County Championship 2025: team-by-team guide to the new season

Surrey look primed to make it four titles in a row and Lancashire have enough to jump back to Division OneCaptain Alex Lees Coach Ryan Campbell Last season 5thFinished mid-table last season thanks to their habit of routing teams at home: they claimed three of their four wins at the Riverside, all of them by an innings. Meanwhile David Bedingham hit the most runs (1331) in Division One, with an average of (78.29), including the most sixes (25) and the most fours (147), and they have since strengthened their batting by signing Emilio Gay, who averaged 57.43 for Northamptonshire last season, and Will Rhodes, who scored 1,020 runs at 48.57 for Warwickshire, while another year’s experience can only benefit the promising 20-year-old, 6ft 7in opener Ben McKinney

Charlotte Edwards ‘relishing winning trophies’ as England’s new head coach

The appointment of Charlotte Edwards as the new England women’s head coach has been warmly welcomed, with former teammate Lydia Greenway saying “everyone should be really excited by this appointment”.“The one thing with Lottie is the standards she sets, and what she expects of you as a player,” Greenway told the BBC. “I’ve got no doubt in my mind that she’ll go into that group and set out her expectations and her standards from the word go.”The former England captain had put her hat in the ring in February, when changes were expected after a disastrous winter tour of Australia. England were whitewashed in the Ashes 16-0 with barely a whimper and plagued by accusations of fitness and attitude problems

ECB have hit a winner by fast-tracking Charlotte Edwards to England role | Raf Nicholson

Last time the England head coach role became available, in August 2022, Charlotte Edwards did not even apply: she believed that she did not yet have enough experience under her belt. Less than three years later, the England and Wales Cricket Board has concluded that she is such a perfect candidate for the job that it expedited her application, somehow condensing the period between firing one coach (Jon Lewis) and hiring another into the space of three weeks.Edwards’s record as head coach now speaks for itself: since domestic women’s cricket entered its professional era in 2020, she has led Southern Vipers to five out of nine available titles. She has also won the Women’s Hundred, coached a side to the final of the Women’s Big Bash League in Australia, and (less than three weeks ago) won her second Women’s Premier League in India. It is sometimes said that brilliant players do not translate into brilliant coaches, but Edwards – who during her 20-year playing career won a 50-over World Cup, a T20 World Cup and lifted the Ashes five times – is a notable exception to the rule

Reopening of Trump-owned golf course delayed after damage by pro-Palestine group

Turnberry’s famous Ailsa Course will not open as planned on 1 May after serious damage caused to the Ayrshire venue – owned by the US president, Donald Trump – by a pro-Palestine group. Tour operators and those with individual bookings at Turnberry are in the process of being informed it will be June before the Ailsa, which is routinely ranked among the finest golf courses in the world, is available for play.The clubhouse at the Ayrshire resort was daubed with graffiti and red paint in the early hours of 8 March. More significant in respect of the championship course – that has staged the Open on four occasions – was the ripping up of greens and on turf approaching them. The course has been closed since October due to planned renovation of the 7th and 8th holes

Ingebrigtsen’s father accused sons of ‘perfect character assassination’, court told

The father of the double ­Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen accused his sons of a “perfect ­character assassination” on a secret recording made after they fired him, a court has been told.Gjert Ingebrigtsen also claimed that he had been dragged “down to hell” after he was referred to child services following an incident in January 2022 where he was accused of whipping his daughter, Ingrid, in the face with a wet towel.But Henrik Ingebrigtsen, the older brother of Jakob, who competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, told his father that he only had himself to blame for the split – and what had happened subsequently – because he had been “violent” towards Ingrid.On another extraordinary day in Sandnes, Norway, the court was told long extracts of a terse and often argumentative 90-minute conversation, which had been recorded by Henrik without Gjert’s knowledge a week after the towel incident. Gjert described that act as a “betrayal”

‘It will never happen again’: former bikie-turned-golf pro Ryan Peake bears the scars of a chequered past

Australian golfer continues to carry a troubled history and a prison sentence with him even as a New Zealand Open title sends him on to the world stage“I’ve done what I’ve done, I’ve been sentenced to do my time,” says Australian professional golfer and former Rebels bikie Ryan Peake. “But the time didn’t end there. Every day is essentially a continuation of my sentence.”In March, the 32-year-old broke through for his first professional victory at the New Zealand Open. It has been five years since he was released from prison for twice causing grievous bodily harm – the same length of time he spent inside