Craig Overton put on a match-winning all-round display. Somerset crushed Essex by 10 wickets in County Championship Division One at Chelmsford. Acting captain Overton belted his second career century, snared four wickets, and pouched a key catch.

Somerset knocked off 47 in just 5.4 overs. Archie Vaughan finished unbeaten on 41 off 25 balls. Essex crumbled to 245 in their second innings—after Overton's 141 had already laid waste to any hopes. Somerset pocket 21 points. Their first win of the campaign.

Those hard lengths at 145kph. Deadly stuff. Echoes of his T20 days.

Punjab Kings nailed the chase against Sunrisers Hyderabad right there at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Stadium. SRH openers Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma tore into the bowling early—120 runs in the first eight overs. Abhishek Sharma hammered 74 off 28 balls. Head chipped in with 38 off 23. PBKS fought back hard though. Bundled SRH to 219/6.

PBKS raced home to 223/4 in 18.5 overs. Six-wicket win. Shreyas Iyer unbeaten on 69. Priyansh Arya and Prabhsimran Singh laid the foundation with their 99-run powerplay partnership. Xavier Bartlett snagged a crucial wicket. That kicked off SRH's collapse.

PBKS now boasts a 10th win chasing 200-plus. SRH's blistering openers faded fast. They're waiting on captain Pat Cummins' return April 17. Fresh off injury.

Sanju Samson smashed an unbeaten 115 off 56 balls—15 fours, four sixes—to haul CSK to 212 for 2. That set up a 23-run win over DC right there at Chepauk. He'd timed it so calmly, finally busting CSK's home jinx. Coach Eric Simons couldn't help drawing MS Dhoni parallels.

After a rocky start to the season, Samson put it down to self-belief. He anchored the innings just right. DC? They scrambled to 189 all out chasing on that batting beauty. Nowhere near enough.

CSK's first win. Gaikwad's leading in this post-Dhoni captaincy stretch, Dhoni finishing things off. Hopes alive again.

Royal Challengers Bengaluru piled on 240/4 at Wankhede, leaving Mumbai Indians short by 18 runs in IPL 2026's 20th match. Phil Salt tore into them for 78 off 36 balls—six fours, six sixes—then Rajat Patidar fired 53 off just 20, their 131-run partnership off 56 balls ripping the heart out of MI's bowling.

Virat Kohli chipped in with a calm 50 off 38. RCB's total loomed large. MI clawed back through Ryan Rickelton's 37, Suryakumar Yadav's 33, Hardik Pandya's 40. Sherfane Rutherford stood tall, unbeaten on 71 from 31 balls with nine sixes. Krunal Pandya grabbed 1/26. Suyash Sharma snared 2/47. Jacob Duffy picked up 1/58. Trent Boult ended with 1/50 for MI. Still, they finished at 222/5.

RCB bounces back from that Rajasthan Royals defeat. MI, coming off a rain-hit loss to RR, deals with Rohit Sharma's hamstring—scans ahead. Tim David loses 25% of his match fee for mouthing off at the umpire.

Rohit Sharma's IPL 2026 got off to a rough start. He retired hurt on 19 off 13 balls in Mumbai Indians' clash with Royal Challengers Bengaluru at Wankhede—hamstring issue suspected, scans pending to gauge how bad. That puts his spot in MI's next outing against Punjab Kings on April 16 up in the air.

Phil Salt, RCB's opener, just shut down the noise about his shaky run. Blasted 78 off 36 balls to win the match, snagged Player of the Match in that nail-biter. "Impact matters more than consistent big scores every game," he said afterward, shrugging off the weight of milestones. Down-to-earth stuff from the keeper-batter who's now lighting it up for RCB with Jitesh Sharma, Tim David, and Suyash Sharma.

Tim David added his own twist to RCB's 18-run win. Umpires nailed him with a 25% match fee fine plus one demerit point. Level 1 Code of Conduct breach—he ignored their ball-change calls twice in the 18th over.

Ollie Pope's building a proper shout for an England Test recall. After that Ashes axe, he fought back hard—smashed 103 in the County Championship at the Kia Oval. Test spots? They're wide open this stacked summer.

Jamie Smith chipped in with 166. Together, they carved out a 200-run stand. Surrey racked up the runs against Leicestershire, who opted to field first and paid for it dearly. Shoaib Bashir grabbed career-best bowling figures too.

