Jacks and Ahmed find dramatic late blitz to earn England unlikely win over New Zealand
A game played on a turning wicket and dominated by spin was decided, appropriately, after a decisive, savage twist.Just as it looked as if England’s unconvincing progress through the World Cup was the one thing destined to remain on its predictable path Rehan Ahmed and Will Jacks spun the game, and the group, in their team’s favour.England’s pursuit of a target of 160 was appearing increasingly forlorn until its 18th over, bowled by Glenn Phillips, which started with them needing 43 off 18 and ended, two sixes and a couple of fours later, with a manageable 21 required off 12.Ahmed started the next with another boundary to keep the momentum going and before the penultimate delivery the batters conferred.“I said: ‘I’ll get a single and you just have a free hit,’” Jacks said; he got his single and Ahmed deposited the final delivery into the stands.
“That six pretty much won us the game,” said Jacks,England were left needing five off the last over,It took them three balls to wrap up victory by four wickets,So England added another to their collection of narrow wins and the question now is whether accumulating so many of them is down to luck or quality,“It’s probably the latter,” said Mitchell Santner, the New Zealand captain.
“If you can get yourself out of tricky positions and end up winning games it does wonders for your confidence.There’s no better team than one that fights and finds a way of winning.There’s several guys stepping up at different times as well, which is what you need.I wouldn’t want to be facing them in the semi-finals.”For Ahmed it was a stunning introduction to the tournament.
Picked ahead of Jamie Overton because of his ability to bowl spin and, with bat in hand, to punish it, he took two wickets in three overs, and scored 19 off seven balls.Meanwhile, Jacks was England’s match-winner once again, also taking two wickets – and conceding only 23 runs from four overs – before hitting 32 off 18 balls.England have played seven games at this tournament and this was Jacks’ fourth player-of-the-match award.That he keeps having to produce match-winning contributions from No 7 is a source of concern, but the fact that he is actually producing them is a source of encouragement.“Ideally I would do nothing,” Jacks said.
“I’m kind of the extra bowler and the extra batter,If I don’t bowl and don’t bat, we’ll have had that perfect game that we keep speaking about,”New Zealand’s defeat gives Pakistan, who play Sri Lanka on Saturday, hope of stealing a semi-final place with an emphatic win, even if the required result – victory by 64 runs, or a chase completed in 13,1 overs – seems unlikely,England will almost certainly play their semi-final in Mumbai on Thursday, against whichever team wins Sunday’s meeting between India and West Indies.
This game’s thrilling conclusion did not quite expunge the memories of what preceded it and in particular the continued travails of England’s top order.For the second game in a row both openers were caught behind having scored two and none.Matt Henry, due to depart Sri Lanka imminently to be with his wife, Holly, for the birth of their second child, produced a screaming delivery to dismiss Phil Salt, caught behind four balls into England’s innings.Then Lockie Ferguson did likewise to account for Jos Buttler, whose two-ball duck means he has now scored 15 off 27 in his past five innings, continued the abject form for which platitudes about the inevitability of his clicking back into gear feel increasingly insufficient.“Whoever we play in the semi-finals it’s going to be a hell of an atmosphere and a hell of an occasion and that brings out the best in certain players,” Jacks said.
“I know [some of] the guys have struggled for runs,Those guys play well in those situations and they’ve done it before,”The game started poorly for England, with them failing, for the first time, to take a wicket in the powerplay and with New Zealand scoring freely,In another first England bowled 16 overs of spin and the run rate slowed markedly in the middle overs as the ball started to grip and turn with increasing extravagance,Phillips in particular may still be wondering how a Jacks delivery that was angled innocently across him ended up hitting middle and off, and it was not the last time he was to experience things spinning out of his control.
