The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has confirmed that the upcoming tri-nation T20 series will proceed as planned despite Afghanistan’s withdrawal.

According to a PCB spokesperson, discussions are underway to include a replacement team in the tournament, and a final decision regarding the third participant will be announced soon.

The tri-nation T20 series, featuring Pakistan and Sri Lanka, is scheduled to take place in Pakistan from November 17 to 29.

The PCB reiterated its commitment to ensuring the successful hosting of the event, saying all logistical and operational preparations are continuing as per schedule.

Earlier, Afghanistan pulled out of the tri-nation series with Pakistan and Sri Lanka next month.

Liverpool face strong competition from Bayern Munich for Crystal Palace defender Marc Guéhi, while Internazionale defender Federico Dimarco has admirers at Manchester United. Join us for the latest transfer news and rumors from around the globe.

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TOP STORIES

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TRENDING RUMORS

– Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Real Madrid are leading the race to sign Marc Guéhi in January, The i Paper reports. The Crystal Palace defender’s contract is set to expire next summer, meaning the reigning FA Cup holders are keen to cash in before he can depart on a free transfer. While Liverpool almost signed Guéhi back in August, a host of clubs around Europe could now rival them for his signature. Palace won’t let the England international leave on the cheap in January, despite the likes of Bayern being keen to land him “at the first opportunity.”

– Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim is a huge fan of Federico Dimarco and would like to bring him to the Premier League, according to Tuttosport. The Inter Milan full-back, whose contract expires in 2027, has been in exceptional form so far this season, with two goals and three assists from his first six Serie A matches. United could face an uphill battle to secure his signature, however, as the dynamic left-back would like to end his career at Inter, amid talk of a bumper contract extension.

– Everton will be able to sign winger Jack Grealish for under £50 million next summer, according to the Daily Mail. Despite the winger’s strong start to life on Merseyside, it is believed that his transfer value will depreciate over the course of the season — which could help Everton sign him permanently. Grealish, 30, has grabbed four assists in seven matches this season, rediscovering his best form, and presenting England manager Thomas Tuchel with a selection headache.

– Bayern Munich are set to open talks with midfielder Leon Goretzka over a new contract. The Germany international, 30, is set to become a free agent int he summer if he does not sign a new deal at the Allianz Arena. Goretzka, who is in his eighth season at Bayern since joining them from Schalke 04, has started five Bundesliga matches for the defending champions so far this season. (Christian Falk)

– Eintracht Frankfurt are “keeping a close eye” on Club Brugge midfielder Raphael Onyedika, according to Florian Plettenberg. The 24-year-old is viewed as a potential replacement for Hugo Larsson, whose future at the Bundesliga club is currently uncertain. Eintracht have a long-standing interest in Onyedika, who has been the subject of several enquiries from clubs around Europe. According to Plettenberg, a transfer next summer appears “likely”.

EXPERT TAKE

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OTHER RUMORS

– Liverpool view Borussia Dortmund defender Nico Schlotterbeck as a potential long-term replacement for Virgil Van Dijk. However, the Reds face competition for his signature from the likes of Manchester City, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. (The i Paper)

– Juventus are monitoring the situation of Newcastle United midfielder Sandro Tonali. (Football Insider)

– Crystal Palace midfielder Adam Wharton is “at the very top” of Manchester United’s midfielder shortlist. (TEAMtalk)

– Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United are all interested in signing Juventus forward Kenan Yıldız. (Football Insider)

– Several clubs are monitoring Genoa midfielder Morten Frendrup. The Denmark international has recently signed with a new agency, ahead of a potential transfer in 2026. (Fabrizio Romano)

– Sunderland will not revive their interest in Bologna defender Jhon Lucumí in January, contrary to reports in Italy. (Sky Sports News)

– Olympiacos are planning on extending centre-back Lorenzo Pirola‘s current deal. (Nicolo Schira)

– RB Leipzig and Eintracht Frankfurt are battling to sign Inter Milan defender Yann Aurel Bisseck, who has a €40 million price tag. (Ekrem Konur)

– Graham Potter is getting closer to becoming the new head coach of the Sweden national team. The former West Ham United boss looks set to join on an initial short-term deal, tasked with taking the team to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. (Fabrizio Romano)

LOS ANGELES — It’s easy to take Shohei Ohtani for granted. By now, we’ve settled into the rote comfort: He is the best player on the planet, and that’s that. Ohtani’s baseline is everyone else’s peak. He is judged against himself and himself only.

And it’s human nature that when we watch something often enough — even something as mind-bending as a player who’s a full-time starting pitcher and full-time hitter and among the very best at both — it starts to register as normal.

Which is his performance on Friday — the unleashing of the full extent of Ohtani’s magic — was the sort of necessary reminder that one of the greatest athletes in the world, and the most talented baseball player ever, is playing right now, doing unfathomable things, redefining the game in real time. And that even when he starts the day mired in an uncharacteristic slump, Ohtani needs only a single game to launch himself into the annals of history.

Where Ohtani’s performance in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series ranks on the all-time list of games will be debated for years. In the celebration following the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers, though, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts stood on the field and said, “That’s the greatest night in baseball history,” and no one cared to argue.

