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Jimmy Anderson goes unsold in IPL auction as 13-year-old batter earns deal

  • Vaibhav Suryavanshi, born in 2011, joins Rajasthan Royals
  • Will Jacks and Sam Curran among England players sold

Jimmy Anderson went unsold in the 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) auction on Monday, while Indian teenager Vaibhav Suryavanshi made history by becoming the youngest player ever to secure a deal.

Suryavanshi was sold for 11m rupees (around £104,000) to the Rajasthan Royals, who are coached by the former India captain Rahul Dravid. The 13-year-old – who was born in March 2011, during India’s winning 50-over World Cup campaign – made headlines recently when he smashed a 58-ball hundred for India Under-19s against Australia U19s in an unofficial Test match in Chennai.

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Joe Root: ‘Winning the Ashes in Australia would mean more than anything’

England’s record-breaking batter is set for his 150th Test and says he will play for as long as he loves the game

“I know this one,” Joe Root says with a little grin as he confirms the latest milestone he will reach in Test cricket on Wednesday when England play New Zealand in Christchurch. “It will be my 150th Test. We’re fortunate to play so much Test cricket compared to other nations, so you can rattle them up rather quickly. But I’ve had to work hard and overcome different challenges along the way, so I’m very grateful to have had so many chances.”

A minute earlier Root had been uncertain when I asked him if he knew what it would mean were he to score another 625 Test runs. A modest and generous man, Root thought hard and then admitted he had no clue. The answer is that, once those runs have been accumulated, he will become the second highest scorer in Test cricket. He will overtake Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting and trail only Sachin Tendulkar.

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Borthwick’s new England are stuck in a time warp with few signs of change | Gerard Meagher

Morale-boosting win over Japan cannot conceal issues facing a coach who could be running out of time

As is standard practice, after one last night together, perhaps sharing a collective sigh of relief at ending their losing streak against Japan, England’s players have returned to their clubs. Less common is that the coaches do so too but Joe El-Abd’s Oyonnax are currently third bottom of the French second division and needs must.

That El-Abd will spend most of the next two months in the foothills of the Jura mountains as part of his job-share arrangement is, to borrow a favourite phrase of the Rugby Football Union, suboptimal. Not least because, after the nine-try win over Japan, the captain Jamie George acknowledged what has been obvious to most observers – that England’s defence, nicknamed “the Hammer”, is their biggest work-on. George reckons it is 80% of the way there, but there has been a significant step backwards since Felix Jones was consigned to video analysis purgatory, running hard drives of information across the Irish sea according to Steve Borthwick, as he sees out his notice.

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