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Usman Khawaja has said he believes Australia should be playing Afghanistan in bilateral cricket although is sympathetic to the human rights issues for women stemming from the Taliban rule.Cricket Australia has twice withdrawn from playing Afghanistan – a Test match due to be staged in Australia and a T20 series overseas – citing “a marked deterioration in human rights for women and girls”, but continues to face them in ICC events.Related

• No bilateral cricket with Afghanistan till there's 'a level of progress', says CA chief

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• Rashid on Australia not playing Afghanistan in bilaterals: 'Don't know the solution for that'

Rashid Khan again commented on the situation in the aftermath Afghanistan’s famous victory over Australia in the T20 World Cup, saying that he couldn’t understand how World Cup events can happen but not bilateral cricket.”I personally think yes we should be playing Afghanistan,” Khawaja told Nine Newspapers at an Amazon Prime event in Melbourne. “I am sympathetic to both sides of the puzzle. I totally respect and agree with a lot of aspects of the stance Cricket Australia has in terms of women’s cricket in Afghanistan, but there’s also another side to it, of promoting and growing the game.”This is the second time Australia have backed out of a bilateral series, and I talked to Rashid Khan. He was really disappointed, more so because the Afghanistan people love cricket, and for them cricket is one of the few things they enjoy and brings happiness, and the fact they were going to play Australia was going to be huge, and they don’t get to see that now. So it actually hurts the people, and the people are separate from the government.”Khawaja also referenced Afghanistan players appearing in the BBL, with Rashid having become a star for Adelaide Strikers over the years. Rashid initially threatened to withdraw from the competition last year over CA’s stance but subsequently made himself available before suffering an injury.”It’s a little bit hypocritical too if we say no we’re not going to play Afghanistan, but then allowing Afghanistan cricketers to play in the BBL,” Khawaja said. “They 100 percent should [play], but then how do you do one and not the other?”Speaking after Afghanistan’s victory in St Vincent, Rashid said: “Some things which are not under the control of anyone in cricket, and that’s something we can’t do anything about it. Wish we could do something, and wish that was a kind of solution for it, we would have been happy, but I don’t know what’s the solution for that.”

Watching rain fall doesn’t sound like a nail-biting pastime but for England the hours waiting to start their final group match of this T20 World Cup, against Namibia, were gripping. England’s eventual victory, by 41 runs in a match reduced to 10 overs per side in Antigua on Saturday, was pure relief for the defending champions.No result other than a win would have kept England in contention for the Super Eight phase but they had to get on the park for that. After the toss was delayed by three hours – won by Namibia, who chose to bowl first – they finally had the chance to control their own destiny, to a point. The equation was simple. England had to beat Namibia and then wait to see whether Australia defeated Scotland – which they duly did, though not without a struggle – to ensure England joined the Australians in progressing from Group B.Showers before the scheduled start returned to Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in the form of a torrential downpour just as it looked like the covers would be lifted. England had to hold onto hope of a reduced-overs match despite the rain appearing to have set in. Eventually, play began at 4pm local time, reduced to 11 overs per side, which became 10 when rain intervened once more, albeit briefly, with England 82 for 3 after eight overs.Harry Brook’s unbeaten 47 off 20 balls and Jonny Bairstow’s 31 off 18 steadied them from a perilous 13 for 2, the pair sharing a 56-run stand for the third wicket to help lift their side to 122 for 5. With Namibia chasing a DLS-adjusted target of 126, England’s bowlers didn’t allow them to score fast enough and secured a comfortable victory, after a torturous wait.

Namibia’s dream, England’s nightmare

David Wiese conceded just a solitary run from the first over on an understandably tacky wicket, testing England openers Jos Buttler and Phil Salt by varying his lines and lengths. Then Ruben Trumpelmann removed Buttler for a four-ball duck with a wonderful inswinger that crashed into leg stump with the second ball of the next over in a dream start for Namibia. It wasn’t until 10 balls into the match that England scored their first boundary, which became two when Salt lofted wider deliveries from Trumpelmann for four down the ground and over deep third. When Wiese returned for a second over on the trot, he had Salt caught behind off an excellent knuckle ball, delivered slow outside off stump and finding a thick edge to put England in trouble at 13 for 2 inside three overs.

