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The Champions Trophy begins Wednesday after a turbulent build-up that saw the tournament split between Pakistan and Dubai, and with England facing calls to boycott their match against Afghanistan.The event, regarded as second only to the World Cup in the one-day game, runs until March 9 and is the first global cricket tournament hosted by Pakistan in nearly three decades.India’s matches will however be played in the United Arab Emirates after the sport’s financial superpower refused to visit their neighbour over long-standing political tensions.A month-long impasse ended in December when the International Cricket Council said that India would play their games in Dubai.It raises the prospect of the final of the eight-nation showpiece taking place there, rather than in Pakistan, if India get that far — a good chance given they are favourites to lift the trophy. Arch-rivals India and Pakistan, who only face off in international competitions because of the politics, clash in Dubai on February 23 in the group phase.England play Afghanistan three days later in Lahore in a match that has been met with a backlash in some quarters in Britain.More than 160 British politicians called for a boycott in response to the Taliban government’s ban on women in sport.England Cricket Board chairman Richard Thompson vowed the match would go ahead, saying a “coordinated international response” by the cricket community would achieve more than unilateral action.  The Champions Trophy will be Pakistan’s first ICC event since co-hosting the 1996 World Cup with India and Sri Lanka.Karachi and Rawalpindi are the other Pakistani cities that will stage games.Pakistan became a no-go area for foreign teams after the visiting Sri Lankan squad were attacked by gunmen in 2009, leaving eight people dead and wounding several touring players.But with improved security across most of the country, international cricket returned to Pakistan in 2020.- India favourites -India, Pakistan, New Zealand and Bangladesh form Group A while Australia, England, Afghanistan and South Africa are in Group B. Two teams from each group qualify for the semi-finals in Dubai and Lahore.Pakistan are reigning champions, having defeated India in the final in 2017 at The Oval in London.But it is two-time winners India who are favourites, with superstar batsman Virat Kohli hoping to overcome a poor run of form by his sky-high standards.It could be the 36-year-old’s last hurrah on the international stage, with captain Rohit Sharma also likely to retire after the tournament.”India is playing superb all-round cricket and so are among the favourites for the Champions Trophy,” former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar told AFP.”The other teams, in my opinion, to watch out for are defending champions Pakistan, New Zealand and South Africa.”India will however be missing ace pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah.Australia beat hosts India to win the one-day World Cup in 2023 but they are missing several key players.Their formidable pace attack of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood are all out.Coupled with the sudden retirement from ODIs of Marcus Stoinis and injury to Mitchell Marsh — both key all-rounders — and Australia suddenly look vulnerable.They were well beaten 2-0 in Sri Lanka in a two-match series last week. Sri Lanka failed to qualify for the Champions Trophy.Pakistan will open the ninth edition of the Champions Trophy with a match against New Zealand in Karachi on Wednesday.The co-hosts are unpredictable, as they showed in the last edition of the tournament, losing to India by 124 runs in the opening match before winning the final against them by 180 runs.England go into the competition under a cloud, having been outclassed by India in both a T20 and one-day series in the lead-up.With quality spinners led by Rashid Khan, Afghanistan are dangerous.They shocked England, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the 2023 ODI World Cup and reached the semi-finals of the Twenty20 World Cup last year. 

