Derbyshire 181 for 2 (Godleman 92, Reece 51) beat Worcestershire 161 for 7 (Guptill 45, Critchley 4 for 36)

Worcestershire missed the chance to close the gap on Vitality Blast North Group leaders Lancashire when they lost by 20 runs away at Derbyshire Falcons, who moved into the top four.

Billy Godleman made 92 from 65 balls, his highest T20 score, and Luis Reece 51 as the Falcons posted an imposing 181 for 2.

Former Derbyshire batsman Martin Guptill hit 45 from 40 balls but legspinner Matt Critchley celebrated his 23rd birthday by taking 4 for 36 as the Rapids subsided to 161 for 7.

It looked promising for the visitors when Dillon Pennington opened with a maiden but that was the calm before the storm as Godleman reeled off a salvo of boundaries in the next two overs.

Wayne Parnell's first ball was launched over the long off boundary and Pennington was driven for three consecutive fours before Reece dispatched Parnell several rows back into the stand at the City End.

The Falcons took 57 from the powerplay and the runs continued to flow as the openers rotated the strike with the Rapids rarely threatening to take a wicket.

Godleman reached 50 from 29 balls and after his side had reached the halfway point on 87 without loss, the pair scored freely without taking any undue risks.

Reece pulled Joe Leach for his sixth four to bring up his 50 from 38 balls and the Rapids had to wait until the 16th over for the breakthrough which came when Reece drilled Daryl Mitchell to cover.

They had slowed the scoring rate, though Goldeman passed his previous highest T20 score of 77 by lifting Ed Barnard over wide mid-wicket for his ninth four.

Wayne Madsen drove Parnell for six but after Godleman failed to clear the man on the deep cover boundary, Leus du Plooy hit the last two balls from Pat Brown for four.

Although the Falcons looked on course for 200, the Rapids faced a tough chase which became harder when the dangerous Riki Wessels failed to respond to Guptill's call and was run out in the second over.

Callum Ferguson cut and drove Fynn Hudson-Prentice for consecutive fours but at 47 for 1 at the end of the powerplay, the Rapids had to live up to their name if they were going to get close.

Ferguson powered Boyd Rankin high over midwicket for six and pulled the next ball for four before Guptill drove Reece for six over long-on to leave the Rapids needing 100 from the last 10.

But the introduction of Critchley proved decisive as Ferguson drove him to long-on, Guptill was bowled trying to cut, and Parnell, after driving him for six, failed to clear long-off when he tried to repeat the shot.

Ben Cox and Barnard both drove him for big sixes but the night belonged to Critchley and the Falcons, as Worcestershire came up well short.

The result means that Derbyshire jump from eighth to fourth in the group, and with just three points separating second-placed Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire in eighth, things could hardly be closer.

After suffering a knee injury in competition last week, Miami Heat forward Kelly Olynyk will be unable to compete for Canada in the FIBA World Cup, a source tells ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.

Olynyk is expected to be ready for the start of the NBA season.

Olynyk slipped and fell during the third quarter of Canada's win over Nigeria in a FIBA exhibition game on Wednesday. X-rays were negative, and the plan was for Olynyk to sit out a week, including an exhibition game on Friday in Winnipeg.

On Thursday, Canada coach Nick Nurse had said he expected Olynyk to play in the World Cup.

Nathan Eovaldi will return to the Boston Red Sox's rotation and start Wednesday's game against the Cleveland Indians, unless he has to be used in Tuesday night's game, manager Alex Cora said.

"He just wants to to contribute. He hasn't been able to do it this season the way we planned it and the way he wanted," Cora said. "We still feel he can make an impact."

Eovaldi has been working out of the bullpen since he returned July 20 from elbow surgery in April. In nine games as a reliever, he has a 6.75 ERA and 1.87 WHIP.

"The stuff is playing. The mix of pitches, I don't want to say he's in between, but sometimes as a reliever, you have to simplify it and not go to what you usually do," Cora said. "He did it before. Obviously this is a different stage."

Cora said the plan was to leave Eovaldi in the rotation going forward. Cora said the team hoped Eovaldi could throw about 55 pitches, with the plan being for him to build up his pitch count.

Eovaldi signed a four-year, $68 million contract to remain with the Red Sox last December.

ESPN's Joon Lee contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON -- Max Scherzer is getting closer to returning.

The Washington Nationals ace threw a simulated game Tuesday, a key step in his progression toward returning to active duty. Facing a trio of Washington players that included Howie Kendrick, Gerardo Parra and Ryan Zimmerman, Scherzer tossed about 30 pitches during two innings on the main mound at Nationals Park.

