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KARACHI: Scotland’s Muslim female cricketer Abtaha Maqsood became the talk of social media after she made her debut in the newly introduced franchise cricket league, The Hundred.

The 22-years-old leg-spinner is representing Birmingham Pheonix in the Women’s category of The Hundred. Her pictures from Day 1 of the league went viral on social media gathering immense attention.

The story of the day! Abtaha Maqsood playing for Birmingham Phoenix #TheHundred https://t.co/UHV9yvX6Sw

— zainab abbas (@ZAbbasOfficial) July 23, 2021

Abtaha Maqsood a 22 year old from Scotland was bowling in Hijab for Birmingham Phoenix in #TheHundred pic.twitter.com/6Nzwjcfwef

— ایڈووکیٹ علی ڈوگر (@AliHass25543294) July 24, 2021

What a proud moment for #AbtahaMaqsood and her parents! #TheHundred – this is the level of inclusion we want for woman, especially British south Asian women! 🥰 pic.twitter.com/eRsQRGeUGz

— 💙💚💛🧡❤️ #BLM (@chaiandpuri) July 23, 2021

Abtaha Maqsood a 22 year old from Scotland was bowling in Hijab for Birmingham Phoenix in #TheHundred pic.twitter.com/hrdkFQ6kzs

— Abhijeet ♞ (@TheYorkerBall) July 23, 2021

In today’s lesson of ‘If you can’t see it you can’t be it’ it was wonderful to see Abtaha Maqsood playing for Birmingham Phoenix in #TheHundred wearing her hijab 👍👍

— Victor Meldrew (@phillya1968) July 23, 2021

#AbtahaMaqsood, in #Scotland, made her debut in #TheHundred today. https://t.co/VqVQOu9THf pic.twitter.com/sTauHuNr6N

— Prof. FanaaFilla (@FanaaFilla) July 24, 2021

One can only imagine how many young Muslim women will be inspired by the sight of Abtaha Maqsoob running in to bowl in her hijab. A big win for cricket.#TheHundred pic.twitter.com/7KMY9OOxlo

— Aatif Nawaz (@AatifNawaz) July 23, 2021

One can only imagine how many young Muslim women will be inspired by the sight of Abtaha Maqsoob running in to bowl in her hijab. A big win for cricket.#TheHundred pic.twitter.com/7KMY9OOxlo

— Aatif Nawaz (@AatifNawaz) July 23, 2021

‘Abtaha Maqsood’s inspiring cricket journey’#TheHundred https://t.co/2JbNyvwzdk

— hypocaust (@_hypocaust) July 23, 2021

Abtaha Maqsood A True Inspiration for Muslim world specially for some landy ki So called librals
#TheHundred 🥰 pic.twitter.com/0d0r0Uqbg4

— Arslan Jutt (@ArslanJutt43) July 23, 2021

It must be noted here that Abtaha has represented Scotland in 18 T20Is taking 23 wickets at an average of 12.82.

READ: WATCH: Chris Gayle look-a-like celebrates Pakistan’s victory

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Games like Valorant don’t just live and die off of their huge playerbases—they also rely on premium, top-tier cosmetics to drive revenue and fund new characters for the growingly popular tactical shooter from the company that brought you League of Legends.

At the 2021 Game Developers conference, producer Preeti Khanolkar and art lead Sean Marino teamed up to pull back the curtain slightly on Valorant’s cosmetics production process. Their talk (aimed at producers and art leads in collaboration) explored how Riot balances its resources to produce its animation-intensive, aesthetically unique products, using the Elderflame and Reaver cosmetics sets as key examples.

The pair’s first example came from the Elderflame skin—an exceptionally expensive weapon skin that trades several Valorant guns’ normal reloading and firing animations for ones that look more like a dragon acting as a living weapon.

Marino said the team’s inspiration came from the variety of dragon-themed cosmetics in other shooters, which mostly looked like scaly models of pre-existing guns—the most lavish of them might have a sculpture on the barrel, but the fundamental shape remained the same.

