Tribe’s Lions heroics fuel Glamorgan’s belief on return to Championship elite
The daffodils were in suitable bloom in Cardiff, swathes of them, creeping from under the trees in Bute Park, yolky heads bobbing in the spring sunshine,A few hundred metres up the road, Glamorgan’s players were gathering at Sophia Gardens before their biggest season in years, back in Division One of the County Championship for the first time since 2005,Their campaign last year was a slow burner but blossomed, a close-knit side playing confidently,Alongside a thousand runs each from Colin Ingram and Kiran Carlson were eye-catching performances from two talented then 21-year-olds, Ben Kellaway and Asa Tribe, who went on to be picked for the Lions tours in the winter,In their shellacking by Australia A in the unofficial Test, Tribe hit an unbeaten 129, which was enough to get him a namecheck from the England managing director, Rob Key, in pre-season media musings – the only non-capped player to be mentioned.
In Cardiff’s busy indoor school, Tribe stands out because of his specs, now a kind of calling card.He has tried lenses, but found the vision was not as good.He is also remarkably composed, on and off the pitch, moving from the Glamorgan second team last April to the first, the Lions and then a franchise gig with Paarl Royals in the South Africa T20 within the space of a year.Has he allowed himself to think of even higher honours?“There’s a bit of talk around it and it’s quite easy to get sucked up into that thinking,” he says.“But if I don’t put in performances like I did last season, it becomes irrelevant whether there’s hype or not.
“There’s the new challenge of moving from Div Two to Div One and I’m sure there’ll be more homework done on the way I play.I don’t buy into the stress thing because being stressed doesn’t make the situation any different.It just makes it worse.”He reminds his captain Carlson of another Glamorgan player.“Asa’s a very impressive young man,” he says.
“He’s a very talented boy, a great athlete, but he is just a sponge.He just wants to ask questions, gain knowledge, know how to improve.“If he struggles in one area, he’ll work on it until he doesn’t struggle on it any more.He’s just got that hunger to succeed.I can relate it back to when Marnus [Labuschagne] first came over.
They are very similar characters, very similar types of player in terms of the way they train, their work ethic,” It is high praise to be compared with one of Glamorgan’s favourite sons,Tribe grew up in St Lawrence, Jersey,“It’s a nice little island and it’s lovely in the summer,” he says,“It’s got lovely beaches, everything’s on your doorstep and it’s home.
” Was it an outdoorsy kind of childhood? “Absolutely, I think that’s key.I hope everyone has one of those, it’s really important to get outside.”He and his older brother, Zak, were as cricket mad as their dad and the two Tribes went to play for Jersey.Asa made his first one‑day international century against Papua New Guinea when he was 19.He chose Cardiff University because of the UCCE (University Centre of Cricketing Excellence) programme and graduated in sports performance analysis last year, another glass in a champagne summer.
Winter continued in the same vein,His unbeaten 129 against an Australia A attack that included Jhye Richardson (Yorkshire) and Fergus O’Neill (Nottinghamshire) was a high point in the debris of the Ashes tour even if his hungry mind would have liked something more to chew on afterwards,“That was a massive step in terms of where I could push myself, and to be not out at the end was quite a big thing because it showed resilience and grit and determination,Post-game, you get some feedback, but not as a whole of how the trip went,I did ask Freddie [Flintoff] for a little bit of that, but he just said I played well.
I’d like to have a little bit more, where can I get better, all these kind of things.”From there to South Africa, where he caught the eye of Kevin Pietersen and R Ashwin, for a different time.“You play in front of very passionate fans and they get quite a few in the stadium.It’s a great experience and a great way to keep staying relevant.“I know that probably doesn’t sound like the most important thing, but with this kind of franchise world and where it’s going, you have to stay relevant in people’s eyes.
As well as it being a great way to see what I can do, playing with guys from all around the world.”Carlson says: “I have no doubt that he’ll play a lot of Test cricket for England.His ceiling’s incredibly high.Hopefully this summer, in the first block, he’s going to be able to put a marker down and show people how much he’s improved.”Another intriguing storyline in a reinvigorated Championship that springs to life on Friday.