Woman at heart of US trial says she was addicted to social media at age six
The young woman at the heart of the landmark trial about the addictive nature of social media testified for the first time on Thursday, saying she got hooked on YouTube starting at age six and Instagram at nine. By the time she was 10, she said, she had become depressed and was engaging in self-harm.The woman, who is now 20 and known by her initials KGM, is the lead plaintiff in an expansive lawsuit against YouTube and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook. The crux of the case alleges social media companies intentionally create addictive products, leading to mental health issues in young people.KGM testified on Thursday that her use of social media made her anxious and insecure, and features like beauty filters distorted her self-image
Riaz Hasan obituary
My father, Riaz Hasan, who has died aged 87, was a water resources engineer with a distinguished career working across 40 countries – in the 1970s with the British firm Halcrow and, from the 80s, at the UN and the World Bank.Originally from Hyderabad, Riaz arrived in the UK in 1965 with £3 and an A–Z, invited, like many engineers in India at that time, by the government. After completing a master’s degree in water resources at Bradford University, where he developed a love of Yorkshire pudding and received his degree from Harold Wilson (which he described as a real privilege), he embarked on his career designing life-saving, long-term water and food solutions for the most vulnerable and those affected by war, famine and natural disasters.Born in the small town of Warangal, near Hyderabad, to Mohammed, an English professor, and his wife, Khadija, Riaz went to Nizam college. He did his engineering degree at Osmania University, graduating in 1960, then got his first job at the Central Water Power Commission (CWPC) in Delhi
Met police to pilot facial recognition identity checks, mayor confirms
Metropolitan police officers are to start scanning citizens’ faces using automated facial recognition technology to check their identities, in a move backed by the mayor of London but described as “alarming” by opponents.The pilot was revealed on Thursday when Sadiq Khan said 100 officers would use the roaming technology – commonly deployed on smartphones – for six months. The mayor was responding to questioning from an opposition politician amid rising concern about the rollout of AI-powered policing tools. The Met’s website still states it “does not presently use the so-called operator initiated facial recognition”.Face scanning has already been deployed by police with cameras on vans and in fixed locations including in Croydon, Manchester and South Wales
Tell us: how will the UK’s landline switch-off affect you or your family?
UK telecoms companies are retiring traditional landline services and replacing them with internet-based home phone connections.The industry has set a deadline of January 2027 to complete this switch with roughly 3.2 million homes still to move over. While the digital switchover has been straightforward for most households, for some vulnerable customers, such as those with telecare devices, it has been very stressful.In December 2025 Virgin Media was fined £23
‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies
ChatGPT Health regularly misses the need for medical urgent care and frequently fails to detect suicidal ideation, a study of the AI platform has found, which experts worry could “feasibly lead to unnecessary harm and death”.OpenAI launched the “Health” feature of ChatGPT to limited audiences in January, which it promotes as a way for users to “securely connect medical records and wellness apps” to generate health advice and responses. More than 40 million people reportedly ask ChatGPT for health-related advice every day.The first independent safety evaluation of ChatGPT Health, published in the February edition of the journal Nature Medicine, found it under-triaged more than half of the cases presented to it.The lead author of the study, Dr Ashwin Ramaswamy, said “we wanted to answer the most basic safety question; if someone is having a real medical emergency and asks ChatGPT Health what to do, will it tell them to go to the emergency department?”Ramaswamy and his colleagues created 60 realistic patient scenarios covering health conditions from mild illnesses to emergencies
Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more
A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternativesThere’s not much to love about big tech these days. So many ills can be laid at its door: social media harms, misinformation, polarisation, mining and misuse of personal data, environmental negligence, tax avoidance, the list goes on. Added to which, Silicon Valley’s leaders seem all too keen to cosy up to the Trump administration, to shower the president with bribes – sorry, gifts – and remain silent about his worsening political overreach. And that’s before we get to the rampant “enshittification”, as the tech writer Cory Doctorow describes it, which means that by design many big tech products have become less useful and more extractive than they were when we originally signed up to them
Diagnosing mental health conditions need not be a case of yes/no | Letters
‘Violent bully’ who broke partner’s neck and left her paralysed jailed for 16 years
European girls aged 13-15 have world’s highest rate of tobacco use for age group
Vegetarians have ‘substantially lower risk’ of five types of cancer
Kinship carers in England to be given financial support in government pilot
Drop in overseas workers is ‘car crash’ for UK hospitals and care homes, say experts