■ Baseball
No plan to fete Bonds: MLB
Major League Baseball has no plans to celebrate the moment San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's all-time home run record, according to commissioner Bud Selig. Bonds remains two home runs short of the 755 career home-run record set by Aaron against in Milwaukee three decades ago. Asked if the league has plans to commemorate the occasion of Bond breaking the record, Selig said there were none. "That's up to San Francisco," he told reporters.
■ Soccer
Charlton loses two stars
Relegated Charlton lost two of their international stars on Friday as Danish striker Dennis Rommedahl was sold to Ajax Amsterdam and defender Luke Young was set to move to Middlesbrough. The 28-year-old Rommedahl, who had played in the English Premiership since 2004 after spending seven seasons with PSV Eindhoven, was sold to Ajax for ?680,000 (US$1.4 million). Boro have negotiated a price of ?2.5 million for 28-year-old Young. Young, who can play at center-half or left-back, joined the Addicks for ?4 million in 2000, but has been given permission by manager Alan Pardew to pursue his hopes of a return to the top flight following Charlton's relegation.
■ Soccer
Anelka could leave: Lee
Bolton coach Sammy Lee admitted on Friday that French striker Nicolas Anelka will be allowed to leave if the club receives an offer from a major team. "I have to be fair to him; he is 29 and told me he wants Champions League football. So do I, with Bolton," said Lee. "But if one of the top four in England or a Champions League club in Europe showed an interest, it would be wrong of me to stand in his way. I'm not in the business of getting rid of our best players but I have to be fair to everybody. If the deal was fair to all parties, I would not stop him."
■ Rugby
World Cup tickets sell well
Two million tickets have been sold for the Rugby World Cup, which will be hosted by France and starts in September, the organizing committee said. A total of 2.4 million tickets have been put on sale for the World Cup, and the sale of the 2 millionth ticket 50 days before the start of the event puts organizers ahead of target, a statement said on Friday. The Rugby World Cup takes place in 10 venues in France and two in Britain. The World Cup starts Sept. 7 and ends Oct. 20. "These ticket sales numbers will mean full stadiums that are alive with excited supporters and busy, colorful streets in all of the host cities," said Bernard Lapasset, president of the French Rugby Union and the Rugby World Cup Organizing Committee.
■ Cricket
Muralitharan support urged
All-rounder Andrew Symonds has urged Australian crowds to applaud Muttiah Muralitharan if the controversial off-spinner breaks Shane Warne's test wickets record when Sri Lanka tour Australia in November. The 35-year-old Sri Lankan became the second player in history to reach 700 victims in the final test against Bangladesh in Kandy earlier this month and lies eight scalps behind leg-spinner Warne's record haul. Symonds, a former teammate of Muralitharan at English County Lancashire, said he hoped Australian crowds would respect his achievements despite him twice being called for throwing on tours there in the 1990s.
Taiwanese tennis veteran Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) and her Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko finished runners-up in the Wimbledon women's doubles final yesterday, losing 6-3, 2-6, 4-6. The three-set match against Veronika Kudermetova of Russia and Elise Mertens of Belgium lasted two hours and 23 minutes. The loss denied 39-year-old Hsieh a chance to claim her 10th Grand Slam title. Although the Taiwanese-Latvian duo trailed 1-3 in the opening set, they rallied with two service breaks to take it 6-3. In the second set, Mertens and Kudermetova raced to a 5-1 lead and wrapped it up 6-2 to even the match. In the final set, Hsieh and
ON A KNEE: In the MLB’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shoot-out, the game was decided by three batters from each side taking three swings each off coaches Kyle Schwarber was nervous. He had played in Game 7 of the MLB World Series and homered for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), but he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off. No one had. “That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shoot-out,” Schwarber said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after
Seattle’s Cal Raleigh defeated Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero 18-15 in Monday’s final to become the first catcher to win the Major League Baseball Home Run Derby. The 28-year-old switch-hitter, who leads MLB with 38 homers this season, won US$1 million by capturing the special event for sluggers at Atlanta’s Truist Park ahead of yesterday’s MLB All-Star Game. “It means the world,” Raleigh said. “I could have hit zero home runs and had just as much fun. I just can’t believe I won. It’s unbelievable.” Raleigh, who advanced from the first round by less than 25mm on a longest homer tiebreaker, had his father
NBA team owners on Tuesday authorized league officials to begin an in-depth analysis regarding expansion, but NBA commissioner Adam Silver said there was no timetable for any changes. The NBA board of governors meeting in Las Vegas marked the first time team owners officially discussed expanding the league beyond 30 teams, but Silver said they went no deeper than requesting more research into the possibility. “There is a significant step now in that we’re now engaging in this in-depth analysis,” Silver said. “It’s something we weren’t prepared to do before, but beyond that, it’s really day one of that analysis. In terms
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