Captain Kane can’t do everything as England’s World Cup kicks off

As the ECB tried to find someone to lead the England cricket team who hasn’t been caught drinking – it reminded me of the scene in I, Claudius when Augustus bellows “Is there anyone in Rome who has NOT slept with my daughter?” – a surprising saviour emerged. “Always ready if needed,” wrote Harry Kane on Instagram, adding photos of him playing an off-drive and bowling leg spin at England’s World Cup training camp.

Alas, Kane can’t make the toss at the Oval on Wednesday (Sky Sports Cricket, 11am), since he has to captain the England football team that afternoon in Texas, but he could be there for day two. In 1975, Chris Balderstone played for Doncaster Rovers against Brentford an hour after he had closed on 51 not out for Leicestershire at Chesterfield, but those matches were only 30 miles apart, not six time zones.

All being well – and it would be ironic for an England footballer to be injured playing cricket before a big match, rather than the other way round – Kane will start his third World Cup as captain against Croatia. He scored six goals at the first in 2018, adding two more in 2022, and is England’s second-top scorer at World Cups after Gary Lineker, who once made a century against Courtney Walsh in a charity match on the same day that he scored a hat-trick for Tottenham Hotspur (England v Croatia, Wednesday, ITV1, 9pm).

Unlike England, Scotland’s matches are at unhelpful times. After facing Haiti at 2am on Sunday (catch it on BBC iPlayer), they play Morocco at 11pm on Friday (ITV1) and Brazil at the same time on 24 June (BBC One). In Sunday’s early-evening match, Germany hope to down Curaçao and [Dick] Advocaat (ITV1, 6pm). Sounds like a night out with the England cricket team.

Ryan Moore has ridden 92 winners at Royal Ascot, behind only Lester Piggott’s 116, and Aidan O’Brien’s favourite jockey should do well again this year. Oisin Murphy is highly rated, however, and might be worth a flutter on Caballo De Mar in Thursday’s Gold Cup, a race first held in 1807 (Tuesday to Saturday, ITV1, 1.30pm).

A busy week of sport also includes England’s women’s T20 World Cup cricket matches against Ireland and Scotland (Tuesday and Saturday, Sky Sports Cricket, 6.30pm); men’s tennis from Queen’s, where Cameron Norrie is the leading British men’s hope (all week, BBC Two, varying times); and the Prem rugby union final (Saturday, ITV4, 3pm). There is also the third major of the year in men’s golf, the US Open at Shinnecock Hills. England’s Tommy Fleetwood was runner-up to Brooks Koepka when it was last held there in 2018 (Thursday to Sunday, Sky Sports Golf, varying times).

However, if you believe the Ultimate Fighting Championship website (and who doesn’t?), the “most historic sporting event of all time” is about to take place in Washington. Ilia Topuria, a Georgian-Spanish pugilist known as “El Matador”, will fight a lightweight-title unification bout with America’s Justin Gaethje in a cage built on the White House South Lawn as an 80th birthday present for Donald Trump. It will be worth it if it makes the president put down his phone for a few minutes (Monday, TNT Sports 1, 1am).

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Photograph by by Rich Storry/Getty Images