Bairstow unleashed

Left-arm spinner Bernard Scholtz came into the attack in the fourth over and in for some Bairstow treatment, reverse-swept for four and muscled over long-on for six next ball. Bairstow skied Gerhard Erasmus’s third ball back over his head and, to England’s relief, the ball plugged in a gap between an advancing long-off, long-on and the bowler running back. He crashed the next through the leg side for four. Brook chimed in with a powerful six over deep midwicket off Jack Brassell and sent the next through point for four to bring up England’s fifty off 34 balls. When Erasmus returned, Bairstow immediately nailed a six over midwicket.Bairstow survived a run-out chance on 31 and hadn’t added to his score when he top-edged an attempted cut off Scholtz towards short cover, where keeper Zane Green collected. Bairstow’s 18-ball knock was his first foray into double figures in three innings at this tournament and his highest score at a T20 World Cup, setting a solid platform after England’s shaky start before more rain arrived to halt play.

Brook in on the act

After such a long wait to learn whether they would get to play again, England’s innings was further reduced to 10 overs when rain caused another 10-minute stoppage, by which time Brook and Moeen Ali were left with twelve balls to set an imposing target. They took 19 runs off Brassell in the penultimate over, 18 of them to Brook, who finished with 4,6,4 to take England past the 100 mark. Moeen fell for 16 off six balls but Liam Livingstone blasted the first two balls he faced from Trumpelmann for six before he was run out on the last ball of the innings and left the field clutching his side in some discomfort. Ben Duckett’s appearance as substitute fielder in his place raised further concerns over Livingstone’s fitness.

Davin makes way for Wiese

Reece Topley conceded only two runs off the opening over of Namibia’s pursuit, one of them a front-foot no-ball on the first delivery of the innings. England’s bowlers were keeping a lid on Namibia’s scoring and, needing 83 more off the last four overs, Nikolaas Davin retired out on 18 off 16, the first player to do so at an ICC event, making way for the vastly experienced Wiese. He clubbed the first ball he faced – off Sam Curran, making his first appearance at this World Cup – for four through backward point. Wiese proceeded to smash back-to-back sixes off Adil Rashid over long-off and deep midwicket then pierced the covers for four.But they needed 55 off the last two overs and Michael van Lingen holed out to Brook off Chris Jordan, brought into the side for Mark Wood on the strength of his death bowling, on the final ball of the ninth. When Jofra Archer removed Wiese, again via a Brook catch in the deep in the final over, the 39-year-old walked off amid handshakes from several England players, a fitting international farewell in his last game for Namibia, the nation he transferred his allegiance to in 2021 after 26 matches for South Africa.

Peter Moores is in line to become men’s head coach at Trent Rockets in the Hundred, with Adam Voges in talks to join the franchise as his assistant.Andy Flower had coached Rockets’ men since the Hundred’s first season but left his role to take up a lucrative job offer from London Spirit. Andrew Flintoff and Stephen Fleming were both candidates to take over from him, but ESPNcricinfo has learned that Moores is now the favourite to take charge in 2026, adding to his role as Nottinghamshire’s head coach.Rockets are operating under new ownership, after private equity firms Cain and Ares bought a 49% stake earlier this year. They will run the franchise jointly with host county Notts, who will retain operational control as majority shareholders, and confirmed Chris Read’s appointment as women’s head coach on Thursday.Moores spent this season – in which Rockets were losing finalists – working as one of Flower’s assistants, and recently signed a three-year contract extension with Notts. He has previous experience in franchise cricket with Melbourne Stars and Karachi Kings, and oversaw Notts’ County Championship triumph last season.Related

