SPORTS DIGEST

BASEBALL

8, LA Angels 2 Pittsburgh Pirates 10, New York Yankees 8 Baltimore Orioles 5 (Game 1), New York Yankees 11 Baltimore Orioles 8 (Game 2), San Diego Padres 4 Tampa Bay Rays 10, Toronto Blue Jays 19 Texas Rangers 4, Washington Nationals 7 Cincinnati Reds 6

CYCLING

Sam Bennett completed back-to-back stage wins at the Binckbank Tour after edging a bunched sprint on stage two. Irish champion Bennett, 28, snatched victory in Hulst on the opening day and followed it up with another brilliant effort in a bunched sprint finish.

The Bora-hansgrohe rider won the 169.1km-stage from Blankenberge to Ardooie ahead of second-placed Belgian Jasper Philipsen (UAE Team Emirates) and the Netherlands’ Dylan Groenewegen (Team Jumbo-visma), who was third. “I can’t believe it,” Bennett told the Tour’s official Twitter feed. “After 70 kilometres my legs weren’t that great, so I didn’t expect to really get a result today. ”

CRICKET

A month after a painfully close defeat in the World Cup final, New Zealand will finally be able to move on when they start a two-match Test series against Sri Lanka today.

Cricket’s new Test championship began with the Ashes series between England and Australia. Sri Lanka and New Zealand contest the second series of the championship. Points accumulated from now will decide the teams for the finals in 2021. New Zealand captain Kane Williamson said that he hadn’t done much reflecting on the World Cup final, which England won on the merit of scoring more boundaries after the scores were tied after 50 overs and again after a Super Over. It was the most dramatic final in cricket’s limited-oversshowpiece. “Ihaven’treally thought too much about that. Look forward to this, the start of the Test championship,” Williamson said. “We have a different squad being a Test format, but here the guys have really been enjoying their time together, back in camp after sort of having a week off after the World Cup,” New Zealand go into the opening test in Galle confident with five straight Test series wins, which includes a home victory over Sri Lanka, and are ranked No 2 in Tests behind India.

Four of those five series victories have been in New Zealand, although the Black Caps did have success on unfamiliar pitches when they beat Pakistan 2-1 in the United Arab Emirates late last year.

DOPING

Five Russian weightlifters, all of them world or European championship medalists, face doping charges which could herald a new wave of cases across a range of sports. The International Weightlifting Federation said yesterday that evidence against the five lifters, including Olympic bronze medalist Ruslan Albegov, comes from new investigations by the World Anti-doping Agency into widespread drug use in Russian sport.

“This important development shows justice being brought to those that may have cheated their sport,” WADA said.

Albegov is a two-time world champion who won bronze in July in a test event for next year’s Olympics in Tokyo.

The others are world champion Tima Turiyeva and double European champions Oleg Chen and David Bedzhanyan, as well as Egor Klimonov, who won European championship silver in April.