I Dig Sports
Matthew Fisher set for extended lay-off after further scans on back injury
Fisher, 24, made his Test debut in Barbados in March as a late replacement for the unwell Craig Overton and took a wicket with his second ball, having John Campbell caught behind. He finished with match figures of 1 for 71 but would have been in contention for the first Test of the summer if fit, not least with a swathe of English fast bowlers unavailable through injury.
Fisher was initially diagnosed with a "stress reaction" in his back following Yorkshire's win against Gloucestershire in their first County Championship fixture this season and was expected to miss a month of cricket.
But the Daily Mail reported on Monday evening that Fisher had suffered a stress fracture and Yorkshire confirmed in a statement that he is "set for a longer spell on the sidelines" than first thought.
"Fisher's rehabilitation program has been progressing well and the club's medical staff will continue to monitor and work with the young fast bowler with his long term performance in mind at all times," Yorkshire said.
"Initially I'd said four weeks," Ottis Gibson, their head coach, had said on Sunday. "But further reports from the medical team seem to suggest that's going to be a slower process than anticipated. Because of his injury history, we're going to have to take a more cautious approach with him."
Fisher is expected to miss the majority of the 2022 summer and it is highly unlikely he will have bowled enough overs to be considered for their final Test against South Africa, which starts on September 8.
ESPNcricinfo understands that Fisher's Hundred team, Birmingham Phoenix - for whom he signed a £50,000 contract last month - have already started to look at replacement options in the expectation that he is unlikely to play any part in the tournament, which runs from August 3-September 3.
Poorer, more-divided game the bottom line of Tom Harrison tenure
Does anyone remember Chris Dehring? Those of a certain age might raise an eyebrow of recognition at a name that, in the years leading up to the 2007 World Cup, was the ubiquitous, plausible face of West Indies cricket - first as the man who spearheaded the WICB's successful bid, then as the Managing Director and CEO of the ICC's rather less successful staging of the tournament itself.
It took barely 24 hours after that tournament's farcical finish, in near total darkness in Barbados, for Dehring to disappear off the face of the game. Overnight, his mobile phone appeared to take a dive for Davy Jones' Locker, pre-empting that of Rebekah Vardy's agent, as he moved onwards and upwards to his next executive calling - a five-year chairmanship of Cable & Wireless Jamaica, as it turned out.
But after the controversies of the past few months, it's hard to believe he'll have any interest in a third innings in the game. In keeping with the traditions of the modern uber-executive, whatever gratitude there might have been for Harrison's service has long since been traded in for a golden handshake - specifically his share of the ECB's £2.1 million bonus pot, which (awkwardly) also happens to be just £100,000 less than the current level of the board's once-flush reserves.
For the bottom line will always be the bottom line when it comes to appraising Harrison's legacy. Even after his "we're-all-in-it-together" gesture of a 20% pay cut during the pandemic, the ECB's top man was still paid more than half a million pounds in 2020, and that figure rose north of £700,000 during the board's years of plenty in the lead-up to the 2019 World Cup. No matter how weighty his responsibilities - and that era since 2015 has thrown up an abundance of crises that have required his first-hand intervention - it is still a sickening sum of money to be siphoning off from the sport, and a distracting one as well, given how much his final pay-cheque has overshadowed his dying days in the job.
The issue of remuneration cuts both ways, of course - it wasn't so long ago that Giles Clarke, the last of the ECB's blazer-breed who predated the onset of Harrison's suits and shirt-sleeves, would seek to justify every one of his autocratic whims by pointing out that, technically, he wasn't paid a penny during his tenure as chairman (although his expenses account took quite the pounding).
At the apex of cricket's culture war sits the ongoing racism scandal - a catastrophic blow to the sport's public image, and one that has been especially humiliating to Harrison in his final months in the role
Is it preferable that English cricket's senior executive is a professional in the most literal sense, and an exorbitantly paid one as well, given the sums that he in turn should expect from the deals he brings in? Probably … even allowing for the dysfunction that he leaves behind him in the boardroom, where since October there has been no chairman on hand to unseat him and, until this past fortnight, no structure beneath him to oversee the most fundamental cricket-focused aspect of its existence. This speaks to a wider truth, that the ECB on Harrison's watch has become too unwieldy to discharge its basic duties to the game. And for that he has been roundly complicit.
Tellingly, there was no mention in Harrison's farewell press release of the most divisive aspect of his reign - his zealous driving-through of the Hundred, a competition that may have made sense on the boardroom notepaper on which it was brain-stormed, but less so when unleashed as a fourth format in an already overwhelmed summer schedule.