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Voges has not previously worked in the Hundred but has established himself as a highly-rated coach after success with Western Australia and Perth Scorchers. He has a long-standing connection with Nottinghamshire, spending five years as one of their overseas players from 2008-12, and has also worked as an assistant coach for Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL.Three men’s coaches for the Hundred’s 2026 season have been publicly confirmed: Flower (Spirit), Mike Hussey (Welsh Fire) and Shane Bond (Birmingham Phoenix), with Daniel Vettori set to join the newly-renamed Sunrisers Leeds.Justin Langer is a potential contender to take charge at Manchester Originals (soon to become Super Giants) after he left Spirit, with Tom Moody becoming the franchise’s global director of cricket. Simon Katich has coached Originals’ men since inception.Southern Brave are yet to confirm a successor to Adi Birrell, with Delhi Capitals head coach Hemang Badani believed to be a contender for the role, while defending champions Oval Invincibles (who will become MI London shortly) are also on the hunt for a new men’s coach after Moody’s departure.Surrey’s deal with Reliance Industries Limited to become co-owners of the Invincibles franchise is the only outstanding paperwork in the Hundred’s privatisation process. It has still not been officially completed, but an announcement is anticipated shortly.

Charlotte Edwards, England’s head coach, says that her team’s flawed World Cup campaign has made her all the more hungry to instigate the necessary changes, after stating it is “time to look to the future” following a crushing semi-final defeat to South Africa in Guwahati.Speaking to Sky Sports, just moments after England’s 125-run defeat, Edwards acknowledged the brilliance of South Africa’s matchwinners – Laura Wolvaardt, who was Player of the Match for her 169 from 143 balls, and Marizanne Kapp, whose five-wicket haul included a first-over double-wicket maiden to wreck England’s hopes of achieving a 320 target.However, having stated before the tournament that a semi-final berth was the bare minimum that should be expected of her squad, Edwards did not shy away from the underlying fragility of England’s campaign. Despite qualifying in second place with five wins out of seven in the group stages, their performances against Bangladesh and Pakistan had already exposed the weaknesses in their batting, before the tournament favourites Australia maintained the stranglehold of last winter’s Ashes whitewash with an emphatic six-wicket win in Indore.Edwards took over from her predecessor Jon Lewis back in April, but held back from wholesale changes to her squad for this winter, instead focusing on improvements within the existing set-up. These were arguably on display at times during the campaign just gone, not least in a gritty performance to beat the tournament hosts, and fellow semi-finalists, India by four runs in their group-stage clash in Indore.However, with the World Cup marking the end of this four-year ODI cycle, and with a home T20 World Cup looming next summer, Edwards accepts that it’s time to step up the squad’s overhaul, starting with a series of training camps from December to March, at which the next generation will be given a chance to prove its readiness.”I’m a winner,” Edwards said. “I don’t like losing. When I came into this role, I knew it wasn’t going to change overnight. I’ve seen some really positive things to come out of this trip. I think we’ve performed a little bit better under pressure, but certain moments we haven’t seized, and that’s going to be an ongoing thing.”Overall, we are making progress, and that’s the most important thing. But ultimately, you’re defined on your results. And today we’re going out of a World Cup in the semi-final stage, where we were all hopeful we could really make that final.””I knew it wasn’t going to be a quick fix. We’ve got some areas we need to work on, but that probably makes me more hungry now to go back home and work with these players over over the winter period.”A number of England’s players are due to head to Australia for next month’s WBBL. Thereafter, however, Edwards has earmarked a series of training camps, in Oman and South Africa, at which the players will be pitted against one another in an arrangement similar to the North versus South fixtures that Andrew Strauss, England’s former men’s director of cricket, began in 2018.Nat Sciver-Brunt after the defeat in the semi-final•ICC via Getty Images