Over the course of 2 hours, 41 minutes, in front of 52,883 fans, with millions watching domestically and tens of millions more in Japan, Ohtani threw six shutout innings and struck out 10 in between hitting three home runs that traveled a combined 1,342 feet, including one that left Dodger Stadium entirely. It was the sort of game that happens in comic books, not real life — and it was a game that completed a championship series sweep and sent Los Angeles to its second consecutive World Series. It was the kind of night that leaves patrons elated they saw it and also just a little ruined because they know they’ll never see anything like it again. Everyone was a prisoner, captive to perhaps the greatest individual game in the quarter-million or so played over the last century and a half.

It was, at very least, one of the finest displays of baseball since the game’s inception, up there with Tony Cloninger hitting two grand slams and throwing a complete game in 1966 or Rick Wise socking two home runs amid his no-hitter on the mound in 1971. And unlike those, this came in the postseason, and in a game to clinch Los Angeles the opportunity to become the first team in a quarter-century to win back-to-back championships.

It wasn’t quite Don Larsen throwing a perfect game — but Larsen went 0-for-2 in that game and needed a Mickey Mantle home run to account for his scoring. It wasn’t Reggie Jackson hammering three home runs, either — because Reggie needed Mike Torrez to throw a complete game that night to make his blasts stand up.

Ohtani is the only player who can do this, the offense and the defense — the mastery of baseball, the distillation of talent into something pure and perfect..

Hours earlier, his day had started by navigating the tricky balance of starting and hitting on the same day. His metronomic routine, such a vital piece of his three MVP seasons (the fourth will be made official in mid-November), is upended completely when he pitches. He budgets for the extra time he needs to spend caring for his arm by sacrificing his attendance at the hitters’ meeting, instead getting the intel he needs from coaches in the batting cage about an hour before the game.

Nobody could tell, when Ohtani arrived in the underground cage Friday, that he was mired in a nasty slump that had stretched from the division series through the third game of the NLCS, a jag of strikeouts and soft contact and poor swing decisions and utter frustration that got so bad earlier in the week he’d taken batting practice outside at Dodger Stadium, something he never — like, really, never — does. He had decided to do so on the plane ride back from Milwaukee, where the Dodgers had humbled the Brewers with the sort of starting pitching never before seen in a league championship series.

Game 4, his teammates were convinced, was going to be a culmination of that extra cage work and the matching of his pitching peers’ dominance.

“You guys asked me yesterday, and I said I was expecting nothing short of incredible today,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “And he proved me wrong. He went beyond incredible.”

After walking the leadoff hitter Brice Turang, Ohtani struck out the next three hitters, popping a pair of 100-mph-plus fastballs and unleashing the most confounding version of his splitter seen all year. He followed by obliterating a slurve from Jose Quintana in the bottom of the inning for a home run, the first time a pitcher ever hit a leadoff homer in the game’s history, regular season or playoffs.

The strikeouts continued — one in the third inning, two more in the fourth, preceding Ohtani’s second home run, which left 50,000 mouths agape. In the stands, they cheered, and in the dugout, they whooped, and in the bullpen, they screamed: “The ball went out of the stadium!” Alex Vesia, the reliever who would come in after Ohtani struck out two more in the fifth and sixth innings, could not conceive that a person could hit a baseball in a game that far. Officially, it went 469 feet. It felt like 1,000.

“At that point, it’s got to be the greatest game ever, right?” said Vesia, who did his part to help keep it so. Ohtani allowed a walk and a hit in the seventh inning, and had Vesia allowed either run to score, the sparkling zero in his pitching line could’ve been an unsightly one or crooked two. When he induced a groundball up the middle that nutmegged his legs, Mookie Betts was in perfect position to hoover it, step on second and fire to first for a double play that preserved Ohtani’s goose egg.

In the next inning, Ohtani’s third home run of the night, and this one was just showing off: a shot to dead center off a 99-mph Trevor Megill fastball, a proper complement to the second off an 89-mph Chad Patrick cutter and the first off a 79-mph Jose Quintana slurve). If it sounds impressive to hit three different pitches off three different pitchers for home runs in one night, it is. To do so throwing six innings, allowing two hits, walking three and striking out 10 is otherworldly.

“We were so focused on just winning the game, doing what needed to be done, I’m not sure we realized how good it really was,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “I didn’t really appreciate it until after. Like, he actually did that?”

Yes. Yes he did. In baseball history, 503 players have hit three home runs in a game, and 1,550 have struck out 10 or more in a game. None, until Friday, had done both. And that’s what Shohei Ohtani does, who he is. For eight years, he has transformed what is possible in baseball, set a truly impossible standard to match, and now, finally, having signed with a franchise capable of giving his talents the largest stage, Ohtani gets to perform when it matters most.

Milwaukee won more games during the regular season than anyone. Regardless of how impotent the Brewers’ offense was this series, they were a very good team, and the Dodgers flayed them. The final game was an exclamation point — and a warning for the Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays, whichever survives the back-and-forth American League Championship Series.

Shohei Ohtani awaits. Good luck.