Real Kashmir fans (Images via X/@realkashmirfc)

NEW DELHI: Few clubs in Indian football have risen as swiftly or as symbolically as Real Kashmir FC. From their debut season to becoming consistent contenders in the Indian Football League (IFL), the Srinagar-based club has carved out a reputation for resilience and ambition. Yet, as the upcoming I-League season prepares to kick off on Feb 21, the Snow Leopards find themselves navigating a familiar terrain of uncertainty both on and off the pitch.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Real Kashmir, back-to-back IFA Shield winners (2020 and 2021), have finished among the top five six times in I-League in the seven seasons they have competed. However, the postponement of the season has created significant logistical and financial challenges, not just for Real Kashmir but for clubs across the league.Club owner Arshad Shawl, who took over as part of the leadership group in 2019, candidly said that the turmoil is the result of a system that leaned too heavily on a single private entity for over a decade.“You have to understand the ecosystem of Indian football over the last 15 years,” Shawl told TOI. “When that private support was pulled out, there was no contingency plan in place.”With the All India Football Federation (AIFF) under financial strain, I-League clubs have been forced to absorb much of the operational burden themselves. For Real Kashmir, the challenge is compounded by geography and climate. Pre-season preparations in sub-zero temperatures, coupled with an an uncertain calendar, have made the task even tougher.“Starting this season is like starting a frozen engine in minus temperatures and asking it to run a rally,” Shawl added.Despite the obstacles, the club’s philosophy stays firmly rooted in local identity. Real Kashmir have consistently prioritised Kashmiri players and home grown talent, a vision reflected in the appointment of former India international and Kashmir native Ishfaq Ahmed as head coach. Under his guidance, the club has become a platform for local footballers to dream bigger. “This club has put Kashmir on the front pages for a happier reason,” Shawl said. “It allowed the world to look at Kashmir through the lens of football.”Beyond the first team, Real Kashmir has invested in a structured youth development, blending local prospects with experienced Indian and overseas players. A capable backroom staff supports the squad.”What continues to hold the club back, Shawl insists, is beyond its control. “We are doing everything that we can control,” he said, pointing to ownership stability, player commitment, and grass roots development.

NEW DELHI: India all-rounder Tilak Varma marked a spirited return from injury with an impactful performance and an emotional message of gratitude after the defending champions defeated South Africa by 30 runs in their T20 World Cup warm-up match at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Wednesday.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Fresh from rehabilitation, Tilak admitted he did not expect to be back in action so soon and credited the BCCI and the Centre of Excellence (CoE) for accelerating his recovery. “To be honest, I did not expect that I will be back on the field this early. Really thankful for CoE and BCCI. I always say that playing the World Cup is my biggest dream,” he said in a video shared by the BCCI.

Walking into a packed stadium chanting his name gave the youngster an emotional lift. “When I entered the ropes and everyone was shouting ‘Tilak, Tilak,’ I really felt nice. It boosted me a lot,” he added, describing the electric atmosphere even during a warm-up game.Inspired by the aggressive intent around him, Tilak said the team’s batting energy pushed him to play freely. “The way Ishan was batting, the way Abhishek and everyone was going, I was also like, ‘Mai bhi maarunga jaake.’ The vibe was really terrific, and yeah — Tilak and the Indian team is ready for the World Cup,” he said.On the field, Tilak backed up his words with a brisk 45 off 19 balls as India piled up 240 for five, building on Ishan Kishan’s explosive start. The bowlers then held their nerve to restrict South Africa to 210, sealing a confident win.With his comeback timed perfectly, Tilak’s return has added fresh energy to India’s campaign as they shift focus to their World Cup opener against the USA on Saturday.

Oleksandr Usyk is currently searching for his next opponent and he may not have to look much further after being called out by one big name in particular.

Usyk has beaten all comers throughout his professional career, first clearing out the cruiserweight division before moving up to heavyweight and repeating that success.

He has beaten Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois all on two occasions each, leading to the 39-year-old twice becoming undisputed heavyweight champion.

The one other name that once ruled over the heavyweight division that eludes Usyk is Deontay Wilder, and it seemed that the former WBC champion would earn a shot at the Ukrainian after they were reported to be in negotiations over a summer fight.

It wasn’t to be, after Wilder instead signed to take on Derek Chisora in April, but another American heavyweight has thrown his hat into the ring for a clash against Usyk.

Speaking to The Ring, Jarrell Miller revealed what would happen were he to step into the ring against Usyk.

“Run his a** over.”