Kolkata locals cherish their city’s past, which is why many in the one-time Indian capital are mourning a vanishing emblem of its faded grandeur: a hulking and noisy fleet of stately yellow taxis.The snub-nosed Hindustan Ambassador, first rolling off the assembly line in the 1950s with a design that barely changed in the decades since, once ruled India’s potholed streets. Nowadays it is rarely spotted outside Kolkata, where it serves as the backbone of the metropolitan cab fleet and a readily recognisable symbol of the eastern city’s identity. But numbers are dwindling fast, and a court ruling means those that remain — lumbering but still sturdy — will be forced off the roads entirely in the next three years.”I love my car like my son,” Kailash Sahani, who has sat behind the wheel of an Ambassador cab for the past four decades, told AFP.”It’s a simple car — no electronics, no frills,” the 70-year-old added. “It’s unbelievable how much things have changed… The end of these taxi cars also marks our end.”Sahani is among thousands of Kolkata cabbies relinquishing their vehicles in line with tough emissions standards introduced in 2009 to ease the city’s endemic smog problem. Only around 2,500 Ambassador taxis were still working at the start of this year, down from 7,000 a year earlier, according to Bengal Taxi Association figures. Another 1,000 will be retired this year, and West Bengal state transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty told AFP that the remainder will be gone by the end of 2027.”The car is strong. Parts and maintenance are cheap and if it breaks down, it’s easy to find a mechanic,” said Bengal Taxi Association spokesman Sanjeeb Roy.Their disappearance, he added, “represents all that’s wrong with India’s changing economy”.- Litany of defects -The Hindustan Ambassador was the cornerstone of India’s automotive industry for decades from its 1957 debut at a factory on Kolkata’s northern outskirts. Modelled on a similarly regal sedan car from Britain’s now long-defunct Morris Motors, the car was a triumphant achievement of industry in the first years of India’s history as an independent nation.A deluxe model, its windows adorned with lace curtains, was for years the main means of conveyance for government ministers and captains of industry. But the car’s shortcomings also served as a reminder of deep structural problems with the quasi-socialist economic system that prevailed in India at the time. Buyers sat on wait lists for years because pervasive red tape stopped Hindustan Motors from raising production to meet demand, while a near-monopoly on sales left no incentive to maintain quality standards.That gave rise to an oft-repeated joke about the litany of defects found in the average “Amby”: the only thing in the car that doesn’t make a sound is its horn.Market reforms from the 1980s onwards saw the Ambassador muscled off Indian roads by more modern vehicles, and production was halted entirely in 2014 after years of flatlining demand.- ‘Get with the times’ -Kolkata, the headquarters of Hindustan Motors, is the last place where the cars are seen in any great number — a reminder of the tethers binding the city to India’s past. Grand public buildings evoke the immense riches that flowed through the city’s tree-lined boulevards back when it was the second-largest city in the British Empire, after London. Nobel laureate poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore was born and died in Kolkata, where the national anthem he composed was sung for the first time during India’s long independence struggle.The city is also renowned for its thrumming nightlife, with crowded and dimly lit restaurants serving up chicken Kiev alongside the same suite of old-world European staples that have been listed on their menus since the late colonial era.But its importance has shrunk dramatically since that heyday, first with the relocation of India’s capital to Delhi in 1911 and then with Mumbai’s ascension as the country’s most important commercial hub.Many of Kolkata’s younger generations have left in search of better opportunities elsewhere, giving it a median age at least six years older than other big Indian cities, according to census data.The city’s skewed demographics prompted its pre-eminent novelist Amit Chaudhuri to once quip that while Delhi was for seeking power and Mumbai was for chasing riches, Kolkata was for visiting one’s parents. “People like me are under pressure to get with the times,” retired Kolkata schoolteacher Utpal Basu, 75, told AFP.”Old cars go, new ones come,” he added. “But it will break my heart when the city loses another icon.”

Sri Lanka’s main elephant orphanage marked its 50th anniversary Sunday with a fruit feast for the 68 jumbos at the showpiece centre, reputedly the world’s first care home for destitute pachyderms.The Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage lavished pineapples, bananas, melons and cucumbers on its residents to celebrate the anniversary of their home, which is a major tourist attraction.A few officials and tourists invited to the low-key celebration were served milk rice and traditional sweets while four generations of elephants born in captivity frolicked in the nearby Maha Oya river.”The first birth at this orphanage was in 1984, and since then, there have been a total of 76,” said chief curator Sanjaya Ratnayake, as the elephants returned from their daily river bath.”This has been a successful breeding programme, and today we have four generations of elephants here, with the youngest 18 months old and the oldest 70 years,” he told AFP.The orphanage recorded its first twin birth in August 2021 — a rarity among Asian elephants — and both calves are doing well.Two years before the orphanage was formally established as a government institution in February 1975, five orphaned elephants were cared for at a smaller facility in the southern resort town of Bentota.”Since the orphanage was set up at Pinnawala in 1975, in a coconut grove, the animals have had more space to roam, with good weather and plenty of food available in the surrounding area,” Ratnayake said.The home requires 14,500 kilos of coconut and palm tree leaves, along with other foliage, to satisfy the elephants’ voracious appetites.It also buys tonnes of fruit and milk for the younger calves, who are adored by the foreign and local visitors to the orphanage, located about 90 kilometres (56 miles) east of the capital Colombo.It is also a major revenue generator for the state, earning millions of dollars a year in entrance fees. Visitors can watch the elephants from a distance or get up close and help scrub them during bath times.