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The Premiership season is rounding the final bend and entering the home straight. Organisers like to call this point in the campaign “The Run-in” and they could hardly have wished for a better set of fixtures this weekend to begin it with. Sixth host fourth when Saracens entertain Gloucester, fifth go to seventh with Sale … Read more

It was difficult to put a price on this victory for Sheffield United. Chris Wilder’s side had surprisingly lost their last three games in a hugely damaging blow to their automatic promotion hopes. But Gustavo Hamer’s typically impish first-half opener and Ben Brereton Díaz’s late strike were enough to revive home spirits on a soggy … Read more

Weathering the choppy waves of his new career with Ferrari it is still clear that every time Lewis Hamilton climbs into the car the seven-time Formula One champion believes he is taking a step forward, regardless of how it seems to others. He remains unfazed by the process of adapting, having long considered it would … Read more

Alex de Minaur’s 50th tour-level quarter-final has ended in defeat, the Australian No 1 beaten 7-5 6-3 in 100 minutes by defending champion Carlos Alcaraz at the Barcelona Open. De Minaur began well, breaking the top seed in the third game before taking a 3-1 lead, and breaking again in the seventh after Alcaraz had … Read more

There was a new story this week about a team of a hundred scientists who have spent nine years analysing a single cubic millimetre of mouse brain. The one hundred scientists have finally published their results. And those results are basically: “Whoah, have you seen this stuff?” What they found inside the cubic millimetre of … Read more

The women’s world-record holder, Ruth Chepngetich, and the reigning champion, Peres Jepchirchir, have withdrawn from the London Marathon, organisers said on Friday, less than two weeks before the race. Kenyan Chepngetich broke the women’s record in Chicago last year, running 2hr 9min 56sec to become the first woman to break 2:10, and had hoped to … Read more

“‘I still believed in myself but it was quite soul-destroying out there,” Kyren Wilson says in a back room at Barratts Snooker Club in Northampton. The world champion once worked here as a barman because he had lost his place on tour after his first season as a professional in 2011. He was still only … Read more

Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature No changes from Daniel Farke from the side that saw off Preston at home last Saturday, while Oxford make two changes from the team that won at Sheffield Wednesday. Poland international Przemyslaw Placheta replaces Stanley Mills on the right, with Mark … Read more

Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, scored a low-key triumph on Monday when he won the Paris leg of the $3.75m Freestyle Grand Slam by defeating his old rival and world No 2, USA’s Hikaru Nakamura, by 1.5-0.5 in the final. It was patient attrition over the two games, worthy of a place in the Carlsen-David Howell … Read more

For a large portion of this match – pretty much the bulk of the first half, in fact – any spectator would have been hard-pressed to identify the Premier League-destined team on the cusp of an all-time Football League record for clean sheets. Not only did Watford find the rarest of routes past James Trafford, … Read more