Category Sports News

Emma Raducanu and Katie Boulter’s doubles partnership at Queen’s came to an end after two matches with defeat in the quarter-finals.

They were outclassed in the first set as Ukraine’s Kichenok and New Zealand’s Routliffe, who have won three Grand Slam doubles titles between them, raced to a 4-1 lead before taking the set with another break three games later.

Raducanu and Boulter came from 4-1 down to level at 4-4 in the second set.

Their best chance to turn the match around came in the following game, but they failed to convert four break points.

Despite saving three match points three games later, they succumbed to defeat.

Raducanu faces Rebecca Sramkova in the last 16 of the singles on Thursday and Boulter takes on fifth seed Diana Shnaider.

Raducanu can replace Boulter as British number one if she equals Boulter’s results at Queen’s, which is hosting a women’s tournament for the first time in 52 years.

Female tennis players who wish to freeze eggs or embryos, so they can start a family at a later date, will have their ranking protected by the WTA Tour.

The offer is open to any player ranked in the world’s top 750 who spends more than 10 weeks out of competition.

The 2017 US Open champion Sloane Stephens says the rule will reduce the pressure on players to return to the court too quickly.

The 32-year-old, who has won eight WTA tournaments, told BBC Sport she has twice previously used the off-season to freeze her eggs.

“The first time I did it, I rushed back and I was overweight and not happy – and just very stressed out,” she said.

“The second time I did it I took a totally different approach so I could just be in better shape: I could have the surgery, I could have more time to recover.

Players who undergo fertility treatment will be able to use their special ranking to enter up to three tournaments within 10 weeks of their return.

The special ranking will be an average of a player’s ranking over a 12-week period before and during their leave.

Players will not, however, be able to use this ranking to enter one of the WTA’s premier 1000 events, as the tour wants to encourage players to undertake the procedure at a quieter time of the season.

“It’s all trial and error, everyone’s body is different,” Stephens added.

“Someone might be out for three months, someone might be out for one week.

“Some people gain a tonne of weight, some people can go back immediately. I think when you are family planning, it’s better if you have that support.”

Stephens says she was a strong advocate for such a measure when a member of the WTA Players’ Council, and the tour’s chief executive Portia Archer confirms the move was player-led.

“It was very much at the instigation of the players,” she said.

Grants have also recently been made available towards the cost of any fertility treatment, and earlier this year the WTA introduced paid maternity leave for the first time.

More than 320 players are now eligible for up to 12 months paid leave – with everyone receiving the same amount, irrespective of their ranking.

Returning to the tour after maternity leave started to become easier when the WTA changed the rules before the 2019 season.

New mothers are able to use their previous ranking to enter 12 tournaments over a three-year period from the birth of their child.

The WTA also offers access to a health team, which offers physical assessments, mental health support and guidance on a staged return to play for new mothers and pregnant players.

Tennis is not the first sport to offer support to women wishing to freeze their eggs, with the American basketball league the WNBA offering up to $60,000 (£52,500) reimbursement to players for fertility treatment including egg freezing.

High-profile athletes have spoken about their decision to freeze their eggs, including England cricket captain Nat Sciver-Brunt and former England netballer Geva Mentor.

Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson has pulled out of Sunday’s Stockholm Diamond League event after suffering a setback in her recovery from a hamstring injury.

The 23-year-old was ruled out of the Keely Klassic – a new athletics event she founded – in February after tearing her hamstring.

She had been due to return on Sunday in Sweden for her first competitive outing of 2025.

The race would have seen Hodgkinson come up against Olympic rivals Tsige Duguma of Ethopia and Mary Moraa of Kenya, who won silver and bronze in Paris respectively.

However, BBC Sport has been told that Hodgkinson’s return has been further delayed after a setback in her recovery from the hamstring issue that ended her indoor season.

Hodgkinson, who was awarded an MBE last month, won 800m gold in Paris last summer with a stunning one minute 56.72 seconds run.

This week’s World Test Championship final between Australia and South Africa at Lord’s is the longer format’s showpiece.

The fixture also represents an opportunity to celebrate international cricket’s historic, and most romanticised, form of the game.

For the majority of its 148-year life, Test cricket has been treasured as the pinnacle of the sport, but over the past two decades its popularity has diminished in some countries.

The growth of shorter formats, and especially T20, has played a part and for some national boards Test cricket is seen as a financial millstone amid poor attendances and declining interest.

The World Test Championship (WTC) was conceived during Greg Barclay’s chairmanship of the International Cricket Council (ICC).

Barclay, who stepped down last December after four years in the role, said it was a necessary step to ensure Test cricket appealed to modern fans.

Each WTC cycle runs for two years. Teams play six series in that time – three at home and three away – with 12 points awarded for winning a match, six for a tie and four for a draw.

However, as teams play a different number of Tests across their six series, the table is ranked by percentage of points won.

“The format of the WTC has got its critics and justifiably so, but we had to do something,” Barclay told BBC Sport.