- Tragic toll -The facility lacked running water and electricity at its inception but things improved as it gained international fame in subsequent years, said retired senior mahout K.G. Sumanabanda, 65.”I was also fortunate to be present when we had the first birth in captivity,” Sumanabanda told AFP, visiting the home for the jubilee celebrations.During his career spanning over three decades as a traditional elephant keeper, he trained more than 60 other mahouts and is still consulted by temples and individuals who own domesticated elephants.Twenty years ago, Sri Lankan authorities opened another elephant home south of the island to care for orphaned, abandoned or injured elephants and later return them back to the wild.While Pinnawala is seen by many as a success, Sri Lanka is also facing a major human-elephant conflict in areas bordering traditional wildlife sanctuaries.Deputy Minister of Environment Anton Jayakody told AFP on Sunday that 450 elephants and 150 people were killed in clashes in 2023,continuing an alarming trend of fatalities in the human-elephant conflict. The previous year saw 433 elephants and 145 people were killed.Killing or harming elephants is a criminal offence in Sri Lanka, which has an estimated 7,000 wild elephants and where jumbos are considered a national treasure, partly due to their significance in Buddhist culture.But the massacre continues as desperate farmers face the brunt of elephants raiding their crops and destroying livelihoods.The minister was confident the new government could tackle the problem by preventing elephants from crossing into villages.”We are planning to introduce multiple barriers—these may include electric fences, trenches, or other deterrents—to make it more difficult for wild elephants to stray into villages,” Jayakody told AFP.

At least 18 people died during a stampede at a railway station in India’s capital late Saturday when surging crowds scrambled to catch trains to the world’s largest religious gathering, officials and reports said.The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj, and has a history of crowd-related disasters — including one last month, when at least 30 people died in another stampede at the holy confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers.The rush at the train station in New Delhi appeared to break out Saturday as crowds struggled to board trains for the ongoing event, which will end on February 26.”I can confirm 15 deaths at the hospital. They don’t have any open injury. Most (likely died from) hypoxia or maybe some blunt injury but that would only be confirmed after an autopsy,” Dr Ritu Saxena, deputy medical superintendent of Lok Nayak Hospital in New Delhi told AFP.”There are also 11 others who are injured. Most of them are stable and have orthopaedic injuries,” she said.Broadcaster NDTV reported three more dead from the stampede quoting an official of another hospital in the city.Those dead were mostly women and children.”I have been working as a coolie since 1981, but I never saw a crowd like this before,” the Times of India newspaper quoted a porter at the railway station as saying.”People started colliding and fell on the escalator and stairs” when platform for a special train departing for Prayagraj was suddenly shifted, the porter said.Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said a “high-level inquiry” had been ordered into the causes of the accident.- ‘Doing our best’ -Vaishnaw said additional special trains were being run from New Delhi to clear the rush of devotees.Undeterred by the accident crowds of devotees continued to throng the railway station on Sunday with more police and railway protection forces deployed to control the flow of passengers.”We are operating an unprecedented and record number of special trains for the ease of passengers,” railways official Himanshu Shekhar Upadhyay told reporters. “We are doing our best.”Opposition parties, however, criticised travel arrangements for the mega-festival and blamed the government for attempting a coverup, after they denied for hours that a stampede had occurred.”They are worried about their image at the cost of the faith of crores of people who are visiting Maha Kumbh… There is no arrangement,” opposition Congress party leader Pawan Khera told ANI news agency.Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “distressed” by the stampede.”My thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones. I pray that the injured have a speedy recovery,” Modi wrote on X.The governor of the capital territory Delhi, Vinai Kumar Saxena said disaster management personnel had been told to deploy and “all hospitals are in readiness to address related exigencies.”  The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and officials said around 500 million devotees have already visited the festival since it began last month.More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the full festival was staged in Prayagraj.

