fielder on the oval

Carlton are riding high on an AFLW wave of momentum. Just don’t call it a fairytale | Sarah Guiney

Momentum is a dangerous thing in sport. It can’t be acquired with any real success; it simply decides to arrive, announced only by the inexplicable way it shifts the air around a team. And something has certainly shifted down at Princes Park.If there had been any lingering doubts, Carlton’s semi-final demolition of Hawthorn well and truly dispelled them. From the first whistle, the Blues burst forth with a single-minded fervour usually reserved for teams far more experienced

Ashes 2025-26: key battles that could decide the urn’s next destination

Before Bazball, there was Travis Head. He was the one playing on fast-forward during the 2021-22 Ashes, sprinting to 152 at the Gabba in a career-shifting innings. The southpaw has since slashed tons in two finals against India, excelled in challenging Australian conditions, and can break out of a lean patch with a chainsaw-wielding knock. Never mind his three consecutive single-figure scores during Australia’s 3-1 win over India a year ago. He’d already hit consecutive hundreds to turn the direction of the series

Boris Becker: ‘Whoever says a prison life is easy is lying – it’s a real punishment’

Former Wimbledon champion on how taking accountability for his crimes allowed for rehabilitation, watching Novak Djokovic from his cell and the new era of brotherhood in the sport“I heard the screaming and I didn’t know what it was,” Boris Becker says as he remembers staring into the dark in Wandsworth prison, just over two miles from Wimbledon’s Centre Court where he won the first of his three men’s singles titles at the age of 17 in 1985. “Were people trying to kill themselves or harm themselves? Or couldn’t they deal with their loneliness? Or are they just making crazy noises because they have lost their minds already?”Becker had been sentenced to a two-and-a-half-year jail term. Amid his insolvency, he was found guilty of not declaring all his assets so that additional funds could be distributed to his creditors. The judge confirmed that his money was used, instead, to meet his “commitments to his children and other dependents, medical and professional fees, and other expenses”.He was taken from court to prison on Friday 29 April 2022, the start of a bank holiday weekend, which meant he was confined to a cell as bedlam broke out around him

‘Never, ever give up’: fighting for Afghanistan’s sporting future in shadow of the Taliban

“My message for all Afghan women who play is that if there is any small opportunity, do it,” Samira Asghari says. “My solid message is never, ever give up. Afghanistan was always a war-torn country, unfortunately. We have grown up in a war country. And we believe in a future Afghanistan, and the future of Afghanistan is the people

Former Rhondda roofer Harri Deaves to make Wales debut against the All Blacks

Harri Deaves began his working life as a roofer but on Saturday the Ospreys flanker will run out in the scarlet shirt of Wales against the All Blacks to complete “an amazing story” from club rugby player to international.The 24-year-old will win his first cap in a Wales side showing five changes from the one that edged out Japan 24-23 with a last-gasp penalty.Deaves’s ascent is one of the game’s more uncommon career paths in the era of professional rugby. He joined the Ospreys Academy from his local club, Pontyclun, in the Rhondda after a brief civil engineering course at Bridgend College.His early days at Ospreys, alongside British & Irish Test Lions Alex Cuthbert, Justin Tipuric and Rhys Webb, saw him turn up for morning training sessions in his van ahead of afternoon work as a roofer

Revealed: sports agent Jonathan Barnett’s three-year legal battle with John Regis and Jennifer Stoute

Special report: A leading agent and two Olympians fell out when their talent agency was sold, leading to ‘three years of torture’ which came to a sudden end after the emergence of text messages sent to a phone registered to BarnettA high-court claim that had pitted the leading sports agent Jonathan Barnett against his former business partners, the Olympic medallists John Regis and Jennifer Stoute, was withdrawn after an extraordinary three-year legal battle.A partnership of which Barnett was a member, the sports agency Stellar Athletics LLP, pursued a claim against Regis and Stoute for £1.2m after they left in 2021. It was settled by the ­parent company, CAA ­Stellar, in April 2024, shortly after Barnett himself resigned from the company.Speaking about the matter for the first time, Stoute described the case as “three years of torture”

Welcome to the Ashes, the classic cricket rivalry that never really starts or stops

Some say the Border-Gavaskar Trophy is now pre-eminent, but there is nothing more intense than Australia v EnglandIf it feels like the buildup to this Ashes series has lasted 842 days that is because it pretty much has. Test cricket’s oldest rivalry resumes on Friday inside Perth’s 60,000-seat thunderdome and with it, mercifully, comes fresh fuel for the ever-raging fire.Because on one level the Ashes never really starts or stops. Since Stuart Broad nicked off Alex Carey at the Oval on 31 July 2023 – the final act of a dramatic 2-2 draw – the sides have been tracking each other, all while their supporters chip away from afar.To the rest of the world this obsession must get a bit tiresome