He also brought up one immediate challenge that raised the bar for what Valorant would need to do with its cosmetics. Because the game comes from the same company behind League of Legends, there was a player expectation to match the lavish, intricately animated skins seen in the company’s flagship game.

But Valorant, being first-person, opted away from character skins in favor of the weapon skins, and an intricate, high-animation gun skin presents a number of problems. The pair identified one early challenge when the team began work on a reload animation. The concept art resembled a smoldering fire dragon, while the early animation looked like a cute grubby lizard holding an egg.

“That brought up an interesting point,” Marino said “which is that we were trying to bring something inanimate to life. It has a personality whether we want it to or not.”

With 4 guns in the skin set, this meant each skin could have its own personality. So the “cute” animation survived, just on a different weapon.

“It was a good exploration for us to dive deeper into what a skin is,” he explained.

The final result served as a strong contrast to what “dragon-themed” skins typically look like. The one on the left was a living creature, the one on the right felt like van art stapled onto a shotgun.

Khanolkar stepped in to raise two production concerns: first, these time-consuming skins needed to be made alongside a whole other pipeline of content. Second, they weren’t sure if players would fully understand why they were suddenly carrying a dragon instead of a gun—would they even want these dragon guns?

Luckily it turned out, dragons are indeed very rad, and by launching these weapons early in Valorant’s life, Khanolkar said the team was able to convince stakeholders by making the skins a selling point—that Elderflame would be just the first of other high-quality skins to come down the pipe.

Next the pair moved on to discussing the Reaver skin set’s origins—the first weapon cosmetics made for Valorant. Marino explained that at this point the team didn’t even know what players wanted out of cosmetics or if they’d want a fantasy skin laid on top of modern-looking tactical weapons.

“Let’s just put a generic fantasy skin on a weapon and see if players respond to it,” he said, in a description of the process.

Khanolkar said this gave a chance for the team to learn what players wanted out of skins—did they want simple, unflashy weapons, or did they want unique animations and sound effects?

This led to some interesting findings—like the fact that some advanced animations could be misleading. Players might not feel a gun was ready to shoot, or it might slower even though it was literally the same time. “It felt pay-to-lose,” she deadpanned.

What surprised the team was that players did respond strongly to “evolving skins”—skins that changed shape and gained new forums as players completed more in-game challenges.

Reaver wasn’t planned to be included in a formal launch, and was only made available in Valorant’s Closed Beta to show off what was possible with skins. It remained unpopular for some of the reasons mentioned above—but then Valorant launched, and suddenly players were begging Riot to put Reaver back in the game.

“’Bring back Reaver’ became a meme!” Khanolkar said with exasperation. She said they even got queries during press interviews about it. She described there being two ways to re-include Reaver—one of them being “the wrong way.” The wrong way, in her words, would just be to re-ship the skin pack and charge players for it with no changes.

“The right way is a lot harder than the wrong way,” she explained. And the right way here was re-doing the Reaver skin to mirror the standards of skins like the Elderflame skin.

But there was stress from all the player interest in the skin—as speculation about the skin grew, the team began to recognize that player nostalgia and self-driven hype would not satisfy players.

This all came to head in a marketing meeting where the team was discussing the pack’s imminent relaunch. Khanolkar expressed worry over the player reception, especially with all the changes that had been done to the skin. Marino jumped in to ask what exactly she felt wrong about it, and clarify what changes had impacted the mood.

After A/B testing on a mood board, he realized her concern was over a very subtle effect—the animation included more pink than the original dark and moody purple.

The fix was equally surprising—Marino brought the skins back to a VFX artist, who pitched swinging the color in the complete opposite direction—pure black effects.

Khanolkar said that looking back, a core issue that led to this conflict was worrying over being a producer who, with little understanding to art, dictated artistic choices to the art team. Marino’s decision to solicit direct feedback from her helped the team course correct—to acclaim from players.

Marino said there were lessons for artists in this process too. “If people are giving you feedback, do your best to understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “If someone [on your team] is coming to you as a player, and saying something’s wrong…you need to give them the space to be honest with you.”

