Warren Gatland is turning into the fall guy for all the failings of Welsh rugby | Andy Bull

Coach isn’t making the best out of Wales, but his troubled reign could force the country to confront the state it is inTwo years, four months and a lifetime ago, a Wales team not so very different from the one that will be on the field on Saturday beat the Springboks 13-12 in Bloemfontein. A lot of good Welsh sides have tried and failed to win in South Africa in the 60 years they have been touring. That team, coached by Wayne Pivac, and captained by Dan Biggar, were the first and only one to do it. They might even have won the series except the ifs and buts went against them in the first Test at Loftus Versfeld the previous week, when they lost 32-29 after Damian Willemse kicked a penalty in the final minute.Wales have fallen a long way in very little time

In Las Vegas, winning is what matters and Verstappen is awfully good at that

Beating Norris in Sin City will deliver a fourth successive title to the Red Bull driver and prove he makes his own luckMax Verstappen may have been dismissive in his opening assessment of last year’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix but by the time he victoriously crossed the line under the neon glow of the Strip he had, as so many before, fallen to the wiles of Sin City. On the floors of the casinos amid the miasma of smoke and bellows of adulation at the roll of a dice, Verstappen is recognised as a man who makes his own luck and no city in the world is better placed to acknowledge that.As he stands ready to claim his fourth consecutive Formula One world championship, Las Vegas is the perfect backdrop for this singular driver. F1, which promotes the race, has spent a fortune on establishing it perhaps as the most striking example of turning a race weekend into an event. Each one a Super Bowl was the grand ambition when Liberty Media took over the sport in 2017 with races in “destination cities” and in Las Vegas it has that and the potential spectacle to match with a world champion ready to cash out again in Nevada

Festival of fast bowling leaves India on top after Australia collapse

More than any pitch in the world, people talk about Perth. In our collective memory, it was always the Waca, fast and furious enough for decades of sequels.These days the city’s cricket venue has hopped from the western bank of the Swan to the east at Perth Stadium, but in our collective contemporary consciousness the pitch is still essentially the Waca, spiritually the Waca. It was literally formed from the same clay, and as per the story about beings created that way, one half of the pair might as well have been made from the body of the other.So if you look at the scorecard for the first day of the Australia-India Test at Perth, you would very reasonably have one question first

Australia v India: first men’s Test, day one – as it happened

Thanks for your company on a pulsating opening day. Geoff’s hastily rewritten feature will be here soon, and we’ll be back for the second – maybe even the final – day in the morning. Goodnight!At the time, with Australia on top, Nathan Lyon’s spell of 5-1-23-0 seemed like a minor detail. Now it feels like a waste of 23 precious runs.Australia aren’t out of this but they surely need Alex Carey to get them to at least 100

Champion Ding and challenger Gukesh prepare for world title battle

China’s world champion, Ding Liren, 32, and his Indian rival Gukesh Dommaraju, at 18 the youngest ever title challenger, meet for the opening ceremony of their $2.6m 14-game title match in Singapore on Saturday, with the first game scheduled to start at 9am GMT (17.00 local time) on Monday.This will be the 50th contest for the crown since 1886, and the first where both contestants are Asian. The No 1 player of the time was almost always a participant, but not in 2023 or 2024

Sport may be a blunt tool of social change, but it’s time to take a stand against Israel | Jonathan Liew

Probably you already know what this is. Probably before you read a word of it, you decided what it was, where you stand on it, how you’re going to feel about it. The headline, there’s your first clue. Maybe you recognised the name of the writer and drew your own conclusions. And of course there’s the Guardian masthead at the top, the world’s leading bat‑signal for wet liberals, so already there’s a self‑selecting audience there