2nd over: England 18-1 (Duckett 9, Smith 0) England have two players who have held their heads high throughout this troubled tour – Ben Duckett and Joe Root. Duckett, facing Lungi Ngidi, plays two serene clips for four, as if he hadn’t even noticed that he’d lost his opening partner.
1st over: England 9-1 (Duckett 0, Smith 0) Marco Jansen’s left-arm angle was a foreign language to poor Salt, who hadn’t even been able to face it in the nets as England left all their lefties at home. He managed a spank over cover for four but played and missed twice, almost gave a catch in the ring with a shovel to leg, and then got that top edge. One of the worst run-a-ball innings you will ever see.
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© Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters
© Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters
The Darkness frontman on intrusive thoughts, stamping on cockroaches and a terrifying flight to South Africa
Born in Surrey, Justin Hawkins, 49, wrote music for adverts and played in bands with his brother, Dan. In 2000 they formed the Darkness; their hit singles include I Believe in a Thing Called Love, and they won three Brits and an Ivor Novello before splitting in 2006. Having reformed in 2011, the Darkness toured with Lady Gaga and their 2017 record, Pinewood Smile, became their third UK Top 10 album. On 6 March they start a UK tour and their new album is Dreams on Toast. Justin lives in Switzerland.
What is your greatest fear?
Fear is for frightened people. I’m not one of those.
© Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock
Doctors caring for pontiff, 88, are assessing how Friday’s incident will affect his condition, says official
Pope Francis, who has been in hospital for two weeks with pneumonia in both lungs, has spent a peaceful night after suffering a breathing crisis, the Vatican said.
Francis, 88, had suffered an “isolated breathing crisis” that caused him to vomit and provoked a “sudden worsening” of his respiratory condition, the Vatican said.
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© Photograph: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters
© Photograph: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters
Killing of Matthew Huttle, 42, during traffic stop ‘legally justified’ and will not lead to criminal charges, lawyers say
The pardoned US Capitol attacker who was shot to death by an Indiana sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop in January had first told the officer: “I’m shooting myself,” before attempting to retrieve a gun from his car, according to officials as well as newly released video of the encounter.
Matthew Huttle’s killing by the deputy – whose body-worn and dashboard cameras captured video of the traffic stop – was “legally justified” and would not lead to any criminal charges, prosecutors said in a statement published on Thursday.
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© Photograph: AP
© Photograph: AP
Do they really think about it every seven seconds? Are they only after one-night stands? We asked 30 men to bare all – their answers may surprise you
There’s a stereotype about young men and sex. I see it play out across social media, and over wine-fuelled chats with my friends: that men only want one thing, that they all cheat and that, ultimately, they’re selfish in bed. It’s an idea that has been fuelled by the rise of toxic masculinity influencers such as Andrew Tate, who discuss sex as something they are “owed” and encourage other men to think similarly.
For the past eight years, I’ve worked at Cosmopolitan magazine, speaking to millennial and gen-Z women about their love lives, and I can’t deny that there is some truth to the stereotype. But when I decided to have candid (and at times incredibly awkward) conversations with men in their 20s about their sex lives, another story emerged: one of insecurity, hidden and misunderstood sexualities, and often a deeper need for connection.
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© Illustration: Justin Metz/The Guardian
© Illustration: Justin Metz/The Guardian
We asked a group of experts on politics, trade, literature, psychology, work and more: what has been the most surprising or shocking consequence of Covid-19 in your field?
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© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian
© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian
Fitness classes, once the preserve of the young and lithe, are big business – and smaller startups are booming as the motivations for working out change
Call it the revenge of the middle-class, middle-aged women.
A recent report found that women aged between 40 and 50 are doing more exercise than women half their age. According to a UK study by Vitality, one in four women approaching perimenopausal age are doing exercise almost every day. By contrast, a fifth of those aged between 20 and 29 do anywhere near that.
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© Photograph: Anchiy/Getty Images
© Photograph: Anchiy/Getty Images
First the doctor was diagnosed with a heart disorder, and then her son became dangerously unwell … How did it feel to be on the other side of the operating table?
Nothing thrills me more than the human body. But, until my mid-20s, it didn’t cross my mind that someone like me could become a doctor. There were no medics in my family. I was slow at maths and science, and gave them up before the age of 16. After school, I decided on an English degree, because it was what I found easiest.
Then, in my final year, something important happened. A few of us were hanging out at a friend’s house one evening when his dad, a surgeon from London, arrived to stay for the weekend. Over dinner, we all sat enthralled as he told us stories of his hospital life. He fetched a surgical textbook from his bag, full of photos of some of his favourite operations, and I remember sitting at the kitchen table late into the night, poring over these luminous images, skin peeled back to reveal muscle and bone, tumours and blood vessels. It was my first glimpse of real anatomy, and I was astounded by its beauty.