Khanolkar and Marino’s talk was ultimately one about navigating different kinds of trust—trust in your team, trusting your gut, and trusting your creative partners. But amidst the trust, the pair also uncovered key lessons from the cosmetic design process that can be applied to any live game, to help create standout cosmetics your players will resonate with and enjoy purchasing.

TOKYO — Devin Booker, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday arrived in Japan on a private jet just before 11 p.m. Saturday, less than 24 hours before Team USA opens Olympic play against France in a vital game out of the gate.

It was a brutal travel day after an exhausting playoff stretch, and the combination will test their mental and physical stamina. It also won the extreme respect of their American teammates.

“I have a lot of respect for those guys for not only committing to do this but actually keeping their word,” Team USA forward Draymond Green said. “You’re talking about three true professionals, three extremely competitive guys that wouldn’t be on their way here if this didn’t mean something.”

As the American team got together to watch NBA Finals games during training camp in Las Vegas and after flying to Japan, they speculated about the possibility that one or more of the three might beg off after such an extreme turnaround. But all three repeatedly stood by their commitment. On Friday afternoon, Booker took a plane from Phoenix and Middleton and Holiday, less than a day after their championship parade, took one from Milwaukee.

They met up at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, not as the competitors they were for the previous two weeks but as teammates. After refueling, they got on the long-range plane for a nine-hour trip across the Pacific through the night.

“We could’ve very easily got to the last game … and Devin Booker saying, ‘Man, we lost, I’m pissed off, I’m out,’ or Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday saying, ‘We just won a championship, I want to celebrate and stay home with my family, I’m out,'” Green said. “It’s on us to make sure that we do our parts to make sure they’re rewarded with what they ultimately came here for, which is to help us to compete and win a gold medal.”

It is unclear how much coach Gregg Popovich can rely on the three to play, but he indicated that his plan is to use them against the French, who project to be the toughest matchup the Americans will face in a pool-play round that also includes games against Iran and the Czech Republic.

“We obviously know they’re in shape. They’re tired. They just went through a roller coaster of emotion,” Team USA guard Zach LaVine said. “I think they’ll be ready to go, and we’ll see what happens. But as for the team, I think we need to be ready for everything. If they’re not ready to go, then we have to go out there and perform still.”

After Team USA finished seventh at the World Cup in China in 2019, when France knocked it off the medal stand in the quarterfinals, and lost two exhibition games in Las Vegas, the team’s reputation has taken some hits. But despite challenges with COVID-19 protocols, injuries and little time to bond, it will have 12 healthy players and a formidable talent pool ready to try to reestablish dominance.

“As much as it sucks to lose, those two losses only helped us,” Green said. “They didn’t hurt us one bit. If anything, maybe you lost a little bit of the fear that we’ve had in people’s hearts for years. Which you go out and do what you’ve got to do and you can get that right back.”

Fast bowler Marchant de Lange takes a wicket with a quarter of his deliveries in finishing with 5-20 from his set of 20; chasing 126 to win, Dawid Malan (62 off 43 balls) and D’Arcy Short (51 off 41 balls) both hit fifties in firing Trent Rockets to nine-wicket win

Trent Rockets cruised to a comfortable nine-wicket win over Southern Brave as Marchant de Lange created a bit of Hundred history, taking the first five-wicket haul in the tournament.

STORY OF THE MATCH

The Rockets romped to their 126-run target, clinching victory with 18 balls to spare as England batter Dawid Malan cracked an unbeaten 62 off 43 balls.

But, truthfully, the win was set up due to the fine work of the Rockets with the ball, as De Lange claimed a wicket with a quarter of his deliveries in finishing with 5-20 from his set of 20.

Ross Whiteley smacked 39 not out off 29 balls lower down the order for the Brave, but they never really recovered from a stuttering start which saw them slip to 71-6 despite winning the toss and electing to make first use of the Trent Bridge pitch.

The Brave rallied somewhat to ultimately post a score of 126-8, but it proved to be well below-par, despite George Garton bowling Alex Hales for a first-ball duck in reply to briefly raise the hopes of the visitors.

