Tour of Britain Women: Lorena Wiebes sprints to victory on opening stage

Returning captain and out-of-the-cold seamer flatten Pakistan on ground where five years ago they produced rare point of pre-Bazball light One win in England’s last 17 Tests. Those were the numbers that greeted Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes when they took over in 2022, a reminder of just how bad things had ended under Joe Root. It was a statistic that gave the new boys permission to rip up the old order. So it’s easy to forget that precious one. It was near the middle of that horror run, and it came at Headingley against India five years ago this month. The tourists were bowled out for 78 as Root reached three figures and celebrated his 27th victory as Test captain, a record among Englishmen. The Yorkshireman had to come home to find some breathing space...

Item, a 10-1 chance, ran down Almaqam to win the International Stakes at York with Constitution River and Ombudsman only third and fourth It all went according to plan for the low-numbered stalls there, as Lexington Blitz fired out into the lead and gave the far side an advantage that they never surrendered. The first four home were drawn five, nine, four and six...

CEO says English football is ‘everything that it should be’ Concern over perception following World Cup scandal Richard Masters has sought to reassure fans that the Premier League remains “everything that it should be” after the Folarin Balogun red-card scandal called the integrity of disciplinary decisions into question. Both Masters, the chief executive of the Premier League, and Howard Webb, the chief refereeing officer for English football, were critical of the process that led to Fifa’s ­disciplinary committee suspending the USA striker’s one-game ban for a year after an intervention by the US president, Donald Trump. Masters went further, calling for a candidate with “a different offer” to run against Gianni Infantino for Fifa president next year...