■CRICKET
Cricketer becomes suspect
A cricketer from the Indian portion of Kashmir was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of carrying explosives in his bag but freed hours later after questioning, police said. The arrest at a stadium complex in Bangalore, came hours before a Champions League Twenty20 match there between Cape Cobras from South Africa and Victorian Bushrangers from Australia. Pervez Rasool, 21, was staying at the complex with Indian Kashmir’s under-22s cricket team. He was arrested after a beeping metal detector with a range of 300m led police to his room, said Shankar Bidari, Bangalore police commissioner. “No explosives were found in his bag. But explosives might have been brought in that bag or might have been transferred elsewhere. There may be some residue in the bag,” Bidari said. The bag is being sent to a forensic laboratory, with results expected in three to four days, he said. “He is a free man. If the result is positive, we will again take him into custody,” Bidari said.
■SOCCER
No Saudi deal on Reds
Liverpool co-owner George Gillett left Riyadh on Saturday with no progress on selling his stake in the club to Saudi sports investor F6, a Saudi official said. Gillett spent several days in Saudi Arabia this week discussing setting up Liverpool-branded training schools and studying the possibility of creating a Mideast NASCAR racing circuit, F6 deputy managing director Gassim Hamidaddin told reporters. “That was the main purpose, and that’s what happened during the visit. There were no talks on buying Liverpool,” he said. Gillett’s visit, weeks after F6 chairman Prince Faisal bin Fahd bin Abdullah met him in London, generated talk that a deal for the Saudi businessman to buy a major stake in debt-laden Liverpool was in the offing. But Hamdaddin insisted the visit was almost totally aimed at building on the two sides’ agreement to create the Liverpool academies in Saudi Arabia and northern Africa.
■FIGURE SKATING
Kim wins Trophee Bompard
World champion Kim Yu-na of South Korea captured the Trophee Bompard on Saturday, winning the free skate with a flawless performance to finish ahead of Japanese skaters Mao Asada and Yukari Nakano. After blowing the field away in Friday’s short program, Kim did it again to total 210.03 points after receiving 133.95 in the free skate and sound a warning ahead of the Vancouver Olympics in four month’s time. Asada, last year’s world champ, rose one spot to second overall with 173.99 points. Nakano finished third with 165.70 points. Nobunari Oda of Japan captured the men’s title, winning the free skate to finish ahead of Tomas Verner of Czech Republic and American teenager Adam Rippon.
■GYMNASTICS
China wins more medals
China’s dominance continued on Saturday when they won three individual gold medals and a silver at the World Championships at London’s O2 Arena. Olympic champion He Kexin won the women’s uneven bars while Zhang Hongtao, on the pommel horse, and Yan Mingyong, on the rings, were crowned champions in the men’s competition. To add to a sensational day for China, Olympic champion Zou Kai claimed silver in the floor exercise, which was won by experienced Romanian Marian Dragulescu. The Chinese grabbed 12 individual medals at last year’s Olympics in Beijing and their team proved too strong on the third day’s action at an arena that will host gymnastics at the 2012 Olympic Games.
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