Malan joined a somewhat scratchy D’Arcy Short (51 off 41 balls) at the crease and the pair dominated proceedings thereafter, with the latter also bringing up a half century a ball before hitting the winning run.

MASSIVE MOMENT

De Lange’s fifth! The damage was already done, the Brave were limping to a low score, but it was still a ‘first’ in the history of The Hundred.

With the 98th ball of the Brave innings, and his 18th, De Lange sent Garton’s stumps cartwheeling out of the ground to cue wild celebrations among the giddy fast bowler and his team-mates.

MATCH HERO

De Lange was also rightfully named Hero of the Match, though Malan too produced a fine display to silence the doubters after a recent rough patch with the bat during the international white-ball series against Pakistan.

Joe Root also deserves a special mention. Not required with the bat, but the England Test captain got through a full 20-ball quota of his part-time off spin and, as well as conceding just 17 runs, he took a wicket with a ‘wrong’un’ to Liam Dawson which turned away from the right-hander and bowled him for five.

Root, in fact, upstaged his team-mate, and No 1 draft pick in The Hundred, Rashid Khan, who went wicketless and conceded 28 runs in his debut outing.

HISTORY-MAKER

De Lange was first introduced after 35 balls of the Brave innings, and he struck straight away, picking up Delray Rawlins caught at cover for seven.

At the end of that first five, he bowled Colin de Grandhomme (4) round his legs, and returned to claim fellow New Zealand batsman Devon Conway (18) just after the midway point of the innings.

Required to bowl the final five balls of the innings, De Lange then ended Chris Jordan’s handy cameo of 16 from 14 balls and then bowled Garton two balls later to make Hundred history.

WHAT’S NEXT?

There’s one final clash to come on Saturday, with the Northern Superchargers and Welsh Fire men in action from Headlingley – live on Sky Sports The Hundred and Sky One from 5.30pm.

Then, on Sunday, there’s another quadruple-header in The Hundred, with London derbies between the Spirit and Invincibles, as well matchups between Manchester Originals and Birmingham Phoenix.

The Spirit and Invincibles women’s squads kick things off from 10.30am, which will also be live streamed on Sky Sports Cricket YouTube channel.

The Matildas have dropped crucial points in the second match of their Olympics campaign, going down 4-2 to Sweden after a late capitulation.

In a see-sawing affair, both sides traded the lead late deep into the second half despite the Aussies scrambling at times to keep their heads above water under the wealth of Swedish possession at Saitama Stadium.

But it would all come undone for the Matildas when skipper Sam Kerr, who had scored two headers to keep her side in the game, missed a crucial penalty from the spot in the 69th minute.

OLYMPICS LIVE BLOG: DAY 1 UPDATES, NEWS, RESULTS | GALLERY: TOKYO OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY

The rare blip from the Aussie superstar allowed the Swedes to hold on to a slender 3-2 lead, before over-running the Matildas to wrap up the game 4-2 by the final whistle.

“I thought it was a really good save, probably not the best penalty. I apologised to the girls but that’s football,” Kerr said at full-time.

“We missed one, myself. So yeah, at the end of the day we lost which is disappointing.”

The loss means Australia will need to pick up points against the USA in their next match, setting up a blockbuster encounter to decide who will progress out of Group G.

Sweden is now 8-1-4 against Australia since 1995. The two sides previously played to a scoreless draw in June in a friendly.

Australia was coming off a 2-1 victory over New Zealand in its opener. It was the Matildas’ first win of 2021.

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TOKYO: The United States bounced back from their embarrassing opening defeat by Sweden in the Tokyo Olympics women’s football competition, thrashing New Zealand 6-1 on Saturday, while Britain and the Swedes reached the quarter-finals.

The previously all-conquering Americans had seen a 44-match unbeaten run ended by a 3-0 loss to Sweden on Wednesday, but with captain Megan Rapinoe restored to the starting line-up, they romped to victory to put their campaign back on track.

They face Australia in Kashima on Tuesday, knowing three points would make sure of a quarter-final place.

First-half goals from Rose Lavelle and Lindsey Horan put Vlatko Andonovski’s side two goals ahead at the break before New Zealand defender Abby Erceg’s 63rd-minute own goal.

