This Day in Sports History

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1973: In his last Test at Lord’s, Gary Sobers held his sixth catch in the match, equaling what was then a Test record for a non-wicketkeeper. A great fielder close to the stumps, he took 109 catches in his 93 Tests, to go with his 8032 runs and 235 wickets. In this Lord’s Test he also made the last of his 26 Test centuries. West Indies won by the huge margin of an innings and 226 runs to take the series 2-0.

1995: 95th US Golf Amateur Championship won by Tiger Woods.

1999: In what was then the largest trade in NBA history, 11 players changed teams. The Vancouver Grizzlies traded the rights to G Steve Francis and F Tony Massenburg to the Houston Rockets for G Michael Dickerson, F-C Othella Harrington, F Antoine Carr, G Brent Price, Houston’s first-round draft pick in 2000, 2001 or 2002, and the Orlando Magic’s 2000 second-round draft pick. Orlando traded F Don MacLean to Houston, and received G Lee Mayberry, F Makhtar Ndiaye, G Rodrick Rhodes and F Michael Smith from Vancouver.

2004: China’s first ever gold in Olympic Games men’s track and field; Liu Xiang wins 110m hurdles in Athens, equalling Colin Jackson’s 1993 world record time of 12.91 seconds.

2016: A world-record total of 489 runs, which included 32 sixes (also a record), were scored in the India-West Indies T20I in Florida – India’s first international match on American soil. It was a thriller that India might have expected to win in front of a big expat crowd when they needed two runs off the last ball, with the cool MS Dhoni to face it. But Dwayne Bravo was cooler. Anticipating that Dhoni would look for the safe single to tie the game, Bravo bowled a slow dipping off-cutter. Dhoni tried to push it to the off side but only managed an edge and was caught at short third man. The teams’ big totals (West Indies 245 for 6) and India (244 for 4) were built on quick hundreds by two 24-year-olds. Evin Lewis, playing his second match for West Indies, made his in 48 balls, and India’s KL Rahul in 46.

2015: 15th Athletics World Championships: Usain Bolt of Jamaica adds the men’s 200m gold to his 100m win.

2017: Former five-weight world boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. defeats MMA fighter Conor McGregor in his debut match in the 10th round in Las Vegas.

2019: Race car driver Jessi Combs dies while setting new fastest women’s land speed record of 522.783 mph at Alvord Desert, Oregon (posthumously awarded 2020).

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