England's chasers hitting stride. Tough Tests loom. Pope, Smith, Bashir—these knocks might just nudge the selectors.

T Natarajan. Back slinging it down for Delhi Capitals in IPL 2026, after that nightmare 2025 where a busted collarbone kept him to just two games—despite the fat auction tag. He's shouting out DC management for getting him right through those training camps.

Talking up his mental toughness now, and shrugging off old injuries. Remember that nail-biter against Gujarat Titans at Arun Jaitley? GT piled up 210/4. DC scraped to 209/8. One run short. Natarajan went 4-34-0, econ 8.50, right in the thick of that chase.

DC's backers stuck by him. Form's creeping back. Sure, David Miller's call to skip the single cost them in the end. Natarajan? He's just locked in on doing his bit.

Punjab Kings nicked a pulsating 6-wicket chase against Sunrisers Hyderabad right there at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium. SRH's openers Abhishek Sharma, blasting 74 off 28 balls, and Travis Head, 38 off 23, tore into the powerplay for 105 runs—looked like 250 was on. Shreyas Iyer, though, pulled a clever trick. Part-timer Shashank Singh.

He clocked 120kph with cutters in that key over. Ended up 3-20-2. SRH stopped at 219/6. Arshdeep Singh chipped in 4-50-2.

PBKS openers Priyansh Arya (57 off 20) and Prabhsimran Singh (51 off 25) rattled up 99 in reply. Iyer's unbeaten 69 off 33 got them over the line in 18.5 overs. Follows their rain-washed no-result with KKR.

SRH now two losses deep. They fell 5 wickets short to LSG last time, scraping 156/9.

BCCI's shaking things up for IPL 2026. They've flipped the venues on CSK vs GT clashes because of Gujarat's municipal elections hitting April 26. That afternoon game? Now it's off to Chennai. The May 21 night slot moves to Ahmedabad instead. Calendar's otherwise untouched.

CSK couldn't be riding higher after those straight Chepauk wins—like the 32-run thumping of KKR while guarding 192/5. GT hit back quick enough, though. Seven-wicket canter past LSG. Now these venue switches hand CSK a spin-happy home pitch right off the bat. Points table just got a bit more interesting.

IPL 2026's priciest 10 auction buys—Rs 118 crore down the drain—haven't fired a shot. Except Ravi Bishnoi. Cameron Green tops KKR's dud list after three grim flops, then back rehab.

Aaron Finch figures they ought to bump Green higher in the batting or just bench him. KKR coach Tim Southee says the allrounder's back bowling now, rehab done. That after early-season woes, like Xavier Bartlett knocking him over in the rain-soaked PBKS scrap.

Vijaykumar Vyshak, Punjab Kings' pacer, tops the IPL 2026 bowling charts. Five wickets from just two games. He's dead set on tweaking his skills each season—knuckle balls and all that—pulling inspiration from skipper Shreyas Iyer plus his own hunger. Team victories? That's his north star. And yeah, he's gunning for a Test berth.

PBKS hold second spot. Five points off two wins in three outings. Iyer's got this squad ticking with real shape to it. Rain wrecked their last one against KKR—25/2 after 3.4 overs, called off, no result. Before that, they carried an unbeaten streak right into SRH, where openers Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya squared off against Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma.

Arshdeep Singh. Yuzvendra Chahal. Throw in Vyshak's hot run, and this rebuild's got legs.

Rajasthan Royals manager Romi Bhinder's in hot water—a show-cause notice from BCCI's ACSU after he pulled out his phone in the dugout during that RCB match. Broke PMOA rules flat out. Those ban devices to stop any whiff of unfair edges. He's sent over an apology, backed by medical records on lung troubles and other health woes.

No bad intent here, sources reckon. Light slap on the wrist, probably. All this amid RR's 57-run drubbing by Sunrisers Hyderabad at Uppal. They crumbled to 159 chasing 217. Bit of backstory: Vaibhav Suryavanshi had peeked at a screen before, went viral. Probe's zeroed in on the rule violation, though.

RR just wants it forgotten fast. Turnaround on the points table awaits.