Betsy Hassett got the Kiwis on the scoresheet with 18 minutes remaining, but the reigning world champions brought on the firepower of Christen Press and Alex Morgan late on.

Press and Morgan, who have now scored 175 international goals between them, both found the net and another own goal, this time from Catherine Bott, added further gloss to the scoreline.

The thumping win leaves the US in second place in Group G behind Sweden, who booked a last-eight spot with a dramatic 4-2 success against Australia.

Fridolina Rolfo broke the deadlock for the Scandinavians, but Chelsea star Sam Kerr scored twice to turn the game in the Aussies’ favour.

Lina Hurtig drew Sweden level and Rolfo’s second put them in front, but the key moment of the game in the 69th minute.

Kerr, who also scored in the opening 2-1 win over New Zealand, saw a penalty well saved by goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl.

Striker Stina Blackstenius came off the bench to grab a fourth goal for Sweden.

– White sends Britain through –

Ellen White’s third goal of the Games boosted Britain’s bid for a first Olympic women’s football medal with a 1-0 victory over hosts Japan in Sapporo.

The 2019 World Cup semi-finalists sit top of Group E after back-to-back wins.

“We are all happy with two wins now. It puts us in a good position, able to rest players and recover well. We are very happy,” coach Hege Riise told the BBC.

Canada moved into second place in Britain’s group as Janine Beckie scored a brace and missed a spot-kick as they saw off Chile 2-1.

Most of the drama came in Group F, as Dutch star Vivianne Miedema and Zambia striker Barbra Banda both equalled the record for most goals scored in an Olympic women’s tournament.

Arsenal’s Miedema, who netted four times in the Netherlands’ remarkable 10-3 win against Zambia, grabbed a double in a thrilling 3-3 draw with Brazil.

That drew her level with the six goals Canada’s Christine Sinclair scored at the 2012 London Games.

Her goals put the Dutch in control after an hour in Miyagi despite Debinha’s strike for Brazil, but Marta, who has scored at five straight Olympics, levelled from the spot before Ludmila’s 68th-minute effort.

Dominique Janssen snatched a point for the Netherlands though which puts them ahead of Brazil at the top of the table on goal difference.

Zambia have been the team to watch for the neutrals so far, with their two games having seen 21 goals scored after their 4-4 draw against China.

Banda, who scored a hat-trick in the Netherlands loss, netted another treble as Zambia came back from 3-1 down to lead 4-3.

But Wang Shuang’s 83rd-minute penalty, her fourth goal of the game, secured China a point.

It was the second time in as many games Banda has scored three and not been the top scorer in the match, after Miedema’s four-goal haul three days ago.

“I’ve not set the number of goals I will score,” said the 21-year-old. “I just want to score as many goals as possible. The little chance I have, I have to utilise it.”

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Games like Valorant don’t just live and die off of their huge playerbases—they also rely on premium, top-tier cosmetics to drive revenue and fund new characters for the growingly popular tactical shooter from the company that brought you League of Legends.

At the 2021 Game Developers conference, producer Preeti Khanolkar and art lead Sean Marino teamed up to pull back the curtain slightly on Valorant’s cosmetics production process. Their talk (aimed at producers and art leads in collaboration) explored how Riot balances its resources to produce its animation-intensive, aesthetically unique products, using the Elderflame and Reaver cosmetics sets as key examples.

The pair’s first example came from the Elderflame skin—an exceptionally expensive weapon skin that trades several Valorant guns’ normal reloading and firing animations for ones that look more like a dragon acting as a living weapon.

Marino said the team’s inspiration came from the variety of dragon-themed cosmetics in other shooters, which mostly looked like scaly models of pre-existing guns—the most lavish of them might have a sculpture on the barrel, but the fundamental shape remained the same.

He also brought up one immediate challenge that raised the bar for what Valorant would need to do with its cosmetics. Because the game comes from the same company behind League of Legends, there was a player expectation to match the lavish, intricately animated skins seen in the company’s flagship game.

