■ Cricket
Lara to lead Windies again
Brian Lara was reappointed captain of West Indies on Wednesday, hours after an 18-month contract dispute was settled between senior players and the national board. The dispute cost Lara the captaincy a year ago but his successor, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, resigned two weeks ago saying the burden of leading a losing team affected his batting form. Lara, who turns 37 on Tuesday, became captain for a third time, and looks set to lead the team into next year's World Cup being held in the Caribbean for the first time. But first he'll lead West Indies in the seven-match, limited-overs series against Zimbabwe starting tomorrow in Antigua, and hinted he won't play in every match in order to be fit for the following test series with India. "This has been a tough decision for me personally," Lara said. "But some luminaries of West Indies cricket, past and present, called me and asked me to consider taking the job in the last week."
■ Tennis
Indonesia snubs Israel
Indonesia has refused to play its Fed Cup playoff in Israel and has requested the International Tennis Federation change the venue to a neutral country. If the request is denied, the women's team will have to forfeit, Indonesian Tennis Association (ITF) deputy secretary-general August Ferry Raturandang said yesterday. "We cannot play in Israel," he said, adding that his country, home to some 190 million Muslims, had no diplomatic relations with the Middle Eastern, Jewish state. Indonesia has long supported Palestinian independence. The ITF said on Tuesday that Israel, which earned a promotion playoff as a winner in the Europe/Africa Zone Group I, would host Indonesia in the July 15-16 World Group II Playoffs.
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