Category Sports News

Test cricket is brilliant.

You may have known that long before England’s defeat of India in the first Test, or discovered it through what happened at Headingley.

Last Wednesday morning, the day after England strolled a chase of 371, there was a spike in social media engagement with posts giving love to the five-day game. “Test cricket is the best format”, “the Rolls Royce of our great game”, “there’s nothing else like Test cricket”. Naturally, there was a bit of Hundred bashing in there, too.

These outbursts of support each time there is a half-decent Test are a strange phenomenon, akin to a subculture being vindicated for a passion in something that would otherwise seem a bit weird. Like admitting to a love of Warhammer, pro wrestling or McFly (no, yes, sometimes – in case you’re wondering).

Compared with other sports, there is not the same fervour after a Premier League thriller, tense final round of a golf major or five-set epic at Wimbledon. Not the same need to proclaim “that is why (insert sport here) is the best”.

There are good reasons for Test cricket devotees to feel under attack, and therefore moved to defend their corner.

This is not meant to be a dig at franchise and short-form leagues. They can be excellent in their own right. In a competitive global market, it is remarkable that what is essentially a new sport has become so lucrative in little more than 20 years.

Where all the different elements of cricket should be able to rub along together for the betterment of each other, we have somehow landed in a civil war, almost exclusively fuelled by the game’s administrators.

Take The Hundred as an example. English cricket is right to have a franchise league and the money due to come in should be lauded as a fantastic opportunity for the sport in this country. Instead, The Hundred has never recovered from the awful PR of its launch, a message of ‘cricket for people who do not like cricket’. It alienated those already enthralled by the game, who are now stirred to protect their bit of it.

The fabric of Test cricket has been chipped away by poor scheduling and the pursuit of dollars, pounds and rupees. If it is eradicated to nothing, leaving a revolving roadshow of leagues, cricket will be infinitely poorer for it.

An obvious solution is to separate the calendar into dedicated windows for the different formats, just like football and rugby ringfence various times for international and domestic competitions. Now it is down to cricket’s governors to show the required guts and gumption.

The irony of Test cricket being under attack is the on-field product has never been so good.

Since the beginning of 2024, West Indies have won in Brisbane, England in Hyderabad and Sri Lanka at The Oval.

Even in the past week, away from Leeds, West Indies flirted with pulling off something special against the Aussies in Barbados, and in Zimbabwe 19-year-old Lhuan-dre Pretorius became the youngest man to make a hundred for South Africa. Keep an eye on him, a megastar of the future.

More broadly, runs are being scored faster, wickets taken more regularly, there are more close matches and fewer draws than ever before.

The run-rate across all Test cricket in the past three years has been 3. 60, the highest of any three-year period. Over the same time, less than 10% of Tests were drawn, down from more than 20% across the previous 20 years and more than 40% historically.

It is a disregard for draws that marks England’s Bazballers out as innovators.

It would be hyperbole to say they have saved Test cricket, still not unreasonable to say they have altered the perspective on the way it could be played – 37 Tests and counting since Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum united, only one soggy draw among them.

Draws can be thrilling – some wonderful Tests have been drawn – but by being so bullish about not considering a stalemate as a possibility, this England team have added a thrilling aspect to the five-day narrative.

For those watching, it leaves the wonder of how England will attempt to force a result, regardless of the situation. For opponents, it leaves the fear of always being in danger, the confusion of what it will take to beat Stokes’ team. For England, it gives the clarity of thought to attempt and comfortably complete a run chase like the one in Leeds, removing the seed of doubt sewn by the safety net of a draw.

As an opening chapter of a 10-part story, comprising this India series and the Ashes against Australia this winter, Headingley was perfect, more than living up to the pre-match billing. There will have been plenty of other series with as much expectation as the two England are undertaking, though it is hard to remember a time when Test cricket has been in such sharp focus for a period of time as prolonged as the next seven months.

England were favourites at Headingley and could, probably should, have lost. India paid the price for dropped catches, a crucial Harry Brook wicket off a no-ball and a tail that refused to wag.