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© Photograph: Kate Peters
© Photograph: Kate Peters
The city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, led the celebrations to observe holy month of Ramadan, now in their third year
Piccadilly Circus has once again been lit up by an installation to mark Ramadan.
It is the third year of the annual display, which features 30,000 LED bulbs in the shape of Islamic geometric patterns and symbols hanging over the West End street.
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© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Kurdish militant group responds to call from its jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, to lay down arms
Outlawed Kurdish militants have declared a ceasefire with Turkey after a landmark call by the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, asking the group to disband.
It was the first reaction from the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) after Öcalan this week called for the dissolution of the group and asked it to lay down arms after fighting the Turkish state for more than four decades.
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© Photograph: Mehmet Masum Suer/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Mehmet Masum Suer/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
Fake reasons for leaving jobs, manipulated dates and inflated titles among most frequent falsehoods
In 28 years of recruitment, Matt Collingwood has witnessed some “very awkward” job interviews. Like the candidate whose CV falsely boasted of a second-dan black belt in taekwondo, only to discover his interviewer was an aficionado of the sport. “An interview that should have been an hour lasted 15 minutes,” said Collingwood, the managing director of the IT recruitment agency Viqu.
Or the candidate who claimed he had attended a certain private school, which his interviewer had also attended and would have been in the year above. But when asked for teachers’ names, the school motto, even where the sports field was, “he was clueless. Didn’t get the job.”
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© Photograph: Tero Vesalainen/Alamy
© Photograph: Tero Vesalainen/Alamy
Half a century on from the sublimely ridiculous Tommy, the passionate abandon that distinguished Russell’s films – from composer biopics to the infamous The Devils, among other bonkers oddities – is needed now more than ever
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the release of one of the most important and groundbreaking pop movies of all time: Ken Russell’s psychedelic screen adaptation of the Who’s rock opera Tommy (1975). Marketed with the eye-catching tag lines “Your senses will never be the same” and “He will tear your soul apart”, the film starred Roger Daltrey as the traumatised kid who becomes a Pinball Wizard and (more importantly) a cult messiah.
Blending themes to which Russell would return throughout his career (the transformative power of music; the alchemical madness of genius; the dark power of false religion), Tommy was a typically wild ride that swung between the sublime and the ridiculous. Among its most memorable set pieces were Elton John in mile-high bovver boots getting trashed at the pinball table; Tina Turner’s Acid Queen blowing Daltrey’s mind with a hallucinogenic Metropolis-style robot suit filled with needles and snakes; and Oscar-nominated Ann-Margret writhing in a sea of washing powder foam and baked beans that spews from her exploding television set. Pete Townshend earned an Academy Award nomination for the film’s music, intended to be played in an ear-bleeding Quintaphonic sound mix for which most cinemas were totally unprepared (Russell told me on multiple occasions that very few audiences who saw Tommy heard the movie the way it was intended).
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© Photograph: Sam Frost
© Photograph: Sam Frost
For more than 50 years I’ve revelled in the epic courage of boxing. But deaths, gangsterism and sportswashing have made it much harder to love
When I was a boy, living in South Africa, I fell for Muhammad Ali. As graceful as he was provocative, Ali amazed me with his uncanny ability, despite apartheid, to entrance black and white South Africans. He made us laugh and dazzled us with his outrageous skill and courage. I have followed boxing ever since, often obsessively, for more than 50 years.
In 1996, after I spent five years tracking Mike Tyson, James Toney, Roy Jones Jr, Chris Eubank Sr and Naseem Hamed, my book Dark Trade allowed me to become a full-time writer. I owe this gift to boxing but our relationship is not easy. Boxing is as crooked and destructive as it is magnificent and transformative.
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© Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images/Reuters
© Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images/Reuters
Exclusive: Bronze cast of Christ connected to Florentine artist to be sold alongside Spanish masterpiece
A precociously talented artist, scarcely out of his teens, was in 1620 commissioned to paint the portrait of an intrepid nun passing through his home city of Seville on her way to one of the farthest outposts of Spain’s vast empire.
His painting reveals a shrewd, formidable woman in late middle age, who clasps a book in her left hand while wielding a crucifix, almost as if it were a weapon, in her right.
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© Photograph: Handout
© Photograph: Handout
The Sky Sports pundit deserves an award for his accurate assessment of India’s Champions Trophy gerrymandering
I believe the robots are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside – let the robots’ laughter remind us how we used to be. The Onion, there, prescient as ever, 25 years on.
May I also say at this point that in a time of industrial-scale sporting bullshit telling the truth is, more than ever, a revolutionary act, all the more so when it involves standing in front of a camera in a rumpled ice-blue blazer, eyes blazing with righteous carved wooden woodpecker fury.
