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Malik Tillman has been billed as a £120 million ($151m) star in the making, with the USMNT ace completing a permanent transfer to PSV

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• Playmaker enjoyed loan spell in Eindhoven
• Will be staying on in the Netherlands
• Tipped to see his price tag soar

• WHAT HAPPENED?

  The 21-year-old forward has enjoyed a productive loan spell in Eindhoven during the 2023-24 campaign, with Eredivisie title glory being savoured. A £12m ($15m) purchase option has now been taken up, with Tillman severing ties with Bundesliga heavyweights Bayern Munich.

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  THE BIGGER PICTURE

  He has penned a four-year contract with PSV, as they seek to unlock further potential in his game, and the expectation is that the exciting playmaker will scale even greater heights during his time in the Netherlands – allowing his price tag to soar.

• WHAT PEREZ SAID

  Former Ajax star Kenneth Perez, who knows all about life in Dutch football, has told of how good Tillman can become: “Arne Slot always says at Feyenoord that his players must first learn to work hard and apply pressure. If Tillman also learns that at PSV, then they have really made a good move. That £12 million will soon become £120 million. I really thought he was great, especially in the second part of the season, in everything actually. Even in defending, which he has become very good at. He's the best player at the club and there is much more to come from him.”

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  WHAT NEXT FOR TILLMAN?

  Tillman has registered nine goals and 15 assists for PSV this season, with opponents struggling to contain his creative qualities. The USMNT will be hoping to put those to good use this summer when they open a quest for Copa America glory on home soil.

Austria coach Ralf Rangnick has refused to rule out leaving his position amid links to replacing Thomas Tuchel as manager of Bayern Munich.

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• Bayern searching for new manager
• Rangnick emerges as favourite to take over
• Coach offers update on future after Bayern contract

• WHAT HAPPENED?

  The former Manchester United boss has emerged as the favourite to take over the Bavarian giants when Tuchel steps down at the end of the season. Rangnick is currently manager of the Austria national team and is preparing for Euro 2024, where his side are due to take on France, Poland and the Netherlands in the group stages. However, he has been asked about speculation linking him with Bayern and has admitted there's been in contact with the club.

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  Bayern's top choice had been Xavi Alonso but the former Real Madrid and Liverpool manager has confirmed he plans to stay with Bayer Leverkusen after guiding his team to a first-ever Bundesliga triumph. It's thought Bayern could therefore turn to Rangnick for a season with a view to trying to bring in Alonso again in 2025.

• WHAT RANGNICK SAID

  He told reporters: "Bayern Munich have contacted me and I have also informed the OFB (Austrian Football Association). We have a very trusting relationship. My focus is on the Austrian national team. We are completely focussed on the European Championship. I feel very comfortable here. At the moment, there’s no reason for me to focus intensively and specifically on that."

  Rangnick was pressed further on what moment could make him change his mind and added: "The moment Bayern would say, ‘We want you’. And then I have to ask myself, ‘Do I even want this?’ If I want to do something else, I will first discuss it with the OFB. We want to look after this team (Austria) as well as possible — and do as well as possible. I have a close and trusting relationship with my team. It won’t play better just because I say, ‘I’ll definitely be here for the next four years.'”

• DID YOU KNOW

  Rangnick managed just 10 wins from 24 Premier League games as manager of United. He also oversaw seven defeats with his team scoring 33 goals and conceding the same amount.

He included his own dismissal among the avoidable ones that he felt had cost Pakistan the chance of getting close to South Africa’s first-innings total

