Alex Carey’s acrobatics lay foundation for Josh Inglis’ fireworks | James Wallace
Catches win matches? Well, they certainly help set them up.Alex Carey’s brace of afternoon wonder-grabs sent the dangerous duo of Phil Salt and Harry Brook trudging back to the sheds blinking not from the afternoon Lahore sun but in disbelief.Carey’s acrobatic, sinew straining exertions in the outfield (gloves? who needs ’em) exemplified a razor sharp Australian performance in the field that kept England’s progress constantly in check and eventually paved the way for a historic run chase, the highest ever in International Cricket Council tournaments no less.The Aussies can turn it on in major tournaments, who knew?Josh Inglis’s liquid nitrogen-veined maiden ODI century will steal the headlines and rightly so, especially as he was brought up amongst the crags and chevins of Menston, Yorkshire, in the first 14 years of his life, before a move out to the sunnier climes and sandy beaches of Mindarie in Perth.The Yorkshire lad turned West Australian dude who lumped a whole lotta pressure on the poms? A delicious and surefire way to get computer keyboards clacking.
Mike Atherton, broadcasting as Inglis secured victory with two and half overs left and finishing unbeaten on 120 off just 86 balls, made the first of what will surely be a common spoonerism for commentators as he heaped praise on “Jos English”, the usually laconic and bone-dry Atherton amusing himself and others with the garble before leaning into it further and cheekily asking Steve Smith the question on all English fans lips after such a flawless performance from the 29 -year -old wicketkeeper-batter,“Has he still got his English passport?!”“You’ll have to ask him! But he’s not going anywhere,” Smith replied with a Garfield smile creeping across his chops, very much the cat that has got the expat cream,Inglis declared himself “over the moon” with the win and his own electrifying performance, his firmly antipodean accent betraying only the tiniest fragment of flattened vowels that hint at his “ay up” past rather than his “ah look” present,Inglis’s innings was all the more remarkable due to the way he shrugged in the face of scoreboard pressure and consistently peppered the boundaries all around the ground with lightning fast hands,The dew-soaked ball seemed to pick up pace off his blade as it repeatedly traced across the glistening Gaddafi Stadium turf like a pebble strewn across a glacier.
Inglis also later gave an insight into what it is like to bat with Alex Carey, with whom he shared a defining partnership of 146 runs in 20 tricksy middle overs after Australia were teetering on 136 for four.“Alex doesn’t really say anything when he bats” he revealed when scooping the player of the match award.“So I just cracked on with it and tried not to look at the scoreboard too much.”The seemingly perennially bashful Carey was extremely content to quietly cruise in Inglis’s batting slipstream and you get the feeling he wouldn’t give a fig that the man who he has relinquished the ODI keeping gloves to will dominate the conversation over the coming days.Sign up to Australia SportGet a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports deskafter newsletter promotionHaving the best year of his career in both domestic and international cricket, Carey still has the air of a man who prefers to blend into the background but possesses an inexplicable Forrest Gump-ian habit of wandering into the centre of the action.
There he is unfurling the underarm throw to run out Jonny Bairstow at Lord’s in 2023, oh and there he is quietly weathering the ensuing shitstorm with bush baby eyed bemusement whilst everything from the spirit of cricket to shoplifted haircuts are flung his way in the aftermath.There’s Carey, having a nice stroll through Tiananmen Square in June 1989, there he is doing a quick Sudoku on a grassy knoll on a November afternoon in Dallas, 1963.Up he pops in Galle in February 2025, compiling 156 runs to set up a Test series win, there he is in Brisbane 2022, hitting a maiden Test century in the background as David Warner scores 200 and grabs the headlines with his first century in three years in his 100th Test match.Did you spot Carey? Never mind, he won’t.Carey was memorably caught on camera stumbling into swimming pool on a Test tour of Pakistan three years ago.
His captain, Pat Cummins, sharing the video of the slip to much viral mirth,It was only a matter of minutes after Carey had let his Clark Kent mask slip for a second in Lahore to pull off a Superman soar at wide mid-on to dismiss Phil Salt that the still image of him at full stretch with the catch inexplicably pouched had been extracted and transposed over the 2022 Karachi swimming pool footage,It was soon doing the rounds online,Carey probably won’t see it, probably doesn’t even go online at all,Even after a day like that.