As a result, the tourists are in a muddle at Edgbaston. Do they play another one of their Jasprit Bumrah chips, leaving only one for the rest of the series? Will they find a place for magician wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav and simultaneously boost their lower-order batting?

England are settled, with the prospect of Jofra Archer returning for the third Test next week at Lord’s, the ground where he made his electrifying debut six years ago. Steve Smith and all that.

It would be good for the series if India won this week. Level at 1-1 is all to play for, 2-0 down is as good as over. The visitors will have to battle history – they have never won in eight visits to Edgbaston spanning 58 years.

Inter Miami are confident they will renew Lionel Messi’s contract, which expires in December.

The 38-year-old forward is a marquee player for Miami and Major League Soccer (MLS), and all parties have begun contract negotiations to extend his stay in the United States.

There is widespread belief from officials at the club and within MLS he will renew, while sources on Messi’s side say he is very open to extending his stay despite reported interest from clubs in Saudi Arabia.

One motivating factor in keeping Messi in the US is to continue drawing attention to the league, with the 2026 World Cup approaching across North America. While not confirmed, the suspicion is Messi will end his international career following Argentina’s title defence.

Messi is the all-time record goalscorer in Miami’s short history with 50 goals, including his most recent strike for the club – a free-kick in the Club World Cup against Porto.

Newcastle United have apologised for causing any offence in a video that was used to launch the club’s new third kit.

The video, which featured Newcastle fan and singer Sam Fender, originally included a flag in the club’s colours that resembled the Rising Sun flag used by Japanese armed forces in World War Two.

The video was deleted by the club on all its social media channels and replaced by an adapted version.

Newcastle said: “The reaction to our new third kit with Adidas has been special, but the launch video contained a scene that could inadvertently cause offence.

Queensland Reds v British and Irish Lions

Date: Wednesday, 2 July Venue: Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane Time: 11:00 BST

In a stadium that has in its day danced to the tune of many different teams from many different sports – the Kangaroos and the Jillaroos, the Reds and the Roar, the Matildas, the Broncos and the Dolphins – it’s the Lions that will fill the place on Wednesday in Brisbane.

Formerly the site of a burial ground and then Lang Park sports stadium, named after a particularly fiery Presbyterian minister from Greenock in Renfrewshire, the Suncorp stands on some interesting terrain in the inner city.

When people say there’s an elephant in the room in this place they’re literally talking about an elephant. Carley, a circus animal, was a beloved performer on this land in the 1950s, so much so that they buried her here after the poor thing performed her last trick for the entertainment of the masses.

The Queensland Reds – coached by Les Kiss who for six years was an assistant with Ireland and for another three was the director of rugby with Ulster – will be looking to do a different kind of burial.

Much of the preamble to the Lions’ second game on Australian soil has, unsurprisingly, centred around the half-back partnership of Scotland’s Finn Russell and Ireland’s Jamison Gibson-Park, two players that serve as a constant reminder that rugby, though a playground for big beasts, can still be artistic and beautiful.

Their combination is one that will have people shifting forward in their seats with quickening pulses. Rugby is forever in danger of eating itself with its inexorable march towards grunt and aggression, but these two remind you of why you might have fallen in love with rugby in the first place.

Not many have ever had their rugby heart stolen by a one-dimensional big banger. But Russell and Gibson-Park and their potential to thrill? That’s different.

They’ve never played together, but Wednesday is the night it happens and if it’s all right then we’re going to be seeing a whole lot more of it in the Saturdays to come.

They’re very different people – Russell gregarious and charismatic, Gibson-Park quiet and laidback – but they’re one and the same when it comes to how the game should be played: fast and furious, off the cuff and adventurous.

Scrum-halves are supposed to be loud and bossy, but Gibson-Park isn’t either of those things. His Lions and Ireland coach Andy Farrell calls him horizontal, such is his unflappable personality.

His speed of thought is electrifying, his accuracy when firing passes that are so on the money that they can eliminate two and three defenders in an instant is unerring.

His quick taps bamboozle defences, his support lines mess with their heads, his ability to scan a field and know in an instant where the space is is a large part of the reason why Ireland have been so consistent over so many years. He’s a totem of that team – tiny but towering at the same time.