Miller returned to action on the Teofimo Lopez vs Shakur Stevenson card at Madison Square Garden in New York on Saturday night, claiming a unanimous decision victory against Kingsley Ibeh.

It was Miller’s first fight since a draw against Andy Ruiz in August 2024, and prior to that the American suffered a stoppage defeat to Daniel Dubois, so his return to winning ways may well have helped his cause for securing a clash against Usyk.

Perhaps the biggest talking point in the bout though was a bizarre moment when it transpired Miller was wearing a toupee, as his hair was punched off his head during the action.

The connections of Where’s The Circus, a value buy, join others in anticipation of another major Inglis payout as she enters Saturday’s Inglis Millennium.

Paul Murray’s two-year-old’s brother, a Widden Stud colt, goes under the hammer at the Inglis Classic Yearling Sale within 24 hours of the $2 million Randwick feature for Inglis grads.

Murray, who snagged Where’s The Circus for $1250 on Inglis Digital in September 2024, expects the Trapeze Artist colt (Lot 190) to command far more, but he’ll inspect anyway.

“We knew he was in the sale and the owners have said, ‘we’ve got to go and have a look at him’, so we’ll be doing that,” Murray said.

Murray’s familiarity with the Fastnet Rock mare Misplaced’s line makes his attention to her 10th foal unsurprising.

He and Michelle Ritchie trained Misplaced’s first pair of Snippetson fillies: Where’s Snippy ($600) and Can’t Find Snippy ($14,000).

Four wins and $61,000 came from Where’s Snippy, with Can’t Find Snippy earning multiples and third in the 2016 race Where’s The Circus contests this weekend.

“Where’s Snippy, she was only a cheap horse and we had a lot of fun with her so we bought the sister and then when she (Where’s The Circus) popped up we thought we’d have a crack at her as well,” Murray said.

“The family’s been good to us.”

Her $231,000 Inglis Nursery score marks Where’s The Circus as the Murrays’ top earner from the family, with more expected.

“We don’t put much pressure on the babies, we just let them tell us what is going on,” Murray said.

“She trialled against the older horses and went well, so we thought we might give her a go at the Inglis (Nursery) and just see how good she is.

“But to this day, we still haven’t really opened her right up. She’s a bit untapped, we don’t know how much further or how good she really is, but we’ll test that a bit on Saturday.”

Aware of the Millennium’s 1100m superiority over Nursery, Murray notes leaders like Plagiarism, Alibaba, Jacaranda atop odds, heightening barrier significance.

From gate four wire-to-wire in Nursery, now barrier two or the rail sans Profitabelle.

“We were hoping for a nice barrier and we got it,” Murray said.

“It was the same as the first start, so she’s really getting the right barriers in these big races, which is a very handy.”

Jay Ford replaces Nursery rider Jean Van Overmeire aboard Where’s The Circus.

The pre-Classic Sale Randwick card spotlights the Millennium, with several having sale siblings.

On sale’s last day Tuesday, Yarraman Park’s Dundeel filly from Advance Party shares blood with Waller’s Snitzel colt Fireball, unbeaten at Rosehill in November.

Plenty of racing betting markets are live for the Inglis Millennium action.

The post Circus rolls on a day ahead of brother’s sale first appeared on Just Horse Racing.

Zoe’s sister Izzy claimed slopestyle bronze in Pyeongchang in 2018.

It gave Britain a first skiing medal at a Winter Olympics – 16 years after Alain Baxter lost his slalom bronze when he failed a drugs test after using an over-the-counter nasal decongestant that he believed to be permitted.

Zoe was watching from the stands eight years ago in South Korea with her parents, and her sister’s achievements spurred her on to pursue her own skiing career.

“Working with a sports psychologist has been important – when I was younger, I felt more intense fear, which was a barrier to performance,” Atkin says.

“I am pretty young still, but there were a lot of expectations internally, things I want to achieve.”

She heads into the Games as the reigning world champion and this season has finished on the podium in each of the World Cups, including a win at Copper Mountain and claimed gold at the X Games.

“Now I’ve won things, surely I shouldn’t be afraid and I should have confidence?” she says.

“But no matter how established you are, there’s always a comfort zone you need to push to progress. It’s always a continuous progress, a journey I now have more fully embraced.”

Atkin has been fortunate in that she has avoided serious injuries, unlike her sister who broke her pelvis just before the 2022 Winter Olympics and has since retired from competitive skiing.

GB team-mate Kirsty Muir has also had her fair share of injuries.

