SPORTS

Naomi Osaka has decided to pull out of the Wimbledon 2021 but she will take part in this year's Olympic Games in Japan, the tennis player's agent confirmed on Thursday. The Championships will be played between June 28 to July 11 this year.

Four-time Grand Slam champion Osaka had withdrawn from the French Open 2021 last month following her first round victory after organisers fined her $15,000 and threatened her with suspension from the Roland Garros when she refused to attend the mandatory post-match press conferences.

“Naomi won't be playing Wimbledon this year. She is taking some personal time with friends and family. She will be ready for the Olympics and is excited to play in front of her home fans,” Osaka's agent Stuart Duguid wrote in an email to Reuters.

The respective skippers of India and New Zealand, who are set to take each other in the WTC Final that is scheduled to take place in Southampton, will have similar feelings after looking at the latest ICC Test rankings.

While Williamson was dethroned from his numero uno position by Australia’s Steve Smith, Kohli gained one spot to replace England’s Joe Root.

With 814 points, Kohli rose to number four as Root had an ordinary series against New Zealand. Meanwhile Kohli has got company in top ten with Rishabh Pant and Rohit Sharma alongside him. The reason Williamson slipped in the rankings is his omission from the playing eleven in the second Test against England. He scored 13 in the drawn first Test. This helped Smith who now has 891 points to his name.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India announced the 15-player squad for the ICC World Test Championship final against New Zealand starting June 18 in Southampton.

The players to miss out from the original 20-member squad that has toured England are: Axar Patel, KL Rahul, Shardul Thakur, Mayank Agarwal, Washington Sundar.

Virat Kohli will lead the side while Ajinkya Rahane will be vice captain.

When cricket’s world governing body first set out to officially decide the best team there was, it effectively only had to find the support cast. It was 1975 and West Indies were a cut above all others. That turned the inaugural ODI World Cup into a search for the best among the rest.

How the Caribbean greats retained the one-day World Cup four years later and underdogs India then toppled them in 1983—all battles settled at Lord’s—is part of cricket’s folklore.

Though a one-off Asian Test championship was held in 1999, the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) plan to infuse context into Test cricket will finally produce its first “champion” later this month. Can India claim a similar dominance heading into the inaugural World Test Championship (WTC) final against New Zealand.

If you want to know what sort of shape New Zealand's Test side is in right now, just ask Will Young.

Young, a top-order batter from Central Districts who has had to bide his time for an opportunity in international cricket, came into this series on the back of two hundreds in three innings for Durham in the County Championship, having signed an early-season deal to help him acclimatise to English conditions. After missing out on selection at Lord's despite those runs, he came into the side this week with Kane Williamson resting his sore left elbow.

Young was the top-scorer in this Test, with scores of 82 and 8, and was unfortunate not to be named player of the match. He was given an early reprieve in the first innings, dropped by Joe Root at first slip on 7, and was visibly furious after chopping on with five runs required in the second, but his willingness to dig in during tough periods - notably probing spells from Stuart Broad and James Anderson on the second afternoon - marked him out as a player well-equipped to succeed at this level.