Why Rachel Zegler's ‘Evita' Performance Is Upsetting Live Theatergoers

Behind the scenes at Sky Sports Cricket and how they changed the game

Yahoo

26 minutes ago

Yahoo

Behind the scenes at Sky Sports Cricket and how they changed the game

Perched beneath an open flap on the side of the lorry, the beckoning wave of the happy cats immediately draws the eye. These golden knick-knacks, known as maneki-neko, are supposed to bring good luck and fortune to those who possess them, but here, amidst a sprawl of cables, cabins and a whirring generator, they serve a different purpose. It is day two of the one-off Test between England and Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge and The Independent has been granted a rare look behind the scenes with Sky Sports' award-winning cricket team. For close to two decades, the broadcaster has served as the ECB's primary partner, showing every home international and much, much more besides. This is one of 166 match days to be covered across 129 actual slots on the calendar this summer; it is a hectic time. Advertisement Back to the cats, then, which are used each morning to sync up the slo-mo cameras – a minor part of what is, as almost goes without saying, an extraordinary operation. For the Zimbabwe Test, the sprawl of trucks and trailers fills an empty space alongside the ground; for a Hundred game, with the BBC also in town, the broadcasters will also commandeer a pub car park. Sky cameras are dotted all around the ground to capture the action (Getty) Three cameras and their accompanying operators generally sit on the gantry at either end, each serving a different purpose behind the bowler's arm. The rest are dotted around the outfield, providing different perspectives, all overseen by a team of producers, directors and wider personnel. Where once this was done on-site, most is now done at the broadcaster's base in Osterley. To assist with the ease of coverage, cabling is placed at each ground – at Worcestershire's New Road, prone to flooding in winter, this must be removed regularly and re-laid before the start of each summer. Innovations like the Sky cart – wheeled out for analysis – and T20 commentary pod are added to this on occasion, creating a different feel beyond the slightly staid studio set-up that characterised cricket coverage for years. Little of the wider operation is sighted, but Sky has made stars of its on-air team. Figures like Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton can set the cricketing agenda. Former England fast bowler Stuart Broad is a recent addition after concluding his playing career. 'Coming into the Sky team has been incredible for me,' he explains. 'You leave a changing room full of friends and you come into a smaller version of a changing room. In my playing career, it was all about continuously improving every day, and coming into this role, it's exactly the same mindset. I've loved it.' Advertisement During a Test, commentators generally operate under a system of half an hour on, an hour and a half off. They can be an idiosyncratic bunch. Hussain, for example, hates air conditioning, while Broad can occasionally be prone to patrolling the commentary box in his socks. Given the sheer volume of cricket that Sky shows, a rotating cast of characters is managed and monitored carefully – Ian Bishop has been a welcome addition in every sense as an expert for the recent West Indies white-ball series, while pundits like Simon Doull and Mel Jones are regular returnees regardless of New Zealand and Australia's involvement in the English summer. The tone will naturally differ depending on the cricket on offer. A broad portfolio, Hussain outlines, should provide something for everyone. 'We have so much cricket and so many different styles of cricket that it should cater for all. The key is to give a broad spectrum of coverage. Nasser Hussain is a Sky Sports cricket expert (Sky Sports Cricket) 'When I was young, mum and dad asked if I wanted to go to the theatre and I wasn't keen. Now I've got a bit more time, you enjoy the finer things in life, and you do want to go and watch a show. Your time and your tastes and what you want to do changes. If you can get people into the game through white-ball cricket, the IPL and the Hundred, you can take them on the journey.' Advertisement Overseeing all aspects of the coverage is Bryan Henderson, the broadcaster's long-serving director of cricket, and among the more quietly influential figures in the game who has just been recognised with an MBE. Workload management is a key challenge. 