It’s said that there is only one Antoine Dupont, but that’s not really true. There’s one and three-quarters and the three-quarters is Gibson-Park. At his best, he’s very much in the same conversation as the great Frenchman.

And now we get to see him play with Russell, the great conductor at 10, a figure of growing authority on the back of a confidence-boosting and trophy-laden season with Bath.

The double threat is what Lions’ fans have wanted to see. Normally a coach wouldn’t necessarily play his first-choice 10 on Saturday and Wednesday, but Farrell is making an exception in Brisbane because he, as much as anybody else, is mustard keen to see how these two will gel. Why wait? Just crack on.

The Lions Test jigsaw is still far from complete. The other day Farrell said they were only getting started in putting things together, but the reality is that come post-match against the Waratahs in Sydney on Saturday there’ll only be two more games before Test week and only one of those – the Brumbies in Canberra – has the look of a telling contest.

It’s early days but, equally, time is slipping away. It’s the glorious contradiction of a Lions tour. If Hugo Keenan is to keep himself in the race at 15 – where the more versatile Elliot Daly and Blair Kinghorn are the main contenders – then he needs to send a message at the Suncorp.

On the wing, James Lowe and Mack Hansen look to be in the box seat, so Tommy Freeman needs to do something to change the picture again. Duhan van der Merwe is the other wing on Wednesday. He’s not the work-rate type operator Farrell values so much, so he’s got a lot to find.

The midfield has changed at every turn with Farrell exploring every option. It’s Huw Jones and Bundee Aki on Wednesday. Potentially devastating in the first Test. Watching from the stand, Garry Ringrose and Sione Tuipulotu. Also potentially devastating. Some incredible talent is going to miss out when the big stuff swings around.

Unlike, say, the 2017 tour to New Zealand there are few moral certainties for the Test pack this time around. Back then, you had a set of mostly unchanging and hardcore forwards playing the big games – a front-row of Mako Vunipola, Jamie George and Tadhg Furlong, a mix of Alun Wyn Jones, George Kruis and Maro Itoje in the second row with Sean O’Brien, Taulupe Faletau and, when fit, Sam Warburton in the back row.

There isn’t that kind of clarity now. Dan Sheehan is a shoo-in at hooker and Itoje is a certainty at lock. There are others who are ahead in their individual races, but they’re nowhere near nailed-on like the class of 2017.

Itoje is in no danger, but could do with a dominant performance on Wednesday. Seven of the pack of eight against the Reds have points to prove.

The hosts should be better than the Force last weekend – fifth in Super Rugby compared to ninth – but they’re still diminished. Hooker Matt Faessler and centre Hunter Paisami are the only two of eight Wallabies who have been released by Joe Schmidt.

Barring a shock so ground-shaking that it could wake lovely Carley from her slumber, the Lions will win. But how well will they win – and how intoxicating will that half-back partnership prove now that it is almost a reality rather than an exciting figment of the imagination?

Leeds have signed Wolfsburg defender Sebastiaan Bornauw on a four-year deal for a fee of £5. 1m.

The 26-year-old is the third signing made by Leeds since their return to the Premier League following the arrivals of Lukas Nmecha and Jaka Bijol.

Earlier on Tuesday, Leeds announced that left-back Junior Firpo has left the club following the end of his contract, with the 28-year-old set to sign for Real Betis.

Belgium international Bornauw moved from Anderlecht to Cologne in Germany in 2019 before joining Wolfsburg where he played Champions League football.

The 6ft 3in centre-back made 15 Bundesliga appearances last season, scoring twice.

Sebastiaan Bornauw has been signed by Leeds for a four-year contract worth £5.1 million.

The 26-year-old is Leeds’ third signing since Lukas Nmecha and Jaka Bijol joined the Premier League.

Junior Firpo, a left-back at Leeds, announced earlier on Tuesday that he had left the club at the end of his contract, and that he was set to join Real Betis.

Bornauw, who has four Belgium caps, made the move from Anderlecht to Cologne in Germany in 2019 before joining Wolfsburg in the Champions League.

The 6’3″ centre-back scored twice in 15 Bundesliga games between the years of injury and the 2024-2005 season.