Instead of easing the burden on Tests as English cricket's bread-winner, the Hundred's existence has hastened their nosediving standards by driving four-day cricket out of the summer's prime months. And if anyone knows of the whereabouts of 50-over cricket - the format that England ghosted on the morning of July 15, 2019 after a passionate four-year affair - approximately 4.5 million casual viewers on Channel 4 might be moderately intrigued to find out.
Therein lies the oddity of Harrison's seven-year reign. It contained around its mid-point one of the greatest glories any administration could ever hope to oversee - two, in fact, if you include the magnificently "disruptive" achievement of England's women on the same ground two years earlier. Given the chaos of his early weeks in the job in 2015, with humiliation at the preceding World Cup coupled with the unresolved saga of Kevin Pietersen's sacking, Harrison clearly deserves some credit for setting the game's sights on a home World Cup, a notion that his forebears in 1999 never came close to contemplating
But ultimately it was the players, not the administrators, who delivered that trophy with a display of unforgettable tenacity when the stakes were at their highest. It's easy to forget now, but until the euphoria of that run-out in the Super Over against New Zealand, the mood music of English cricket had been a gut-clenching, gnawing dread. While Eoin Morgan's men kept their eyes on the prize as best they could, the board was already deep into a furiously silent and NDA-littered game of tug-of-war with the counties as the Hundred spluttered unconvincingly into existence.
Harrison's board won the argument in the end, but in breaking the counties' centuries-old hold on the sport, it seems they broke too the ECB's very raison d'etre. Its purpose (not always realised, mind you) used to be to draw together the various disparate strands of the game at every level, and create - at the very top of its pyramid - an England team that could win the big series, and thereby perpetuate a level of interest into each coming generation.
However, his fixation with revenue streams, over and above the human side of sport - and specifically with establishing the Hundred as a failsafe for the dreaded day when international cricket ceases to pay the bills - has fostered an air of rancour and barely suppressed civil war that has only served to hasten that date in the first place.
"It is about giving more people the opportunity to be part of cricket's future" was Harrison's oft-repeated mantra, most particularly in the lead-up to the competition's soft-launch in May 2019, when it seemed the ECB's preferred route to this new market was to apologise loudly and offensively about everything that the game's existing fans held dear, and trample over generations of softly-sold affection to access the take-it-or-leave-it types at Mumsnet - for whom such well-meaning but ultimately under-delivering initiatives as All Stars Cricket were less about inculcating a lifetime's love of the sport, and more about an hour's childcare during the summer months.
The disdain was felt across the game - most particularly by those young enough to have been active cricketers around the time of the 2005 Ashes, and who remember both the nationwide euphoria that accompanied that summer's Ashes, and the decade of silence that followed it. Instead of showing gratitude to a generation whose own kids are now propping up the sport's participation levels, their fandom has been taken for granted at every turn, and their faith in the game eroded by avoidable insults - particularly on social media, where the silence that greeted the start of this year's county season was at stark odds with the blow-by-blow updates from a distinctly underwhelming Hundred draft.
And at the apex of this culture war sits cricket's ongoing racism scandal - a catastrophic blow to the sport's public image, and one that has been especially humiliating to Harrison in his final months in the role.
It's hard to deny he recognised the issues before they had gone mainstream - and in 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement exposed historic grievances in the game's already withered Caribbean heritage, Harrison's response was honest and heartfelt.
And yet, when push has come to shove on the public stage - most particularly during his desperately uncomfortable appearances before the DCMS select committees - Harrison has been reduced to a stuttering, management-speak cipher. The buzzwords with which he has ruled a succession of boardrooms hold no sway in the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary inquiry, and he was similarly scorched by Mehmooda Duke's resignation as Leicestershire's chair last November - Duke, the only minority-ethnic female in such a role, was understandably reluctant to be paraded as proof of the ECB's hard-won EDI credentials.
There are aspects of Harrison's legacy that may take time to reveal themselves fully. The strides taken in the women's game are clear to see, for all that the England team itself is at another crossroads, and if nothing else, the configuration of the Hundred as an equal opportunities competition (if not yet equal pay…) is the most obvious means to ensure year-on-year "growth" - the capitalist dream. After all, given the current levels of investment in the format, a sport that barely had a professional footing a decade ago has nowhere to go but up.
And then there's the stewardship of the Covid pandemic - not merely the navigation through the summer of 2020, an impressive display of on-the-hoof crisis-management (albeit tainted by the redundancies at the end of it), but the long-term attempts to manage the health and well-being of England's players. The human cost of the bubble lifestyle is not yet fully realised, but in setting out to mitigate the impact of the players' attempts to "keep the lights on", Harrison tried to show he cared.
