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Finishing it in the gravel trap wasn’t the ending Jonathan Rea wanted, in a career that earned 119 victories, 264 podium finishes, and six World Superbike Championship titles.

The Northern Ireland rider was planning to end his glittering 17-year career at Sunday’s Jerez final race of the season.

However, it came to an abrupt conclusion when Rea was denied a second start in the Superpole race for a knee injury sustained during a first-lap collision.

There were “mixed emotions” in the 38-year-old’s words, “I’m very grateful that I’ve had the career that I’ve had” but not the end we all hoped for.

Being excluded from the season finale was a cruel way to leave the sport, as well as putting an end to a challenging two-year relationship with Yamaha, which he had called “stressful” and “struggle,” and which was a step up from the six titles won by Kawasaki between 2015 and 2020.

Rea told BBC Sport NI’s Stephen Watson in Spain, “I was frustrated to go down, and to be ruled out of my last race isn’t how I wanted to write the story’s conclusion.”

“I need to be very content, too.” I’m happy to close the chapter.

Rea, who also ended Saturday’s opening race in the gravel at Jerez, had a second crash of the weekend.

On the first lap of his motorcycle, he and Australian Remy Gardner collided, sending both riders into the gravel trap. Rea was taken away from his torn bike on a stretcher when the collision occurred on Sunday morning.

He claimed that early signs of knee ligament damage showed up while he was walking in the paddock.

Rea added that his team manager and wife Tatia, who had frequently been by his side with their sons Jake and Tyler, made him feel bad when he learned he would no longer be able to race one last time.

He continued, “It’s tough in one way because it’s not how you imagined you finished.”

You are not able to choose how that ends, as every story does, though.

Rea’s World Superbike career’s final two years could not have been more different from the unheard success he had during his golden era, when he broke records after records to become the most decorated rider in the championship.

However, he compared Valentino Rossi, the legend of motorcycle racing, who won six titles in the top class before his retirement in 2021, to his cherished memories.

Rea, who started out with Honda in 2008, continued, “This is just a small chapter in a big book that we’ve written.”

“The great Valentino Rossi, I can’t recall how his final season, let alone his final race, went. I hope that’s how I’ll be remembered.

I went down fighting, and I hope people still are inspired by that statement. I’m certain that I will leave my career feeling content with what I did and that I will never have any regrets.

Rea hobbled into his box in the pits while his team waved a “Thank you JR” banner, and then received a special helmet to mark his professional career.

We’re proud of what he has accomplished, but we’re more proud of who he is, according to his father Johnny, a successful motorcycle racer himself in the 1980s.

Toprak Razgatlioglu won his third World Superbike title in Jerez, beating Nicolo Bulega in the final race, in a dramatic manner.

The BMW rider, who won the championship in 2021 and 2024, had a sizable 39-point lead over Bulega from Ducati at the weekend.

Although Bulega won the Superpole sprint race on Saturday in front of Razgatlioglu, that margin decreased as a result.

Rea and Gardner had made eye contact with the riders’ leaders on the opening lap, but Bulega made a gaping pass and the defending champion slid into the gravel.

Although Bulega received a long-lap penalty for the incident, he still had enough speed to win the sprint race and cut Razgatlioglu’s lead to 22 points.

All eyes were on Razgatlioglu, who needed to finish 13th or higher to claim the title, after the 26-year-old Italian rider controlled the main race to claim the title.

In the end, the 29-year-old raced from 10th to third place to celebrate his final World Superbike victory before joining Yamaha for MotoGP in 2026.

“We had a fantastic season,” he said. Everyone, my team, everyone worked so hard, thank you very much, Razgatlioglu said to TNT Sports.

First ODI

India 136-9 (26 overs): Rahul 38 (31), Hazlewood 2-20

Australia 131-3 (21.1 overs): Marsh 46* (52), Patel 1-19

By seven wickets (DLS), Australia won.

Virat Kohli was dismissed for a duck on his international return, giving Australia a comfortable seven-wicket victory over India in Perth’s rain-shortened first ODI.

The match was shortened to 26 overs-a-side due to poor weather, with India eventually posting 136-9 after their innings was halted six times due to rain.

Rohit Sharma and Kohli, who were playing their first international match since March, both started the match with an eight-ball duck inside the powerplay.