At least 18 people died during a stampede at a railway station in India’s capital late Saturday when surging crowds scrambled to catch trains to the world’s largest religious gathering, officials and reports said.The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj, and has a history of crowd-related disasters — including one last month, when at least 30 people died in another stampede at the holy confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers.The rush at the train station in New Delhi appeared to break out Saturday as crowds struggled to board trains for the ongoing event, which will end on February 26.”I can confirm 15 deaths at the hospital. They don’t have any open injury. Most (likely died from) hypoxia or maybe some blunt injury but that would only be confirmed after an autopsy,” Dr Ritu Saxena, deputy medical superintendent of Lok Nayak Hospital in New Delhi told AFP.”There are also 11 others who are injured. Most of them are stable and have orthopaedic injuries,” she said.Broadcaster NDTV reported three more dead from the stampede quoting an official of another hospital in the city.Those dead were mostly women and children.”I have been working as a coolie since 1981, but I never saw a crowd like this before,” the Times of India newspaper quoted a porter at the railway station as saying.”People started colliding and fell on the escalator and stairs” when platform for a special train departing for Prayagraj was suddenly shifted, the porter said.Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said a “high-level inquiry” had been ordered into the causes of the accident.Vaishnaw said additional special trains were being run from New Delhi to clear the rush of devotees. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “distressed” by the stampede.”My thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones. I pray that the injured have a speedy recovery,” he wrote on X.The governor of the capital territory Delhi, Vinai Kumar Saxena said disaster management personnel had been told to deploy and “all hospitals are in readiness to address related exigencies.”  The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and officials said around 500 million devotees have already visited the festival since it began last month.More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.

With Coldplay and Ed Sheeran among the superstars who have played to packed-out crowds in India recently, there is increasing talk that the world’s most populous nation could soon become a mainstay of the global touring schedule.However, a lack of world-class venues to host big-name events has left fans wanting, with complaints ranging from filthy conditions, poor security and technical problems among the issues causing headaches for organisers.Booming demand from young affluent Indians looking to splurge on new entertainment experiences are drawing international acts as well as hugely popular homegrown stars.Big-name stars have in the past overlooked the country, given the historically low spending power of its consumers.But while per capita income remains low at $2,500, investment bankers Goldman Sachs estimate that the number of Indians with annual earnings of more than $10,000 has jumped from 24 million in 2015 to 60 million in 2023.That has helped attract the sort of talent unthought of just a decade ago, with Dua Lipa playing to packed crowds last year and US chart-toppers Maroon 5 playing their first gig in the country.Robin Hood crooner Bryan Adams played a number of sold-out venues across country in 2024, while other artists like Green Day and Shawn Mendes will perform later this year.”A decade ago, India was not on their radar,” said Deepak Choudhary, event management entrepeneur and founder of EVA Live.”It’s a hungry audience sitting across the country,” he said, adding that he believes India’s music event industry is on track to catch up with markets such as Britain, Japan or Germany within three to five years.”You give them good content and they are happy to explore.”The number of live events in India rose almost a fifth last year, according to the country’s largest ticketing platform BookMyShow, which called music tourism a “defining trend”.- ‘Biggest-ever show’ -Coldplay last month performed what the band called its “biggest-ever show”, at a huge cricket stadium named after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad.Their tour prompted a wild scramble for tickets, which were priced from around $30-$420.”As soon as they announced the concert dates, I booked my flight ticket, I booked my stay because I wanted to get there first,” said Monica Sawant, 36, who travelled fromBengaluru to see them in Mumbai.But demand was so high she was forced to purchase from ticket touts.”I caved in… I thought I would not make it,” she explained, paying $125 for a $55 ticket.After the Coldplay show, Modi praised what he dubbed the “concert economy”, saying “India has a massive scope for live concerts”.However, not all cities have the infrastructure needed to host massive live events, with BookMyShow’s CEO Ashish Hemrajani likening the experience economy boom in an interview to “starting an airline but not having an airport”. Fans complain that makeshift venues can have poor sanitation, non-existent crowd-control measures and terrible traffic to reach the venue with little parking space.”It was awful,” said Ruchi Shukla, 27, describing her experience at a show last year in Gurgaon, a satellite city of New Delhi.”You had to fight to get into the venue, fight to get out, and even during the concert you had to fight to hear the singer.”Other performers ranging from Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh to South African comedian Trevor Noah have publicly complained about Indian venuesNoah in 2023 performed to sellout crowds in New Delhi and Mumbai, but scrapped shows in tech-capital Bengaluru as the audience could not hear him.In January, US band Cigarettes After Sex also cancelled a concert in Bengaluru owing to “technical difficulties” blamed on “local production”.- ‘Teething issues’ -Avid concert-goer Sheldon Aranjo grabbed public attention in December by writing a public post after wetting himself at a Bryan Adams show, saying there was a lack of toilets.”We are bringing international acts, we are paying on par with people abroad,” he told AFP. “Why can’t I expect an international quality event?”But organisers such as Tej Brar, who oversees one of India’s biggest music festivals, NH7, said they were “teething issues”.”These are just growing pains, as we come into our own as an industry,” Brar said.And EVA Live’s Choudhary was confident success will bring investment and help India “move past infrastructure challenges”.Economists at Bank of Baroda estimate the spate of shows could translate into annual spending of up to $918 million, as organisers pump money into local economies and consumers shell out on everything from hotels to flights.It is a bright spot in an otherwise sluggish economy.”We are opening a door for something that is new,” said Bank of Baroda economist Jahnavi Prabhakar.”This is a big boost, something like we’ve never seen before. It’s a big boom for us.”

