分类： sports

The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup at Headingley, Leeds delivered two lopsided group-stage results on Wednesday, headlined by a career-defining all-round performance from India’s Shafali Verma that silenced recent critics and secured the biggest run victory in India’s Women’s World Cup history.

India faced the Netherlands in the first-ever T20 meeting between the two sides, and the Indian batting unit turned in a historic performance, posting a tournament-best total of 209 for five off their 20 overs. The outing belonged to Verma, who entered the match facing growing questions over her 2024 form: her average this year sat at just 23.13 runs, a sharp drop from 52.12 in 2023 when she reestablished her reputation as one of the game’s most dangerous big hitters. After a disappointing six-run dismissal against Pakistan in her prior outing, Verma bounced back to score her first fifty of the tournament, finishing with 55 off 34 balls that included 10 fours. She was dropped in the cover field exactly as she brought up her half-century, and her opening stand with star Smriti Mandhana reached 115 runs in the 12th over before the partnership broke.

Mandhana matched Verma’s aggressive form, notching back-to-back World Cup fifties with 74 runs off 47 balls, highlighted by four consecutive boundaries off Dutch bowler Silver Siegers. After India’s batting set an imposing target, the team’s spin attack dismantled the Netherlands’ batting order, with Verma adding another layer to her historic day: the 25-year-old finished with three wickets for 20 runs from her off-spin, making her only the third player in Women’s World Cup history to score a half-century and take three wickets in a single match, joining West Indies’ Hayley Matthews and South Africa’s Sune Luus. Slow left-armer Shree Charani put the finishing touches on the collapse, taking four wickets for 19 runs including three wickets in a single over, as the Netherlands slumped from a solid 96-3 to be all out for 114 in 17.3 overs. The 95-run margin marked India’s largest victory by runs in any Women’s T20 World Cup to date.

Speaking after the match, Verma addressed her recent form slump, saying: “Happy to be back with some runs. I just practiced hard to get my shots again. When balls were not coming on I just went for singles so it was a mature innings.”

In the earlier match on the same Headingley pitch, six-time tournament champions Australia maintained their unbeaten start to the competition, chasing down a low Bangladesh total of 77 for eight in just 9.3 overs to secure a nine-wicket win. On an overcast day suited to seam bowling, Australia’s bowlers dominated from the first over, with Kim Garth taking two wickets in the powerplay, while captain Sophie Molineux and star all-rounder Ellyse Perry, named player of the match, each claimed two wickets. Bangladesh collapsed to 27 for five by the eighth over, flirting with their own World Cup record low total of 46, but battled through to pass the mark in the 15th over. Opener Georgia Voll bounced back from a duck on her tournament debut against South Africa to finish unbeaten on 45 off 32 balls, including a towering six over the bowler’s head, to guide Australia to an early victory. Australia will next face the Netherlands on Saturday.

Injury updates emerged as a major side story on the day, with multiple key players sidelined for upcoming matches. Australia’s Phoebe Litchfield, who opened the tournament with a 50 against South Africa, will miss the next three matches with a quadriceps injury, while star all-rounder Ash Gardner missed the Bangladesh clash with an ankle sprain. Host nation England suffered a significant blow, as captain Nat Sciver-Brunt will miss two matches after re-injuring her left calf; she was forced to retire hurt on 48 against Ireland on Tuesday. India also lost young all-rounder Shreyanka Patil during Wednesday’s match, after she appeared to twist her ankle and had to be carried from the field.

Bangladesh captain Nigar Sultana acknowledged her side’s struggles in the batting department after the defeat, noting that the team has faced long-term challenges developing power-hitting talent: “We have been looking for a few players like power hitters. It’s pretty difficult to find batters like that.”

In the opening fixture of a three-match Twenty20 international series between Australia and Bangladesh hosted in Chattogram on Wednesday, a disciplined spin attack from the visitors laid the foundation for a four-wicket victory, with slow bowlers Adam Zampa and Joel Davies sharing six wickets between them to dismantle the home side’s batting lineup.

A notable milestone also marked the match: leg-spinner Nikhil Chaudhary, the first India-born male cricketer to earn a cap for Australia’s national team in six decades, chipped in with one wicket to cap his historic appearance. Australia’s spin unit dominated from the middle overs onward, bowling Bangladesh all out for just 131 runs inside 19 overs.

