SOCCER
NZ cancel England game
New Zealand yesterday pulled out of a friendly next month against England, saying that “complications” caused by the COVID-19 pandemic had made it too difficult to field a team at Wembley on Nov. 12. “The shifting nature of travel restrictions and commercial flight availability under COVID means that we do not have certainty we could assemble a squad at Wembley,” New Zealand Football chief executive officer Andrew Pragnell said in a statement.
CRICKET
CSA intervention looms
South African Minister of Sports Nathi Mthethwa yesterday told the International Cricket Council that he intends to intervene in the running of Cricket South Africa (CSA) unless the latter commits by Oct. 27 to governance reforms. CSA has been mired in controversy and claims of mismanagement since the suspension of former chief executive Thabang Moroe in December last year, with an internal report providing a long list of concerns over the actions of staff members in the organization. “Efforts have been made over several months to try and assist CSA to stabilize its governance matters. This, after a huge outcry regarding the failure of its leadership to effectively manage its affairs,” the ministry said in a statement.
RUGBY UNION
Plumtree issues warning
New Zealand assistant coach John Plumtree yesterday said that Australia got away with several off-the-ball incidents in the drawn first Test in Wellington and that if the referee for Sunday’s second match is similarly lenient then the All Blacks would fight fire with fire. All Blacks coach Ian Foster was particularly unhappy with some of the treatment dished out to Richie Mo’unga, saying on Monday that the flyhalf was the victim of several late tackles that were not picked up by referee Paul Williams of New Zealand. Plumtree continued that theme, saying he hoped that the referee for the second Bledisloe Cup test at Eden Park, Australia’s Angus Gardner, would be more vigilant. “That type of play on the field has got to be dealt with by the ref,” Plumtree told reporters in Auckland. “There were several occasions where there was some off-ball incidents, but it has got to be dealt with properly on the field.” If the Wallabies adopted similar tactics on Sunday and went unchecked, then the All Blacks would have no choice but to give the visitors a dose of their own medicine in front of what is expected to be a sold-out crowd of 47,000, he said.
RUGBY UNION
S Africa given extension
Rugby Championship organizers SANZAAR have given World Cup champions South Africa an additional 48 hours to decide whether they are to compete in the four-nation tournament in Australia from next month. Australia, Argentina and New Zealand are locked in, but the participation of the Springboks, the defending champions, has been in doubt because of their lack of domestic rugby. “The SANZAAR member unions have agreed to provide SA Rugby with an additional 48 hours to finalize its internal stakeholder discussions on participation,” SA Rugby said in a statement. “This will now delay the scheduled departure of the Springboks from South Africa to Australia.”
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed