Jasprit Bumrah, Rohit Sharma To Return Against RCB?

Indian cricket team star fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah will be available for Mumbai Indians' upcoming IPL 2025 encounter against Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

Indian cricket team star fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah will be available for Mumbai Indians' upcoming IPL 2025 encounter against Royal Challengers Bengaluru on Monday. In the pre-match press conference, head coach Mahela Jayawardene confirmed that Bumrah will be available for the match after a prolonged absence due to injury. Bumrah has been missing in action since the back injury he sustained during the Sydney Test in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in January this year. Jayawardene confirmed that pacer is looking good in practice and is raring to go for the contest against Virat Kohli and Co.

“He is available. He is training today, so he should be available,” Jayawardene told reporters.

Rohit Sharma did not play the last match after suffering a knee injury during practice but he is looking good and will most likely be back for Mumbai Indians.

“Rohit looks good. He is going to bat today as well. We were travelling yesterday. He will have a hit today so we will do an assessment on that,” said Jayawardene.

MI have had a rocky start to IPL 2025, managing just one win from four games. In Bumrah's absence, the team handed debuts to newcomers like Satyanarayana Raju, Vignesh Puthur, and Ashwani Kumar, while Trent Boult, Deepak Chahar, and skipper Hardik Pandya have shouldered the pace-bowling responsibilities.

A one-franchise man, Bumrah has played his entire IPL career with Mumbai Indians since debuting in 2013, amassing 165 wickets in 133 matches. The 2023 season remains the only one he missed prior to this due to a back injury.

His latest setback occurred on January 4, during the second day of the final Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test in Sydney. He was subsequently ruled out of the Champions Trophy, which India went on to win last month. This is his first back-related issue since undergoing surgery in March 2023.

Lionel Messi breaks Inter Miami record with goal in 1-1 draw against Toronto

 Lionel Messi broke yet another record for Inter Miami on Monday morning, as the 37-year-old scored in a 1-1 draw against Toronto FC in the MLS. Messi, featuring for the Herons for the 39th time in his career, became the highest scorer for the club in the MLS, surpassing fellow countryman and former international teammate Gonzalo Higuain.

Messi featured in the starting XI for Javier Mascherano’s side,
and pulled his side level in the dying minutes of the first half, after Federico Bernardeschi fired the visitors in front just a few minutes prior. Messi’s perfect touch at the edge of the penalty area set him up for a blistering half volley, which found its way past opposition keeper Sean Johnson and into the bottom right corner.

With his third MLS goal of the season, Messi is now the record holder for most goal contributions for Miami, with 44. The earlier record by Higuain was achieved in 67 appearances. Messi on the other hand, only needed 29 regular season appearances to reach the summit.

Since joining the Herons in July 2023, Messi has led them to the Leagues Cup in his first season, coupled with the Supporters’ Shield back in October of last year. His inimitable numbers in the MLS also handed the Argentine the Landon Donovan MLS MVP award last season.

Miami are currently second in the MLS Eastern Conference standings, trailing Columbus Crew by a single point. Messi and Co have a monumental task at hand later this week, as they host Los Angeles FC for the second leg of the CONCACAF Champions Cup, who lead 1-0 on aggregate.

History of Cricket

Cricket is one of many games in the "club ball" sphere that involve hitting a ball with a hand-held implement. Others include baseball , golf, hockey, tennis, squash, badminton and table tennis. In cricket's case, a key difference is the existence of a solid target structure, the wicket (originally, it is thought, a "wicket gate" through which sheep were herded), that the batter must defend. The cricket historian Harry Altham identified three "groups" of "club ball" games: the "hockey group", in which the ball is driven to and from between two targets (the goals); the "golf group", in which the ball is driven towards an undefended target (the hole); and the "cricket group", in which "the ball is aimed at a mark (the wicket) and driven away from it".

It is generally believed that cricket originated as a children's game in the south-eastern counties of England, sometime during the medieval period.Although there are claims for prior dates, the earliest definite reference to cricket being played comes from evidence given at a court case in Guildford in January 1597 (Old Style, equating to January 1598 in the modern calendar). The case concerned ownership of a certain plot of land, and the court heard the testimony of a 59-year-old coroner, John Derrick, who gave witness that:

Sports

Sport includes all forms of competitive physical activity or games which,through casual or organized participation, at least in part aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants, and in some cases, entertainment for spectators.Sports can bring positive results to one's physical health. Hundreds of sports exist, from those between single contestants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals. In certain sports such as racing, many contestants may compete, simultaneously or consecutively, with one winner; in others, the contest (a match) is between two sides, each attempting to exceed the other. Some sports allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure one winner and one loser. A number of contests may be arranged in a tournament producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs.

Sport is generally recognised as system of activities which are based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with the largest major competitions such as the Olympic Games admitting only sports meeting this definition,and other organisations such as the Council of Europe using definitions precluding activities without a physical element from classification as sports.However, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. The International Olympic Committee (through ARISF) recognises both chess and bridge as bona fide sports, and SportAccord, the international sports federation association, recognises five non-physical sports: bridge, chess, draughts (checkers), Go and xiangqi,and limits the number of mind games which can be admitted as sports.

Sport is usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition, and allow consistent adjudication of the winner. Winning can be determined by physical events such as scoring goals or crossing a line first. It can also be determined by judges who are scoring elements of the sporting performance, including objective or subjective measures such as technical performance or artistic impression.

Records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information may be widely announced or reported in sport news. Sport is also a major source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator sport drawing large crowds to sport venues, and reaching wider audiences through broadcasting. Sport betting is in some cases severely regulated, and in some cases is central to the sport.

According to A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, the global sporting industry is worth up to $620 billion as of 2013.The world's most accessible and practised sport is running, while association football is the most popular spectator sport.