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Updates from final day of the latest round of matches Sign up to The Spin | Email Tanya or comment BTLThree in the over for Barker! Charlie Allison, bowled by one that may have kept a bit low. Essex 16 for three...​Early wickets in sunny Brumbados, Keith Barker striking first ball from the Pavilion End as Dean Elgar is trapped lbw offering no shot. In comes Tall Paul to join Sam Cook, who spared him the hassle last night but has since squirted Barker’s third ball of the day to cover. That’s Barker’s 700th career wicket across formats. Essex 16 for two (need another 190) and an inauspicious start. Continue reading...

Youngster takes 6-3 lead after aggressive early displayDing Junhui secures last-16 date with Zhao XintongHalifax teenager Stan Moody announced himself on the World Snooker Championship stage with some superb play for a 6-3 first-session lead over No 3 seed Kyren Wilson.The 19-year-old Crucible debutant discharged himself from hospital after suffering from a serious bout of tonsilitis to enable him to qualify for the tournament. But it was 2024 world champion Wilson left feeling under the weather as Moody – the first teenager since Judd Trump in 2007 to make their debut at the Crucible – showed no sign of nerves during an aggressive display of snooker.This report will be updated later on Monday Continue reading...

Giallorossi manager has struggled to build and his relationship with Claudio Ranieri is beginning to frayRight from the beginning of Gian Piero Gasperini’s time as Roma manager, there have been people who believed it would all end in tears. Despite a brilliant record with Atalanta, whom he made into consistent top four contenders, as well as winning the Europa League in 2024, a section of his new club’s support was opposed to his appointment. “Respect our history,” read one banner outside the Stadio Olimpico last May. “Don’t bring that shit Gasperini to [Roma’s training ground at] Trigoria.”Such objections were born more from rivalry than doubts about the quality of his work. Unsurprisingly, given that the Giallorossi were in direct competition with Atalanta throughout most of Gasperini’s nine-year tenure there, he had made various comments that got under fans’ skin. Continue reading...

Erling Haaland scored a winner and refused to take a dive but could not resist a little dig at the fading GunnersMan of the weekend in the Premier League? It is not in doubt. Erling Haaland deserves the acclaim and not only because he scored the winner for Manchester City in the top-of-the-table showdown against Arsenal – his 23rd goal of the season in the competition and 34th for City overall. Another Golden Boot is within reach; Haaland’s only rival is Brentford’s Igor Thiago, who has 21. Another league title is also there for the taking.Yet Haaland trumped it all with something he did not do at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday. It was an old-school battle between him and the Arsenal centre-half Gabriel Magalhães; a wrestling match at times, so much pushing and pulling, all about the upper body strength. There was always the potential for it to bubble over and that is what happened in the 84th minute. Continue reading...

It is 45 years since the Women’s Professional Basketball League played its final game. But it laid the foundation for the stars of todaySign up for our WNBA 30 newsletterIt was the night before the 1980 Women’s Professional Basketball League draft in New York City and the Dallas Diamonds had the No 1 pick. But the team’s top brass was split. Coach Greg Williams wanted to take the 6ft 5in Danish star Inge Nissen, and the team’s GM Nancy Nichols prized Nancy Lieberman, the American point guard people called “Lady Magic”.“We argued for days about Nissen versus Lieberman,” Nichols tells the Guardian. Continue reading...

Player forced to miss Madrid Open and Italian OpenLatest setback for Briton represents another painful blowJack Draper has been sidelined for at least another month as injuries continue to disrupt his hopes of establishing himself as one of the top players in the world.Draper has withdrawn from the Madrid Open this week and the subsequent Italian Open due to the aggravated knee tendon injury that forced him to retire from his opening match at the Barcelona Open last week. Continue reading...

Union’s interim head coach has been given a hospital pass and, despite a vastly improved performance, her team went down to WolfsburgSo different, but absolutely the same. If you had wanted a clear demonstration of why exactly 1. FC Union Berlin was just the place for Marie-Louise Eta to become the first female head coach in a top five European league, you got it on Saturday afternoon. Eta made her debut at the helm in the Bundesliga match with Wolfsburg and after a week in which both she and Union were global news, with coach and club visibly taken aback by the media flocking to Berlin to see her opening press conference and debut in charge, just being able to get to work was a relief.And there is really no place to ply your trade in Germany, or in Europe, quite like the Stadion An der Alten Försterei. As the team lineups are read out before kick-off there is a call and response, with each player’s name met with the collective reply “Fußballgott!” (Football God). On Saturday, when Eta’s name was announced, it was met with a united “Fußballgöttin!” (Football Goddess). On an extraordinary day, it was touchingly normal. Continue reading...

Defender’s current deal due to expire this summer‘There is a big chance I’m here next season’Ibrahima Konaté has said he is close to agreeing a new contract with Liverpool, having informed the club he wanted to stay during negotiations last year.The France international’s deal expires this summer and, with talks over an extension dragging on for over 12 months, Liverpool have been at risk of losing another asset on a free transfer alongside Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson. Continue reading...

The Lakers star would have been expecting to play a supporting role as he burrows into his 40s. But injuries means he has assumed a familiar roleLeBron James must be so sick of this. If he wanted to experience being the best player on an otherwise thin team, he could simply remember the Cleveland Cavaliers’ run to the NBA finals in 2007. Or the 2015 NBA finals when his best teammates, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, suffered injuries. Or the 2018 season, which convinced SNL to make a spoof of James’ support staff. “I’m 53 years old,” one of LeBron’s “teammates” says in the clip. “I have seven kids, and two of them are also on the Cavs.” It’s 2026, James is a Los Angeles Laker, his two best teammates are hurt, and one of his kids actually is on the team.How on earth did we get here, again? James is 41. The story of his season was his labored yet successful pivot into the Lakers’ third option, behind Luka Dončić (who was having one of the best stretches of his career before tweaking his hamstring in a humiliating loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder) and Austin Reaves (who strained his oblique in the same game). Both men are in their primes. James, on the other hand, has been plagued with what some observers may call old guy injuries: he missed the start of the season due to sciatica; he’s sat out a couple games since thanks to arthritis in his left foot. So how – how – is it that Dončić and Reaves were the ones felled by injuries and James is the iron man? Aren’t the rules that athletes in their 20s get to enjoy energy and health, while those in their 40s have to retire and become mediocre pundits? Continue reading...

From Dion Dublin to Eric Cantona, the signatures I collected with my dad in the 1990s record a time when the Sky Blues seemed almost invincibleJohn Barnes: got. David Beckham: got. Ruud Gullit: got. Andrei Kanchelskis: got. Matthew Le Tissier: got. Alan Shearer: got.Looking back through the football autographs I collected as a teenager in the early 1990s feels delightful and discomfiting. The Merlin sticker albums, Pro Set cards and Shoot annuals chronicle a youth spent travelling the country with my dad, watching Coventry City take on the great and the good of the top flight at the dawn of the Premier League. We would hunt for the visiting teams at local hotels before each game, aiming to bag a handful of signatures when the players went for their mid-morning walk, then sneak around the back of Highfield Road after the match – darting past security, through the executive suites, to the players’ exit – where we would complete our haul as the players boarded the team buses. Continue reading...