Pace bowler Will O’Rourke claimed four wickets while Daryl Mitchell and Tom Latham hit half centuries as New Zealand defeated Pakistan by five wickets to clinch the tri-nations series final on Friday.O’Rourke’s 4-43 helped the tourists dismiss Pakistan for 242 in 49.3 overs before Mitchell’s 58-ball 57 anchored the chase as the Black Caps finished on 243-5 in 45.2 overs at Karachi’s National stadium.The victory gives the New Zealanders a timely boost ahead of the Champions Trophy opener against the same opponents at this venue on Wednesday.New Zealand lost opener Will Young in pacer Naseem Shah’s first over for five before Devon Conway (48) and Kane Williamson (34) steadied the chase with a second wicket stand of 71.Williamson lost his wicket while charging down the wicket against spinner Salman Agha while Naseem returned for his second spell to dismiss Conway.At 108-3 the tourists’ chase wobbled but Mitchell found an able ally in Latham (56) as the two added 87 for the fourth wicket.When Mitchell fell caught and bowled off spinner Abrar Ahmed the tourists needed just 48 runs which Latham and Glenn Phillips (20 not out) reduced to ten.Mitchell hit six boundaries in his knock while Latham’s 64-ball innings featured five fours.Naseem was the pick of an otherwise ineffective Pakistan bowling attack with 2-43 off eight overs. Earlier, spinners Mitchell Santner (2-20) and Michael Bracewell (2-38) backed up O’Rourke to ensure Pakistan did not post a big total.Skipper Mohammad Rizwan top-scored with a 76-ball 46, while Salman Agha hit 45 off 65 balls as slow and variable bounce on the National stadium pitch proved tough for batting.Pakistan lost opener Fakhar Zaman to O’Rourke in the fourth over for 10 and then Saud Shakeel for eight.Babar Azam looked good for his 29 runs, hitting four boundaries and a six, and reached 6,000 runs scored in one-day internationals when he was on 10.He was playing his 123rd innings, the joint fastest to reach the 6,000-run milestone with South African Hashim Amla.Azam fell to a miscued shot off Nathan Smith, leaving Pakistan struggling at 54-3.Rizwan and Agha, who shared a match-winning 260-run partnership against South Africa on Wednesday, then revived the innings with an 88-run stand.Rizwan hit four boundaries and a six but he and Agha fell within 19 runs of each other to end any hope of a challenging total.Tayyab Tahir hit a 33-ball 38, also with four boundaries and a six, while Faheem Ashraf (22) and Naseem (19) added 39 invaluable runs to get Pakistan past 240.Brief scores:Pakistan 242 all out in 49.3 overs (Mohammad Rizwan 46, Salman Agha 45; W. O’Rourke 4-43) v New Zealand 243-5 in 45.2 overs (D. Mitchell 57, T. Latham 56; Naseem Shah 2-43)Result: New Zealand won by five wicketsToss: Pakistan

Lancashire hope their new Indian Premier League partners can help the English cricket county’s Hundred franchise rival football giants Manchester United and Manchester City in “the UK’s number one sporting city”.RPSG Group, the owners of Lucknow Super Giants, have agreed to pay around £80 million ($101 million) for a 70 percent share in Manchester Originals.It is one of several lucrative deals across the eight Hundred franchises that are set to bring in more than £520 million into English domestic cricket — including an immediate £25 million for Lancashire.The Hundred has proved controversial, with many county cricket fans angry at the way the tournament deprives their side of key players at the height of the season.The terms of the RPSG deal are yet to be finalised, but Lancashire chief executive Daniel Gidney said he is excited about the potential impact of the new investment at the Old Trafford club, just down the road from United’s ground of the same name.”We’ve talked about Manchester being probably the UK’s number one sporting city,” Gidney said on Friday. “Manchester is a global sporting capital… a powerhouse. “We want the Manchester franchise in the Hundred to become the third-biggest sports team in Manchester and challenge those two sports teams in Manchester (United and City).