India fell 45-4 in the 14th over after Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer were both dismissed, but KL Rahul, who had top-scored 38 runs, rebuilt his side’s innings along with Axar Patel (31) and Washington Sundar.

However, India lost 4-21 after the latter’s exit in the 24th over sparked a further flurry of wickets.

Mitchell Owen and Matthew Kuhnemann both took two wickets, with Josh Hazlewood taking the ball for 2-20 from seven overs.

Travis Head and Matthew Short both received eight powerplay wickets, but Australia managed to get close to hitting their revised target of 131.

Mitchell Marsh and Josh Philippe shared a 55-run third-wicket partnership with Josh Philippe (37 off 29), and Australia triumphed with Matt Renshaw (21-6 off 24), who had 29 balls to play in the opener.

Final round of the DP World India Championship

-22 T Fleetwood (Eng), -20 K Nakajima (Jpn), -18 A Fitzpatrick (Eng), S Lowry (Ire), T Lawrence (SA), -17 V Hovland (Nor), J Luiten (Ned), J Schaper (SA)

Selected others: -16 D Hillier (NZ), -15 B Schmidt (Eng), -14 D Bradbury (Eng), -13 A Sullivan (Eng), B Robinson-Thompson (Eng), -11 R McIlroy (NI)

With a two-shot victory at the DP World India Championship, Tommy Fleetwood won his eighth European tour title by making his son Frankie a reality.

The Ryder Cup winner claimed that his eight-year-old son had never had a chance to run onto the 18th green to congratulate him after rolling in for a seven-under-par final round of 65 to finish on 22 under.

He was unable to watch Fleetwood’s maiden PGA Tour victory in August and was not old enough to watch the DP World Tour’s most recent victory in January 2024.

After welcoming his son on the green, Fleetwood, 34, said, “That was all day today what I had in my mind. Could I put myself in a position where I could actually make that happen”?

“It’s one of those little things,” it says. I wanted to do it all day because it meant a lot to me, and that was really cool.

With two shots clear of Keita Nakajima, Fleetwood was two shots clear of Japan in the final round.

After moving to seven under for his round, New Zealander Daniel Hillier, who is ranked 218th in the world, couldn’t hold onto his lead after a double bogey six on the 14th, which he did not recover from.

Nakajima, however, was forced to accept his third-place finish on the DP World Tour in order to recapture the fireworks from his third-round 65.

However, Englishman Fleetwood, who had a shaky third round on Saturday, had a run of four consecutive birdies all round, starting with the seventh and seventh, followed by some strong birdie putts on the 14th and 17th, to take the final shot with a respectable two-shot lead.

His most recent success included a star turn for Europe’s Ryder Cup victory over the United States in New York, which ensured his qualification for the season-ending tournaments.

added Fleetwood following his most recent success of a remarkable season, which saw him claim eight top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour. “There’s been plenty of times when things haven’t gone my way, but the last two tournaments I have been in contention for haven’t gone in, I have won, so maybe things are starting to level out a little bit,” said he.

Alex Fitzpatrick, a fellow Englishman, birdied the final three rounds to move to 18 under and one-two with Ireland’s Shane Lowry for third place, with his third consecutive round of 67.

Viktor Hovland chipped in for an eagle at the last to move up to 17 under and share fourth place in the week.

You wait four years for a World Cup, but if you’re a player or fan in Colombo then you may have spent most of this tournament staring at the rain rather than enjoying some much-anticipated cricket.

Five of the nine matches staged in the Sri Lanka capital have been affected by rain – with four ending in no result – causing former England spinner Alex Hartley to say the conditions had “ruined” the World Cup.

October is monsoon season on the island, with 300-370mm of rain anticipated in the month.

“I don’t really know what anybody was expecting to be completely honest. You have a tournament in Sri Lanka during monsoon season, it pretty much rains at the same time every single day,” Hartley, who won the tournament in 2017, told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“It’s ruined this World Cup – it’s been a real shame.”

All bar two of Sri Lanka’s group games are being staged at the R. Premadasa Stadium, as are all of Pakistan’s matches because of the ongoing political tensions with India, who are hosting the majority of the tournament.

Fatima Sana’s side sit bottom of the tournament standings and are facing elimination having seen their past two games washed out, including one against England where they looked well placed to win.

“You don’t want to come into a 50-over World Cup going ‘oh, well let’s hope we get a T20 tonight if it rains a little bit’. It’s been a little bit too predictable and really disappointing,” added Hartley.