Danyal Rasool at the Wanderers12-Jan-2019

Pakistan captain Sarfraz Ahmed cut a strikingly upbeat figure at his post-match press conference despite acknowledging the challenge his team faced to avoid their second successive whitewash in South Africa. It was a day of relative personal success for a man who has been under severe pressure for much of the tour, with Sarfraz stroking a classy half-century and breaking the record for most dismissals by a Pakistan wicketkeeper against South Africa in a Test match. However, Sarfraz also pointed towards several missed opportunities for Pakistan to come away from day two in a better position.”I think if you talk about our day, we had a chance to get to 262 runs but we didn’t get it,” Sarfraz said. “When me and Babar were batting, we were thinking we should play positive cricket. Unfortunately, I couldn’t score more than 50. If I’d scored 50-70 more runs, the position we’d be in would be much better.”He bemoaned a few “bad shots” towards the end of the Pakistan innings, paving the way for the collapse that allowed South Africa to move into a commanding position. Sarfraz and Babar Azam had launched a brilliant counterattack after Pakistan were in dire straits at 91 for 5. The pair added 78 runs in only 10.1 overs, and suddenly Pakistan looked like they had South Africa’s first-innings score in their sights.But from the moment Sarfraz poked at one slightly wide of off stump to the slips, Pakistan slumped once more. Babar Azam lofted one straight into fine leg’s lap four balls later, and before you knew it, the visitors had been bowled out for 185, allowing South Africa a hefty 77-run lead. Sarfraz acknowledged his own responsibility in the collapse, admitting he had played a poor stroke.”I think we played a couple of bad shots. I think my shot was also a bad shot, and Babar’s too. If you see the last five wickets, there were three bad shots. Mine, Babar’s and Faheem [Ashraf’s]. If we hadn’t played those shots, maybe we’d be in a much better position.”The problem of losing too many wickets quickly is one we’ve been facing for the past 10-12 innings. We had the same problem in the first Test match, where Shan [Masood] and Imam [ul-Haq] batted well, and once they got out we lost too many wickets. It was the same in Cape Town, and now the same here. It’s a problem we’re facing and we have to work on this.”Faheem Ashraf celebrates a wicket•AFP

Even so, Pakistan’s bowlers helped them storm back into the game in a disciplined hour of bowling with the new ball. Dean Elgar was undone by a beauty from Mohammad Amir that cut him in half and took the edge, before Mohammad Abbas’s discipline and subtle movement saw him draw Aiden Markram’s edge. In the 15th over, Faheem removed Theunis de Bruyn and Zubayr Hamza within three balls to leave South Africa tottering at 45 for 4. That they ended the day having added 90 more runs for the loss of just one more wicket disappointed Sarfraz, who believed the bowlers had taken their foot off the pedal towards the close.”I think our bowling, especially the last 45 minutes, we weren’t up to the mark,” he said. “We bowled really well overall but the last one hour we didn’t bowl well. At the moment, if you talk about our bowling attack, we are only bowling well in patches. If we bowl well consistently throughout an innings, I don’t think South Africa will score as many runs against us.”For a man carrying the weight of a nation’s expectations, there wasn’t much time to enjoy any personal triumphs, but he did say he had made a slight technical adjustment since the Centurion Test match, where he scored a pair.”If you see my first two innings, my feet weren’t moving very much at all. My batting style hasn’t changed. So I worked on my feet movement, so thankfully I’m playing well at the moment. If you want to score here you have to play positive cricket. Because the good ball is never far away. If you see Markram or Hashim [Amla], whenever they see the bad ball they put it away. If you don’t play positive cricket, you will get out at any time.”With South Africa 212 runs ahead with five wickets still in hand, Sarfraz will be hoping for one final burst of positivity from both bowlers and batsmen. While the series may be lost, if Pakistan can pull off the unlikeliest of results here, it would go a massive way to assuaging the negativity pervading the Pakistan camp throughout this tour.