- Big ambitions -“That is the scale and level of the ambition of both of us as partners…. This is something that is incredibly exciting for us and that is why we wanted to partner with an IPL team and we always have done. “You’ve got a 1.4 billion population of people (in India) who adore cricket. Why wouldn’t we want to inject a bit of that energy and passion into Manchester and Lancashire?”Shashwat Goenka, vice-chairman of RPSG, admitted his group had initially wanted a stake in the Lord’s-based London Spirit side before losing out to a mammoth bid from a Silicon Valley consortium, which offered a reported £145 million for a 49 percent stake.He said he was glad to have joined forces with Lancashire instead.”While we did bid aggressively for Lord’s, we stopped at a point and I’m extremely happy with Manchester,” he said via a video link from Kolkata. “We are very excited with this investment. It’s going to be a formidable partnership,” “From a cricketing standpoint, it is one of the only sports in the world that has the kind of viewership that it does globally across race, caste, culture, religion, any of that. Manchester is a global sporting hub… one of the top five sporting cities across the world.”England opening batsman Phil Salt, who plays for Lancashire and the Originals and also has IPL experience, said the new cash injection could make the Hundred become world cricket’s premier franchise competition.”At the inception of the IPL, I suppose their ambition was to bring the world’s best tournament that we’ve ever seen and that’s exactly what they’ve done,” he said. “We sit here today knowing full well that our ambition is to bring the world’s best cricket to Manchester.”

New Zealand pace bowler Will O’Rourke took four wickets to restrict Pakistan to a modest 242 runs in the tri-series final in Karachi on Friday.O’Rourke finished with 4-43 and was ably supported by spinners Mitchell Santner (2-20) and Michael Bracewell (2-38) as Pakistan were dismissed in 49.3 overs after they won the toss and batted.Skipper Mohammad Rizwan top-scored with a 76-ball 46, while Salman Agha hit 45 off 65 balls, with slow and variable bounce on the National stadium pitch proving tough for batting.The final is a dress rehearsal for the opening match of the Champions Trophy between the same teams at the same venue on Wednesday.Pakistan lost opener Fakhar Zaman to O’Rourke in the fourth over for 10 and then Saud Shakeel for eight.Babar Azam looked good for his 29 runs, hitting four boundaries and a six, and reached 6,000 runs scored in one-day internationals when he was on 10.He was playing his 123rd innings, the joint fastest to reach the 6,000-runs milestone with South African Hashim Amla.Azam fell to a miscued shot off Nathan Smith, leaving Pakistan struggling at 54-3.Rizwan and Agha, who shared a match-winning 260-run partnership against South Africa on Wednesday, then revived the innings with an 88-run stand.Rizwan hit four boundaries and a six but he and Agha fell within 19 runs of each other to end any hope of a big total.Tayyab Tahir hit a 33-ball 38, also with four boundaries and a six, while Faheem Ashraf (22) and Naseem Shah (19) added 39 invaluable runs to get Pakistan past 240.

Prize money for the eight-nation Champions Trophy starting in Pakistan next week has been increased by 53 percent, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said Friday.Besides an impressive trophy, the winning side will earn a whopping $2.24 million, an ICC statement said, while the runners-up will receive $1.12 million.”The total prize pool has increased by an impressive 53 percent from the 2017 edition, reaching $6.9 million,” the ICC said.”The substantial prize pot underscores the ICC’s ongoing commitment to investing in the sport and maintaining the global prestige of our events.”Each losing semi-finalist will take home $560,000, teams finishing in fifth or sixth place will receive $350,000, and the seventh and eighth-placed sides take home $140,000.Last place is worth $125,000 — and a win in the group stages is worth around $34,000The February 19 to March 9 tournament marks the first time Pakistan hosts an ICC event in three decades, although some matches will be played in the United Arab Emirates as India is refusing to play on its neighbour’s soil.