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© Illustration: Gary Neill/The Guardian
© Illustration: Gary Neill/The Guardian
Criminal justice specialists call for new approach to identify emerging type of murderer with no prior convictions
The rise of “0 to 100” killers who go from watching torture, mutilation and beheading videos in their bedrooms to committing murder suggests there could be a link between extreme violence online and in real life, experts have said.
Criminal justice experts advocated a new approach, inspired by counter-terrorism, to identify an emerging type of murderer with no prior convictions, after cases such as Nicholas Prosper, who killed his mother and siblings and planned a primary school massacre.
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© Photograph: Artur Marciniec/Alamy
© Photograph: Artur Marciniec/Alamy
The religious festival is a month of fasting, prayer and community – not consuming and comparing ourselves with one another
Supermarkets have wheeled out the 20kg bags of rice. High-street stores have popped hijabs on mannequins. Cosmetic companies are churning out products scented with pomegranate, cardamom, saffron and “sticky date” – at Lush you can buy Salam shower gel, Noor lip butter and a massage bar that apparently smells like a turmeric latte. All this can only mean one thing in our modern, consumerist world: Ramadan is upon us.
Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar, begins this weekend. Like many Muslims, I find it is my favourite time of the year (and not because I can bulk-buy rice for the entire year in my local Tesco). It is a time of spiritual growth and reflection, of turning away from our own desires and egos to focus on God, and of letting go of the trappings of the earthly world – including food and drink in daylight hours.
Nadeine Asbali is the author of Veiled Threat: On being visibly Muslim in Britain, and a secondary school teacher in London
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© Photograph: Anna Gordon/Reuters
© Photograph: Anna Gordon/Reuters
Chestnuts lend their crumbly, creamy and crunchy magic to a lentil and cabbage ‘risotto’
If chestnuts could speak, they would ask for equal rights with other nuts, and not just to be eaten at Christmas. Once upon a time, eating chestnuts in season, from October to December, made sense, because, unlike other nuts, they have a short shelf life. But, thanks to fancy new packaging, we can now enjoy these crumbly, creamy nuts all year round. Being robust and buttery, rich and sweet, they’re an excellent addition to vegan dishes, such as in these lentils. Here, I’ve braised some chestnuts with lentils in wine until deeply delicious, then hard-fried some others until they’re like crumbly sweet breadcrumbs.
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© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Jennifer Kay. Food styling assistant: Eden Owen-Jones.
© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Jennifer Kay. Food styling assistant: Eden Owen-Jones.
I’ve set myself a project to wear the neglected items in my wardrobe – from a crimson silk skirt to a mustard coat
Most of us have clothes in our wardrobe that we never wear but can’t quite let go of. I have a daffodil yellow tweed shift dress with buttons down the front that I bought about five years ago and have worn, I think, three times. Every time I open my wardrobe, it catches my eye and I feel bad. I feel guilty that I bought a dress that I didn’t need and don’t even really seem to like. But I also feel bad for the dress, because it really is very pretty, and what has it done to deserve being ghosted by me? That part sounds crazy, I know. But I try to be honest about the thought process of buying clothes and choosing what to wear, even when the truth makes no sense.
Like lots of us, I hate seeing stuff go to waste. I go to unnecessary lengths to make dinners using up whatever is in the fridge. I tell myself this is because it is healthier and more sustainable than takeout, but it’s also a kind of mental game to me, to use everything up. Odds and ends in the salad drawer unsettle me, like missing pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, and I have to find a place for them. Even if I suspect no one is going to be hounding me for my celery and beetroot risotto recipe, I find these dishes strangely satisfying.
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© Photograph: David Newby/The Guardian
© Photograph: David Newby/The Guardian
After head coach’s failure to recognise the need to upgrade an ageing squad last summer, the FA Cup is their last hope
In Manchester City having only the FA Cup to chase we see the product of the club’s failed summer recruitment, ill fortune with injury and the ravage of time to a core of Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering squad.
While Julián Álvarez’s club-record £81.5m sale to Atlético Madrid in the close season bulged transfer coffers, only Savinho was recruited for £30m, alongside the return of the now 34-year-old Ilkay Gündogan for free, as Guardiola decided no major replenishment was needed.
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© Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA
© Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA
Ralph Fiennes has been nominated for three Oscars during his career
© Philippe Antonello/Focus Features
Donald Trump and JD Vance shouted over Volodymyr Zelensky as a critical meeting on Ukraine erupted into a shouting match in the Oval Office on Friday, 28 February.
© AFP via Getty Images
This limited-time offer is giving savers a chance to grow their money faster – here’s how to claim it
© Getty Images/The Independent
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