Iga Swiatek bundles brilliant Boulter and Britain out of United Cup after epic

Over the course of the past 18 months, by far the most rewarding period in her blossoming career, Katie Boulter has gradually established herself as one of the best players in the world. She has won noteworthy titles, defeated top opponents and embedded herself inside the top 30.Yet no battle in her career has quite matched the delirium of an unforgettable night in Sydney when she went shot-for-shot with the greatest active women’s player, Iga Swiatek, and came so close to securing her biggest victory yet. After three hours of tennis of the highest ­quality, Swiatek somehow survived a brilliant ­performance from Boulter, winning 6-7 (4), 6-1, 6-4 to secure a 2-0 win for Poland over Great Britain and a spot in the semi-finals of the United Cup.Earlier on Thursday, Britain’s Billy Harris played a solid match but he was outclassed by the men’s No 16, Hubert Hurkacz, who closed out a tough 7-6 (3), 7-5 win to secure Poland’s first victory of the tie

The end comes quickly for India’s fading champions ahead of Test series finale | Geoff Lemon

Australian tours have a habit of making or breaking Test careers. VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid destroyed Australia’s world-record winning streak at Kolkata in 2001, overcoming one of the greatest teams and its champion bowlers Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath. By 2012, Australia’s home grounds ended Laxman and Dravid, four Tests across the country returning a pair of half-centuries and bringing two fine careers to a deflating close against the more modest threat of Ben Hilfenhaus and Nathan Lyon.Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag were two more declining champions who creaked through that tour and were managed out of the side by the following year. The only player who fell into the make rather than break category was a young Virat Kohli, who scored his first century in Adelaide of a tally that he has now taken on to 30

A quarter of a century on: what we got right and wrong about sport’s future

From VAR to the rise of women’s sport, the media’s finest were hit and miss in predicting how things would developImagine tumbling back in time to 1 January, 2000. You pick up the 70p Saturday Guardian, with its spectacular photograph of Earth from space and a headline that hails the dawn of the new millennium. Soon you are reading a host of predictions for how the 21st century will play out – across science and sport, lifestyle and life itself – many of which oscillate between the fantastical and the terrifying.By 2010, a newborn will have a robot pet, you learn from Andy Beckett’s brilliant essay Born to be Wired. By 2030 they will be “in brain-to-brain contact, via electronic implants, without needing to speak with family members, lovers and friends”

Luke Littler dismantles Aspinall to make PDC world championship last four

Nathan Aspinall probably thinks he just took part in a game of darts. And look, his name was definitely on the scoreboard, and you may have glimpsed him on your television grinning away in the background, and in a few days’ time there will be a hefty bank transfer from the Professional Darts Corporation confirming he did, indeed, participate.But while Aspinall may have been here corporeally, in a very real sense he wasn’t actually here at all. He was essentially a tower of pixels, a mannequin, an uncredited extra, the silent letter in the middle of a word. He was one of those characters in a noughties video game who walks into a wall and disappears

PDC World Darts Championship: Littler overpowers Aspinall to set up Bunting clash – as it happened

Chris Dobey 5-3 Gerwyn PriceMichael van Gerwen 5-3 Callan RydzPeter Wright 2-5 Stephen BuntingLuke Littler 5-2 Nathan AspinallA very good day of darts, with one classic match in Van Gerwen v Rydz. I’m shattered so I’m going to wrap this up, but Jonathan Liew’s report will be along shortly. In the meantime here’s his take on the afternoon games.Niall McVeigh will be here tomorrow night for the semi-finals: Van Gerwen v Dobey and Littler v Bunting. It’ll be great, it always is

Michael van Gerwen edges Callan Rydz in epic at PDC world championship

They call 1 January, world championship quarter-final day, the greatest day in the darting calendar. Well: come back in another 364 days to see if there’s been a better match than this. Michael van Gerwen is a semi-finalist again, beating Callan Rydz, and if the headline facts feel unremarkable enough, then rarely, if ever, will he have been pushed, challenged and interrogated as he was here by the likeable Geordie.Rydz, perhaps the outstanding performer to this point, was magnificent, outdoing the great Van Gerwen on almost every conceivable metric. He won 18 legs to 17