“I toured Sri Lanka 10 years ago in October and every single one of our training sessions got rained out every single afternoon.

“The games in Sri Lanka could have, and should have, started earlier – that’s the only way you could have got the games unaffected.”

All matches are being played as day-nighters, with a 10:30 BST start and 15:00 local.

New Zealand have also seen their past two games in Colombo rained off, and the T20 World champions currently sit out the qualification places for the knockout stages.

“It’s extremely frustrating, let’s be honest. You wait four years for a World Cup and to have suffer through the rain,” said New Zealand captain Sophie Devine, who at 35 is likely to be playing in her last 50-over World Cup.

“I hope in future editions, they think of playing earlier in the day. We have seen the rain comes in the evening so play at 10 or 11. For the game, to be scuppered by rain is a real shame for me.”

BBC Sport has approached the International Cricket Council (ICC) for comment.

England’s game against Pakistan in Colombo saw them slip to 133-9, with the game called off during their opponents’ chase.

Nonetheless, England coach Charlotte Edwards has also been critical of the situation in Sri Lanka.

“You want to play as much cricket as you possibly can. I don’t know if things could have been changed that the games start earlier because of the monsoon season.

“I just hope that the teams that are playing there get some cricket this week, because you want to be playing games in the tournaments like this and it’s very frustrating that they’re not at the moment.”

If Pakistan were to qualify for the knockout stages then their matches would be held in Colombo, but given they are unlikely to qualify there are likely to be just two further matches staged there – between Pakistan and South Africa on Tuesday and Sri Lanka and Pakistan on Friday.

The weather for both days?

BBC Sport writer Ffion Wynne

You do not need to spend a significant amount of time in Sri Lanka, at this time of year, to work out the weather patterns.

We were there for eight days, and pretty much each of them was the same: bright sunshine and scorching sunshine in the morning, cloud cover after around two in the afternoon, followed by rain and thunderstorms from around four.

It is such a shame that greats of the game, the likes of Devine, Suzie Bates and Chamari Athapaththu are playing in what is likely to be their last World Cup and it will be the weather that dictates how it ends.

Only one game in this tournament, which is England v New Zealand in Visakhapatnam, starts early because there are two games in one day.

Robbie Savage, manager of Rovers of Forest Green, says more needs to be done to address the “vile abuse” his opposition fans have received.

The former Wales midfielder claims abuse that “crossed the line” caused him to lose to Carlisle United on Saturday after his side lost to Carlisle United 4-2.

After the loss, Savage told BBC Radio Gloucestershire, “I’ll take the banter, and when they’re singing songs about me as an individual I’ve got no problem.”

What is done about it when it crosses the line, when it becomes nasty, and when some of the things are said to be incorrect?

After quitting his game, Savage became a feared pundit after playing for clubs like Leicester City and Derby County.

He is known for polarizing his audience and continues to host the 606 phone-in show on BBC Radio 5 Live while he is in charge of Rovers.

Savage, who turned 51 on Saturday, claims that not enough is done when abusers overreact in a personal way.

Stewards, volunteers, anyone else standing there, it’s still permitted to happen consistently, he continued.

I’m not interested in banter. I’ve had photos with kids and young people there, and I’m prepared to stand there and endure the most shocking abuse from people of all ages, most likely in powerful positions at work.

“They believe it’s acceptable to come in and hurl hateful abuse at a person; it’s not acceptable, but nothing will be done about it.”

It occurs frequently, as it did recently at Worthing, and it continues to do today.

After crashing out of the Superpole race in Jerez, Jonathan Rea’s World Superbike career came to an end sooner than expected.

After the final competition of the season in Spain, the six-time champion intended to retire.

He is unable to begin his final race, though, due to an injury sustained in the Superpole sprint race on Sunday morning.

Early in the opening lap, Rea and Australia’s Remy Gardner met and were taken out of the gravel on a stretcher.

The 38-year-old was declared out of his final race after suffering a “right knee sprain and contusion with functional impairment,” according to a statement from his Yamaha team.

The most prestigious World Superbike rider of all time is coming to an end in his racing career.

From his first championship in 2015 to his clinching victory in 2020, the Northern Ireland rider won six titles in a row.

In his World Superbikes career, he won a record 119 races and took home 264 podiums.