The 21-year-old competes in ski slopestyle and big air. She rides rails and performs tricks of large ramps.

She knows all too well about the horrors of serious injury in the line of duty.

In December 2023, a scan revealed that repeated blows to her knee had resulted in a torn cruciate ligament, ruling her out for a year.

Muir, having “never not skied for that long in my life”, says she is fit and firing for Milan-Cortina – but admits the road back was hard.

“The sport progresses continually, so having that much time off was difficult,” Muir tells BBC Sport.

Muir has won World Cup events in ski slopestyle and big air this season and also won at the X Games but is no stranger to the occasional crash landing.

The key to overcoming that fear, she says, is accepting they will happen.

“The injury wasn’t my scariest, as it didn’t happen at a specific moment,” she says. “It’s more when things out of your control go wrong.

“I’ve had skis come off my feet or my goggles come over my eyes when about to jump, and I’ve been flying through the air without skis on my feet. That is a weird feeling.

“We are good at adapting to situations, not thinking about it until it happens. There is no point in worrying - be prepared, then adapt.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shane Wright scored twice to lead the Seattle Kraken to a 4-2 win over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday night.

Vince Dunn and Adam Larsson also scored and Chandler Stephenson and Frederick Gaudreau each had two assists for the Kraken, who have won five of their last six games. Joey Daccord made 25 saves.

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Andrei Kuzmenko scored both of Los Angeles’ goals and Darcy Kuemper made 19 saves.

The Kings took a 1-0 lead at 7:42 of the first period when Kuzmenko scored on the power play.

Wright tied it at 1 at 9:16 on a backhander for his first goal of the game and Larsson put Seattle up 2-1 at 10:14 on a one-timer. Dunn made it 3-1 on the power play at 15:21.

Kuzmenko cut it to 3-2 on the power play at 10:27 of the second period, but Wright gave the Kraken a two-goal lead again with a power-play score at 5:50 of the third.

Up next

Kraken: Visit Dallas on Feb. 25.

Kings: Visit Vegas on Thursday night.

—

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.

As much as the mood has undoubtedly improved this season, the root causes of Cardiff’s recent troubles have not simply disappeared.

Tan remains a divisive figure, as do chairman Mehmet Dalman and chief executive Ken Choo.

They were the target of numerous protests last season, some of which saw hordes of supporters marching to Cardiff City Stadium, holding banners and singing songs demanding that Tan and his fellow board members leave.

Some of the ill feeling can be traced back to Tan’s highly controversial rebranding of the club’s colours from red to blue in 2012, even though he reversed the decision three years later.

More recently, the anger relates to his perceived lack of interest, with Tan having not attended a home game for more than two years.

Then, perhaps most damningly, there is the way he, Dalman and Choo have run the club.

Fans, former players and pundits have all highlighted the startling lack of football knowledge at board level, with no layer of expertise between Tan and the many managers he has hired and fired.

Cardiff at least tried a new method in their appointment of Barry-Murphy, forming a one-off sub-committee which included the club’s academy manager Gavin Chesterfield, former Swansea City sporting director Mark Allen and members of the Wasserman agency. However, the final decision still belonged to Tan.

“They didn’t plan to get relegated,” says Perry. “And in hiring Barry-Murphy, is it really a thorough process that we’ve got to the outcome of getting him? I don’t think so.

“It’s a filtering system, a few people narrowing it down to five choices, and those five choices go then to the owner.

“The problem will always be the owner, simply because he hasn’t got that knowledge to pick out of those five. Nathan Jones was in there [on the shortlist], there were others who weren’t similar to Barry-Murphy.

“I’ll only start calling it a process if Barry-Murphy goes and the next appointment is very similar. Then it becomes a process, get another coach who puts a team out that we can identify with as supporters and is also successful.

“But you must have knowledge of what you’re looking for. The same problems are here at this club, and they need to change for us to have success continuously.”

Given how well the Barry-Murphy appointment has gone so far, then, might Tan be convinced to use a director of football or similar on a permanent basis?

“The total opposite,” Perry says. “I think he’ll get carried away, so much so that it will reinforce his own opinion of himself, that he is the right man because of what we’re seeing now.

“He will not look at the process and put his hands up and go, ‘possibly we’re fortunate here because it wasn’t our first choice’.

“You have to be honest, reflection is a key part of football or any big business, but when you reflect you have to be honest and you have to look at your skillset. Then you have to either improve that skillset or you bring somebody in that has those skills. Unfortunately, at City we don’t have that and that is my concern.”

