WHAT’S HOT WHAT’S NOT

HOT RISHABH PANT

IT wasn’t just that this 23-year-old Indian played the new ball with a reverse sweep. Or that the bowler was Jimmy Anderson. Or that he completed his century with a six. Or that he did it off 115 deliveries at two distinct tempos. Any one of those would be fun. To serve them all up in the space of a few hours was showing off in the most delightful way.

COLLIN MORIKAWA

BY winning at Concession, he became only the second player to pick up a major and a World Golf Championship event before turning 25. The first was Tiger Woods. There were a lot of red-shirted imitators paying tribute to Woods last weekend and only one golfer who resembled him.

JOHN HIGGINS

ONE old boy of the baize had most of the attention last week but there’s so much life left in another. Higgins, 45, obliterated the field at the Players’ Championship to win his first ranking event in three years. He dropped just four frames in the entire tournament.

NOT ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC

HE has won a lot and he has said a lot. Not many players have been a match for him, and even fewer talkers. And then he ran into LeBron James, a far better player of his particular game, and a far, far better talker on matters that are bigger than ball sports. Ibrahimovic took one hell of a beating.

GORDON ELLIOTT

HE was taking a phone call, he says. But he sat on a dead horse. He was gesturing to a colleague, he says. But he sat on a dead horse. He cares deeply about his animals, he says. But he sat on a dead horse. He is one of the great trainers, they say. But he sat on a dead horse. And that, pretty much, is all that will stick.

STEVE BRUCE

IRRESPECTIVE of where you stand on what he has done at Newcastle and with what resources, the signs are looking bad on his current employment. Excellent reporting in Sportsmail has laid bare the issues within his club, and you wonder if his time would be better spent tackling those rather than hunting moles.