'We would love Nasser, for example, to work on every single broadcast we do, but clearly that's not possible,' he explains. 'It's not as exhausting as playing, I'm sure, but they are quite intense days and it can be quite mentally draining working on a Test match. They need work-life balance, like all of us do. But you want your more experienced or bigger names on the higher profile games – it's common sense, really.' Stuart Broad has eased effortlessly into the Sky team (Getty) Henderson's planning for the next summer will begin before the current season is even at an end. Once a fixture list is figured out – increasingly complex with some changes to the structure of the County Championship likely for 2026, plus the presence of the Women's T20 World Cup – he will begin a three-to-five-month planning process, figuring out budgets, commentators, staff and some of the technical elements that may enhance coverage. Advertisement The hope is always to stay up with, if not ahead of, the game. While the fundamentals of Sky's coverage remain based around a strong journalistic sense, there has naturally been an emphasis on ensuring that it also moves with the modern world, reflecting the diversity of the audience watching. 'I like the phrase innovate or die,' Henderson says. 'I'd like to think that Sky Cricket tends to be slightly ahead of the curve. It would be rare for us to be accused of being a bit slow to change. Sometimes it's forced on us a little bit, through Rob Key getting the big England job, or Michael Holding or David Lloyd moving on, or the tragic events around Shane Warne's passing. 'I think we're proud of the role we've played and developing the women's game. I think we're probably quite proud of how in difficult economic environments or with different formats and the congested schedule, I think we keep our standards pretty high.' He also spotlights the work raising money for the Bob Willis Foundation in memory of an old favourite, and giving platforms to Holding and Ebony Rainford-Brent to talk powerfully about racism as examples of the wider work Sky does alongside simply covering cricket. Michael Holding, here with Michael Atherton, was able to talk powerfully about his experiences of racism (Getty/ECB) Technological advancements are on the way. Hawkeye is developing a sort of virtual reality replay system that could place the viewer, say, in the cordon after a slip drops a catch, putting them in the perspective of the fielder. While helmet cams have been helpful, showing the sheer speed of a game is something Henderson feels cricket is still yet to crack. Broad has eased effortlessly into the commentary box and work to develop the next generation of voices – from Tammy Beaumont to Tymal Mills – has been clear in recent years. Advertisement There is also a need for existing broadcasters to stay in touch with the sport. The digital age has made this both harder and easier, with the advent of high-quality county streaming, umpire cams and global broadcasting deals meaning the amount of cricket broadcast vastly outweighs that of when Hussain started. Nasser Hussain works hard to follow cricket all around the world (Getty) 'I always remember the comment Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, said after I got the job at Sky,' the former England captain recalls. 'He shook my hand and said, 'well done for the job. Just remember in five years' time the game will look completely different. Make sure you keep up to speed.' Within a year, Kevin Pietersen was switch-hitting Scott Styris for six. 'If you take a month off watching cricket – and I don't for this reason – you end up so far behind. When I first joined, you could catch up. Nowadays, there is a 14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi bursting on the scene at the IPL. When Shoaib Bashir was picked, I hadn't watched him bowl in my life, but you go into Twitter and put in his name and you can see his wickets – and that's how he got selected. It's a completely different landscape now.' Advertisement With India's men and women visiting England simultaneously, it is clearly a huge summer, one that also brings renewed scrutiny on The Hundred after the windfall brought by the sale of stakes in the eight franchises. But after a glimpse behind the scenes, Sky's cricket coverage looks in very safe hands indeed. Watch all five England-India Test matches live on Sky Sports Cricket and NOW from 20 June