“We’ve got a new cycle now of ODI cricket, haven’t we, but first and foremost it’s the T20 World Cup,” Edwards said. “There’ll be a group of players that will be training from December through til March. We’re going to spend time with these players and hopefully upskill them, and hopefully they can deal with these occasions better.”That’s exciting for me. As an international coach, it’s rare to get time with players to actually advance their games. We’ve got an opportunity this winter to hopefully do that with some of our younger players. and I’m looking forward to getting that underway in December.”Edwards namechecked the likes of Freya Kemp and Dani Gibson, who missed this tournament through injury, while other names who will come into consideration for future campaigns include the likes of Tilly Corteen-Coleman and Davina Perrin, the breakout star of this year’s Women’s Hundred.”We’ve targeted 13 to 15 players who we’re going to work really, really hard with,” she said. “[This tournament] was too early. The players that had got this far, we wanted to stick with them, but it’s exciting now. We’ve got a new group of players coming through. We’ll go home and reassess. We won’t make too many rash decisions, but we’ve got to look at the future now. And we’ve got some unbelievable talent coming through.”England’s defeat to South Africa was especially painful given that they had beaten the same opponents at the same venue in their tournament opener, after bowling them out for 69. This time, however, the match was played on a bouncier red-soil surface that was more conducive to the seamers, most notably Kapp with her match-sealing figures of 5 for 20.Asked whether there had been any temptation to tinker with the spin-heavy line-up that had brought them this far, Edwards replied: “Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We’ve stuck with that combination. It’s done us really well throughout the [competition].”England had seemed competitive, having reduced South Africa to 202 for 6 going into the final ten overs of their innings. But then Wolvaardt cut loose, adding 119 runs in partnership with Chloe Tryon, before Nadine de Klerk helped add the finishing touches.”At times, we just didn’t hit our straps today, certainly that back 10 really cost us,” Edwards said. “If we’d have kept them to 280, which probably was a par score, we may have been able to chase that down, but, yeah, it wasn’t to be.”It’s going to be a sad dressing-room,” she added. “I don’t think I’ll say too much tonight. I don’t think there’s anything you can say tonight that’s going to make things better. As we all know, life moves on very quickly. These girls will be off to Australia soon. But yeah, I’m hurting too.”

Hampshire Hawks reached Finals Day for an 11th time as they comfortably beat Durham by 26 runs in their Vitality Blast quarter-final.Hampshire made a brilliant start, with Toby Albert and Chris Lynn smashing half-centuries to put on 112 for the first wicket. Durham did restrain them briefly in the middle overs, but Hilton Cartwright’s 61 took the Hawks to a massive total of 221 for 8.Durham’s chase was full of starts, with Ollie Robinson the only batter to pass fifty, but an excellent all-round bowling effort from the Hawks restricted Durham to 195 for 6.Alex Lees won the toss and elected to bowl first at the Banks Homes Riverside and Matthew Potts kicked things off with a tidy first over, but Albert showed some early intent as he launched Callum Parkinson’s first ball down the ground for six. The opening pair of Albert and Lynn continued to take on the bowling, with Jimmy Neesham’s first over going for 24 runs.Durham had a chance to breakthrough, but Albert was dropped by Robinson on 25 as a Parkinson delivery was nicked but the keeper couldn’t cling on.The pair continued to hit anything short and in the slot to the boundary, as they displayed incredible power to get the visitors to 89 without the loss in the powerplay, a season high. Hampshire then passed the century mark, with Lynn and Albert both recording fifties, but Nathan Sowter struck to remove Lynn for an excellent 51.Albert continued his assault as he heaved back-to-back Parkinson deliveries to the boundary, but the opener went for one hit too many as he picked out Colin Ackermann on the fence and he had to go for a swashbuckling 68.Cartwright then came to the crease and played a lovely reverse sweep for four and James Vince started to tick with consecutive boundaries off Raine. However, the Hawks skipper went for 27 as his ramp shot from a Raine ball didn’t have the legs on it and David Bedingham produced an excellent catch to dismiss him.Cartwright continued the onslaught, but Neesham picked up the wicket of James Fuller to stem the flow of runs.Australian Cawrtwright became the third half-centurion for the Hawks as he hit a Raine ball for six, but Benny Howell was then run out and Potts removed Cartwright for 61. A cluster of wickets then fell as Liam Dawson was run out and Potts removed Scott Currie, but the Hawks still reached an imposing total of 221 for 8.Durham, in front of their biggest crowd since 2019, had a daunting task, and that wasn’t made any easier as Graham Clark clipped one to Scott Currie in the deep to depart for 9.Bedingham heaved a Chris Wood short ball into the stands to give Durham their first maximum of the night and the South African smashed one down the ground in the same over. Bedingham then went for an enterprising 22 to leave Durham in trouble, as he sent a Currie ball straight to Howell on the leg-side boundary.Lees started to open his shoulders as he clipped a Dawson ball to the long-on boundary for four, but the impressive Howell removed him for 26 with the Durham skipper holing out to Dawson on the leg-side boundary.Ackermann was then run out by Wood for 16 after he tried for a single that wasn’t really there to leave Durham staring down the barrel of a T20 Blast exit.The Hawks then got Raine for 13, with Howell getting his second, but Neesham came out firing and smashed four boundaries in an over, but his cameo ended at the hands of Wood. Robinson showed some resistance with a tidy ramp shot off Currie and reached fifty from 29 balls but it was too little too late for Durham and they fell 26 runs short.