Ultimately, however, leaders can only be judged by results. And as he leaves office with the game failing by every measure that has ever exercised public opinion - be it matters of money, morals or pure sporting endeavour - there's really no way of saying he has left the game better than when he found it.
Andrew Miller is UK editor of ESPNcricinfo. @miller_cricket
Special tee: Tiger paired with Spieth, Rory at PGA
TULSA, Okla. -- Tiger Woods' quest for a fifth PGA Championship victory will start Thursday on the back nine of Southern Hills Country Club.
Woods, a 15-time major champion, will play in a featured group with Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth in the first two rounds. The threesome will tee off on No. 10 at 9:11 a.m. ET in Thursday's first round and on No. 1 at 2:36 p.m. Friday in the second.
Other featured groups include Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Collin Morikawa, the top three players in the Official World Golf Ranking. They will tee off on No. 1 at 2:36 p.m. ET on Thursday and on No. 10 at 9:11 a.m. Friday. Dustin Johnson, Patrick Cantlay and Justin Thomas will tee off on No. 1 at 2:14 p.m. ET on Thursday and on No. 10 at 8:49 a.m. Friday.
Woods, 46, last won the PGA Championship at Southern Hills in 2007. Another victory would give him 83 victories in his PGA Tour career, which would break his tie with Sam Snead for most all time.
"We're all happy that Tiger is here, obviously," Rahm said Tuesday. "We're extremely happy. Who would have said over a year ago that he would be competing in major championships again? ... You know, he's Tiger. He's a competitor. He's going to try to win every single time, and anytime he tees up, the world wants him to win."
Woods will be playing in his second official event since he was seriously injured in a car wreck outside Los Angeles on Feb. 23, 2021. He said doctors nearly had to amputate his right leg. He finished 47th at the Masters in April, his first event in nearly 17 months.
Woods said earlier this week that his surgically repaired right leg felt stronger than it did at Augusta National Golf Club, where he struggled while walking the sloping fairways on the weekend.
"Six weeks is a long enough time to recover from that week and then build yourself back up again," McIlroy said. "He certainly hasn't chosen two of the easiest walks in golf to come back to, Augusta and here. But no, he's stubborn, he's determined. This is what he lives for. He lives for these major championships, and if he believes he can get around 18 holes, he believes he can win."
There will also be much attention this week on Spieth, who will be trying to complete the career Grand Slam by winning the PGA Championship. At 28 years old, Spieth would be the third youngest to accomplish the feat in the Masters era, behind only Woods (24) and Jack Nicklaus (26).
The New York Mets announced Tuesday that an MRI performed Monday on Jacob deGrom's right shoulder blade revealed continued healing of a stress reaction that has sidelined him all season.
"He will continue to build distance and velocity in his throwing program, and we will provide an update on his progress when appropriate," the team said in a statement.
The expectation has been that deGrom, who is on the 60-day injured list, will be sidelined until at least June.
The two-time National League Cy Young winner got hurt late in spring training, leading the Mets to shut him down after an elbow sprain in his pitching arm sidelined him after July 7 of last year.
The Mets, who are 23-13 entering Tuesday's games, are atop the National League East even with their ace sidelined. Offseason additions Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt have led a pitching staff that is ranked third in the NL with a 3.40 ERA.
The Mets also announced Tuesday that starting right fielder Starling Marte was placed on the bereavement list Monday.
AW promotion
Carl Lewis, the nine-time Olympic and eight-time world champion, asked a simple question on Twitter: is the long jump the most challenging track and field event? According to him, only doing the long jump opens one to the challenge and tact it takes to make the long jump correctly and perfectly. Therefore, ensues a long-overdue debate: between the long jump and the triple jump, which one is much harder for athletes? We will look at evidence that contributes or refutes to each of these sides on this site. Let’s dive in.
The Triple Jump
The triple jump starts with a sprint, three big steps after crossing the board, a hop, a step, and the final jump before landing on the sand. The sprint gives the triple jump the speed to make the jump. The difficulty in the jump comes from making and controlling the steps before the jump.
The coordination needed to keep the speed throughout the three stages is challenging since every step must be controlled. The athlete’s posture, which should be upright when jumping but folded when landing, also affects the length of the jump.
The Long Jump
The long jump starts with a sprint, three quick steps, a jump from the board with one leg, and ends with both feet landing on the sand. A long jump elite can reach 22 miles per hour because speed is necessary to ensure the jump is long. But the take-off jump also requires power. Still, the jumping and landing posture for the long jump is similar to that of the triple jump.