Prior to that, he threw roughly 30 pitches during warm-ups in the bullpen.

The mock outing, which featured the veteran hurler's game-day walkout song ("Still D.R.E") and Parra's walk-up music ("Baby Shark"), comes three days after Scherzer threw his first bullpen session since going back on the injured list with back issues.

Manager Davey Martinez was encouraged by what he saw and heard Tuesday.

"He said he felt really good," Martinez said. "But the whole deal with this injury is his recovery, so we'll see how he feels tomorrow."

If Scherzer feels like his normal self Wednesday, the plan would be for him to throw a light bullpen session Thursday. As for whether Scherzer would work another simulated game or perhaps go on a rehab assignment before being activated, Martinez was noncommittal. One thing the Nats skipper does know is that when his ace eventually returns, his workload will be restricted.

"If we decided to pitch him in a game," Martinez said, "it wouldn't be 100 pitches right away. I can tell you that right now. We really gotta be very careful where we're at with him right now. This is to get him through the rest of the season and then some."

Scherzer has been dealing with back issues since the end of June, a month in which he went 6-0 with a 1.00 ERA and won National League pitcher of the month honors. On July 13, after skipping the All-Star Game in an effort to get healthy, the three-time Cy Young winner was placed on the injured list with a mid-back strain, retroactive to July 10. He returned from the IL to face the Colorado Rockies on July 25, when he allowed three runs in five innings and threw a season-low 86 pitches. Four days later, Scherzer landed on the IL again (back-dated to July 26) with a mild rhomboid strain.

In other Nationals news, slugger Juan Soto is back in the starting lineup for Tuesday's game against the Cincinnati Reds. Soto missed Monday's series opener after spraining his right ankle while rounding third base against the New York Mets on Sunday. The injury appeared serious at the time, but X-rays were negative on the 20-year-old outfielder, who fractured the same ankle in 2017. Despite walking gingerly around the clubhouse Monday, Soto was cleared for action a day later.

"He checked all the boxes," Martinez said of Soto. "We got him on the field. He ran angles. He turned like he was running the bases. The biggest thing was the turns. He said he felt great. He was bugging me yesterday to go in the game, and I told him just sit down and relax. But he was not happy that he had to sit and watch. He kept bugging me to pinch-hit. I was like, just sit down. You'll be fine."

Soto entered Tuesday hitting .288 with 24 home runs and 77 RBIs in 107 games. His 75 walks ranked third in the NL.

Scherzer is 9-5 with a 2.41 ERA. Despite spending time on the shelf, his 189 strikeouts were tied for most in the NL entering Tuesday.

The Nats went into Tuesday's action with a 63-55 record. They were in second place in the NL East, six games behind the Atlanta Braves, and in possession of the top wild-card spot in the NL.

MILWAUKEE -- Brewers star Christian Yelich has returned to the lineup after missing five starts because of a back injury.

The 2018 National League MVP was set to bat third and play right field Tuesday night when the Brewers hosted the Minnesota Twins.

Yelich leads the NL with a .335 batting average, and his 39 home runs are tied for the most in the majors with Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels.

Yelich pinch hit on Sunday and struck out in the Brewers' 1-0 loss to the Texas Rangers.

The lefty-swinging Yelich missed six consecutive games from April 29 to May 4 while dealing with a back issue. He has not been on the injured list this season.

Good news if you're a Tigers, Orioles, Mariners or Royals fan: You can start prepping for 2020! MLB released its 2020 schedule and here are some key dates to know.

Opening Day, March 26: All 30 teams will open up on a Thursday in late March. At least MLB did a better job of avoiding most of the northern cold-weather cities, but bring your gloves and parkas if you're in Cleveland, Baltimore or New York. Top games to watch:

• Giants at Dodgers: Will Madison Bumgarner take the mound for the Giants?

• Angels at Astros: Yordan Alvarez begins his quest for 74 home runs.

• Cubs at Brewers: Will Joe Maddon be back as Cubs manager?

• Nationals at Mets: The Mets begin defense of their World Series title.

Angels at Rangers, March 31: The Rangers will debut new Globe Life Field against Mike Trout and company.

Opening road trips: Last year in this space I mentioned the Red Sox starting the season with an 11-game road trip, something you don't usually see. That proved to be a big deal as the Red Sox started 3-8 and have spent all season trying to recover from that bad start. No team is stuck with an 11-game trip this year to start the year, but there are several seven-game trips to begin the season: Red Sox (at Blue Jays, Orioles); Angels (at Astros, Rangers); Twins (at A's, Mariners); Rockies (at Padres, Dodgers); Braves (at Diamondbacks, Padres); Phillies (at Marlins, Mets).

