BASEBALL
Yankees most valuable team
The New York Yankees maintained their status as Major League Baseball’s most valuable team and are worth an estimated US$3.7 billion, a survey released by Forbes on Tuesday showed. The Yankees, 27-time World Series champions who have held the top spot on the list in each of the 20 years Forbes has been tracking MLB valuations, are worth nearly US$1 billion more than the next most valuable team. Forbes said the average MLB team is worth US$1.54 billion, a 19 percent rise from last year, which the magazine attributed to new local TV deals that are increasing at roughly a two-fold rate, as well as a surge in profitability. The Los Angeles Dodgers (US$2.75 billion), the Boston Red Sox (US$2.7 billion), World Series champions the Chicago Cubs (US$2.67 billion) and the San Francisco Giants (US$2.65 billion) rounded out of the top five. The Yankees, who last year missed the post-season for the third time in four seasons, saw their revenue rise 2 percent to an MLB-high US$526 million, Forbes said.
CRICKET
Match thrown over umpiring
A Bangladeshi club cricketer peppered the field with no balls and wides to concede 92 runs in four legal deliveries in an extraordinary protest against poor umpiring in the Dhaka Second Division Cricket League, local media reported yesterday. Lalmatia Club’s Sujon Mahmud bowled 15 no balls to go with 13 wides that also raced to the boundary in his side’s match against the Axiom Cricketers. His four legal deliveries went for 12 runs as Axiom won by 10 wickets. Lalmatia had been dismissed for 88 after being put into bat with the team unimpressed at several umpiring decisions that went against them in the match on Tuesday. “It started at the toss,” Lalmatia secretary-general Adnan Rahman Dipon told the Dhaka Tribune. “My captain was not allowed to see the coin and we were sent to bat first and ... the umpires’ decisions went against us.” The tournament has been plagued by umpiring controversy and Fear Fighters Sporting Club’s Tasnim Hasan did something similar on Monday, conceding 69 runs in seven legitimate deliveries to protest against the umpiring.
RUGBY UNION
Players under investigation
Three Grenoble rugby players were on Tuesday night put under formal investigation by a French examining magistrate on suspicion of gang rape following a complaint by a 21-year-old woman, a judicial source said yesterday. Earlier, prosecutors issued a statement saying there was evidence that France’s Loick Jammes, New Zealand’s Rory Grice and Ireland’s Denis Coulson had probably taken part “either as initiator or accomplice” in the crime. The woman told police on March 12 that she had been drugged and taken to a hotel in Bordeaux, where she was raped after a French Top 14 league game between Bordeaux and Grenoble. Being placed under formal investigation in France is often the first step to a trial, but it does not necessarily mean that the case will go to court. The three players were not thought to have been held in custody, but have been placed under restrictions that would require them to report regularly to French police until the case is resolved. Last month, a lawyer for Coulson denied the allegations and described the incident “as a night out between consenting adults.”
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
Real Madrid’s FIFA Club World Cup quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund had taken three crazy turns during nine minutes of second-half stoppage time when Marcel Sabitzer chested the ball and sent a right-footed volley toward Thibaut Courtois’ post. Courtois leapt to his right, extended the long arm on his 2m frame and just managed to get his gloved fingertips on the ball, knocking it down. Courtois hit the ground as the ball bounded up. He looked skyward, planted his right hand to regain his balance, grabbed the ball with both hands on the second bounce and fell onto it with his chest. Sabitzer turned
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
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