Triple Jump vs. Long Jump
Performance for athletic jumpers is dependent on speed, height, and technique or power. But this is something both the long jump and triple jumpers do. But because a triple jump requires the hop, step, and jump, many people presume that it is much more complex than the long jump.
Why? The three steps can slow down the athlete’s speed, thus, requiring them to use more strength to make a more significant jump. On the other hand, athletes like Carl Lewis, who have competed in the long jump for decades, believe that the sport is more challenging because of the tact required to hit the board at a certain angle and maximum velocity.
So, which one is more challenging? According to science, landing the hop and the step phases in the triple jump takes more effort and tact than the long jump. The force a triple jumper exerts on the ground can be 22 times their body weight.
Christian Taylor (Mark Shearman)
This means that an athlete with 75kgs exerts a force that measures 1.6 tonnes. Remember that this is a force exerted while the athlete is standing on one leg. Additionally, it is the most tremendous force measured on a human limb that results from intentional activity.
That is also why athletes in the triple jump category often develop more muscular bones. Their shin and thigh bones become thicker and denser to accommodate the massive impact of the triple jump.
Don’t forget that the triple jumper must also include speed as a requirement to make a high jump, with the fastest athletes in the category taking off the board at 10.5 and 9.5 meters per second for men and women, respectively – these are speeds similar to those seen in long jump athletes at finals.
So, in a word, science dictates the triple jump is much more complicated than the long jump.
Still, It Is Subjective
Different people have varying conclusions on whether the triple jump is more complex than the long jump or vice versa. Both sports lack a single measurement, further sparks debate on whether one is even more complex than the other. Additionally, there is no measurement on which of the two is harder to train for or which is the hardest to reach a world-class level. So, while science determines the triple jump to be harder, the answer remains pretty much subjective.
Eddie Jones: England building a squad for the World Cup
England head coach Eddie Jones talks to the BBC's rugby union correspondent Chris Jones about his 36-strong training squad to prepare for July's Test series against Australia.
READ MORE: England call up London Irish flier Arundell
Listen to the latest Rugby Union Weekly podcast on BBC Sounds
PGA Championship odds: Scottie Scheffler favored; long odds for Tiger Woods
Scottie Scheffler is the pre-tournament betting favorite over the world’s best at this week’s PGA Championship.
Scheffler, who won his first career major at the Masters in April, is listed +1000 odds by PointsBet Sportsbook, just ahead of Jon Rahm at +1300 and Justin Thomas at +1400.
Jordan Spieth, who would complete the career Grand Slam if he were to win this week at Southern Hills, is listed at +1600 alongside former PGA champions Collin Morikawa and Rory McIlroy. Spieth has come close twice at the PGA Championship, finishing runner-up in 2015 at Whistling Straits and T-3 in 2019 at Bethpage Black.
Tiger Woods is listed at +6000 after his 47th place finish at the Masters.
Here’s a list of notables for this week’s PGA Championship:
- +1000: Scottie Scheffler
- +1300: Jon Rahm
- +1400: Justin Thomas
- +1600: Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa, Rory McIlroy
- +2200: Dustin Johnson
- +2500: Hideki Matsuyama, Viktor Hovland, Xander Schauffele
- +4000: Brooks Koepka, Joaquin Niemann, Sam Burns
- +6000: Tiger Woods
- +9000: Bryson DeChambeau
- +17500: Rickie Fowler
For full and most updated odds, click here.
Rory McIlroy admits, 'might have been a little presumptuous' about LIV Golf's demise
TULSA, Okla. – Just three months ago, Rory McIlroy declared the Saudi-backed rival tour “dead in the water,” after a wave of top players announced their intentions to remain with the PGA Tour.
It appears that’s no longer the case.
Though LIV Golf and CEO Greg Norman have endured a series of false starts, setbacks and PR headaches over the past several months, the upstart league still remains an existential threat to the Tour, with the inaugural event of the eight-tournament circuit beginning next month outside London with the richest purse in golf history ($25 million).
“I might have been a little presumptuous at that point,” McIlroy conceded Tuesday at the PGA Championship. “It seems like it’s still going. Greg and everyone behind it are very determined. I think we’re just going to have to see how it plays out. Guys are going to make decisions.”
And those decisions are imminent, with the field list for the first LIV event set to be released later this month. The Tour denied conflicting-event releases to members wanting to play in London, setting the stage for possible sanctions and what would be a lengthy court battle.
McIlroy was among the first marquee names to spurn the rival tour, and other stars like Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa have followed suit in aligning with the Tour.
“Honestly, I’m rooting for it all to be over. I’m just so sick of talking about it,” McIlroy said. “I’ve made my decision, I know where I want to play, and I’m not standing in anyone’s way – I’m not saying that they shouldn’t go over there and play if that’s what they feel is right for them, then 100% they should go and do it.”
