England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff, who hasn’t played Test cricket for over a year, took a step back on the way to international recognition with a wicket for Lancashire on the opening day of this year’s English County Championship on Wednesday.
In a First Division match against Surrey at The Oval, pace bowler Flintoff, who underwent a fourth operation on his left ankle in the close season, removed home opener Scott Newman. When bad light ended the day’s play Flintoff, whose performance was watched by England national selector Geoff Miller, had taken one for 24 from 10.3 overs.
However neither Flintoff nor the rest of the Lancashire attack could dismiss Mark Ramprakash. The former England batsman started the day needing just three more centuries to get to a 100 hundreds in first-class cricket and he wasted little time reaching No. 98 by scoring an unbeaten 102, reaching three figures in 164 balls with 17 fours. At stumps Surrey were 242 for two with captain Mark Butcher, another ex-England batsman, 80 not out.
Elsewhere in the First Division, New Zealand fast bowler Shane Bond marked his Hampshire debut with seven wickets as champions Sussex were bowled out for 332 at the Rose Bowl.
Bond, who won’t be able to take part in New Zealand’s Test tour of England starting next month after playing in the rebel Indian Cricket League, showed his compatriots what they’d be missing with seven for 66 in 19.1 overs.
But former Zimbabwe batsman Murray Goodwin made 121 and Matt Prior, recently dropped as England’s wicket-keeper, 62. Hampshire, now minus Shane Warne, closed on four for one.
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