Terence Crawford dethroned over $300k fee, handing Britain’s Sheeraz title shot

Terence Crawford has been stripped of his World Boxing Council super-middleweight world title after a dispute over unpaid sanctioning fees, a decision that puts Britain’s Hamzah Sheeraz in line to fight for the vacant belt.The WBC announced on Wednesday that it had removed the American star as its champion, three months after he shocked Canelo Álvarez in Las Vegas to become undisputed at 168lb. The organization said Crawford had not paid its required fees from that victory or from his previous bout in 2024, despite “multiple” attempts to contact him and his team.With the title now vacant, the WBC has ordered its interim champion Christian Mbilli to face Sheeraz for the belt. The 26-year-old from Ilford made an explosive arrival to the division in July when he demolished local favorite Edgar Berlanga at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens

Favourable 2027 Rugby World Cup draw provides few potholes for England | Robert Kitson

As the Ashes have reminded us, it never pays to get too excited in advance about winning in Australia. But once the draw for the 2027 men’s Rugby World Cup had concluded and the various knockout permutations had been crunched there was a strong whiff of deja vu in the Sydney air. A World Cup in Australia and a decent draw for England? What could possibly go wrong?The organisers had already stoked the narrative nicely by wheeling out Jonny Wilkinson in the promotional tournament video, essentially a mashup of Mad Max and Wacky Races roaring across a dusty outback. When every Australian wakes up on Thursday to discover it is 666 days until the 2027 edition kicks off, the nagging fear of nightmarish history repeating itself will further intensify.The cards have certainly fallen more kindly for England than for several of their rivals

Wallabies must improve as World Cup draw delivers daunting All Blacks clash

If the Wallabies are to fight their way to a World Cup triumph in front of their home crowds in 2027 they must first face off with arch-rivals New Zealand in the pool stages. The showdown between the traditional TransTasman rivals was set in stone at the tournament’s draw in Sydney on Wednesday night and will likely launch the six-week campaign of the 11th Rugby World Cup at Optus Stadium in Perth on 1 October 2027.The Wallabies will enter their home Cup outside the top seedings, ranked No 7 in the world and coming off a winless European tour for the first time since 1958. “We didn’t have a good November, it’s impossible to hide from that,” coach Joe Schmidt admitted last night of Australian rugby’s first 10-loss season. “It was an emotional rollercoaster of a year

In the pink? Cricket bosses and players still not seeing benefit of day-night Tests | Simon Burnton

In October 2012, the International Cricket Council formally green-lit the idea of day-night Tests, offering a new, potentially lucrative spin on the oldest format. “This is all about new audiences and doing all we could to make the game more accessible at every level,” said the England and Wales Cricket Board’s then chief executive, Tom Harrison, when he announced his side’s first pink-ball game a few years later.James Sutherland, Cricket Australia’s chief executive, welcomed the change from a status quo in which “Test cricket is played at times when most people are at work or school. We limit ourselves by staging cricket’s premium format at times when fans often can not watch.”Since that decision 24 of 554 Tests have been day-night games

The Spin | Pink-ball wizard: batters on facing ‘devastating weapon’ Mitchell Starc

That tall, fast and slim kid, sure bowls a mean pink ball.Leading into Thursday’s crucial second Test match, a day-night affair at Brisbane’s Gabba, much has been made of Mitchell Starc’s pink-ball wizardry. With 81 wickets at an average of 17.08, the lissom-limbed southpaw seamer has more wickets than any other with the pink’un in hand. Just what English supporters want to read as their side pitches up at a ground where they haven’t won a Test match in 39 years

World Athletics scraps takeoff zone idea to avoid ‘war’ with long jumpers

World Athletics has scrapped plans to introduce a takeoff zone for the long jump rather than the traditional board because of widespread hostility from athletes. Jon Ridgeon, the World Athletics’ chief executive, said that while the proposals had gone well in trials, “you ultimately do not want to go to war with your most important group of people”.The idea of introducing a wide takeoff zone was to reduce the number of foul jumps with athletes no longer required to try to hit a narrow board before jumping into the sand pit. However, the Olympic long jump champion, Miltiadis Tentoglou, described the proposal as “dog shit” because it took much of the skill out of the event, while the former track and field athlete Carl Lewis, who won four long jump medals at the Olympics, called it an “April fool’s joke”.“The athletes do not want to embrace it,” Ridgeon said