■ Cricket
Sri Lanka to play Kiwis
A New Zealand A team will play Sri Lanka A in a home series of three matches in March of next year, New Zealand Cricket (NZC) said yesterday. The series will be played on the South Island and will consist of three five-day tests followed by a three-match one-day series. New Zealand Cricket says it is negotiating with other International Cricket Council member countries to establish an annual A team playing program, which will involve a mix of home and away tours. The Pakistan tour will open with three-day matches against Canterbury and Auckland starting on Dec. 8 and 13 respectively. After their two-test series against New Zealand before and after Christmas, the tourists will play a one-day match against Wellington on Jan. 1 before the five-match one-day series. South Africa begins with a one-day match against Northern Districts on Feb. 12 before its six-match, one-day series against New Zealand.
■ Sumo
Musashimaru takes a rest
Struggling grand champion Musashimaru will sit out the Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament, officials from the Musashigawa stable said yesterday. Hawaiian-born Musashimaru, who pulled out of July's Nagoya tournament after suffering three straight losses, missed the previous three tournaments while recovering from surgery on his left wrist. The 32-year-old is one of the sumo's most successful foreign-born wrestlers. Following fellow Hawaiian Akebono, he was second to reach the ancient sport's highest rank, and has won 12 Emperor's Cups, more than any other wrestler currently in the ring. But Musashimaru has been unable to return to form since undergoing surgery on his wrist.The 15-day Autumn tourney begins on Sept. 7 at Tokyo's Ryogoku Kokugikan.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier