BASEBALL
Yanks, Gardner sign deal
Outfielder Brett Gardner and the New York Yankees have agreed a four-year contract worth US$52 million. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman announced the deal on Sunday. The new pact starts next year. The deal includes a fifth-year club option for US$12.5 million and a US$2 million buyout. If traded, Gardner would receive US$1 million. Gardner has a US$5.6 million, one-year contract for this season. The Yankees are moving Gardner to left field this year after the signing of free agent center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury to a US$153 million, seven-year contract in December last year.
CRICKET
Injuries mar Asia Cup
Injuries to star players, including India’s World Cup-winning captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, have taken the sheen off the Asia Cup, which opens in Bangladesh today. New entrants Afghanistan appear the only injury-free side as the other four teams struggle to field their best players for the 11-match tournament, billed as the symbol of regional supremacy in the one-day game. Dhoni’s absence, due to a side strain suffered on the New Zealand tour that ended barely a week ago, leaves stand-in captain Virat Kohli without one of the world’s leading limited-overs players. With Bangladesh also due to host the World Twenty20 next month, India are not the only side reluctant to take risks with injuries at the Asia Cup. Sri Lanka, who ended a month-long bilateral tour of Bangladesh on Saturday, have their bowling resources depleted with the absence of injured seamer Nuwan Kulasekara and veteran spinner Rangana Herath. Opening batsman Tillakaratne Dilshan may not be available for the entire tournament due to a finger injury sustained during the recent one-day series against the hosts. Pakistan’s fast bowler Mohammad Irfan was ruled out of both the Asia Cup and the World Twenty20 after aggravating a hip injury sustained on the tour of South Africa in early December last year.
SOCCER
Balotelli denies assault
AC Milan striker Mario Balotelli on Sunday denied being involved in an altercation with a photographer following media reports of an alleged assault outside a nightclub. Domestic news agency ANSA said Balotelli, who was ruled out of his side’s trip to UC Sampdoria on Sunday due to injury, had traveled to Liguria, on Italy’s northwest coast, to watch his brother play in a soccer match. The report said Balotelli later refused a photographer’s request for a photograph when he showed up at a restaurant with his fiancee Fanny Neguesha and some friends. The party moved on to a nightclub, where the same photographer was waiting. According to witnesses, Italy international Balotelli kicked the photographer after refusing another request for a picture. The photographer called police and later accompanied them into the nightclub to identify the 23-year-old. However, Balotelli told ANSA: “I categorically deny being involved in the altercation, I was standing apart.”
SOCCER
Australia launches FFA Cup
Australia will have its own knockout FFA Cup giving grassroots clubs the chance to play the top-tier A-League clubs this year, Football Federation Australia said Monday. Preliminary matches involving more than 600 clubs across Australia are underway ahead of the national knock-out FFA Cup round-of-32 starting in late July, the FFA said. That is when the 10 A-League clubs will join the 22 clubs who will have qualified from feeder cup competitions in the country’s eight states and territories.
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