Interleague play: The primary cross-league series in 2020 will feature the NL West versus the AL Central (good for the NL West), NL East versus AL West, and NL Central versus AL East. So that's 'good' news for the Mariners -- even more miles to travel than normal!

Puerto Rico series, April 28-30 (Mets versus Marlins): The three-game series at Hiram Bithorn Stadium will be the first in Puerto Rico since the Indians and Twins played two games there in 2018. That series brought Francisco Lindor and Jose Berrios back to their home island, while this one will bring Edwin Diaz, one of 23 players born in Puerto Rico who have played in the majors so far in 2019.

Red Sox at Yankees, May 8-10: The first meeting of 19 games between the AL East rivals. The teams will play their final series against each other at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 8-10.

Yankees at Astros, May 15-17: This could be a rematch of the 2019 ALCS. Will Gerrit Cole be in the Astros rotation or will the free agent sign a big contract with another team in the offseason?

"I'd like a warm beer and some bangers and mash, please": We're back in jolly old England for the second year in a row as the Cardinals and Cubs head to London for two games on June 13 and 14. By all accounts, the two-game Red Sox-Yankees series this year was a huge success (unless you were a pitcher for the Red Sox or Yankees). Once again, the games will be played at the former Olympic Stadium, now home to the West Ham football club.

All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium on July 14: The last All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium was so long ago (1980) that Ken Griffey SENIOR was the MVP of the game. All-Stars that year included Ken Reitz, Bucky Dent, John Stearns, Ken Landreaux, Jorge Orta, Tom Burgmeier, Ed Farmer, Jim Bibby and Pete Rose (umm, a first baseman who played all 162 games that year and hit one home run). Of course, the Phillies won the World Series that year anyway. It was a different game.

P.S.: Please invite Vladimir Guerrero Jr. back to the Home Run Derby.

Brewers at Dodgers, July 20-22: The first showdown of the season between Cody Bellinger and Christian Yelich, currently locked up in a historic MVP duel.

Tigers at Rays, July 24: Wait, the Tigers will be playing a big game in July? No. This will be the debut for Rays wunderkind Wander Franco (predicted).

A's at Astros, July 27-29: Believe it or not, this is the final meeting between the two clubs. How can you not have teams from the same division playing each other in August and September? So all 19 meetings will come before the trade deadline. Ridiculous.

Field of Dreams game, Aug. 13 at Dyersville, Iowa (Yankees versus White Sox): Is "Field of Dreams" a classic movie? It has an 86 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes although a less enthusiastic 57 percent on Metacritic. It has many obvious flaws. Why does Kevin Costner buy just one bag of corn seed at the grain store? Why would a 2-acre baseball field cut out of a large farm of presumably hundreds of acres cause Kevin Costner's family to lose the farm? Why can't Costner's dad, who has like one line of dialogue, properly throw a baseball? They couldn't find an actor who could throw?

I haven't watched the movie in a couple decades, so I'm not sure how it holds up compared to certain classics like "Bull Durham" or "The Bad News Bears" (the original one with Walter Matthau, when the kids drink beer and swear). I know many people who say "Field of Dreams" is their favorite baseball movie. Maybe it is the best baseball movie ever, fathers and sons and heaven and James Earl Jones' speech and all that.

What I do know is that this game, played on a Thursday night with a temporary 8,000-seat ballpark, will generate a lot of buzz -- it already has, as even non-baseball sites were tweeting and writing about it when the game was announced a few days ago. I just hope they make the players wear baggy wool uniforms, use one ball the entire game, give Costner an at-bat (he'd probably homer for the Yankees) and make the spitball legal for the day. Oh, and good luck getting tickets.

Little League Classic, Aug. 23, at Williamsport, Pa. (Red Sox versus Orioles): This will be the fourth iteration of this now annual contest, one of the highlights of the season. The major leaguers will attend a Little League World Series game earlier in the day before playing the Sunday night contest. Now that we'll have games in London, Puerto Rico, Iowa and Williamsport (plus games in the past in Japan, Australia and Mexico), where else could MLB play regular-season games? I recommend Paris, Prague, Vienna, Amsterdam, Florence and Berlin and happily volunteer to cover.