UK food inflation ‘could hit 9%’, trade body warns as Reeves meets retail chiefs
Food inflation could hit 9% in the UK this year even if the strait of Hormuz opens within the next few weeks, figures suggest, as the Iran war pushes up energy prices.The Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which represents 12,000 food and drink manufacturers, has predicted prices will rise by “at least” 9% by the end of 2026, almost tripling a forecast of 3.2% that was made before the Middle East conflict.The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, met supermarket bosses on Wednesday to discuss how to ease any impact of cost inflation on prices at the till, while global markets rallied on remarks from Donald Trump suggesting the war could end in “two to three weeks”.The FTSE 100 shut 1
Starmer’s ‘five-point plan’ was not a plan | Nils Pratley
‘We have a five-point plan for the immediate crisis,” declared the prime minister during his remarks from Downing Street on Wednesday. Really? Two of his five points were measures on energy bills that pre-date the Iran war. One was a description of support for a sub-set of consumers but dodged the key question of who else could get help.Another stated the government’s longstanding energy strategy in unchanged terms. The last was a diplomatic policy, presumably shoehorned into the cost-of-living passage because a five-point plan sounds better than a four-point one
Claude’s code: Anthropic leaks source code for AI software engineering tool
Anthropic accidentally released part of the internal source code for its AI-powered coding assistant, Claude Code, due to “human error”, the company said on Tuesday.An internal-use file mistakenly included in a software update pointed to an archive containing nearly 2,000 files and 500,000 lines of code, which were quickly copied to developer platform GitHub. A post on X sharing a link to the leaked code had more than 29m views early on Wednesday, and a rewritten version of the source code quickly became GitHub’s fastest-ever downloaded repository. Anthropic issued copyright takedown requests to try to contain the code’s spread. Within the code, users spotted blueprints for a Tamagotchi-esque coding assistant and an always-on AI agent, per the Verge
SpaceX confidentially files to go public at $1.75tn, reports say
SpaceX has confidentially filed for an initial public offering on the US stock market, according to reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. The IPO is set to be one of the most closely watched and highly valued listings in market history.Elon Musk’s company, which has become a dominant power in both space travel and satellite communications, could potentially seek a valuation upwards of $1.75tn. The confidential filing will give regulators a period to review and discuss the company’s financial disclosures before investors and the public are able to view them
Jaden Ivey’s release isn’t a victory for inclusion. It’s a lesson in athlete expendability | RK Russell
When the Chicago Bulls waived Jaden Ivey on Monday, after he made a series of unprompted anti-LGBTQ and religiously charged comments on social media, the move was framed as a response to “conduct detrimental to the team.” On the surface, the situation appears straightforward: a player said something controversial, and the organization acted.But there’s a version of this story where Ivey is still in the league. Where he and his publicist create a swift and thoughtful apology, where his overnight inclusion education uses all the key buzzwords to prove his newfound allyship, maybe he pays a fine or makes a small donation, and he’s able to go back on to the court and live out his dreams in the NBA, a league which has been pro-LGBTQ+ for more than a decade. Ivey’s words exposed his beliefs
‘He’s phenomenal’: American teen fast becoming athletics’ next big thing
Fire on the boards. Slack jaws off it. Last week, I was fortunate enough to be yards away from the 17-year-old American high school student Cooper Lutkenhaus when he powered away from a strong 800m field in Torun to become the youngest world champion in track and field history. But no sooner had the applause died down than the search for superlatives began.“He’s like David Rudisha,” said Eliott Crestan, the Belgian who took world indoor championship silver behind Lutkenhaus
‘After one gig, someone stole my car with my dole money in it’: Morcheeba on how they made The Sea
Jayson Gillham announces tour with Palestinian-Jordanian musician ahead of MSO court case
Fill that Glasto-shaped hole! The 40 best UK festivals you can still book
Shaun Micallef: ‘Charlie Pickering said that’s the only thing keeping him going – to vanquish me’
I thought I’d been coping with my sister’s death – a Taylor Swift song showed me I hadn’t
The Guide #236: Is celebrity casting a cynical marketing stunt or does it help to democratise theatre?