Lloyd

Lancashire are sixth in Division Two of the Championship with three games to go and promotion back to the top division looks unlikely following relegation last year.

With the expansion of the hotel at the ground and large music concerts staged most summers, it has been suggested that county cricket has taken a back seat in importance in recent years.

That is a perception that Lloyd, affectionately known as ‘Bumble’, believes he could change.

“You’ve got to be hands-on as cricket chair,” he added. “You’ve got to be there almost every day and know the people on reception, the cleaners, to build that culture within the club that you are very dynamic.

“We’ve got a great opportunity at Emirates Old Trafford right now to reignite the club if you like, to bring it back into line as a cricket club and not an arena or a stadium.”

As someone steeped in Lancashire’s history since making his debut for the first-team in 1965, Lloyd says that he would love to give something back.

“Lancashire Cricket Club has given me every opportunity in life and I feel that I can help in some way,” he said.

“It’s complicated because there’s a business side of the board and that’s not my forte. But cricket is.”

Lloyd Howell has resigned as executive director of the NFL Players Assn., citing distractions his leadership has caused in recent weeks.

“Two years ago, I accepted the role of Executive Director of the NFLPA because I believe deeply in the mission of this union and the power of collective action to drive positive change for the players of America’s most popular sport,” Howell said in a statement released late Thursday night. “Our members deserve a union that will fight relentlessly for their health, safety, financial futures, and long-term well-being. My priority has been to lead that fight by serving this union with focus and dedication.

“It’s clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day. For this reason, I have informed the NFLPA Executive Committee that I am stepping down as Executive Director of the NFLPA and Chairman of the Board of NFL Players effective immediately. I hope this will allow the NFLPA to maintain its focus on its player members ahead of the upcoming season.”

Howell has come under scrutiny since ESPN reported he has maintained a part-time consulting job with the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that holds league approval to seek minority ownership in NFL franchises.

That followed the revelation that the NFLPA and the league had a confidentiality agreement to keep quiet an arbitrator’s ruling about possible collusion by owners over quarterback salaries.

The latest issue was an ESPN report Thursday that revealed two player representatives who voted for Howell were not aware that he was sued in 2011 for sexual discrimination and retaliation while he was a senior executive at Booz Allen.

“I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish at the NFLPA over the past two years,” Howell said. “I will be rooting for the players from the sidelines as loud as ever, and I know the NFLPA will continue to ensure that players remain firmly at the center of football’s future.”

West Indies have been battling with “systemic issues” for 25 years that have left them with players “ill-equipped” to deal with the challenges they faced against Australia, according to Trinidadian commentator Fazeer Mohammed.

“It was almost the perfect storm,” he told BBC Sport.

“You’ve got Mitchell Starc, a world class bowler, deadly in any sort of situation and even deadlier with the pink ball, coming up against players really ill-equipped to deal with those sorts of challenges.

“Everything was set up for something like this to happen. You never really factor in 27 all out but, in the general context of West Indies cricket, this was an accident waiting to happen.”

While Lara has been drafted in to help find a solution to the problems facing the current side, Mohammed believes the iconic left-hander’s heroics were part of the reason a lot of the issues were masked for so long.

“What lies behind it is the failure to address the fundamental challenges in our domestic game – in our regional game,” he added.

“We have many different challenges. Fundamental to those would be costs because we have many different territories – it’s very costly to travel around the Caribbean, to host tournaments.

“There’s an air of resignation about it. People will this morning be arguing amongst themselves and debating about how this can happen, who needs to be fired, who needs to be dropped, who needs to be got rid of.

“It’s the same sort of knee-jerk reaction and then they’ll shrug their shoulders and say ‘well this is how it is now’.”

It is almost two and a half years since West Indies last won a Test series – 1-0 in Zimbabwe – and three years since their last home series victory, 2-0 against Bangladesh.

“I don’t think all is lost by any stretch of the imagination,” Mohammed said.

“It requires at a very fundamental level at the schools, at the under-19, under-23 levels a serious financial investment in growing the quality of the game – male and female.

“But also there has to be, first and foremost, that recognition that Test cricket still means something to us in the Caribbean.”

Julian Cash and Lloyd Glasspool became the first all-British pairing to win the men’s doubles title at Queen’s in the Open era with victory in a match tie-break over Nikola Mektic and Michael Venus.

Cash and Glasspool won 6-3 6-7 (5-7) 10-6 to earn their third ATP Tour title of the season and their fourth since beginning their partnership last year.

“It’s been a great year so far,” Cash said. “It’s really nice to start the grass season strong. Hopefully we can push on to a good run at Wimbledon.”

The Britons dominated the first set and were on course to wrap up victory with a break in the second before Croatia’s Mektic and New Zealand’s Venus fought back to take it to a tie-break, which they edged.

