South Africa paceman Dale Steyn yesterday played down his rift with Australia captain Michael Clarke, saying their supposed feud had been “a bit silly.”
Clarke has been ruled out of the last three matches of the one-day series against the Proteas by a hamstring injury and Steyn said he wished the Australian a swift recovery.
The row started in March when Clarke sledged Steyn when the South African and teammate Vernon Philander were batting to try, ultimately unsuccessfully, to save both the Cape Town Test and the series.
Photo: AFP
Clarke, who was fined for threatening England paceman James Anderson with a broken arm during the Brisbane Ashes Test last year, apologized in Cape Town for the sledge.
However, Steyn said after a triangular series in Zimbabwe later in the year that he would not forgive the personal slight until Clarke shook him by the hand and apologized — comments he said had been blown out of all proportion.
“It’s got nothing to do about: ‘I’ll see you in the car park and we’ll beat the crap out of each other,’” Steyn told reporters in Canberra yesterday. “Maybe I just said too much in Zim. The issue with Michael Clarke got blown out completely, it was like two schoolgirls the way the media got hold of it.”
Although Steyn said that he believed there was “a line” in sledging that should not be crossed, he was happy to put the disagreement with Clarke behind him.
“He’s a great player and I think there’s enough respect from both of us, we’ve played against each other for long enough now and it’s just kind of got blown out of the water. It’s a bit silly really in all honesty.”
With the one-day series nicely poised at 1-1 after the first two matches in Perth, the tourists face Australia in the third match at Manuka Oval today.
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