HAMILTON, New Zealand (AP) — Jacob Bethell and Joe Root made half centuries in a 104-run partnership but both fell before lunch Tuesday as England battled to save the third test against New Zealand on the fourth day.
Root was out for 54 after compiling his 65th half century and 101st test innings of 50 or more while Bethell posted his third half century of the series and fell for 76.
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England's Jacob Bethell bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
The New Zealand cricket team pose for a group photo ahead of play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Jacob Bethell bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Jacob Bethell bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Joe Root bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Jacob Bethell and Joe Root gesture during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Joe Root bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
New Zealand's Mitchell Santner appeals successfully for a LBW decision to dismiss England's Joe Root during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
At lunch England was 193-5, still trailing New Zealand by 464 runs with Ollie Pope 17 not out and Gus Atkinson 19.
England has an unassailable 2-0 lead in the series after winning the first test by eight wickets and the second by 323 runs.
England began the day at 18-2 after losing Ben Duckett and Zac Crawley late on the third day and after New Zealand declared with a mammoth lead of 657. The tourists lost Root, Bethell and Harry Brook (1) in an extended first session.
While an England win was always improbable as it would have to eclipse the previous highest winning fourth-innings score in tests of 418, there was at least a possibility it could bat for two days to draw the test and win the series 2-0.
The loss of Root, who looked in good form and of Brook who scored centuries in both of the first two tests has made that outcome more remote.
Play began half an hour early to make up time lost to rain on the third morning and Root, who resumed on 0, and Bethell, who started on 9, looked untroubled at first.
Bethell reached his half century from 53 balls with eight fours and a six and Root followed him to that milestone from 59 balls with nine fours.
The England batters were unsettled by another fiery spell by New Zealand fast bowler Will O'Rourke who, bowling with a strong wind at his back, reached speeds of 153 kph (95 mph).
He struck Root in the groin, which left him in discomfort for the rest of his innings, and hit Pope on the helmet as he ducked into a short ball.
Root was out soon after, trapped lbw by left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner as he knelt to sweep. New Zealand's appeal was turned down by the on-field umpire but the replay showed the ball that had pitched on leg stump was straightening and hitting the middle stump.
Brook faced a series of extremely quick balls from O'Rourke and was caught when he fended a difficult delivery to Daryl Mitchell at first slip.
Bethell made 10 and 50 not out in the first test, 16 and 96 in the second and 12 and 76 in the third after stepping into a vacancy at No. 3 in the England order. He had reached 76 from 96 balls Tuesday when he sliced a ball from Tim Southee to Glenn Phillips at deep third man.
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England's Jacob Bethell bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
The New Zealand cricket team pose for a group photo ahead of play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Jacob Bethell bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Jacob Bethell bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Joe Root bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Jacob Bethell and Joe Root gesture during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
England's Joe Root bats during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
New Zealand's Mitchell Santner appeals successfully for a LBW decision to dismiss England's Joe Root during play on day four of the third cricket test between England and New Zealand in Hamilton, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Andrew Cornaga/Photosport via AP)
LOS LLANITOS, México (AP) — On a dirt field on Mexico’s Pacific coast, five cousins between the ages of 8 and 13 strip down and kick off their shoes. Nearby, adults help them fasten the pre-Hispanic-style “fajado,” securing loincloths and leather belts that wrap around their hips.
The Osuna children grab the rubber ball, all 3.2 kilograms of it — around 7 pounds or seven times heavier than a soccer ball — and begin playing. Only the hips may touch it, forcing players to leap through the air or dive low when it skims the ground.
As Mexico prepares to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the nation is looking back 3,400 years to one of the oldest team sports: the ancient ballgame known as ulama, a ritual practice nearly erased during the Spanish conquest that survived only in the remote pockets of northwestern Mexico before its late 20th-century rebirth. Today, authorities and its modern players are leveraging the momentum of international soccer to shine a spotlight on the ancient sport once again.
While players acknowledge that tourism fueled the sport’s revival, many worry that projecting an “exotic” image undermines a tradition central to their identity.
“We must rid the game of the notion that it is a living fossil,” said Emilie Carreón, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, and director of a project aimed at studying and practicing the sport.
That's exactly what the Osuna family is trying to do. After ulama player Aurelio Osuna died, his widow, María Herrera, 53, continued his legacy, teaching the ballgame to their grandchildren in their small village in Sinaloa, 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northwest of Mexico City.
“This seed will bear fruit someday,” she said.
