CRICKET
India’s women go on tour
India’s women’s team left for a tour of England yesterday, hoping to claim a share of the limelight the men’s team is so used to dominating. Amid the busy men’s calendar, the women’s team will feature in two four-team limited-overs tournaments in England starting next week. Captain Jhulan Goswami said “it is important to do well abroad” in order to raise the profile of the team, which will play in a Twenty20 tournament starting on Thursday and a one-day tournament from June 30 to July 27. Women’s teams from Australia, New Zealand and England will also compete in the tournaments.
FOOTBALL
Packers reunite to get rings
Super Bowl champions the Green Bay Packers reunited on Thursday to receive their championship rings after receiving special permission from the league to hold the ceremony. The Packers captured their Super Bowl title four months ago, but the National Football League is now in the midst of a labor dispute. The locked out players and team officials gathered on Lambeau Field to collect their rings after the club asked the league to allow them to go through with the ceremony. The rings feature a Packers “G” logo with 13 diamonds to symbolize each of the team’s titles. Packers chief executive Mark Murphy said the players “wanted big and they wanted bling.”
BASKETBALL
Yao sues sportswear firm
NBA star center Yao Ming has sued a sportswear company in central China for US$1.5 million for using his name and signature without permission, Chinese media reported yesterday. The Wuhan Intermediate Court heard the case against the Wuhan Yunhe Shark sportswear company on Wednesday, the Chutian Metropolis Daily newspaper reported. The oft-injured 30-year-old Houston Rockets center did not appear in the courtroom where his lawyers argued the company’s “Yao Ming Generation” label and associated advertising campaigns misled consumers, the report said. The US$1.5 million in damages sought were based on how much Yao earned from similar authorized campaigns, it added.
SOCCER
Wembley to get final again
The Champions League final will take place at London’s Wembley Stadium in 2013, for the second time in three years, UEFA president Michel Platini announced on Thursday. Having hosted European soccer’s showpiece event last season, when Barcelona beat Manchester United, Wembley will again play host to the final because of the “exceptional circumstances” of the Football Association’s 150th anniversary, Platini told a press conference. “There are always many candidates for the Champions League final and the [UEFA] Congress, but this is to mark the special year of the English FA,” Platini said. “Some will be surprised that we’re going back there two years later, but it was important to mark the FA’s 150th year ... They’re the oldest federation. If we forget the past, we have no future.”
RUGBY UNION
All Blacks face Web ban
Social media enthusiasts in the All Blacks World Cup squad will be banned from updating their Twitter and Facebook pages during the tournament. Head coach Graham Henry said a previous policy of advising caution to players would be replaced by a blanket ban during the Sept. 9 to Oct.23 tournament, which New Zealand is hosting. The ban also includes blogs and newspaper columns.
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