South Africa fast-bowling prodigy Kagiso Rabada took six wickets to put South Africa on top on the third day of the fourth and final Test against England at Centurion Park yesterday.
England were 318-8 at tea, still 157 runs behind South Africa’s first-innings total of 475.
Rabada took 6-101, including a devastating burst of three wickets in 12 balls shortly before lunch.
Rabada dismissed Joe Root, James Taylor and Jonny Bairstow in quick succession — all caught behind by wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock — to claim his second five-wicket haul in successive matches.
He followed up by ending an aggressive innings of 33 by Ben Stokes, who was caught at first slip by Hashim Amla off the second delivery with the second new ball.
Chris Woakes was dropped by a leaping De Kock off Morne Morkel when he had 1, but went on to score 26, helping Moeen Ali add 43 for the eighth wicket, before he was caught at slip in part-time off-spinner J.P. Duminy’s first over.
Root, who hit a century and two 50s in the first three Tests, made 76 with 11 fours before edging Rabada to wicketkeeper De Kock.
Batting conditions were tricky under a heavily overcast sky on a pitch with occasional variable bounce, but England lost only one wicket before Rabada’s burst.
Alastair Cook and Root made their third wicket stand worth 99 with largely watchful batting, adding 37 runs in an hour before Morne Morkel dismissed Cook for 76.
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