Your Guardian Sport weekend: England v India, Club World Cup, tennis and NBA
Day two of the first Test gets under way with Rob Smyth and James Wallace your over-by-over hosts,India are seeking a first series win in England since 2007, having been held to a 2-2 draw last time out, a garland their new red-ball skipper, Shubman Gill, ranks higher than going all the way in the Indian Premier League,“You don’t get many opportunities as a captain to be able to come to England and you get to have a crack at the IPL every year,” says one of the IPL’s poster boys and a title winner with Gujarat Giants in 2022,“In my opinion winning a Test series in England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa is bigger,” Ali Martin, Andy Bull and Simon Burnton are our reporting team at Headingley.
“It’s the biggest five days in our sport – our shop window,” says the leading jockey William Buick of the glittering five days of Royal Ascot.The Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes (3.40pm) is the highlight of the sun-baked meeting’s final day.Kevin Ryan’s Inisherin was a brilliant winner of the Commonwealth Cup over the course and distance 12 months ago, while the French raider Lazzat won his first six starts for Jérôme Reynier and, having bolted up back over six furlongs at Chantilly, has been snapped up by the powerful Wathnan Racing operation.One to watch is Aidan O’Brien’s Australian recruit Storm Boy.
Tony Paley keeps the updates flowing with Greg Wood our reporter in top hat and tails at the Berkshire course.Under a broiling sun in west London, conditions have been particularly gruelling as some of the world’s leading players gear up for Wimbledon.Carlos Alcara, the top seed and 2023 winner, endured three hours and 23 energy-sapping minutes in beating his Spanish compatriot Jaume Munar on Thursday.The match may have been two hours shorter than his five-set French Open final win over Jannik Sinner earlier this month but the five-time grand slam champion suffered as temperatures soared to 32C.After a 15th straight win, the longest winning run of his career, a near-exhausted Alcaraz said: “It was a really tough battle.
” Tumaini Carayol has all the action covered.An unfamiliar England face France for Saturday’s non-cap international.There are five uncapped names in Steve Borthwick’s makeshift squad, with three set to start, as call-ups to Andy Farrell’s British & Irish Lions have have given the head coach the chance to experiment.The late addition of Jack van Poortvliet to the Lions party means there will be 14 players unavailable when England run out for the final time before the summer tour to Argentina and the United States.Michael Aylwin reports from Twickenham.
The European Under-21 Championship 2023 winners face a rematch with Spain, whom they defeated to lift the trophy two years ago.But Lee Carsley’s side approach the quarter-final in patchy form having followed up last Sunday’s goalless draw with Slovenia with a disappointing 2-1 loss against Germany to round off the group stage.Slovenia’s defeat by the Czech Republic in the other final match in the group was enough to secure Carsley’s side passage to the last-eight tie in Trnava, Slovakia.Will Unwin keeps the updates flowing while Ed Aarons reports.Our columnist considers the cult of personality at the revamped Club World Cup – how the individual walk-ons at the start of matches offer further proof, if any were needed, that Fifa is failing to understand that football remains a team sport – just ask Paris Saint-Germain, who unlocked European success by ditching their superstars.
Rob Smyth and Taha Hashim take up the over-by-over baton on day three at Headingley.Win against India in the coming weeks, then reclaim the Ashes in Australia, and Ben Stokes would go down as one of his country’s greatest skippers, but he is not ready to think in those terms.“There’s always a different buzz coming up against India and Australia in particular, purely because of how big those series are,” he says.“Away from the dressing room, we know what these series mean compared to other ones.But defining a career as England captain isn’t something that I really think about.
If that’s what I’m really bothered about, it’s just completely and utterly selfish and that ain’t me,”Tanya Aldred helms our rolling blog and will no doubt be keeping a weather eye on Jofra Archer’s exploits for Sussex against Durham,England’s paceman has been beset by a litany of injury problems and played the last of his 13 Tests in February 2021,It is hoped he will make his first-class return, part of a plan that could lead to him being restored to Ben Stokes’s squad at some point during a five-match series against India,There has been an understandable sense of caution about Archer’s latest rehabilitation, which was further delayed by a broken thumb, but the bowler himself has made his own intentions clear – at one stage floating a hurried return in last month’s one-off Test against Zimbabwe.
The Indiana Pacers stormed to a 108-91 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday to level the NBA finals at three games apiece and set up a decisive game 7 in Oklahoma City in the early hours on Monday,David Lengel will be across all of the action with his live blog on the biggest night in the basketball season,In the small hours, our live coverage of the tournament continues at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta as the holders face Emirati opposition,City’s new signing Tijjani Reijnders will be hoping to build on his impressive debut in the comfortable 2-0 win over Wydad in Philadelphia on Wednesday,The Dutchman joined City from Milan last week in a deal worth an initial £46.