“I think it’s driven a lot of interest in Test cricket. Conceptually it’s been a real positive addition to the cricketing calendar.

“If you have context, relevance and a bit of jeopardy the fans get far more involved in it.”

While the WTC is only in its third iteration, there is much work to be done to ensure it has the “sporting integrity” to help aid Test cricket’s finances, according to former West Indies chief executive Johnny Grave.

“It’s not ‘pure’ in the sense that every team plays equal games, that there’s genuine jeopardy in terms of who might win, central marketing, revenue sharing and collective selling,” Grave explained.

“All these things, in terms of the theory behind how and why a sports league works, don’t exist within the WTC.

“We have a WTC where if you’re being really honest, the most valuable fixture – India versus Pakistan – within that league never happens. It’s like having La Liga but Barcelona and Real Madrid not playing each other.”

Three countries – Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan – play Test cricket but are not in the WTC.

Cricket Ireland chief executive Warren Deutrom said he had a “very open mind” about the Irish joining the WTC in future, even though they currently only play Test cricket sporadically at the moment.

But Deutrom acknowledged there would need to be more ICC funding – Ireland currently receive about $18.0m (£13.3m) a year – for that to be a reality.

For players from England, Australia and India, playing Test cricket is financially rewarding.

Ben Stokes, England’s Test captain, has a central contract reportedly worth £2.47m a year with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)

Not all boards have the same depth of financial resources.

So inevitably, there has been a talent drain towards franchise cricket, frequently ensuring the most talented players are not always available for Test commitments.

WTC finalists South Africa were criticised for sending a weakened squad on a Test tour of New Zealand so their star players could play in the country’s domestic franchise tournament, the SA20.

That trend appeared to go a step further this week when West Indies’ Nicholas Pooran, who has never played a Test match, decided to retire from international cricket at the age of 29.

Pooran is paid $2.5m for his participation in the IPL alone, while the top-earning centrally contracted players with Cricket West Indies earn $200,000.

The idea of the ICC ring-fencing a Test fund to financially incentivise players to play the format has been mooted in the past.

“It has to be something that’s looked at,” said Grave, who is now the chief executive of Major League Cricket in the USA, but an advocate for Test cricket.

“Players will make decisions about what’s good for them and their livelihoods and their future financial security.”

Deutrom believes there should be a degree of a financial autonomy for the likes of Cricket Ireland to decide how to spend the cash.

“I think the way it would work is that you would incentivise the boards in order to make sure that the players could be incentivised,” he said.

“Every member deals with its players differently, incentivises different formats. Obviously we are very familiar with the approach England takes in terms of the incentivisation of its players to play Test cricket.”

Barclay remains more cautious and would be “loathe to see a direct subsidy” to enable Test cricket to be played.

He added the idea “wasn’t seriously discussed during my watch” at the ICC but conceded “there may be a slightly different emphasis” now.

“It’s a case of prioritising, using resources sensibly, and accordingly,” Barclay said.

“My dream is that in my lifetime I will be able to see India and China playing against each other in Test cricket,” said Malcolm Speed when he was ICC chief executive in 2007.

BBC Sport understands the ICC sent a delegation to China last year, but the longer format was not part of discussions in any formal sense.

Speed’s comments feel like pie in the sky, yet China never had a world snooker champion until this year. There were 34,000 snooker halls in the country around the time Speed made his remarks – there are now 300,000.

Could Test cricket expand to new frontiers to boost its financial sustainability?

“The ICC made both Ireland and Afghanistan full members in 2017 but it did not mean it was the end of the line,” Barclay said.

“Again it’s the old adage of being careful what you wish for, because once you become a full member you move into another echelon and you have a lot of commitments that you need to make. It costs a lot of money.

“Everyone thinks that becoming a full member is this financial El Dorado, and it kind of is. But if broadcast revenues and commercial outcomes were to fall away, and the full members have to split their pie other ways, it might not be the financial boost they are expecting that it is.”

Nepal, USA, UAE and Scotland are all seen as future Test-playing nations, even if there does not appear a rush for any of them to assume full-member status.

BBC Sport has been told there are no extra financial incentives from the ICC for those nations to develop their domestic structures for red-ball cricket.

Barclay said it is “really important” to “have a basis for the game and playing red ball cricket at domestic level”.

Deutrom indicated a way to ensure the growth and financial sustainability of the format for those who have recently come into the fold, would be to remove some of the costly barriers to staging Test cricket.

“To preserve the prestige of the format doesn’t necessarily mean it should be so exclusive as to be unaffordable,” he added.

In England, Australia and India, Test cricket’s appeal to broadcasters can still move the needle for broadcasters, sponsors and fans.

The deal between the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Sky Sports is currently worth £880m.

A sold-out Ashes Test, for example, can largely determine the annual profitability of the English county side hosting the match.

For the Test-playing countries outside the so-called ‘big three’, attendances for matches have dwindled and broadcast revenues are considerably smaller.