McIlroy has staked his future with the Tour – he’s currently serving as the chairman of the Player Advisory Council – but he acknowledges that this is a fraught moment.
“Honestly, it’s going to shape the future of professional golf, one way or another,” he said. “I think we’re just going to have to see how it all shakes out.”
Owais Shah makes Middlesex return as white-ball batting consultant
Shah, 43, is one of Middlesex's finest limited-overs players and represented England 88 times across the white-ball formats during his playing career as well as playing in every major T20 league. He is among a select group of Englishmen to win an overseas T20 league as a coach, having led Rajshahi Royals to success in the Bangladesh Premier League in 2020, but he has found opportunities hard to come by in county cricket.
Two years ago, Shah gave a scathing interview to the Telegraph about the lack of diversity in Middlesex's squad and among coaching staffs across the county game, describing the situation as "staggering".
"We've only had a handful of people of colour in the last 20 years who have represented Middlesex," he said. "Now there are a lot of Asian kids I know who play a lot of cricket in London. And I find it amazing that a London club doesn't have many people coming through the ranks and representing Middlesex. At junior age group, yes, they have, but what is happening to these kids? By the time they're 19, 20 they should be representing Middlesex - well, they're not."
Middlesex's board have been conscious of their shortcomings, launching a diversity and inclusion activation plan last year and partnering with Ebony Rainford-Brent's ACE programme last month to give further opportunities to young black cricketers, and Shah's appointment is in keeping with their attempts to become a more inclusive club.
"I started at the club as an under-11 and played all the way through as a player until the age of 31," Shah said in a Middlesex press release. "It is now a great honour to return to Middlesex as a coach and help the younger guys develop quicker so that we can get the club back to the top."
Shah will work alongside Mark Ramprakash, who is already in place as Middlesex's lead batting coach - also on a consultancy basis - throughout the T20 Blast and the Royal London Cup.
"As a player he had something really special, a real will to win and unbelievable skills in white-ball cricket to back that up," Alan Coleman, Middlesex's head of men's performance cricket, said. "His record in the shorter forms of the game is exceptional and he will bring some real expertise to our white-ball coaching set-up.
"He has played in all of the world's biggest T20 franchise tournaments, has experienced the pressures of international cricket, and is an exceptional coach who can put all these experiences to good use with our playing group, specifically the development of our young batters as they learn about the shorter formats of the game."
Silverwood waits for Bangladesh to 'try to push things on' in slow-moving Chattogram Test
"I think it is a very well-balanced game," Silverwood said. "I think the morning session will be key. It will be interesting to see how Bangladesh come out and play, [and] if they try to push things on. The scoring rate, as it is, come lunch time tomorrow they will be somewhere around level with us. With five sessions left in the game from there on, it will be interesting to see how they play. We will try to restrict the runs but we also know that they have some very good players who can move the run rate.
"I think we are [waiting for the opponents to make mistakes], because there's very little happening with the wicket. The turn is slow. We are trying to pressure people into making mistakes. Batters weren't willing to take risks. They have played calculated shots and waited for the bad ball. It was good batting. It will be interesting to see if people try to force a result."
"I think if we can bat the day tomorrow, and then try to bowl them out in a day, that'll be a very good effort. If they serve up some bad bowling, and if we go on the attack [it would be a matter of time]."
Sri Lanka could have been in a better position after the third day had it not been for the missed chances. Lasith Embuldeniya dropped Mahmudul Hasan Joy on 51, Dhananjaya de Silva dropped Tamim on 114, and Oshada Fernando spilled one when Litton was on 33. Mahmudul didn't add many to his score after the life, falling for 58, but Tamim and Litton have cashed in.
"It was great to see Kasun make an immediate impact in the game," Silverwood said. "[But dropping] three catches is not good on a wicket that's offering so little. We have to be more disciplined in our fielding. We need to take those catches."
"The job that the openers did on the second day [ending on 76 for no loss], set us up for today," Siddons said. "Yesterday was very tough after almost two days of fielding in very, very hot conditions. Tamim's performance is fantastic. Plenty more runs left. He can come back when we think he's fit. The discipline today was exactly what we asked for.
"Tamim didn't go fast. He looked like Angelo Mathews actually. Very patient in taking ones when they were there, only hitting fours when they were handed to him on a plate. He didn't really take on the bowlers like I have seen him before. Joy just did his job of taking on the new ball, and put a partnership together with Tamim."
Phone: (800) 737. 6040
Fax: (800) 825 5558
Website: 
Email: 