The Reds' September schedule: Don't overlook the Reds as 2020 contenders with Luis Castillo, Trevor Bauer and Sonny Gray heading the rotation and the great Aristides Aquino ready to bash 50 home runs. The Reds have a quirky final month: Orioles, at Cubs, at Brewers, at Giants, Red Sox, Cardinals, at Marlins, at Pirates. So they see some division rivals, two AL East teams and end with two teams who could be terrible.

Twins at Indians, Sept. 8-10: The final series of the season between the AL Central powers, who look like they're battling down to the wire this year.

Season-ending series, Sept. 25-27: I'm not Nostradamus, but these look like the big series to potentially watch the final weekend of the season: Astros at Braves (World Series preview?); Rays at Yankees; Cardinals at Cubs; Phillies at Nationals; Dodgers at Padres (Fernando Tatis Jr. clinches MVP honors with four home runs over the weekend as the Padres shock the Dodgers to win the NL West and break L.A.'s streak of seven straight division titles).

England's Lewis Ludlam tells Rugby Union Weekly seeing his dad in the Twickenham crowd during his passionate rendition of the national anthem against Wales "got him going".

Ugo Monye reads Lewis a message from the player's proud father, Arron, who says his son's England debut was "the proudest day in Lewis' career so far, and for the whole family".

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Eighteen-year-old Tyler Ankrum knows he’s playing with house money going into the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series playoffs.

After all, by his own admission, he wasn’t even supposed to make it to this point and have a shot at a championship in his rookie season at the national level.

However, thanks to his stunning breakthrough victory at Kentucky Speedway in July, Ankrum has the chance to “crash the party” during the Truck Series postseason – and he’s hoping to do just that with his DGR-Crosley team as they pursue a title together.

“My confidence is actually really high now, especially after the (Kentucky) win. I actually had to go out and buy a bigger hat, because my head was so big for a few days there,” Ankrum joked. “It was just a whole whirlwind of media and an awesome experience. I think we’re still viewed as the underdogs – I think DGR-Crosley as a whole still is, really – but I think that suits us and we’ll be able to shake it up.”

Ankrum may be the No. 8 seed in the playoffs, with just one win, three top-five and six top-10 finishes to his credit in the 13 races he’s been able to run this year, but that’s already far beyond where he ever expected his season to be when it started back in the spring at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.

“Honestly, when we started the year and made the announcement that we were going to be running full-time, I said I was going to be happy to run inside the top 10 … and maybe get to the top five a couple of times,” admitted Ankrum, who wasn’t old enough to run the first three races of the season due to age restrictions. “All of a sudden, though, we surged in the middle of the year and found some speed. That wasn’t expected at all, but we made the most of it and now, look where we are.

“To have the sponsorship issues that we did, have to go to the (No.) 87 and start-and-park for a couple of weeks just to keep our playoff eligibility alive, that was really hard on me,” he added. “In a way, though, we were hedging our bets with that move, because we knew we were getting faster and faster with the No. 17 truck.

“I didn’t have the confidence in myself going into this that we could be a playoff contender, really, but the fact that we are up here now is incredible and makes me believe something special can happen.”

How special does Ankrum think his playoff run can be?

“I think we can win the whole thing; I really do,” he affirmed.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for Ankrum to pull off, however. The unique first round will test every skillset a driver has, consisting of a short track, a road course and an intermediate track.

“I think Bristol and Canada are going to be pretty tough, honestly, but our team comes prepared every single race and I think that we’ve proven that no matter the experience I have or this team has, we seem to run well everywhere that we go,” Ankrum noted. “We know that we have fast equipment, but these next seven are just going to be all about closing races.

“The playoffs really come down to staying out of all the bad luck and trying to make your own luck, and I believe that if we can do that, then we’ll be OK.”

However, Ankrum was quick to note that he’s not putting any pressure on himself just because he’s a championship contender now.

In his mind, there are no expectations, “because this is already gravy on our entire season.

“Really, the biggest goal for me in these playoffs is just to have fun and learn as much as I possibly can,” Ankrum added. “That’s what I’m here to do, because I don’t want to treat this like a job; I want to treat it like it’s my passion. I’m really excited for what we’ve got headed up, and hopefully we can make it all the way to Homestead.”

And as for those sponsorship woes Ankrum suffered through during the middle of the summer, don’t expect those to resurface as long as the California teenager can keep his recent form going.

“Knock on wood, we’re going to make it to Homestead,” Ankrum said when asked about funding by SPEED SPORT. “If we can win a race or two and stay consistent, I believe that’s very realistic. Now, as far as next year? I don’t know what the plans are, whether I’ll be driving or whether I won’t be, but we’re just focused on right now and closing the season out on a high note for this organization.

“That’s the goal and everything else will continue on after that.”