But Valorant, being first-person, opted away from character skins in favor of the weapon skins, and an intricate, high-animation gun skin presents a number of problems. The pair identified one early challenge when the team began work on a reload animation. The concept art resembled a smoldering fire dragon, while the early animation looked like a cute grubby lizard holding an egg.

“That brought up an interesting point,” Marino said “which is that we were trying to bring something inanimate to life. It has a personality whether we want it to or not.”

With 4 guns in the skin set, this meant each skin could have its own personality. So the “cute” animation survived, just on a different weapon.

“It was a good exploration for us to dive deeper into what a skin is,” he explained.

The final result served as a strong contrast to what “dragon-themed” skins typically look like. The one on the left was a living creature, the one on the right felt like van art stapled onto a shotgun.

Khanolkar stepped in to raise two production concerns: first, these time-consuming skins needed to be made alongside a whole other pipeline of content. Second, they weren’t sure if players would fully understand why they were suddenly carrying a dragon instead of a gun—would they even want these dragon guns?

Luckily it turned out, dragons are indeed very rad, and by launching these weapons early in Valorant’s life, Khanolkar said the team was able to convince stakeholders by making the skins a selling point—that Elderflame would be just the first of other high-quality skins to come down the pipe.

Next the pair moved on to discussing the Reaver skin set’s origins—the first weapon cosmetics made for Valorant. Marino explained that at this point the team didn’t even know what players wanted out of cosmetics or if they’d want a fantasy skin laid on top of modern-looking tactical weapons.

“Let’s just put a generic fantasy skin on a weapon and see if players respond to it,” he said, in a description of the process.

Khanolkar said this gave a chance for the team to learn what players wanted out of skins—did they want simple, unflashy weapons, or did they want unique animations and sound effects?

This led to some interesting findings—like the fact that some advanced animations could be misleading. Players might not feel a gun was ready to shoot, or it might slower even though it was literally the same time. “It felt pay-to-lose,” she deadpanned.

What surprised the team was that players did respond strongly to “evolving skins”—skins that changed shape and gained new forums as players completed more in-game challenges.

Reaver wasn’t planned to be included in a formal launch, and was only made available in Valorant’s Closed Beta to show off what was possible with skins. It remained unpopular for some of the reasons mentioned above—but then Valorant launched, and suddenly players were begging Riot to put Reaver back in the game.

“’Bring back Reaver’ became a meme!” Khanolkar said with exasperation. She said they even got queries during press interviews about it. She described there being two ways to re-include Reaver—one of them being “the wrong way.” The wrong way, in her words, would just be to re-ship the skin pack and charge players for it with no changes.

“The right way is a lot harder than the wrong way,” she explained. And the right way here was re-doing the Reaver skin to mirror the standards of skins like the Elderflame skin.

But there was stress from all the player interest in the skin—as speculation about the skin grew, the team began to recognize that player nostalgia and self-driven hype would not satisfy players.

This all came to head in a marketing meeting where the team was discussing the pack’s imminent relaunch. Khanolkar expressed worry over the player reception, especially with all the changes that had been done to the skin. Marino jumped in to ask what exactly she felt wrong about it, and clarify what changes had impacted the mood.

After A/B testing on a mood board, he realized her concern was over a very subtle effect—the animation included more pink than the original dark and moody purple.

The fix was equally surprising—Marino brought the skins back to a VFX artist, who pitched swinging the color in the complete opposite direction—pure black effects.

Khanolkar said that looking back, a core issue that led to this conflict was worrying over being a producer who, with little understanding to art, dictated artistic choices to the art team. Marino’s decision to solicit direct feedback from her helped the team course correct—to acclaim from players.

Marino said there were lessons for artists in this process too. “If people are giving you feedback, do your best to understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “If someone [on your team] is coming to you as a player, and saying something’s wrong…you need to give them the space to be honest with you.”

Khanolkar and Marino’s talk was ultimately one about navigating different kinds of trust—trust in your team, trusting your gut, and trusting your creative partners. But amidst the trust, the pair also uncovered key lessons from the cosmetic design process that can be applied to any live game, to help create standout cosmetics your players will resonate with and enjoy purchasing.