Sports

As over 87,000 people watched in person, Pakistan won its first, and only (as yet), ICC Cricket World Cup in 1992, a win so cherished that the captain of the team eventually was elected to lead the nation. The country is cricket crazed, no one doubts that. So why then have the stands been so empty during the Pakistan vs West …

LONDON: The Premier League lost another match to a Covid-19 outbreak in a squad when Aston Villa’s home game against Burnley was postponed around two hours before kickoff on Saturday. Villa said it did not have enough players to field a team following more positive tests in its squad that were reported early Saturday. The league approved Villa’s request to …

ISLAMABAD: Nasir Iqbal, Pakistan’s only hope in the men’s event of the 21st Asian Individual Squash Championship, fell to Yip Tsz Fung of Hong Kong in the semi-final after retiring here at the Mushaf Squash Complex on Saturday. Yip downed Nasir 11-6, 11-4, 3-1 in a one-sided 29-minute battle. Ng Eain Yow of Malaysia outplayed Hong Kong’s Lau Tsz Kwan …

LAHORE: Rana Abdul Waheed scored twice, including a 57th-minute leveller, to help Pakistan hold South Korea to a 3-3 draw in their round-robin match of the Asian Champions Trophy in Dhaka, Bangladesh on Saturday. Man-of-the-match Afraz’s 24th-minute goal cancelled out Kim Kyu-beom’s opener for South Korea 10 minutes earlier before Wahid put Pakistan in front in the 33rd. The Koreans, …

ADELAIDE: England were staring down the barrel of another sorry defeat on Saturday, dismissed for 236 then forced to watch as Australia batted again and stretched their lead in the day-night second Ashes Test in Adelaide. Joe Root and Dawid Malan had survived the opening session of day three unscathed, building a 128-run stand as they chased Australia’s imposing first-innings …

India opener KL Rahul has been named vice-captain for the three-match Test series against South Africa after Rohit Sharma was ruled out of the tour due to injury, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said on Saturday. The 29-year-old is returning to the Test side after missing the series win against New Zealand at home due to a muscle strain. “The …

PESHAWAR: A second successive round of one-under 71 sent Nouman Ilyas to the top of the National Amateur Ranking Golf Championship leaderboard at the end of round two the PAF Golf Course here on Friday. Nouman’s consistency saw him end the day with a five-stroke lead over overnight leader Mohammad Shoaib, who is at three-over 147 after he could only …

BEIJING: An outcry over the whereabouts of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai escalated on Friday as the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) said it was prepared to pull its tournaments out of China over the issue, prompting an influential Chinese state media editor to criticise the organisation for using a “coercive tone”. Former doubles world number one Peng has not been …

ISLAMABAD: At a time when unemployment is rife among the youth, the Pakistan Cricket Board has 23 over-age employees who are all contractual. The matter came to light after Senator Irfan Siddiqui posed a question to Federal Minister for Inter-provincial Coordination Dr Fehmida Mirza, asking her about the number of employees over the age of 60 as well their salaries …

Pakistan recovered from a top-order collapse to beat Bangladesh by four wickets in the first Twenty20 international of their three-match series in Dhaka on Friday. The visitors restricted Bangladesh to a measly 127-7 as the hosts won the toss and elected to bat first at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium. Fast bowler Hasan Ali picked up 3-22 and right-arm medium pacer …