Cricket
England M tour of India, 5th Test
Not much to say. The test series was already won, and the final test was icing on the cake.
Afghanistan v/s Ireland M at UAE, Only Test
Ireland gets their first test win!
Afghanistan v/s Ireland M at UAE, 1st-3rd ODIs
Afghanistan gets the series win on tests, winning the first and third matches. The second was washed out completely.
WPL 2024
The RCB women's team won a trophy before the men's team. The memes are legendary.
A curious observation I made - the same players are playing well in nearly every match they play. It's as if the gradient of sporting ability is steep. Contrast this with men's cricket, where everyone is of nearly the same sporting ability, so different players shine in different matches.
I wonder if this could be a metric to gauge how much talent makes it from grassroots sport to the international level - the number of different players receiving player of the match awards, for example.
Formula 1
Bahrain Grand Prix
Welp, Max dominance has begun.
Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
Max dominance yes, but also Oliver Bearman was called in for reserve duties after Carlos Sainz went down with appendicitis. He qualified outside the top ten but fought his way to a P7 finish, setting similar laptimes as his more experienced teammate by the end. His neck is unfortunately not yet built for F1, with him leaning on the headrest towards the end of the race because he couldn't keep his head up.
In the F1 Academy race, Doriane Pin won by quite a margin. However, her radio failed and the checquered flag was not waved in clear view of the drivers, so she did an extra lap at racing speed and the race had to be red-flagged for her to stop. She got disqualified for no fault of her own.
Australian Grand Prix
Verstappen and Hamilton retire for different reasons, and Carlos Sainz takes the win! Right out of appendicitis, putting himself on the map for a seat next year. Carlos ends Max's winning streak for a second time.
With Max's teammate Perez not winning this race after a Verstappen retirement, questions are being asked if he's the right fit for Red Bull. They need him to be there to pick up the pieces on days that Max has issues, and he did not.
Alex Albon crashed his car in practice and his (underperforming) teammate Logan Sargeant was asked to give up his car. To make it worse, Alex had had virtually no practice on Friday before being handed the car on Saturday. Logan had two practice sessions where he notably did not wreck the car. Since track acclimatization is a vital part of driver preparation, if Williams still did not expect Logan to perform better than Alex, why even have him in the team at all?
Formula E
Sao Paulo E-Prix
Sam Bird takes McLaren's first FE win by making an overtake on his old teammate Mitch Evans... who was unfortunately suffering from a battery derate at the end. He had the energy but the battery was too hot to safely discharge it to him.
Especially important because Sam was dropped by Jaguar last year for underperforming, and he's back to his winning ways. He'd won races in every season since the beginning of FE, and that streak was broken over the last couple of seasons.
3 different winners in 3 different races.
Tokyo E-Prix
There's a bump in the track which gives cars some airtime. Fun!
Nissan had pole with Ollie Rowland but failed to convert to a win at their home race.
This makes it 4 different winners in the first 4 races. F1 fans cannot comprehend this.