But in the match tie-break – played to 10 points and in lieu of a deciding third set – Cash and Glasspool got an early mini-break and then broke again before sealing victory on their first match point.

“I think we’ve been a really strong team this year and hopefully he [Julian] can continue making these tie-breaks a lot easier when he serves and the ball doesn’t come back,” said Glasspool, who was runner-up here in 2022 with Finland’s Harri Heliovaara.

The victory marks a successful couple of weeks on grass for the pair after they also reached the final in ‘s-Hertogenbosch last weekend and they will continue their warm-up for Wimbledon by competing at Eastbourne next week.

Britons to have won the doubles title here include Andy Murray, Neal Skupski and Jamie Murray but the only other all-British team to contest the Queen’s men’s doubles final in the Open era (since tennis went professional in 1968) were 1978 runners-up David and John Lloyd.

There was more British doubles success on grass in Germany, where Olivia Nicholls and her Slovak partner Tereza Mihalikova won the Berlin Open women’s title.

They came from behind to beat Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini 4-6 6-2 10-6 to win their first title as a pair.

Lloyd Lake, the San Diego man at the center of the Reggie Bush extra benefits saga, scored a major legal victory this week over the former USC running back after a Van Nuys judge upheld an arbitrator’s decision to award Lake nearly $1.4 million in his defamation suit against Bush.

Lake filed the suit against Bush back in February 2023 — along with his parents, Roy and Barbara Gunner — alleging that Bush publicly disparaged and defamed him during a podcast appearance and in social media posts and, as such, violated the non-disparagement clause they agreed upon in a previous settlement. The comments, according to Lake and his parents’ complaint, “created a firestorm of vitriol” that saw the Gunner home vandalized with graffiti and left them fearing for their safety.

The judge’s decision this week came more than 15 years after the first explosive lawsuit between the two men was settled. That suit, which Lake first filed in 2007, claimed that he and another businessman, Michael Michaels, had provided Bush and his family with cash, a car, rent-free use of a house and other gifts while he played at USC in 2004 and 2005 with the expectation Bush would sign with Lake and his fledgling sports management company, New Era Sports & Entertainment.

The first case was settled in April 2010, just before Bush and Michaels were scheduled to be deposed. But Lake’s account of their arrangement, which violated NCAA rules, had already prompted a firestorm, one that ultimately ended in severe sanctions for USC’s football program, the vacating of the Trojans’ 2004 national title and the return of Bush’s Heisman Trophy.

As college athletes were allowed to receive compensation for use of their name, image and likeness and public opinion began shifting toward Bush, the legendary Trojan running back began sharing more about his experience and the saga that would come to define him. In an appearance on the “I Am Athlete” podcast, Bush opened up about the emotional toll the case and losing his Heisman Trophy took on him and his family. Bush eventually succeeded in having the Heisman returned to him in 2024.

Neither of the two men had spoken publicly about the other in more than a decade, abiding by the non-disparagement agreement in their 2010 settlement. At the time of that agreement, all parties involved — including Bush’s mother and stepfather — agreed to “not make any statements or representations to any person that may cast another Party to this Agreement in an unfavorable light, that are offensive to or disparage them, or that could adversely affect their name and reputation.”

But during the 2022 podcast interview, Bush went on to accuse Lake of blackmail and exaggerate Lake’s criminal record, which he said was “as long as the Cheesecake Factory menu.” Months later, in a Twitter post, Bush falsely accused Lake of being a convicted rapist.

The same week the podcast was published, the Gunners’ home was vandalized with graffiti. The threatening message left behind, written in red spray paint on an outside wall, read: “Help Reggie Bush Get His Trophy Back F— Crook.” The number “187” was also spray painted on the wall, which the plaintiff attorneys say referred to the state penal code number for murder. They blamed the graffiti on “unknown bad actors” working “on behalf of or at the direction of Bush.”

Lake’s attorneys first sought to bring the case to a jury trial. But a judge ruled in June 2024, that Lake’s lawsuit against Bush would go to binding, confidential arbitration, per the terms of their original settlement.

The arbitrator in the case, Jeffrey G. Benz, ultimately ruled in Lake’s favor, awarding him $500,000, as well as $764,640 in attorneys’ fees and $116,780 in other costs, according to court documents. Still, Bush’s attorneys continued to challenge the ruling by arguing that Benz had exceeded his authority as the arbitrator.

Their latest challenge was quashed this week by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Eric Harmon, who took only a few hours to reaffirm the arbitrator’s decision.

But Bush and his legal team succeeded, in one respect: Bush’s responses to Lake’s petition, as well as other supporting exhibits and documents pertaining to Bush’s side of the case, remain under seal or heavily redacted.