Zimbabwe Women head to Pakistan for their first-ever tour, playing three ICC Women's Championship ODIs from May 3-9, followed by three T20Is May 12-15. All at National Bank Stadium, Karachi.

This marks a milestone in women's cricket ties between the nations.

Zimbabwe's women head to Pakistan for the very first time. Their six-match white-ball series starts May 3—three ODIs under the ICC Women's Championship—then three T20Is from May 12. Every match unfolds at National Bank Stadium in Karachi.

Pakistan's sticky humidity awaits in Karachi. That sets things up nicely for the T20 World Cup down the line. First bilateral tour between the women's sides. They're building some real momentum before the big global event.

Zimbabwe wants to etch their name in the history books. Expect a proper scrap out there. Landmark trip.

Heinrich Klaasen, Sunrisers Hyderabad's big-hitting keeper, isn't coming back to international cricket for South Africa—no matter how he's smashing it in IPL 2026. Post-retirement, he's all in on franchise stuff now. Those recent knocks? 145 runs at 147.95 strike rate, including two fifties.

Eye gym training keeps him sharp, he says. And he's right behind SRH's setup with Ishan Kishan standing in as captain.

Lucknow Super Giants nicked a last-ball three-wicket thriller over Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens. Chasing 182, they had Mukul Choudhary to thank—his unbeaten 54 off 27 balls, packed with seven sixes and that helicopter flick he loves. LSG were down at 128/7, still needing 54 from 24 balls. Somehow, they pulled it off.

Ayush Badoni got them going first, 54 off 34 with seven fours and a couple of sixes. But Choudhary? Kid's a Dhoni fan from way back. Practices the helicopter every day, smacking 100-150 sixes in the nets. Deep breaths between those massive hits. Faced 25 of the last 30 balls. Vaibhav Arora went hard with 4-38-2, Anukul Roy matched him at 4-32-2. Sunil Narine kept it tight, 4-13-1. Didn't matter. Earlier, Ajinkya Rahane cracked 41 off 24—four fours, two sixes—while Ajinkhav Raghuvanshi chipped in 45 from 33, five fours and a pair of sixes. KKR posted 181/4.

Choudhary's feat puts him alongside Kieron Pollard—only two with a fifty-plus in death overs during a winning IPL chase. LSG now on back-to-back triumphs after SRH. They're climbing. KKR? Stuck ruing that washout versus PBKS.

Lucknow Super Giants are set to name Wanindu Hasaranga's replacement any moment now. That hamstring injury's kept him out since the T20 World Cup. George Linde, the South African allrounder, steps in at his base price of INR 1 crore. It's his IPL debut. Director Tom Moody figures we'll hear something in 24-48 hours.

LSG's latest thriller against KKR—Mukul Choudhary sealing that win—shows they can't skimp on spin options. Depth matters.

Rajasthan Royals pulled off a six-wicket win over Royal Challengers Bengaluru at Barsapara Cricket Stadium. Chasing 202. They got there in 18 overs flat, all down to fireworks from 15-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi and Dhruv Jurel—Suryavanshi with 78 off 26 balls, capping it with a 15-ball fifty, his second joint third-fastest in IPL history. Kid now leads IPL 2026 scoring, 200 runs in four innings at 266.66 strike rate.

Jurel unbeaten on 81 off 43. Ice-cool maturity all the way. Ambati Rayudu called him a complete batsman with top technique and temperament. Aaron Finch picked up on his awareness against pace and spin. At No. 3 this season, he's piled up 176 runs. RR bowlers laid the groundwork—Jofra Archer 3/33-2, Ravi Bishnoi 4/32-2, Ravindra Jadeja 2/14-1. RCB's Rajat Patidar managed 63 off 40. Kohli's 32 off 16 fell short, even after their 43-run win over CSK.

Came right after RR's 27-run triumph over MI in a rain-cut game. Suryavanshi and Jurel. Young guns carrying RR's charge.

Rashid Khan's backing out of Afghanistan's one-off Test against India in June 2026. Back troubles linger after surgery, and the docs say hold off—get fit for that 2027 ODI World Cup instead. He's eyeing just one Test a year from here, chasing white-ball cricket and a longer career.

Fresh off IPL standout stuff—think 3/17 against DC—thanks to his comeback and skipping Tests. That sparked GT's tight victory.