Tom Banton powers England to emphatic T20 World Cup win over Scotland
In the city where a few handfuls of rupees were melted down to make the original Calcutta Cup, it was Scotland who lost their shape when the heat started to rise and the pressure to build.England won by five wickets and, though it was ultimately emphatic, it was not exactly a rediscovery of peak form, even if Tom Banton located his with the 41-ball 63 that powered his team to victory.“We haven’t made it as easy as we would have liked so far but hopefully we can have a slightly easier run starting with Italy on Monday,” the captain Harry Brook said.“We haven’t played our best cricket yet but we’re in a strong position.World Cups aren’t always smooth sailing.
We’d rather not start amazing and finish amazing than start amazing and finish bad,”Scotland built half an excellent innings at the beginning of the match, but it careered downhill at Winter Olympic pace in its third quarter and, for all that they continued to show flashes of quality, they were unable to recover,“The dressing room is hurting a little bit,” said their captain, Richie Berrington, who top-scored for his side with 49 off 32,“We had a lot of belief going into that game,If we played our best cricket, executed our skills, we were right in there with a chance.
We showed that for a large part of the game,It has reinforced the message that when we execute our skills for long enough we can put any team under pressure and mix with the best,”Scotland faced two helpings of spin, each four overs long, and each brought carnage of a different kind: a barrage of runs in the first, a riot of wickets in the second,From there they were unable to produce a total to truly stretch England on a good batting wicket, even if Brook’s team did occasionally threaten to self-destruct,England’s opening partnership is in theory a strength but against both Nepal and Scotland Phil Salt and Jos Buttler have faltered.
“There’s a long way to go in this tournament,” Brook said, “and if they get firing at the right time then we’ll be in a really good place.”They put the team in an awkward one here, Salt driving straight to point having scored only two, and Buttler going only one better – even if he became just the fourth player to score 4,000 runs in T20 internationals in the process – before he sent a leading edge looping into the hands of mid-off.Banton and Jacob Bethell eventually added 66 from 45 for the third wicket but they were initially determined to bring little more than calm, and this became the first time in 16 years that England failed to score a boundary in their first four overs of a T20 innings.But Scotland’s score was sufficiently small that one big over would send the required run rate plummeting and it came in the ninth, Mark Watt’s first, in which Banton deposited each of the first three legal deliveries into the stands, and from there it quickly became less a chase than a stroll.Scotland’s innings had been derailed when Jofra Archer took two wickets in its third over, but Berrington rebuilt alongside Michael Jones (33 off 20), before a partnership of 71 off 42 with Tom Bruce saw the team stride towards a genuinely competitive score.
But having romped to 48 runs in the first four overs of spin they faced, everything changed when Adil Rashid and Liam Dawson returned.The transformation was not quite immediate, and Berrington hit the second ball of Dawson’s comeback high over the head of long-off for six.But then, from nowhere, there was chaos.In the space of 22 balls of unbroken spin, and, despite the fact that few deliveries actually did much spinning, Scotland lost five wickets for just 15 runs.And that, there, was the match.
England now know that victory over Italy on Monday will secure a place in the Super Eights; Scotland are not out yet, but may be by the time they face Nepal in their final group fixture on Tuesday.“We’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” said Berrington.“We can’t look too far ahead but our focus is going to be on how we move on from this game.There’s a lot of positives to take from the cricket we’ve played in the last three games.”