Chasing a modest total, Australia got off to a rocky start, losing returning opener Mitchell Marsh — who was back in the side after missing the preceding ODI series with an ankle injury — and fellow opener Josh Inglis in quick succession. But Cooper Connolly, whose match-winning 149 in the final ODI rescued Australia from a potential series sweep just days prior, stepped up again to anchor the run chase. Striking four fours and three sixes, the batter compiled a steady 47 runs to steer Australia closer to the target.

Connolly shared a valuable 40-run third-wicket partnership with Tim David, who contributed 20 runs, before he was caught off the bowling of Abdul Gaffar, who claimed his maiden international wicket on his T20 debut. The left-arm fast bowler finished his opening outing with strong figures of 2 wickets for 32 runs. Australia ultimately crossed the finish line in 18.2 overs, finishing on 133 for 6 to claim the first win of the series.

For Bangladesh, the match was played under new leadership: regular captain Litton Das was forced out of the fixture with a calf injury sustained in the third ODI, forcing Tawhid Hridoy to step in as stand-in skipper. Hridoy won the pre-match toss and opted to bat first, but the decision failed to pay off, as no home batter could mount a sustained resistance against Australia’s controlled spin attack. While Bangladesh got off to a promising start at 39 for 1 after the first five overs, Zampa and Davies sparked a dramatic batting collapse that saw the home side lose seven wickets for just 60 runs, capping their disastrous batting performance.

The second match of the three-match T20 series is scheduled to take place this Friday, with Bangladesh looking to bounce back and level the series before the deciding final fixture.

A veteran sports commentator has lost his spot on Turkey’s national public broadcaster TRT’s 2022 FIFA World Cup coverage team over an on-air gaffe that mixed up two competing Group G teams, broadcaster officials confirmed this week.

The error unfolded during Monday’s tightly contested Group G match between Iran and New Zealand, which ended in a 2-2 draw between the two sides. In the opening minutes of TRT’s live broadcast, commentator Murat Ekrem Çimen, a 30-year veteran of sports media named by local Turkish outlets, incorrectly attributed Iran’s offensive plays to New Zealand and mislabeled New Zealand’s in-game maneuvers as Iran’s.

In an official statement released late Tuesday, TRT announced that Çimen had been immediately removed from the network’s World Cup commentary delegation based in the United States, and will not take part in any further match coverage for the duration of the tournament. The network added that a full internal investigation into the incident is ongoing.

TRT framed the mistake as a clear violation of the network’s official broadcasting standards, noting that the error was particularly notable given Çimen’s decades of experience in sports journalism. “We apologize to our viewers and the public for this error,” the statement read. “It is unacceptable for TRT that someone with over 30 years of experience in sports broadcasting would make such a mistake.”

On the opening day of the third and decisive Test match between New Zealand and England at The Oval, the Black Caps capped their most productive batting session of the ongoing England tour with a frustratingly underwhelming result, ending Wednesday at 291 for seven wickets after squandering multiple promising starts against a drastically inexperienced English bowling attack.

England entered the clash holding a 1-0 series lead, having secured an 115-run victory in the opening Test at Lord’s. That result came under intense scrutiny after match officials rated the Lord’s pitch “unsatisfactory”, and the psychological impact of that win appeared to linger in New Zealand’s batting performance Wednesday. On a pitch that shed its early hostile, fast-bowling friendly conditions as the day progressed — matching pre-match expectations — six of the Black Caps’ seven wickets came courtesy of soft, unforced dismissals that gifted the underprepared English side easy breakthroughs.

The casualty list of wasted starts reads like a who’s who of New Zealand’s batting core: captain Tom Latham, Henry Nicholls, who stepped into the key number three batting slot vacated by retired former skipper Kane Williamson, all-rounder Rachin Ravindra, and wicketkeeper-batter Tom Blundell — the first New Zealand batter to register a half-century in this series — all threw away solid foundations after getting set at the crease.

By the close of play, only Glenn Phillips remained unbeaten on 49, alongside fast bowler Kyle Jamieson who had notched six runs. The final hour of the day delivered the most dramatic action of the opening session, with star England fast bowler Jofra Archer delivering a relentless, probing spell to test Phillips that had crowds on the edge of their seats.