According to the Popol Vuh, the sacred Mayan book, the world was created from a ballgame, where light and darkness clashed to balance life and death and set the universe in motion.
Long before the Maya, the Olmecs — the earliest known Mesoamerican civilization — practiced the sport; the recreation of this clash of opposing forces was common in various pre-Hispanic cultures. The evidence is in millennial rubber balls unearthed in Mexico and in nearly 2,000 ball courts found from Nicaragua to Arizona.
The game, depicted in codices, stone carvings and sculptures, had many variations and meanings, from fertility or war ceremonies, to political acts and even sacrifices.
While some players were beheaded — possibly the losers — Guatemalan archaeologist and anthropologist Carlos Navarrete explained this occurred only during specific periods and in certain regions. The physically demanding game was primarily a big social event, drawing crowds for fun and betting.
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés was impressed by the spectacle presented by the Aztec emperor Moctezuma but the Spanish ultimately banned ulama and ordered the destruction of its courts, likely viewing the tradition as a form of resistance to Christianity. For the Catholic Church “the ball was the living devil,” Carreón said.
The game — played by hitting the ball with the hip, the forearm or a mallet — survived only on the Mexican northern Pacific coast, where the colonial process led by Jesuit priests was less aggressive and ulama was accepted in Catholic festivities, said Manuel Aguilar Moreno, a professor of art history at California State University.
On the opening day of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, spectators watched as burly men contorted their bodies in unexpected ways to keep the rubber ball moving for as long as possible. The exhibition sparked studies about the ballgame and how to preserve it in the following decades.
Luis Aurelio Osuna, 30, Herrera’s eldest son, began playing hip ulama after school, just as his father did decades ago in Los Llanitos, a ranch next to the port city of Mazatlán. Now his three children also play.
Osuna and his mother teach the children how to hit the ball and guide them through the complicated rules, which include a scoring system with points that are won and lost.
They do it out of passion, but also out of pragmatism in a state where organized crime is pervasive.
“We need to find a way to keep them entertained with good things,” said Osuna.
Hip ulama teams have up to six players and the Osuna family sometimes participates in tournaments or exhibitions.
Decades ago, matches were big events tied to religious feasts, sometimes stretching on for an entire week. But those days are gone, as interest waned and rubber balls became hard to get.
In the 1980s, filmmaker Roberto Rochín documented the work of perhaps the last rubber ball-maker in the mountains of Sinaloa. The artisan made them similar to the Olmecs, who discovered that mixing hot rubber sap with a plant created a strong, elastic and durable material. This civilization made some of the oldest balls of the world.
During the 1990s, staff from a resort in the Mexican Caribbean traveled across the country in search of Sinaloan families who could represent the ballgame as a tourist attraction in the Riviera Maya, where no one played it anymore.
“It’s pure spectacle: they paint their faces and put on feathered costumes,” Herrera said. Yet, she acknowledges the value. “That’s where the revival began.”
The ballgame began to spread and to be known outside Mexico. Osuna, with the family team his father had formed, ended up playing hip ulama in a Roman amphitheater in Italy. It attracted so much attention that they were hired for a deodorant commercial, he said.
As the World Cup approaches, authorities and corporations are launching exhibitions in Mexico City and Guadalajara, and featuring ulama players in ad campaigns highlighting Mexican heritage — a move that has sparked mixed feelings.
“We’re not circus monkeys,” says Ángel Ortega, a 21-year-old ulama player from Mexico City who recently participated in a TV commercial alongside football players.
Ilse Sil, a player and member of the UNAM project led by Carreón, believes that institutional support will help to preserve ulama but officials need to promote the game in communities and schools to recruit more young players, as it remains a marginal sport with approximately 1,000 players mainly in México and Guatemala.
In Los Llanitos, Herrera’s grandchildren love playing. They don't care where — in the dirt field, in a court or even in the house corridor — but always with the precious inheritance: a handmade decades-old rubber ball from the mountains of Sinaloa. They say it cushions the blows better.
Eight-year-old Kiki is the most enthusiastic. He says he is determined to keep practicing until he fulfills the dream of leading a team of his own.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Juan Osuna plays ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
The Osuna family poses for a photo before a match of ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, that they organized in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Iker Salgueido plays ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Iker Salgueiro stands still as an adult fastens a pre-Hispanic-style “fajado,” or leather belt, in preparation for ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Youth play ulama, a traditional Mesoamerican ballgame dating to pre-Hispanic times, in Los Llanitos on the outskirts of Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
