SPEEDWAY: Danny King top-scored with 13+2 points as the Ipswich Witches crushed defending champions Belle Vue 56-34 on Thursday night to gain the extra aggregate point and move four points clear at the top of the Premiership. 

Max Fricke and Ryan Douglas both bagged 17+1 points as Leicester thumped Oxford 54-36 in the evening’s other fixture. 

Second-placed Sheffield, who have two games in hand over Ipswich, were not in action.

MEN’S CRICKET: Munster Reds all-rounder Curtis Campher became the first male to take five wickets in five balls in a professional match when he finished off the North West Warriors in Wednesday’s Irish Inter-Provincial trophy match. 

Campher finished with 5-16 from just 15 balls as Munster won by 100 runs to climb above the Warriors at the bottom of the table. 

Runaway league leaders Leinster beat the Northern Knights by two wickets.

MEN’S RUGBY UNION: Wales will be without Taulupe Faletau when they face Japan in Kobe on Saturday morning. 

The Welsh lost out 24-19 in Kitakyushu last weekend, slumping to an all-time low 14th place in the world rankings, and now face the ignominy of becoming the first “tier one” nation to lose 19 games in a row. 

Japan have never won consecutive games against a top-level team.

HORSE RACING: Oslo-born William Buick became only the seventh active jockey to have ridden 2,000 winners in British racing after steering El Cordobes to victory at Newmarket on Thursday. 

He went on to claim a treble at the west Suffolk track, with success on Crimson Rose and Opera Ballo in the next two races.  

Buick, who rode his first winner in 2006, was champion jockey on the flat in 2022 and 2023.