Grave has long argued for a more even distribution of the pie.

“West Indies haven’t got terrible overnight at Test cricket. Pakistan haven’t fallen down the rankings overnight,” he said.

“This has been a gradual decline since satellite TV came in, in 2001. And the economics of the game just changed, evolved dramatically over 20 years.

“So in order to get up to where Test cricket could be, it’s probably going to take another 20 years of changing the model before you’re really going to see the benefit.”

England paid a touring fee to Zimbabwe for their Test at Trent Bridge last month and Grave believes the ‘big three’ should give a share of revenues from Tests where they are fulfilling broadcast contracts.

“I found it frustrating when we would come to England at a cost of $1m to Cricket West Indies and see no revenue,” Grave added.

There has not been a single three-match Test series not involving at least one of England, Australia and India since 2019.

The main reason for the truncation of a series is that it is not possible to be fitted in because of the need for three days of rest between matches.

Broadcasters have to provide an expensive outlay for a fifth day which doesn’t always happen.

Is it time for four-day Tests to become the norm? Barclay thinks it should be considered.

“Anything is on the table and if that helps in terms of the betterment and maintenance of Test cricket then absolutely we should be looking at doing that,” Barclay said.

Grave can see the practical benefits to keep fans engaged.

He said: “I would have all Test matches starting on a Thursday and finishing on a Sunday.

“When you have a longer Test series, and you have a complete week off, that ends up for the fan being 10 days off, it’s quite difficult to switch on a casual fan and remind them the Test series is still going on.”

The former West Indies chief executive even suggested bolder proposals to get the game done within a four-day timeframe – including tweaking the number of balls in an over.

“The Hundred doesn’t have six balls in every over. So why couldn’t Test cricket have three sessions of 25 overs and eight balls for example?” Grave added.

Test cricket’s appeal would seem to lie in its brand legacy. As in other walks of life an individual’s lifestyle choices change with age – and perhaps T20 can be the gateway to fans whose tastes alter later in life.

For Barclay the format is “in pretty good fettle” despite concerns it is facing some sort of existential crisis.

“I absolutely say it’s sustainable. I think it’s the format of the game which really represents the essence of cricket,” Barclay said.

“To allow it to fall away, or in any way be compromised, I think would be at a massive loss to cricket as a sport. It’s incumbent on everyone involved in the game to ensure Test cricket does sustain itself financially.

“The phrase I use is cross subsidisation so having an unabashed form of the game which is generating the revenue in T20 enables investment back into [Test cricket].

“The game’s never been more wealthy and more lucrative but it’s never needed as much money now as what it has, so I guess you have to trade off in terms of what your priorities are.”

Grave is adamant changes need to be made to a “broken model” for the format to endure in monetary terms otherwise “the majority of Test cricket will just be played by three teams”.

“If the game of cricket wants Test cricket to be financially sustainable, I genuinely believe it is. Is it sustainable in its current model? Almost certainly no,” Grave said.

While balancing the books weighs on Deutrom’s mind, it does not detract from an unbridled passion for Ireland to continue to play the longer format.

“The discussion about Test cricket doesn’t start with finance and funding,” Deutrom added.

“It’s a format that we all love. It absolutely symbolises and exemplifies the journey Irish cricket has taken.

“So any discussion around, funding and finance has to be placed within that context in the first instance.”

During a round of interviews as he embarked on a stint at Middlesex, former New Zealand captain Kane Williamson recently said red-ball cricket was the “soul” of the game while Virat Kohli chose the IPL final to declare his deep love for the format.

Barclay’s successor as ICC chair, Jay Shah, is said to be a fan of Test cricket by those who know him well, which would at least appear to safeguard its financial future for the immediate term at least.

Sporting have not received an offer for striker Viktor Gyokeres and there is no ‘gentleman’s agreement’ for him to leave for £59m, says club president Frederico Varandas.

Sweden international Gyokeres, 27, has been heavily linked with Manchester United and Arsenal after scoring 97 goals in 102 matches during two seasons in Portugal.

He has a 100m euro (£85m) release clause in his contract.

It has been widely reported that, after staying at Sporting last summer, Gyokeres and Sporting agreed he could leave for 70m euros (£59m) this summer.

However, Varandas said the club’s only promise to Gyokeres was that they would not demand his full release clause.

“To this day Sporting has not had an offer for Gyokeres – neither today nor last season.”

Gyokeres spent three seasons with Coventry City in the Championship before joining Sporting under Ruben Amorim.

Manchester City director of football Hugo Viana was sporting director at Sporting last summer, when Gyokeres’ agent sought assurances about his leaving if a suitable offer arrived.

“One of the agent’s biggest concerns was whether we would demand the termination clause,” said Varandas.

“He wanted to guarantee certain things. And what was agreed? That Sporting would not demand a release clause now.

“For one reason: he was going to be 27 years old and no player leaves Portugal at 27 for 100m eurors or 90m euros.