Jimmy Kimmel on Maga: ‘It’s such a delicate balance between stupid and evil’
Jimmy Kimmel talked about Pam Bondi and this week’s judiciary hearings as well as the latest climate-destroying victory for the Trump administration.The late-night host said that Donald Trump “might be feeling a bit lonely this Valentine’s Day” as his recent fundraising email leads with the question: “Do you still love me?”Kimmel said that then, “like a lot of dirtbag boyfriends, it asks you for money”.He said that for Valentine’s Day, Donald and Melania Trump will be enjoying dinner – “separately of course” – before speculating that over at JD Vance’s household, the vice-president won’t be getting his wife a gift as “he likes it when she makes him go sleep on the couch”. Kimmel joked: “That’s his sexy time.”This week Vance has been “weakly defending his boss” with yet more anger over “what are now known as the Trump-Epstein files” given how many times the president is mentioned in them
Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus: the story of one of Australia’s favourite political memes
OK, Josh, so there’s a leadership challenge incoming, but everyone is talking about this “Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus” meme, so where did it come from?It’s one of the great memes of Australian political history, Krishani. Let’s go back to May 2019, when Taylor was the minister for energy in the Morrison government. Just weeks before then PM Scott Morrison would win “the unwinnable election” against Bill Shorten, Taylor was in the midst of local politicking, posting on Facebook about transport projects in his electorate of Hume
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘A code orange de-mental emergency going on here right now’
Late-night hosts unpacked the Trump administration’s continued attempts to distract from and underplay the Epstein files.It took barely a glance at Donald Trump’s social media posts on Tuesday for Jimmy Kimmel to know: “We’ve got a code orange de-mental emergency going on here right now. I mean, he’s gone. He’s totally gone.”The host focused in particular on the US president’s meltdown over the $4
Jon Stewart calls Maga backlash to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show ‘actually pathetic’
Late-night hosts addressed the performative Maga outrage over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show.Jon Stewart returned to his Monday night Daily Show post fired up about the Super Bowl, and particularly the outrage from conservative pundits such as Megyn Kelly and Benny Johnson over Bad Bunny’s half-time show, which he performed, as usual entirely in Spanish.Stewart played numerous clips of Fox News hosts et al complaining that they couldn’t understand the Spanish, then cut to a clip of Turning Point USA “All-American Halftime Show” headliner, Kid Rock, singing his hit Bawitdaba, with its gibberish chorus.The host then tore into the rightwing talking point that Bad Bunny’s half-time show, whose overarching theme was pan-American unity, was not “unifying” because it was in Spanish. “Why the fuck is it the Super Bowl Halftime entertainer’s job to unify the country? Is that their job?” he fumed
‘We recorded it in a kitchen!’ How China Crisis made Black Man Ray
Ed and I had just come off a long tour of Europe and North America supporting Simple Minds and needed a break. I immersed myself in music-making with a synth, drum machine and a four-track Tascam Portastudio. I was very inspired by Brian Eno. I’d seen the words “found sounds” on his album credits. The notion that any sound could be included in a recording struck me as magical
Super Bowl: Bad Bunny, the ads and everything but the football – as it happened
Well, I could not tell you a thing about that game – I’ve heard that it was a boring outcome for a boring match-up – but it does not matter: the real winner tonight was Bad Bunny, who delivered a raucous, intricate and wildly ambitious half-time show that exceeded already sky-high expectations. With the world watching and many in the US government actively rooting against him (you can guess who took to Truth Social already), the Puerto Rican artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio thoroughly stomped on the haters with an exuberant 13-minute show that both honored his roots and championed an expansive view of American unity.It’s hard to overstate how much pressure Bad Bunny was under, as the first all Spanish-language half-time performer at a time when the US government is profiling Spanish speakers for its brutal immigration enforcement campaign. But Benito made the whole affair feel light as a feather, from the sugar cane fields to the bodegas to the rollicking casita party to a full-on real wedding (and surprise duet with Latino pop trailblazer Ricky Martin). Truly, this set was exquisite
Scottish Labour leader says he doesn’t regret calling for Starmer to quit – UK politics live
Dual nationals to be denied entry to UK from 25 February unless they have British passport
Left or right, Keir? Labour factions jostle for influence in post-McSweeney No 10
Reform UK’s Kent council faces ‘extreme risk’ after passing first budget
Reeves urged to reassure MPs over public finances amid £6bn-a-year Send costs
Starmer ousts cabinet secretary in clear-out of top team after Mandelson scandal