Sports

LAHORE: Multan Sultans have gone about their HBL Pakistan Super League title defence in near-perfect style, winning nine out of ten round-robin matches. Now, for a first crack at reaching the final, they square off in the Qualifier on Wednesday against Lahore Qalandars, the only team who have managed to hurt them so far. After failing to defend more than …

Batter Suryakumar Yadav and fast bowler Deepak Chahar have been ruled out of India’s three-match Twenty20 International series against Sri Lanka at home, the country’s cricket board (BCCI) said on Wednesday. Yadav was adjudged player of the T20 series in India’s 3-0 win against West Indies at home and scored a match-winning 65 off 31 balls in the last match at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens. …

KARACHI: Eminent Olympian Abdul Waheed Khan, one of the two survivors of the 1960 Rome Olympics gold medal-winning Pakistan hockey team, died peacefully at his home in Karachi early Monday morning. He was 87. Waheed is survived by a widow, two daughters and a son. He will be laid to rest at Sakhi Hasan graveyard after Zuhr prayers on Tuesday. …

MELBOURNE: The world’s top-ranked test batter Marnus Labuschagne is hoping to take his dominant form on Australian pitches to Pakistan and is leaving no stone unturned as he prepares for the three-Test tour. Labuschagne has been practising batting on his home balcony on a rubber mat laden with pieces of taped aluminium sheeting to try to emulate the variable bounce …

MUSCAT: Ireland edged into the semi-finals of qualifying for this year’s T20 World Cup on net run-rate with a comfortable seven-wicket victory over Germany in Oman on Monday. The Germans could only post 107-7 from their 20 overs, and a third successive fifty partnership from openers Paul Stirling and Andy Balbirnie ensured the Irish reached their target, with 41 balls …

Australia Test captain Pat Cummins and opening batsman David Warner will not feature in the limited-overs meetings with Pakistan next month after they were left out of the squad for a trio of one-day internationals and a Twenty20 clash. Cummins and Warner, along with bowlers Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon, have been included in the squad for Australia’s …

Shahid Afridi may be retiring from the PSL but does that put an end to the Boom Boom Afridi spirit? Not if his son-in-law-to-be can help it. Captain of the Lahore Qalandars, Shaheen Shah Afridi, wowed cricket fans in the Peshawar Zalmi versus Lahore Qalandars PSL match on Feb 21. Zalmi may have won the match but Shaheen won everyone’s …

LAHORE: Lahore Qalandars seemed out of it, only for inspirational captain Shaheen Shah Afridi to pull them back in. Chasing 159 to win against Peshawar Zalmi, Qalandars needed 24 off the final over to win with Shaheen at the crease. Shaheen had already hit big shots off Mohammad Umar in the Zalmi pacer’s previous over but this time he was …

There is no such thing as an uneventful and dull Pakistan Super League (PSL). First, it was a league that was played thousands of miles away from the country it bore the name of. Then there was that nasty spot-fixing scandal of 2017, followed by the national quest to bring the tournament along with the big names in world cricket to …

BEIJING: China doused the Olympic flame on Sun­day night, closing Beijing Games that will be remembered for the extremes of its anti-Covid measures and outrage over the doping scandal that enveloped 15-year-old Russian skating sensation Kamila Valieva. Chinese President Xi Jinping was on hand for the snowflake-themed ceremony at the Bird’s Nest stadium, where International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach described the …