She won a 100k ultramarathon through the mountains

Yahoo

29 minutes ago

Yahoo

She won a 100k ultramarathon through the mountains

When Stephanie Case entered a 100-kilometer (around 62 miles) ultrarunning race through the Welsh mountains, winning was far from her mind. Six months postpartum and still breastfeeding her infant daughter Pepper, Case's only real aim was to finish the Ultra-Trail Snowdonia in North Wales' Eryri National Park and make sure her daughter was fed, having received special permission from race organizers to stop at an additional point to do so. In fact, it wasn't until the end of the grueling race that Case – whose three-year hiatus from running meant that she set off in the third wave, far behind the elite runners – was informed that her finish time made her the winner of the women's competition. This, in spite of the fact that she had stopped to feed Pepper three times during the run, which was included in her total race time. 'That was a huge shock. I wasn't expecting that. It wasn't even on my radar that that could have happened,' Case told CNN Sports. Pictures of her taking part in the race in May have since gone viral, and the response has been overwhelming, according to the ultra runner. 'It wasn't something I kind of strategized or planned ahead of time, but what it tells me is that we really aren't telling enough stories about new moms kind of doing all sorts of things, living full and complete, multi dimensional lives.' Case said she thinks the photos show that 'life doesn't stop when you become a mom, and it's just another layer to who you are as a person. 'We all have mom guilt, but it's important for new moms to know that it's okay to prioritize the things that make them full and complete human beings because that will make them better parents in the long run – because we are multi dimensional. She added to CNN: 'Becoming a mom, it's one of the most physical and emotional transformations you can go through in your entire life. And so if there are things that you can hold on to – for me, it's running – that kind of remind you that everything that has changed, there are some things that remain constant, there are some parts of your identity that you haven't lost.' Case, who turns 43 this month, started ultrarunning almost 18 years ago when, after finishing her first marathon, she was looking for another challenge. She got pretty good at it too, racing across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Africa. But Case, an international human rights lawyer by day, took a three-year hiatus from the sport after suffering several miscarriages as she and her partner tried to have a child. 'I got some questions from people around whether it was the running that caused the miscarriage. And of course, there's no medical evidence, there's no science to back that up, but it did plant the seed of doubt in my head, and really changed my relationship with running,' she told CNN Sports. 'Running, instead of it being a source of stress relief and a source of joy for me, it turned into something quite different,' she explained. After Pepper's birth and getting the all clear from her doctor, Case started running again six weeks postpartum. 'It felt physically weird, strange. I thought my organs were going to fall out, but at the same time, I felt like a runner again. I felt like me again,' she explained. Starting so far back in the Ultra Trail Snowdonia, she said, was 'perhaps a blessing in disguise because it really took the pressure off. Starting the third wave kind of solidified to me that I couldn't have any performance goals because I was starting so far back.' Although the race already had stopping checkpoints at 20 km and 80 km, Case knew she would need to feed Pepper in between, so she requested and got permission to get assistance at the 50 km checkpoint. 'It meant that my partner, John, could only hand me Pepper. He couldn't help me with any of my bottles, with my pack, with anything else I needed to do with food for myself. 'I had to manage everything myself and also make sure that Pepper was taken care of. So it was a whole other layer of logistics that I had never experienced before. Pepper is used to kind of feeding mid-training runs, but we've never done it in a race situation,' she explained. While Case has received many positive responses to her win, she has also received numerous 'misogynistic, paternalistic' comments. '(They were) saying: 'Does she spend any time with her baby? She should be at home. Why didn't she wait?' Comments about my looks or my age, really just trying to criticize anything that they saw me doing,' Case said. Other messages, she explained, came from moms 'who were quite worried that this image and this story was contributing to this idea of setting this impossibly high standard that women can't reach.' 'Some moms are exhausted and they're just trying to get through the day,' Case said. 'And so the idea that they not only have to be mom, but they also have to have a career, and they have to regain their fitness and now running ultra marathons and breastfeed just made them feel really bad about themselves, and I think that that's part of the patriarchal society that we live in, that we're taught to compete with one another. 'Everything we do as new moms, it becomes scrutinized and judged, and we just need the space to be able to navigate that journey on our own, to figure out what motherhood looks like for each of us, individually,' she added. 'For me, it means running 100k and, you know, doing all the things that make me happy and for others, it could be running a 5k or, you know, joining a book club, or, you know, something totally different.' Next up for Case is the Hardrock 100, a 100-mile run with 33,197 feet of climb and 33,197 feet of descent in Colorado in July. 'It should be about choice. I mean, that's the whole point. Women can do all of this if they want, if they have the support, if XYZ, fall into place. If the stars align, if they choose to go after that, then they should be provided the support and the encouragement and the resources to be able to pursue all the things that they want – but they don't have to.'