It came down to 14 runs needed off the last six balls. Nathan Edward took a single on the first ball, bowled by Shamar Springer, putting Kieron Pollard on strike. Game over, you’d think, and two-in-two for Trinbago Knight Riders in CPL 2025. Except that Pollard swung and missed the first two, got enough bat on the fourth ball but chose not to run, and then connected well but not well enough to get the ball to the fence. Four dot balls. He dug a yorker-length ball out for a four off the last, but Springer was the hero for Antigua and Barbuda Falcons, while Pollard had fluffed his lines.Knight Riders came into the game having won their first match, and gave themselves enough chances to earn their first win over Falcons after two losses last season. In the end, though, they let the game slip through their fingers.First, all the bowlers bar Sunil Narine – 4-0-17-0 – got at least wicket, and Falcons looked out of it at 77 for 5, all their premier batters gone, by the 14th over.Fabian Allen scored quick runs towards the end to give Falcons a competitive score•CPL T20 via Getty Images

But Fabian Allen walked out, took off straightaway, and smashed 45 in 20 balls, to go with Imad Wasim’s unbeaten 27-ball 39, to take them to a competitive 167.The second ball Allen faced, off Usman Tariq, went for six over long-on. Then overs 15, 16 and 17 went for 22, 17 and 15, Allen doing most of the hitting, but Imad was slow only by comparison. Knight Riders needed to stop the bleeding, and Narine’s last over was the answer. It went for just four runs, and Narine could have had Imad’s wicket, except the ball was hit with great power back towards him, and though the bowler stuck his hand out, he couldn’t make it stick.Mohammad Amir picked up his 400th T20 wicket in the next over, that of Allen, but Imad and Springer finished strongly, taking Edward for 18 runs for the momentum to well and truly be on Falcons’ side at the break.Kieron Pollard’s innings featured some big hits and plenty of dot balls•CPL T20 via Getty Images

Enter Colin Munro, and the advantage swung Knight Riders’ way quickly. Not instantly, as Imad gave away just three in the first over, and Jayden Seales nine in the second. But in the third, by Imad again, Munro went 4, 4 and 6 off the first three balls, and finished with another four, to put Knight Riders on their way. Fifteen came off Seales’ next – all Munro, with Alex Hales, the other opener, facing just eight balls at that stage and scoring just 4.At 47 for no loss, Knight Riders were on top, but for the second time in the game, Falcons hit right back. This time, through Obed McCoy, who sent back Hales and Munro in the fifth over.That was a proper momentum-breaker, and from the end of the fifth to the end of the tenth, Knight Riders scored just 20 runs, and lost the wicket of Nicholas Pooran. The script didn’t change after the ten-over mark either, with 13 runs coming off the next three, plus the wicket of Darren Bravo. And at 83 for 4 after 13, and the asking rate at 12.14, the chase looked dead in the water.Keacy Carty got some sort of impetus going with a 16-run over, the 14th, but it was back to single-digits after that: 7, 3 and 8. Till it came down to 36 from 12. Pollard, at a-run-a-ball 17 at that stage, finally found his hitting range – he took three sixes and a four off the penultimate over, bowled by McCoy, to put the game in the balance. And then came that last over from Springer.