Archive November 24, 2025

Dakota Ditcheva, a British flyweight, will make her first appearance since suffering a hand injury on February 7 in Dubai against Dutch flyweight Denise Kielholtz.

Ditcheva won her 15th fight straight after winning against Sumiko Inaba in July, breaking her hand.

Ditcheva’s first fight since winning the PFL’s 2024 flyweight championship match made her the first British woman to do so.

She has a reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting fighters, stopping 13 of her 15 opponents and triumphing 12 of them by knockout.

Ditcheva, 36, will face a former world champion kickboxer in Kielholtz, who has already won eight of her 13 professional matches.

Usman Nurmagomedov’s lightweight title defense against Britain’s Alfie Davis is the focus of the PFL’s Road to Dubai event.

Similar to Ditcheva, Davis won the PFL tournament and won the lightweight bracket this year before taking home the title against Nurmagomedov.

Guwahati, day three of the fifth test

South Africa 489: (Muthusamy 109, Kuldeep 4-115) &amp, 26-0 (Rickelton 13*)

India 201: (Jaiswal 58, Jansen 6-48)

South Africa leads by 314 points.

After being bowled out for 201 by South Africa on day three of the third Test in Guwahati, India had a massive 288-run lead in the first innings. The series would now be lost.

Seamer Marco Jansen was the tourists’ long-time favorite to win the series by 2-0, going 648 innings before the tourists came to a 26-0, 314 runs lead.

Yashasvi Jaiswal, who started with a score of 58 before being caught off the bowling of Simon Harmer, was returning with a score of 9-0.

As the home side fell from 102-3 to 122-7, Jansen, who had a career-best 93 in South Africa’s opening innings, took four wickets in a row to slam India’s middle order.

Washington Sundar (48) and Kuldeep Yadav (19) put together a slow-paced 72-run partnership, but Aiden Markram caught him along with five others after he edged a Harmer delivery.

Kuldeep and Jasprit Bumrah’s two wickets, respectively, were then taken by Jansen to close the innings.

India hasn’t lost a Test series away from home for 12 years, until New Zealand defeated them 3-3 last year.

Second Test, Guwahati (day three of five)

South Africa 489: (Muthusamy 109; Kuldeep 4-115) & 26-0 (Rickelton 13*)

India 201: (Jaiswal 58; Jansen 6-48)

South Africa lead by 314

India conceded a massive 288-run first innings lead and face a series defeat after they were bowled out for 201 by South Africa on day three of the second Test in Guwahati.

Seamer Marco Jansen took 6-48 before the tourists closed on 26-0, 314 runs ahead and now firm favourites to seal a 2-0 series victory.

Resuming on 9-0, opener Yashasvi Jaiswal top-scored with 58 before being caught by Jansen off the bowling of spinner Simon Harmer.

Jansen, who struck a career-best 93 in South Africa’s first innings, took four consecutive wickets to blow away India’s middle-order, as the home side slipped from 102-3 to 122-7.

Washington Sundar (48) put on a slow-scoring 72-run partnership with Kuldeep Yadav (19), but his resistance ended when he edged a Harmer delivery and became one of five players caught by Aiden Markram.

Jansen then took the two remaining wickets of Kuldeep and Jasprit Bumrah to conclude the innings.

India went 12 years without losing a Test series at home until they were beaten 3-0 by New Zealand last year.

When the Premier League rolled out semi-automated offside technology we thought we would lose the arguments about offside.

Largely we have, but there is still a major issue with how decisions are presented to fans.

Take a Newcastle United goal against Manchester City on Saturday. To the naked eye, Bruno Guimaraes looked to be just ahead of Ruben Dias in the build-up to Harvey Barnes’ goal. But after the tech was applied, the goal stood.

Then on Sunday, Gabriel Gudmundsson’s toe appeared to be within the video assistant referee (VAR) offside line before Lukas Nmecha scored the opening goal of the game for Leeds United against Aston Villa. Again, the goal was awarded.

The new technology was supposed to clear this all up. Gone were the manually drawn lines placed onto a TV picture, replaced with a slick animation. But that has not always been the case.

Much of it is about the little known tolerance level, or margin for error, added to the technology in the Premier League.

In every other competition, offside is given to the millimetre; in the Premier League there is 5cm grace which is effectively the width of the green line. Gudmundsson is given onside because his foot is within it.

Guimaraes, too, was just ahead of Dias but within the tolerance level.

This approach, which has been used in the Premier League since 2020-21, splits opinion. On one side people would say offside is offside, and on the other how can we trust this new technology to be so reliable that we do not need the margin for error?

But the tolerance level causes other issues, too. Unlike in other competitions, because of it the animation does not move directly in line with the players. And it is often unclear exactly which part of a player is being used for the offside decision.

When Burnley had a goal ruled out at Manchester United at the start of the season, some indistinguishable part of Lyle Foster’s upper arm was offside.

And in other cases, Dias being a good example, a player’s body position on the animation does not seem to fully match up.

For all the investment that has been ploughed into the offside technology, we are still some way off a solution.