Tonight, Australia takes on Afghanistan in a must-win match at the ICC Champions Trophy. The last time the two sides met was at the 2023 World Cup.

Glenn Maxwell produced one of the more memorable innings seen in international cricket and single-handedly won the match for Australia.

If you haven’t seen the highlights, do yourself a favour.

Have a great weekend.

8
The number of consecutive games the Detroit Pistons have won, after beating defending NBA champions the Boston Celtics 117-97. The winning streak is the franchise’s longest in 17 years. Detroit has not made the playoffs since 2019.

"We're a sport for everyone, for all, and I think sending an invite to the sitting president of this country is appropriate and that's what we did."
NRL CEO Andrew Abdo about the league’s invitation to President Donald Trump. Anti-domestic violence organisation White Ribbon wrote to the NRL asking that all associations between itself and the NRL be removed from the NRL’s website because of Trump’s history of violence against women. In 2023, Trump was found liable for the sexual abuse of American journalist and author E. Jean Carroll.

In the very early iterations of football and rugby in England, ‘hacking’ was a term used to describe the tactic of kicking another player in the shins to injure, trip, or slow them down. It was made illegal in football in 1863 and illegal in rugby union in 1871.

In the WNBL semi-finals, the Bendigo Spirit beat the Sydney Flames 94-71 and secured their spot in the finals series against the Townsville Fire. Sami Whitcomb starred for the Spirit with 22 points, 10 rebounds, and six assists. The Spirit will head into the Finals as favourites after topping the table during the regular season. 

Melbourne United have started their NBL Playoffs series against the Perth Wildcats with a 105-93 victory. Chris Goulding starred for United with 10 three-pointers and 41 points in total. The next match of the best-of-three series is tomorrow. The other Playoff series between the Illawarra Hawks and the S.E. Melbourne Phoenix will begin tonight.  

Following a series of disappointing performances at the SheBelieves Cup, the Matildas will continue to wait until the middle of the year for a permanent head coach. Football Australia board member Heather Garriock told AAP that the organisation was in negotiation with a candidate and that the “middle of the year is important”. The team has been under the command of interim coach Tom Sermanni since Tony Gustavsson left after the Paris Olympics. After yesterday’s 2-1 loss to Colombia, Matildas midfielder Clare Hunt expressed some frustration: "It's a massive wake-up call. We've got 12 months. Obviously we're looking to have a new coach come in at some point this year.”

Australia will play Afghanistan tonight in a must-win match at the ICC Champions Trophy. The match starts at 8:00pm (AEDT) and will be streamed on Amazon Prime.

Despite being one of the lowest-ranked teams in the tournament, Afghanistan will be hopeful of another stunning upset after eliminating England two days ago.

Australia have only had one opportunity to play after their match against South Africa was washed out. With that one opportunity, Australia scored the highest-ever total at a Champions Trophy tournament and beat England.

However, they won’t be resting on their laurels tonight. Marnus Labushagne said earlier this week: "We know how good [Afghanistan] are, we know the skill level that they play with.”

Since the Taliban came to power in 2021, Afghan women have been prohibited from playing sport. In response to the Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women, Cricket Australia has refused to play Afghanistan in any bilateral series. However, Cricket Australia’s policy does not extend to playing against Afghanistan if they happen to be drawn against them at a tournament.

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Rugby league officially returns this weekend with four matches being played in Las Vegas as part of an NRL Showcase.

It’s the second year in a row that the NRL has opened its season in Las Vegas as part of a campaign to grow awareness of the game in the U.S.

Sunday (AEDT) will see two NRL matches, an international women’s match, and an English Super League match.

The first match on the schedule will be the English Super League match between the Wigan Warriors and Warrington Wolves at 8:30am (AEDT).

Then, the NRL season officially kicks off with the Canberra Raiders taking on the New Zealand Warriors at 11:00am (AEDT).

That will be followed by the women’s international where the Aussie Jillaroos will play England at 1:15pm (AEDT).

The final match of the day will be a highly anticipated clash between 4-time defending premiership winners the Penrith Panthers and the Cronulla Sharks at 3:30pm (AEDT).

Last year was the first year of a five-year deal between the NRL and Allegiant Stadium to host fixtures there once a year.

Fox Sports will broadcast the matches on their free-to-air channel in the U.S, which reaches 125 million households. Last year, more than 40,000 people attended the inaugural Vegas matches.

NRL Talent Combine

As well as the actual matches, the NRL will host a ‘Talent Combine’ — a training session with a series of physical tests where invited American athletes exhibit their skills to NRL recruiters.

This is a concept based on the NFL Combine, which began this week in Indianapolis. The combine is used by teams to help decide which players they would like to pick in the NFL Draft.

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