5m as part of Pep Guardiola’s rebuild in response to their disappointing 2024-25 season.Alexander Abnos hosts our minute-by-minute coverage.
Michael Vaughan criticises Ben Stokes’s ‘staggering’ decision to put India in to bat
The former England captain Michael Vaughan said he was “staggered” that Ben Stokes chose to bowl first after winning the toss on the opening day of the Test series against India. The tourists proceeded to plunder 359 runs for the loss of three wickets on a flat pitch with Yashasvi Jaiswal and the new captain, Shubman Gill, both scoring centuries.The last six Tests played at Headingley had all ended in victory for the side that bowled first, and Vaughan, a former Yorkshire batter, accused England of making their decision based on the history books rather than the conditions on the day. “I am an old-school traditionalist here at Leeds that when the sun is shining, with dry weather, you bat,” said the 50-year-old Vaughan, who played 51 first-class matches at Headingley including four as England captain.“I was staggered when he said he was going to bowl
Shubman Gill glides India into commanding position with regal coronation | Andy Bull
For a man who moves so slowly, Shubman Gill can fit a lot into a split second. Gill is one of those rare athletes who works in a different rhythm to the rest of us, so that even when a ball’s coming down at 90mph he seems to be able to take a beat to whistle a bar of Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle while he thinks about what he’s going to order for dinner that evening, finally decides how to meet this latest delivery and then, at the last possible moment, follows through. He is, as any number of players and coaches say, someone you only need to see hit one shot to know exactly how good he is.England, unfortunately for them, got to watch a lot more than one on the first day of the opening Test.In style, Gill is a throwback batter
England v India: first men’s cricket Test, day one – as it happened
I’ll leave you with Ali Martin’s report from Headingley. Thanks for your company, see you in the morning. Big first hour!Simon Burnton soaks up the Headingley atmosphereThough a pleasant breeze took the edge off it, at lunch the biggest queues were for the water refill stations, and by tea the bars were virtually deserted but heaven help anyone who wanted an ice cream. A previously rather flat atmosphere perked up soon afterwards, potentially assisted by copious quantities of soft serve. Flake? Not us, pal
Royal Ascot 2025: Cercene claims major Coronation Stakes shock on day four – as it happened
That’s this blog wrapped for the day. We’ll be back tomorrow.Don’t forget to gaze through Tom Jenkins’s photo gallery.6.10 Royal Ascot result1st Adrestia 10/12nd Hammer The Hammer 9/23rd Redorange 12/14th Zayer 16/124 ran,Non-runner 15, 16, 18, 3A fine winner from Oisin Murphy who seems the best judge of these races, give or take Ryan Moore
Jack Draper earns Wimbledon seedings boost by making Queen’s Club last four
Jack Draper is a perfectionist in every sense of the word, which means that for the third consecutive match he departed the court quite unimpressed by the level of tennis he demonstrated. There were, after all, quite a few self-sabotaging concentration lapses, his forehand was sometimes too erratic and he did not always seem comfortable moving on the slick grass.In the most important moments, however, when the match hung in the balance, the 23-year-old locked in and produced his best tennis. Once again, the British No 1 held his nerve in the final stages of a tough three-setter as he defeated Brandon Nakashima 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to reach the semi-finals at Queen’s Club for the first time in his career.The victory means Draper will return to his career-high ranking of No 4 on Monday, securing him a top-four seeding at Wimbledon
India’s Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal make tons to leave England toiling in first Test
India slightly snuck into the country four weeks ago, dribs and drabs getting an A tour under way before the bulk of the first-teamers landed and began playing intra-squad cricket. The delayed finish to the Indian Premier League commanded eyeballs, then the World Test Championship final last week. All told, it was a soft launch.But on day one of this summer’s marquee series, the tourists announced their arrival with a flex of the muscles and an eruption of runs. Sublime centuries from Yashasvi Jaiswal (101) and Shubman Gill (127 not out) had driven England potty and taken India to 359 for three at stumps
Keir Starmer’s AI tsar to step down after six months in role
Whip’s resignation over disability benefit cuts not a sign of major rebellion, Nandy says
£5bn UK overseas aid cuts cannot be challenged in court, say government lawyers
Labour MP resigns as government whip in protest at benefit cuts
Give thanks Priti Patel isn’t foreign sec – she’d already be at war with Iran | John Crace
Grooming gang survivors tell MPs to stop ‘tug-of-war with vulnerable women’ – as it happened