• Updates from the Boxing Day Test at the MCG
• Sam Konstas scores sensational 60 on debut
• Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email

1st over: Australia 0-0 (Konstas 0, Khawaja 0) There’s a real good lip curl from Konstas on the close-up cam, waiting for Bumrah. The crowd hushes in anticipation… and sighs as he leaves the ball. A big jerky action, shouldering arms over the top of the ball and pulling his bat around to face back down the pitch.

Plays and misses at the next one, a pearler that goes away off the pitch. Bumrah doing heaps early. Draws another leave third ball, but the fourth and the fifth are lovely. Beaten, beaten again, both times drawing Konstas into the defensive shot before seaming past the edge. Perfect seam position, upright then scrambling away.

• Leicester manager was unbeaten against Slot with PSV
• Slot warns team ‘cannot underestimate one minute’

Arne Slot has said his experience of facing Ruud van Nistelrooy in the Netherlands, plus ­Liverpool’s ­brief drop-off against ­Tottenham, ensures Leicester will not be underestimated at Anfield on Boxing Day.

The Liverpool head coach was ­unable to beat Van Nistelrooy’s PSV when guiding Feyenoord to the ­Eredivisie title in 2022-23, drawing 2-2 at home and losing 4-3 away. PSV were one of only two teams to defeat Feyenoord in a season when Slot’s side won the league by seven points from their closest challengers from Eindhoven.

• City have qualified for 14 seasons in a row
• Manager says he still has full backing of club hierarchy

Pep Guardiola has admitted he fears Manchester City will not qualify for the Champions League. The club are in the tournament for a 14th con­secutive season but an extraordinary slump has left them “at risk”, said the manager, who acknowledged there would be financial as well as sporting repercussions.

City are seventh in the Premier League, four points behind Notting­ham Forest who are in fourth. Fifth spot could secure a Champions League berth, with Uefa rewarding two leagues with an extra place based on their clubs’ performances in all European competitions this season, but Guardiola was clear about his concern as he prepared for a Boxing Day visit from Everton.

• Mahomes leads Kansas City to 29-10 win over Pittsburgh
• Beyoncé steals show at half-time of Ravens-Texans game
• Jackson breaks QB rushing mark as Baltimore win 31-2

Patrick Mahomes passed for 320 yards and three touchdowns and the Kansas City Chiefs locked up the top seed in the AFC for the fourth time in seven seasons with a 29-10 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Wednesday.

The two-time defending Super Bowl champions raced to an early 13-point lead and were never really threatened by the Steelers (10-6), who have dropped three straight as their chances of capturing the AFC North took another hit.

The grey is a decent bet at around 5-1 to underline his potential in the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day

There have been many renewals of the King George VI Chase in recent years which revolved around a clear market leader but there is no obvious starting point for weighing up this year’s race at Kempton on Thursday, as nine of the 11 runners already have at least one Grade One victory over fences to their name and at least four – Spillane’s Tower, Banbridge, Grey Dawning and Il Est Francais – could conceivably set off as favourite.

There are also slight question marks over all four of the principals in the betting. Banbridge is unproven at the three-mile trip, Il Est Francais ran poorly after bursting a blood vessel last time out, Spillane’s Tower has shown his best form with more cut in the ground and Grey Dawning had a tough race in the Betfair Chase in November.

Rodri’s injury, Erling Haaland and Pep Guardiola all play a role in this champion team’s profound collapse

Eight weeks, 12 games and nine defeats into Manchester City’s descent into the footballing upside down, Pep Guardiola has at least identified the problem.

“We haven’t scored the goals we scored before, and we have conceded the goals we didn’t concede,” Guardiola told the BBC cameras after the defeat at Villa Park on Saturday, speaking in that now-familiar watery, rambling drawl, the voice of a man being encouraged by paramedics to talk about defensive injuries and midfield duels in order to keep himself awake until the ambulance arrives.

The French capital overcame issues including an opening ceremony deluge to deliver 17 days of joyous madness

Four months after Paris 2024’s spectacular finale, starring Tom Cruise abseiling off the top of the Stade de France and hurtling out of a plane above Los Angeles, the executive director of the Olympics is mulling over the lasting impact of the Games. Albeit with the help of a rather different cinematic icon.

“I was making a presentation to Deloitte executives recently,” says Christophe Dubi, the man responsible for planning and delivering the Olympics. “And I started by paraphrasing the Stranger in The Big Lebowski: ‘Sometimes, there is a man, he’s the man for his time and place, he was The Dude.’ Because Paris really was the right Games, at the right time and place.”

• Long-serving players have ‘big responsibility’ says coach
• Rashford is still keen to play for United, insists Amorim

Ruben Amorim says Marcus Rashford has a “big responsibility” to help Manchester United out of one of the club’s lowest moments by performing at his best, with the manager insisting the forward wants to play.

Rashford has been excluded from United’s past three match-day squads owing to his performance in training and for “selection reasons”, the head coach has said. Amorim takes his side to Wolves on Boxing Day after the Carabao Cup defeat at Tottenham and the 3-0 loss against Bournemouth in the Premier League at Old Trafford last Sunday.

The Dan Skelton-trained chaser is hoping to follow in the hoofprints of great greys at Kempton on Boxing Day

A bold-jumping grey in the King George at Kempton: for a dozen years from the mid‑1980s, it was a Boxing Day tradition as Desert Orchid, One Man and Teeton Mill racked up seven wins from nine appearances between them. And as Robert Kirkland, a racehorse owner for nearly 40 years, still recalls, there might have been another.

“The first horse I ever had a share in was called High Edge Grey,” Kirkland said this week. “He won the Charlie Hall at Wetherby in 1988 and the plan was to go to Kempton, but then he hurt his back in the Hennessy at Newbury. In those days, you didn’t have chiropractors for horses, and he missed it.”

The best and worst of the last 12 months and hopes for 2025 in our review of the year in rugby union

1 Antoine Dupont (France, Toulouse, France sevens)
2 Eben Etzebeth (South Africa)
3 Pieter-Steph du Toit (SA), Ox Nché (SA), Wallace Sititi (New Zealand), Ellie Kildunne (England)