New Zealand quick Neil Wagner could not walk at the start of the final day of the first Test against Pakistan after breaking his toes, but he said that a burning desire to help his team pushed him through the pain barrier.
Wagner played the last three days of the match with broken toes after being hit by a Shaheen Afridi yorker in New Zealand’s first innings at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand.
The left-arm quick battled through the pain and went on to claim two second innings wickets, including that of centurion Fawad Alam, as the hosts prevailed with 4.3 overs remaining on the final day.
Photo: AFP
“On the last day, I couldn’t walk getting out of bed,” Wagner told reporters. “I sort of fell to the ground quite frustrated and quite angry, and just wanted to get out there and play.”
“As I tried to walk, the pain got worse and worse, and I got the frozen vegetables out of the fridge and a couple of ice bags, and tried to ice it a couple of times,” he added.
Wagner said that he was forced to take multiple injections to try and numb the pain.
“About the 12th injection on the day, I started screaming and squealing a bit and biting on the towel,” he said. “The injections helped for about two hours then you got to try and bite your teeth, grit and go through it. I kept walking back to my mark saying to myself: ‘Just one wicket, just one wicket.’ The desire to help the team is just there, you know, and it sort of gets you through it.”
Wagner is expected to be sidelined for six weeks, with Canterbury fast bowler Matt Henry named as his replacement for the second Test, which begins today at Hagley Oval in Christchurch.
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