Moeen Ali has intensified the focus on Australian player behaviour after claiming that he was subjected to a racial taunt

ESPNcricinfo staff14-Sep-2018Moeen Ali has intensified the focus on Australian player behaviour after claiming that an unnamed member of their 2015 Ashes team subjected him to a racial taunt during his first appearance against them.Writing in his autobiography, which is being serialised in The Times ahead of the book’s publication later this month, Moeen claims he was abused during the first Ashes Test at Cardiff in 2015, a performance in which he made 77 in the first innings before taking five wickets in a 169-run England victory.”It was a great first Ashes Test in terms of my personal performance,” Moeen writes in the book. “However there was one incident which had distracted me. An Australian player had turned to me on the field and said, ‘Take that, Osama.’ I could not believe what I had heard. I remember going really red. I have never been so angry on a cricket field.”I told a couple of the guys what the player had said to me and I think Trevor Bayliss [the England coach] must have raised it with Darren Lehmann, the Australians’ coach.”Lehmann asked the player, ‘Did you call Moeen Osama?’ He denied it, saying, ‘No, I said, ‘Take that, you part-timer.” I must say I was amused when I heard that, obviously I had to take the player’s word for it, though for the rest of the match I was angry.”Moeen added that he had brought the incident up at the end of England’s 3-2 series win, but once again, the “Osama” slur was denied by the player in question, who then added that some of his best friends were Muslim.Cricket Australia has responded to Moeen’s claim, saying it will meet with the ECB to probe the alleged incident.”Remarks of this nature are unacceptable and have no place in our sport, or in society,” a CA spokesperson said. “We have a clear set of values and behaviours that comes with representing our country.”We take this matter very seriously, and are following up with the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) as a matter of urgency to seek further clarification around the alleged incident.”Moeen, who was born in Birmingham to a Pakistani father and an English mother, spoke earlier this year about the racial abuse he had suffered at the hands of Australia’s spectators during the last Ashes series Down Under, with one person asking him when his kebab shop was opening.At the time he played down the incidents, but the anger is apparent in his book. “Guys were sticking their fingers up at me,” he writes. “I expected Australia to be quite rough, but not as bad as this. I hadn’t heard such comments for a long time. I got some of this abuse even in the practice games.”In an interview in The Times on Friday, Moeen had gone into greater detail about his treatment on the Ashes tour, from the players in the middle as well as those watching from the stands”Everyone you speak to . . . they are the only team I’ve played against my whole life that I’ve actually disliked,” Moeen told Mike Atherton. “Not because it’s Australia and they are the old enemy but because of the way they carry on and [their] disrespect of people and players.””The first game I played against them, in Sydney just before the 2015 World Cup, they were not just going hard at you, they were almost abusing you. That was the first time it hit me. I gave them the benefit of the doubt but the more I played against them they were just as bad, the Ashes here [in 2015] they were worse actually. Not intimidating, just rude. Individually they are fine and the Aussies we’ve had at Worcester have been fantastic, lovely guys.”Australian cricket has since been left stunned by the tall-tampering scandal in Cape Town in March, which led to bans for three of their players, including the captain and vice-captain, Steve Smith and David Warner. A culture review has been commissioned by Cricket Australia to look into their player behaviour, but Moeen feels that the team got what was coming to it.”I’m someone who generally feels sorry for people when things go wrong but it’s difficult to feel sorry for them. This ODI series they were very good actually; they’d been…humbled.”September 15, GMT 0710 The story was updated to include Cricket Australia’s response

Stats highlights of Australia’s collapse for 85 on the first day of the second Test against South Africa in Hobart

Gaurav Sundararaman12-Nov-201685 Australia’s total, their lowest in a home Test in 32 years. They were bowled out for 76 by West Indies in Perth in 1984. In all home Tests, they have been bowled out for less than 85 only ten times.

197 The number of balls South Africa took to dismiss Australia. It was Australia’s second shortest innings at home in terms of balls faced since 1936, after the Perth Test against West Indies in 1984. Till 1936, they had seven such instances.11 Instances of Australia being bowled out in under 200 balls in a Test innings since 1950. Only two of those have been at home, while six have been in England.

