‘Having a Bazball at Noosa’: Australian media goes to town over England’s mid-Ashes beach break
A mid-tour jaunt by the England cricket team to a Queensland beach town was covered gleefully by Australia’s tabloid newspapers, which splashed a shirtless Ben Stokes across their pages amid taunting headlines,“On back foot, England bails to the beach”, one read,“Life’s a beach, even for the sinking Poms,” added another,“Sun’s out, runs out”, offered a third, alongside a photo of Stokes’s tattooed biceps,“Having a Bazball at Noosa!”, the top of the front page of Brisbane’s Courier Mail declared, alongside coverage of Jamie Oliver’s best Christmas ham recipe and Australia’s controversial ban of under-16s from social media which comes into force on Wednesday.
A double page spread inside the news section noted the “wounded” English team couldn’t altogether avoid cricket on their getaway, as Stokes was pictured striding behind a young beachgoer with bat in hand.England lost inside two days in Perth in the first Test, and went down by eight wickets in Brisbane.The 2-0 scoreline means the tourists must win in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney if they are to regain the Ashes.The West Australian – which had lampooned the team with the headline “Baz bawl” on their arrival in Perth – led with a photo of vice-captain Harry Brook, opener Zak Crawley and bowlers Brydon Carse, Will Jacks and Gus Atkinson drinking beer at the beachside Rococo Bistro & Bar.“After gallivanting around golf courses in Perth and joyriding without helmets on E-scooters in Brisbane, England favoured rest and relaxation for their latest mid-series break,” the article read.
The front page had pointed to the piece with the headline: “‘Overprepared’: fails pub test”, citing coach Brendon McCullum’s explanation for the defeat at the Gabba that the players may have overtrained.“I’m a horse racing man and you wouldn’t just keep doing the same thing with your horse – you’d send it around in figure eights or over the little jumps, just to switch it up a bit,” the coach said on Sunday.“So we’ll look at some alternative methods over the next few days.”Relaxation appears to have part of a plan proving irresistible to Antipodean newsrooms.Even broadsheet The Australian weighed in, with more photos of a topless Stokes on the beach on page three, above the headline “Ashes in ruin: Poms take beach sabbatical”.
In the face of the media sledging, the Australia wicketkeeper Alex Carey has defended England’s right to “refresh the batteries”,“The Ashes is very hotly contested, you don’t want to be thinking of cricket every single day of the tour,If you do have a little break it’s probably not a bad time to refresh the batteries,” he said,“It’s a pretty big series with lots of time between games,The Australia cricket team gets to go home for a few days and be with the families, so touring parties have got to find time to fill in those little windows.
“It’s totally up to the touring groups to find ways to take your mind off cricket for a little bit,It’s not new stuff the English guys are doing, having a break,And if the media likes to follow certain teams around, that’s totally up to them to do,We understand that comes with the privilege of playing the game,We’re in a pretty lucky position that we’re playing professional sport and people want to follow the journey.
”The England team have been afforded time off before they travel to Adelaide for the third Test, beginning on 17 December.
Trump demands Fed listen to him as he lines up new leader: ‘I’m a smart voice’
Donald Trump declared he “should be listened to” by the Federal Reserve, as he weighs candidates to lead the central bank amid an extraordinary campaign by the White House to exert greater control over its decisions.The US president said on Friday that former Fed governor Kevin Warsh is currently top of his list to chair the central bank.Jerome Powell, the current Fed chairperson, is scheduled to finish an eight-year stint in the role next May. He has repeatedly defied Trump’s demands for drastic cuts to interest rates, prompting the president to launch a string of public attacks.Trump is also considering his adviser Kevin Hassett, who leads the National Economic Council, as a potential chair of the Fed
‘Every Leon should be magical’: food chain’s co-founder on what went wrong – and how to fix it
John Vincent on bouncing back after cutting branches, refreshing the menu, and staff learning from martial arts John Vincent is going back to the future. Four years after selling Leon, the fast food chain named after his father and founded in 2004 with two friends, he has bought it back with hopes of reviving its fortunes.“In a crisis you need a pilot in full control,” the martial arts fan says, speaking to the Guardian from Leon’s headquarters near London Bridge.He is getting his metaphorical trainers on to “outrun the lion” as he ploughs his efforts and his own money into reviving the troubled chain.The former management consultant bought back Leon for a rumoured £30m-£50m – significantly less than the £100m he sold it for – from the supermarket chain Asda in October, 21 years after the first restaurant opened in Camden
Crypto mogul Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud
Do Kwon, the entrepreneur behind two cryptocurrencies that lost $40bn (£29.8bn) three years ago and caused the sector to crash, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud.The South Korean, 34, had pleaded guilty to two counts of US charges of conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud.Kwon, who co-founded Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna currencies, was sentenced at a hearing in New York.The US district judge Paul Engelmayer called his crimes “a fraud of epic generational scale”
Elon Musk teams with El Salvador to bring Grok chatbot to public schools
Elon Musk is partnering with the government of El Salvador to bring his artificial intelligence company’s chatbot, Grok, to more than 1 million students across the country, according to a Thursday announcement by xAI. Over the next two years, the plan is to “deploy” the chatbot to more than 5,000 public schools in an “AI-powered education program”.xAI’s Grok is more known for referring to itself as “MechaHitler” and espousing far-right conspiracy theories than it is for public education. Over the past year, the chatbot has spewed various antisemitic content, decried “white genocide” and claimed Donald Trump won the 2020 election.Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, is now entrusting the chatbot to create curricula in classrooms across the country
Your Guardian sport weekend: Premier League, WSL and NFL action
Yara El-Shaboury is on duty for our essential portal to the weekend’s bumper football programme. She’ll be looking forward to the day’s four Premier League games, Championship, EFL and Scottish Premiership fixtures, sharing breaking news and reader feedback. Why not join the conversation? Send your thoughts to matchday.live@theguardian.com
‘I messaged Sia on Instagram. She didn’t get back to me’: cult darts hero Stephen Bunting on his viral walk-on
The world No 4’s entrance to the song Titanium has become a quasi-religious moment in darts, but while he loves the attention what he really wants is the world title“There’s a lot of people playing darts who haven’t got no character,” Stephen Bunting says in a matter-of-fact tone, his voice still a little croaky from the cold that has been laying waste to him for the last week. “They’re boring to watch. And that’s probably why they’ll never be in the Premier League. You need to have a personality as well as being at the top of your game. You need to balance both
Barbican to close its doors for a year for multimillion-pound renovation
Seth Meyers to Trump: ‘You can’t convince people the economy is good when they can see the truth’
The world’s most sublime dinner set – for 2,000 guests! Hyakkō: 100+ Makers from Japan review
Dragon’s teeth and elf garden among 2025 additions to English heritage list
Discover Australia’s top 50 children’s picture books as nominated by Guardian readers
Joyful, irreverent, endlessly quotable: why Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the perfect holiday movie