Far-right links and Putin praise: fears over £600m UK history theme park plan
French family behind project visited Kremlin in 2014 to discuss building ‘Tsarland’ in annexed CrimeaWith its spectacular shows featuring Viking longboats, Roman charioteers and sword-wielding knights who perform death-defying stunts, Puy du Fou in France is consistently ranked among the world’s best theme parks. Each performance of its centrepiece Cinéscénie show, which depicts 700 years of French history, features more than 1,000 actors, hundreds of horses and about 800 fireworks.Now the company has set its sights on bringing its brand of immersive history to the UK via a £600m investment to build its mock medieval castles, hotels and restaurants on farmland just off the M40 in Oxfordshire. It has asked the upmarket property firm Savills to help with its planning applications and is expected to look for British co-investors for a project that it says will create thousands of jobs.Some who live near the site, however, are dismayed at the lack of attention given to what they see as the French company’s dark underbelly, including ties to the far right and a past flirtation with Vladimir Putin
Oil workers ‘could strike’ to protect jobs in green transition; Trump tariffs hit US economic growth – as it happened
Oil workers and tanker drivers could take strike action in an effort to force UK and Scottish ministers to protect jobs threatened by the green transition, Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary has predicted.Graham told trade union activists based at PetroIneos’s Grangemouth oil refinery near Edinburgh, which is set to close over the next 18 months with the loss of 400 jobs, that direct action was being considered.Speaking outside Scottish Labour’s annual conference in Glasgow, she suggested Unite members could target petrol and diesel production, throttling fuel supplies to forecourts, our Scotland editor Severin Carrell writes.Graham told the rally:“Puts these politicians on notice, we are not going to allow oil and gas workers to be the coal miners of our generation. I have already been meeting with refinery reps up and down the countries in Britain, and we will escalate this action if necessary
How to navigate apps, from checking safety to remembering passwords
With more and more organisations asking you to download an app to access the best deals, or even use their services at all, you may be wondering how to deal with the technical side of all of this technology. Fear not, our consumer technology editor, Samuel Gibbs, has some tips.Delete unused apps and games.Move photos and videos to iCloud, Google Photos or similar.Clear out your WhatsApp photos, videos and gifs
How poignant to see loved ones frozen in time on Google Street View | Letters
All the overwhelming opposing emotions that Adrian Chiles went through happened to me too when I casually looked at our street on Google Maps (My dad died a year ago – and a photo of him on Google Street View brought me up short, 19 February). There was the palliative care nurse at our front door waiting to be let in, standing by our small red car. My husband had terminal cancer and this amazing nurse was incredibly supportive to all of us. The car was his little runaround while he was still able to drive. The picture must have been taken in 2017, not long before he died
Dmitry Bivol defeats Artur Beterbiev for undisputed light heavyweight championship – live reaction
And the new! Dmitry Bivol is the undisputed light heavyweight champion of the world after defeating Artur Beterbiev by a majority decision in a close, competitive fight marked by ebbs and flows in both directions. The official scores were 114-114, 116-112 and 115-113. (The Guardian had it 115-113 for Bivol.)It’s the first professional defeat for Beterbiev, whose eight-year championship reign at 175lb is over.That’s all for tonight
Joseph Parker stops stand-in Martin Bakole in two rounds for crushing win
Joseph Parker overcame the surprise of fighting a very different opponent from the man he had been expecting to face when he knocked out Martin Bakole with devastating force in the second round of their heavyweight contest in Riyadh. The New Zealander had been scheduled to challenge Daniel Dubois for his IBF world heavyweight title but, after the champion fell ill with a virus on Thursday, Bakole flew to Saudi Arabia from the Democratic Republic of Congo as an emergency replacement.The odds against Bakole were underlined by the fact that he had only landed in Riyadh at 3am on the morning of the fight. Less than 22 hours later, at 1.10am local time on Sunday morning, Bakole ambled calmly to the ring
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