CNN

an hour ago

CNN

She won a 100k ultramarathon through the mountains – while breastfeeding

When Stephanie Case entered a 100-kilometer (around 62 miles) ultrarunning race through the Welsh mountains, winning was far from her mind. Six months postpartum and still breastfeeding her infant daughter Pepper, Case's only real aim was to finish the Ultra-Trail Snowdonia in North Wales' Eryri National Park and make sure her daughter was fed, having received special permission from race organizers to stop at an additional point to do so. In fact, it wasn't until the end of the grueling race that Case – whose three-year hiatus from running meant that she set off in the third wave, far behind the elite runners – was informed that her finish time made her the winner of the women's competition. This, in spite of the fact that she had stopped to feed Pepper three times during the run, which was included in her total race time. 'That was a huge shock. I wasn't expecting that. It wasn't even on my radar that that could have happened,' Case told CNN Sports. Pictures of her taking part in the race in May have since gone viral, and the response has been overwhelming, according to the ultra runner. 'It wasn't something I kind of strategized or planned ahead of time, but what it tells me is that we really aren't telling enough stories about new moms kind of doing all sorts of things, living full and complete, multi dimensional lives.' Case said she thinks the photos show that 'life doesn't stop when you become a mom, and it's just another layer to who you are as a person. 'We all have mom guilt, but it's important for new moms to know that it's okay to prioritize the things that make them full and complete human beings because that will make them better parents in the long run – because we are multi dimensional. She added to CNN: 'Becoming a mom, it's one of the most physical and emotional transformations you can go through in your entire life. And so if there are things that you can hold on to – for me, it's running – that kind of remind you that everything that has changed, there are some things that remain constant, there are some parts of your identity that you haven't lost.' Case, who turns 43 this month, started ultrarunning almost 18 years ago when, after finishing her first marathon, she was looking for another challenge. She got pretty good at it too, racing across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Africa. But Case, an international human rights lawyer by day, took a three-year hiatus from the sport after suffering several miscarriages as she and her partner tried to have a child. 'I got some questions from people around whether it was the running that caused the miscarriage. And of course, there's no medical evidence, there's no science to back that up, but it did plant the seed of doubt in my head, and really changed my relationship with running,' she told CNN Sports. 'Running, instead of it being a source of stress relief and a source of joy for me, it turned into something quite different,' she explained. After Pepper's birth and getting the all clear from her doctor, Case started running again six weeks postpartum. 'It felt physically weird, strange. I thought my organs were going to fall out, but at the same time, I felt like a runner again. I felt like me again,' she explained. Starting so far back in the Ultra Trail Snowdonia, she said, was 'perhaps a blessing in disguise because it really took the pressure off. Starting the third wave kind of solidified to me that I couldn't have any performance goals because I was starting so far back.' Although the race already had stopping checkpoints at 20 km and 80 km, Case knew she would need to feed Pepper in between, so she requested and got permission to get assistance at the 50 km checkpoint. 'It meant that my partner, John, could only hand me Pepper. He couldn't help me with any of my bottles, with my pack, with anything else I needed to do with food for myself. 'I had to manage everything myself and also make sure that Pepper was taken care of. So it was a whole other layer of logistics that I had never experienced before. Pepper is used to kind of feeding mid-training runs, but we've never done it in a race situation,' she explained. While Case has received many positive responses to her win, she has also received numerous 'misogynistic, paternalistic' comments. '(They were) saying: 'Does she spend any time with her baby? She should be at home. Why didn't she wait?' Comments about my looks or my age, really just trying to criticize anything that they saw me doing,' Case said. Other messages, she explained, came from moms 'who were quite worried that this image and this story was contributing to this idea of setting this impossibly high standard that women can't reach.' 'Some moms are exhausted and they're just trying to get through the day,' Case said. 'And so the idea that they not only have to be mom, but they also have to have a career, and they have to regain their fitness and now running ultra marathons and breastfeed just made them feel really bad about themselves, and I think that that's part of the patriarchal society that we live in, that we're taught to compete with one another. 'Everything we do as new moms, it becomes scrutinized and judged, and we just need the space to be able to navigate that journey on our own, to figure out what motherhood looks like for each of us, individually,' she added. 'For me, it means running 100k and, you know, doing all the things that make me happy and for others, it could be running a 5k or, you know, joining a book club, or, you know, something totally different.' Next up for Case is the Hardrock 100, a 100-mile run with 33,197 feet of climb and 33,197 feet of descent in Colorado in July. 'It should be about choice. I mean, that's the whole point. Women can do all of this if they want, if they have the support, if XYZ, fall into place. If the stars align, if they choose to go after that, then they should be provided the support and the encouragement and the resources to be able to pursue all the things that they want – but they don't have to.'

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Behind the scenes at Sky Sports Cricket and how they changed the game

She won a 100k ultramarathon through the mountains

She won a 100k ultramarathon through the mountains – while breastfeeding

Why Rachel Zegler's ‘Evita' Performance Is Upsetting Live Theatergoers

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Behind the scenes at Sky Sports Cricket and how they changed the game

She won a 100k ultramarathon through the mountains

She won a 100k ultramarathon through the mountains – while breastfeeding

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