England’s bowling unit, which took the field at Lord’s for the first Test, has been decimated by a combination of player suspensions and injury ahead of the Oval clash. That left Archer — playing his first Test match since the Christmas break last year — to lead a vastly inexperienced group: Josh Tongue, Matthew Fisher (playing just his second Test at international level), and Sonny Baker, one of three debutants named in England’s bowling line-up.

Against expectations, the young group performed far better than many pundits predicted, consistently delivering fast, line-and-length bowling that kept New Zealand batters under pressure. That said, wayward bowling that resulted in 44 extras meant the free gifts from New Zealand’s batters were matched by England’s unforced errors, with the 44 extras tying for the third highest individual score on New Zealand’s innings card at stumps.

Even part-time spinner Jacob Bethell got in on the action, delivering the first spin bowling of the entire series for England and claiming an eye-catching two wickets for just eight runs from his five overs, further highlighting New Zealand’s generous dismissal rate. Baker, the lively young fast bowler, claimed the wicket of Ravindra, while both Archer and seamers Dom Mitchell chipped in with one wicket apiece. Archer’s final eight-over spell of the day, which conceded just 22 runs without taking a wicket, delivered the high-tempo, high-stakes drama that woke a dozing packed crowd and gave the home side momentum heading into Day Two.

On a sweltering Wednesday in Lucknow, India, centuries from star batters Shubman Gill and Ishan Kishan delivered a commanding 170-run victory over Afghanistan in the second One-Day International, securing an unassailable lead in the three-match bilateral series. Afghanistan won the pre-match coin toss and made the decision to send India in to bat first, a choice that would quickly backfire against the hosts’ in-form top order. India made three changes to its starting lineup from the rain-shortened opening ODI in Dharamsala, which India had already won by seven wickets, and opened the innings with Yashasvi Jaiswal and captain Rohit Sharma. Jaiswal failed to capitalize on his starting opportunity, departing after scoring just four runs, but Sharma anchored the early innings, notching 48 runs off 39 deliveries and building an 87-run second-wicket partnership with Gill. When star Afghan spinner Rashid Khan clean-bowled Sharma in the 14th over, Gill and Kishan joined forces at the crease and turned a solid start into a historic batting onslaught. The pair compiled a staggering 224 runs for the third wicket from only 140 deliveries, with each batter reaching the triple-figure mark. Gill notched his ninth career ODI century, while Kishan claimed his second ODI hundred — his first on home soil, and his first since December 2022. The pair traded aggressive phases throughout their partnership: Gill raced to his half-century from 38 balls, while Kishan reached the same milestone from 52 deliveries, before Kishan accelerated dramatically, hitting his second 50 from only 19 balls to Gill’s 39. Kishan finished with 125 runs off 79 balls, hammering 14 fours and seven sixes before he was caught at midwicket while attacking left-arm spinner Nangyal Kharoti in the 37th over. Kharoti would also remove Gill, but not before the right-hander had crossed the 150-run mark. Gill eventually holed out in the 43rd over, struggling with cramps and dehydration from Lucknow’s extreme heat, having scored 154 runs off 110 deliveries with 22 fours and two sixes. India’s middle order stumbled late in the innings: Lokesh Rahul fell for a golden duck, caught at long on attempting to clear the boundary against Kharoti, and the side lost its final five wickets for just 42 runs. Even with the late collapse, India still posted a mammoth total of 402 runs from 49.5 overs. In pursuit of the daunting target, Afghanistan got off to a quick start, with opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz hitting 41 runs off 33 balls, including seven fours and one six, and sharing a 52-run opening stand with Ibrahim Zadran. Debutant Indian seamer Gurnoor Brar claimed Gurbaz, caught behind the stumps, before fellow debutant Prince Yadav took a spectacular diving catch at fine leg to help left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh dismiss Zadran for 21. Sediqullah Atal scored 42 runs before being out leg before wicket to Washington Sundar, while Afghan batter Darwish Rasooli, also making his ODI debut, retired hurt after sustaining a hamstring injury during fielding earlier in the match, even after he had returned to the crease to bat. Rahmat Shah stepped in to anchor the Afghan innings, scoring a steady 79 runs and notching his 33rd ODI half-century to delay the inevitable result. The visitors were bowled out for 232 runs in the 45th over, with Arshdeep finishing with figures of 3 for 45 and Brar taking 3 for 60 to wrap up the victory for India. The third and final match of the series is scheduled to take place this Saturday in Chennai.