The Spin | A decade after Phillip Hughes’ tragic death: how much has cricket changed?

The boy from Macksville, a small town pocketed between Sydney and Brisbane, formed a habit. With each century scored, he would collect the match ball, scribble the date and score by the seam. They filled up baskets. His father – a banana farmer who set up the bowling machine, drove him around, did whatever love asks – reckoned he had hit 68 or 70 hundreds before leaving home at the age of 17.The runs, never-ending, turned him into an almost mythical creature, a whisper that travelled through towns and into the city

Counties warned to spend ringfenced cash on women’s cricket or risk losing it

Counties hosting professional women’s teams will be strictly monitored to ensure the England and Wales Cricket Board’s multimillion-pound investment is being used to achieve gender equality, Beth Barrett-Wild, the ECB’s director of the women’s professional game has said.Should counties fail to deliver an equitable environment they would risk having their funding withdrawn. A national women’s player and staff survey is being introduced to encourage whistleblowing as the ECB seeks to ensure that the £1.5m provided to 10 of the first-class counties is being invested appropriately.Eight counties – Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire – won the right to host professional tier one women’s teams next season after a competitive bidding process this year, while two teams will join them in 2026 (Yorkshire) and 2027 (Glamorgan)

Fanduel network shows an industry bought and paid for by gambling

In sports broadcasting’s equivalent of a team changing its colors from red to blue in mid-season, the Diamond Sports Group, a bankrupt operator of 16 regional sports networks, last month rebranded its channels as the FanDuel Sports Network.The prior name was already linked to gambling – Bally’s held the branding rights for three years. But FanDuel is a higher-profile new partner with a much larger parent company. Flutter, headquartered in New York and originating from the Irish-British merger of Paddy Power and Betfair, is the world’s largest online betting business.If Bally’s is a brand that evokes Las Vegas-style gambling in a bricks-and-mortar casino, FanDuel looks more like the future: younger, fast-expanding, built for the smartphone era and blurring the lines between the media and the betting industry

NFL offenses are struggling on two-point conversions. No one knows why

The Baltimore Ravens were hardly having the best of days, but they’d successfully negotiated a last-ditch journey Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers by driving 69 yards in nine plays for a touchdown. The Steelers suddenly led by just 18-16 with 66 seconds left.No doubt the Ravens would try a two-point conversion to tie the score and send the game into overtime. But the Steelers, expecting a Tim Tebow-like pop pass, called time out as quarterback Lamar Jackson got ready to take the snap. So the Ravens called another play

‘We close the circle’: Rafa Nadal makes emotional exit after Davis Cup defeat

Rafael Nadal says he has “closed the circle” on his time in tennis as his storied career came to an end at the Davis Cup in Málaga on Wednesday. “It’s in some ways good, maybe, if that was my last match,” he said after his singles match. “I lost my first match in the Davis Cup, and I lost my last one. So we close the circle.”Nadal was comfortably defeated 6-4, 6-4 by Botic van de Zandschulp, his first Davis Cup singles loss in 20 years after winning 29 matches in a row