There is no guarantee of an instant return to the Championship. It took Cardiff 18 years to get back to that level when they were last relegated to the third tier in 1985.

Of the 30 teams to have been in the Premier League and relegated to League One, six have never made it back to the Championship.

Given how Cardiff are going this season, they should not add to that number.

Promotion will not fix everything, though.

“I came into this season determined to enjoy it,” says Perry.

“We’re doing well, playing a brand that we identify with and everybody’s happy.

“But you’ve only got to look around the football club and I still see the same mistakes.”

The Ben, Will and J D Hayes team at Lindsay Park believes the Blue Diamond Stakes dreams for their two-year-old Eurocanto are realigned properly now.

Post his scratch from the January 24 Blue Diamond Preview (1000m) at Caulfield, the colt was dispatched for more trials.

Eurocanto had gate issues that day, resulting in a barrier scratch.

To resume racing, the two-year-old required a clean bill from vets after being diagnosed lame in the near fore on race day, plus a stewards-approved jump-out trial.

Eurocanto delivered in that trial last Friday at Flemington, running second over 800m to Don’t Hope Do.

J D Hayes shared relief at having the Blue Diamond aspirant primed again, with a start confirmed in Saturday’s Blue Diamond Prelude (1100m) at Caulfield.

Hayes would prefer Eurocanto approaching the Group 1 Blue Diamond Stakes (1200m) at Caulfield on February 21 at his third run this term.

The stable drew encouragement from his Flemington performance.

“He trialled really well against the older horses, and he’ll be taking his place,” Hayes said.

“He’s back on track and I thought it was a good trial.

“He passed with flying colours, and he was on his best behaviour and hopefully he stays that way.”

Eurocanto’s sole prior race was a win in October’s Listed Maribyrnong Trial (1000m) at Flemington.

Leading into the January 24 attempt, he trialled third at Flemington on January 2 and won at Werribee January 16.

“I don’t think he will be lacking anything for fitness on Saturday,” Hayes said.

In the Prelude’s colts and geldings’ bracket, Eurocanto is Lindsay Park’s lone runner, as Jacaranda, Medicinal and Portinari enter the fillies’ side. Punters can find plenty on the racing betting markets for the Blue Diamond Prelude.

The post Take two for Eurocanto first appeared on Just Horse Racing.

The baseball world is mourning the loss of a player who made history with the Detroit Tigers.

Mickey Lolich, remembered as the Tigers’ hero in the 1968 World Series, has died, the Tigers announced. He was 85. Lolich is the last MLB pitcher to win three games in the World Series. He was named World Series MVP that year.

The Tigers said Lolich’s wife informed the franchise that Lolich was recently in hospice care. The cause of death was not released.

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In this Oct. 3, 1968, file photo, Mickey Lolich of the Detroit Tigers pitches during the second game of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Mo. (AP Photo/File)

Lolich is No. 23 on the all-time career strikeouts list with 2,832.

2026 WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: YANKS’ JAZZ CHISHOLM JR BACK FOR GREAT BRITAIN

Lolich was an unlikely star of the Tigers 1968 title run. During a reunion of the World Series team, he recalled how manager Mayo Smith had sent him to the bullpen for much of August. He returned to the Tigers’ starting rotation and was 6-1 in the final weeks.

“I was having a few problems, but I had been a starting pitcher ever since 1964,” said Lolich, who was upset about the bullpen move. “I remember telling him, ‘If we win this thing this year, it’s going to be because of me.’ But I was only talking about the season. I wasn’t talking about the World Series.

“I got my revenge back in the World Series.”

Mickey Lolich, pitcher of Detroit Tigers, poses for a photo in March 1968.  (AP Photo, File)

Lolich pitched Game 7 after only two days rest. He figured he would get a Corvette from General Motors for being the Series MVP but had to settle for a Dodge Charger GT because Chrysler was the sponsor in 1968.

“Nothing against Chargers, nothing at all,” Lolich said in his book, “Joy in Tigertown.” “It’s just that I already had two of them in my driveway.”

Since Lolich, only two pitchers have won three games in a single World Series — Arizona’s Randy Johnson in 2001 and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2025. But they pitched fewer innings and got their third victories in relief.

Former Detroit Tigers pitcher Mickey Lolich throws out the ceremonial first pitch before a game between the Tigers and the Pittsburgh Pirates March 30, 2018, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

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In a statement, the Tigers expressed condolences to Lolich’s family and said his legacy “will forever be cherished.”

After his baseball career, Lolich went into the doughnut business in the Detroit suburbs, making and selling them for 18 years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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