17 The lowest score at which Australia have lost half their side in the first innings of a Test. The previous lowest was 21, against England at Trent Bridge in 2015. Their score at the fall of the sixth wicket in Hobart – 31 – was also their second lowest at home.1978 The previous instance of Australia losing six of their top-seven batsmen for single-digit scores at home – against England in Brisbane.8 Instances of an Australian batsman scoring a higher percentage of the team’s runs than Steven Smith. Smith contributed 48 unbeaten runs out of Australia’s 85 (56.47%). The last time an Australian batsman contributed a higher percentage was in 1999, when Michael Slater scored 123 out of Australia’s 184 (66.84%) against England in Sydney. In team totals of below 100, this is the fifth-highest contribution ever: only Asanka Gurusinha (63.41%), Mohinder Amarnath (61.85%), Len Hutton (57.69%) and Trevor Goddard (56.56%) have done better.

6 for 43 Australia’s worst first session of a home Test since the 4 for 58 against England in the Boxing Day Test in 2010. There have been only three worse first sessions for any team since then. Australia were dismissed in the first session at Trent Bridge, Pakistan lost 6 for 36 at Edgbaston, and New Zealand were dismissed for 45 at Newlands.15 Wickets that fell on the first day of this Test, which is the most ever in a day at the Bellerive Oval. Thirteen wickets fell on a day in each of the first two Tests in Hobart – on the first day in 1989, and the third day in 1993.2 Runs by Australia’s openers – the fewest they have scored since the game against England in Nottingham in 2015. Before that, both openers were dismissed for no runs against Sri Lanka in Kandy in 1999.3 Number of innings in which the opposition has been dismissed for fewer than 100 and Philander has taken a five-for. Apart from today’s game, Philander took 5 for 7 against New Zealand and 5 for 15 against Australia.

Sam Curran, Will Jacks also in the runs as Surrey post mammoth 236 for 2

ECB Reporters Network07-Jun-2023

A record-breaking batting performance from Laurie Evans and his Surrey teammates set up a 65-run victory against Glamorgan in their Vitality Blast match in Cardiff.Evans made the highest score against Glamorgan and the highest score on this ground as Surrey also set a record total at Sophia Gardens.With Sam Curran and Will Jacks both making runs, Surrey set Glamorgan a target of 237 to win. This was a hard enough task but with big hitting all-rounder Dan Douthwaite unable to bat, having only managing to bowl 10 balls before he left the field, it became even harder.Glamorgan eventually reached 171 for 8 as Surrey closed out a comfortable win with Sam Northeast’s 76 the only significant score from the home side.Surrey won the toss and elected to bat and were electrifying from the start of their innings. Jacks gave Evans great support in an opening stand that brought 115 runs from just 64 balls. Jacks was dismissed when he was trapped lbw by Glamorgan’s Australian leg-spinner Peter Hatzoglou for 46 from 29 balls.While Evans had been the aggressor in his stand with Jacks it was Curran who took on the role when he walked into bat at three. In innings that was full of outrageous shots, seven of which were smoked over the boundary for six, it was the three balls Curran hit over the rope in Prem Sisodiya’s final over that will live longest in the memory. The last of these was a shot where Curran danced down the pitch a long way from where the ball pitched and still managed to straight drive it for six.It was in that same Sisodiya over that Glamorgan nearly had some respite from the partnership between Curran and Evans, but Kiran Carlson, playing with a dislocated finger he sustained in Sunday’s match against Sussex, put down a catch at long on when Evans was on 94.Evans made the most of his chance to score his third hundred in T20 cricket and his first for Surrey. His career best 118 not out came from 60 balls and contained 12 fours and six sixes.Curran departed in the final over, caught by Colin Ingram at long on going for another six, as Surrey posted 236 for 2, the highest total made on this ground, going past the 216 for 5 that Glamorgan made against Hampshire in 2019.Glamorgan were left with a near insurmountable task of going at nearly 12 runs an over from the very start of their innings and they were two wickets down inside the powerplay with Carlson and Callum Taylor both falling inside the first six overs.Glamorgan came into this match with four wins from five matches and most of that success has been down to the form of Ingram and Chris Cooke. There was a rare failure for both of them with Ingram dismissed for 11 by Sunil Narine and Cooke clean bowled by Gus Atkinson for 12.With Cooke and Ingram gone it was left to Northeast to try and bring some respectability to the Glamorgan total and his half-century the only bright spot on a tough day for his side.