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Pakistan players push back boundaries with Zoom cricket

Bored during Pakistan's coronavirus lockdown, Test batsman Shan Masood put on his helmet, picked up his bat -- and Zoom cricket was born.

Masood, 30, was video-chatting with teammates when they grabbed their cricket gear and pretended to play a match.


"A couple of us guys were talking on Zoom and it was pretty late at night and somebody just picked up a ball," Masood told AFP.

"He had a ball (in) his hand and eventually all of us got kitted up and we played... a made-up cricket match."

"So that was quite a funny moment where I kind of had my helmet on. Hassan Ali was seaming into the ball, Imam ul Haq was fielding, Wahab Riaz was the captain," he added.

"(We) just made it into a funny little incident."

Cricket, like most other sport, is on hold during the pandemic, much to the frustration of players and fans.

Masood said Pakistan's squad had been training at home -- sometimes using staircases and armchairs as gym equipment -- to prepare for cricket's return.

"Everyone's been training, everyone's been being good, and also that we have to take into account that this is the month of Ramadan and it's harder to train," said Masood.

"Hopefully that whenever this thing ends... all this hard work that we're putting in right now, even with uncertainty around, it (will) be translated into cricketing performances."

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Why the UK government is moving to fully nationalise British Steel after years of crisis

  • The UK government is expected to announce full British Steel nationalisation in the king’s speech.
  • British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant operates the country’s last remaining blast furnaces.
  • Rising losses, Chinese ownership tensions and fears over industrial security pushed the government towards intervention.

For decades, the giant blast furnaces towering over Scunthorpe stood as symbols of Britain’s industrial strength. Now, they are becoming symbols of something else entirely — the struggle to keep the country’s steel industry alive in a rapidly changing global economy.

The UK government is expected to formally move towards full nationalisation of British Steel in the upcoming king’s speech, marking another dramatic turn in the long and turbulent history of one of Britain’s most politically sensitive industrial businesses.

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