India’s IPL explodes into life this weekend with all the noise, colour and star power we have come to expect from cricket’s richest, glitziest T20 carnival, while soccer’s giant-killing minnows Curaçao and Cape Verde limber up for their debut World Cup campaigns and the Los Angeles Dodgers begin their title defence as favourites to complete a rare Major League Baseball three-peat. Elsewhere, Formula One fires up in Japan, figure skating phenom Ilia Malinin seeks redemption, and the leading men of curling slide towards the world championships.
Here’s your inside track to the action.
CRICKET
Kohli, teen prodigy and a roaring RCB return set IPL 19 alight
Clear the decks and turn up the volume — IPL 19 storms in on March 28 with Virat Kohli centre stage as cricket’s glitziest, noisiest carnival lights up.
The 19th edition of the world’s richest T20 competition — the Indian Premier League (IPL) — gets underway on Saturday, with Kohli in action on the opening day of the 10-team tournament.
One of the defining batters of his era, Kohli is no longer captain of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), but aged 37 remains the beating heart of a side that finally shed their