Harry Brook given licence to lay down new ODI template against Australia

In one sense the five-match ODI series between England and Australia that starts in Nottingham on Thursday is slightly lacking in wider context. Part of a trend that has seen previously lengthy visits by India and Australia broken up by way of format and spread out across the four-year cycle, it feels designed to simply keep the “Big Three” energy burning in between marquee Test summers.Although the rivalry endures, tickets have been shifted despite autumn’s creep, and for Harry Brook, there is a bit more on it still. For one, Brook has had a slightly underwhelming international season by way of runs, not least that restless double failure against Sri Lanka at the Oval. And then on top of the chance to bank more experience against Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood before Bazball’s moonshot Ashes tour in 2025/26, there is this opportunity to further his captaincy knowhow with a similar eye on the future

Booming WNBA says Portland will become league’s 15th franchise

The WNBA will add another west coast team after the league announced on Wednesday that Portland will become the league’s 15th franchise.The team, which has not yet been given a name, will enter the league in 2026. It will be the second time Portland has hosted a WNBA franchise: the Fire entered the league in 2000 as an expansion team before folding in 2002.“I don’t think we ever have a bias as to whether there was a team there before or not,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert told ESPN on Wednesday. “But certainly I think Portland has proven they’ll show up for women’s sports and definitely for women’s basketball, so we’re excited to be coming back to the market

‘My drag racing career is taking off’: a Paralympic hero’s next steps

Matt Stutzman, Team USA’s self-described ‘armless archer’, wants to follow up gold with a move into a new sportHollywood has been turning Olympic stories into biopics for decades, but – documentaries aside – studios rarely give the blockbuster treatment to Paralympians. After his gold medal at this year’s Paralympics in Paris, however, Team USA archer Matt Stutzman’s career now has the kind of feelgood ending tailor-made for a sports movie.Indeed, if Stutzman’s life were a film, a fitting climax would feature his Paris semi-final against reigning Paralympic champion He Zihao. It’s worth setting the scene. Each athlete is down to their final arrow

The Spin | Worcestershire thrive in a summer of adversity, bereavement and floods

Somerset could still win their first County Championship title, while Surrey remain on for the three-peat. Gloucestershire’s victory in the T20 Blast was particularly rousing – watched by David Lawrence, their club president so visibly confronted by the effects of motor neurone disease – but Worcestershire’s tale may be the most remarkable of the summer, one of existential questions, tragedy and on-field joy.Promotion to Division One was followed by winter floods – eight in total – that ravaged New Road, the club’s idyllic ground by the River Severn. The venue is familiar with flooding, leading to the odd strange anecdote. “We’ve had players who have left their cars for overseas tours that have been seen floating along the car park,” says the head coach, Alan Richardson

Anthony Joshua, Daniel Dubois and boxing’s broken mandatory challenger system

Boxing’s power brokers have again chosen short-term gain over the long-term health of the sport by marketing Joshua-Dubois as a fight for the world heavyweight championshipOn Saturday Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois will meet in the ring before more than 90,000 screaming fans at Wembley Stadium. It’s a quality match-up between two good fighters. But once again, boxing’s powers that be have chosen short-term gain over the long-term health of the sport by marketing Joshua-Dubois as a fight for the heavyweight championship of the world.It isn’t.The heavyweight champion of the world is Oleksandr Usyk

Life as an NBA seven-footer: ‘The cons? Doors, beds and a shortage of tall women’

Life as a professional athlete brings plenty of unwelcome attention. But many basketball players started getting stares when they were still in their early teensWhen Paul Mokeski traveled to China several years ago to teach a month-long basketball clinic, he says he couldn’t help but feel like Godzilla. For the 7ft former NBA center, who played 12 years in the league, many of them on a Milwaukee Bucks team that battled Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals, it was a familiar feeling. People would come out of stores and point as if they were seeing a giant from a storybook. “That’s all part of the gig when you’re as tall as I am,” says Mokeski