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Tennis Bytes: Somdev rises to 94, a shorter ATP tour?
Somdev is hitting his stride and new heights on the ATP tour.
His ranking has risen to 94, his best ever on the ATP tour.
Somdev has been hovering in and out of the top 100 for the past few months.
A ranking within the top 100 will ensure automatic entry into the majors allowing him to skip the grind of qualifying rounds.
Devvarman recently clinched the men’s singles gold at the CommonWealth Games in New Delhi, justifying his top seeding.
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IPL: A Sea Of Storms For Kochi, Kings XI and Rajasthan Royals
Image by kdewhunter via Flickr
The route to IPL4 has never seemed as foggy as it is today.
And there seems to be no one sounding the fog horn either!
The three vessels SS Kings XI Punjab, SS Rajasthan Royals and SS Kochi are stranded in the stormy seas seeking a lighthouse to guide them to safety.
But their distress signals , their SOSs, have received little response from the current keepers of the beacon.
The IPL seas are still uncharted waters and the reefs are mapped as they are traversed.
Three voyages in three seasons and it was Heigh Ho! Life’s a bottle of rum!
Life’s not so rummy any more for the voyagers.
Nor quite so profitable!
The treasure hunt continues!
Tennis Bytes: Sampras in the news, Federer wins 64th title
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Pete Sampras is in the news — in an active role and a passive one.
Roger Federer won the If Stockholm Open equalling Sampras’ record of 64 career titles.
Along the way, Federer passed 900 career matches —- the only current player on the tour to do so.
An interesting bit of trivia is that Federer has never retired from any of his matches.
This is hard evidence of his durability and mental toughness.
Federer’s powers may be on the wane but his popularity with fans endures.
The Stockholm Open did not offer any real challenge to Federer but sometimes the less challenging ones are harder to win.
Pete Sampras lost to Greg Rusedski 4-6,2-6 at Chengdu, China in an ATP Champions Tour event final.
The event also saw the debut of Thai star, Paradorn Srichapan.
The top seed in the event was Swede Thomas Enqvist.
This is one tour when the also-rans can get their own sweet measure of revenge for the many defeats inflicted on them by their better counterparts in their heyday.
Greg Rusedski boasts of just one win against the 14 time Grand Slam champion on the ATP tour.
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IPL: The octopus spreads its tentacles to South Africa, Kochi and Lalit Modi in troubled waters
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Cricket South Africa (CSA) reminded us that the tentacles of the IPL mess are not restricted to just Indian and English shores.
CSA have terminated an external investigation into the bonuses paid by Lalit Modi to CSA chief executive Gerald Majola and 40 other staff during the IPL’s second season.
The IPL was moved to South Africa in 2009 following the Indian government’s refusal to provide adequate security for the event because of the clash with the general election. The security apparatus of the state could not be stretched to meet both concerns.
A payment of 4.7 million rands was made to Majola and his associates.
The South African opposition has slammed the switch to an internal investigation as ‘disappointing’.
The Enforcement Directorate(ED) is known to be investigating the payment back in India as apparently there was no tax paid on the foreign exchange transfers.
Indian cricket: More cricketing mores
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The third one-day between India and Australia was rained off. A similar fate befell the first one-day at Kochi.
It just goes to show that cramming in a series in what’s usually the off-season requires detailed planning. Though we had a wonderful Test series, the fans and spectators were left short-changed by the washout of the two ODIs.
Rain, rain, go away, the Ozzies and Indies want to play!
The Australians are probably left a little shell-shocked by the way their curtailed tour of India turned out. A winless tour for a team of their calibre will rankle for a long time.
I don’t envy the Poms when they meet the kangaroos down under.
The Australians will be doubly motivated to move up the rankings and prove that their recent losses are just an aberration.
Indian badminton: Jwala Gutta, the doubles flame
Jwala Gutta has always been in the news but always for the wrong reasons.
Unlike her singles counterpart, Saina Nehwal, controversy seems to court her with a vengeance.
So who is Jwala Gutta?
Jwala is a left-handed badminton player of mixed Indian and Chinese descent.
According to Wikipedia:
“Her mother’s grandfather, Tseng from Tianjin, was a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and stayed with him at Sevagram ashram, where he translated Gandhi’s autobiography and other works into Chinese.”
With her doubles victory partnering Ashwini Ponappa at the CommonWealth Games 2010 , New Delhi, Gutta is now a household name and can count herself among the limited pantheon of Indian sports heroes.
Jwala and her partner Diju also clinched a silver at the CWG in the mixed doubles , going down in the final to the Malaysian pair Koo Kien Keat and Chin Ee Hui 14-21, 21-10, 10-21.
But the path to glory has been a thorny one.
Ponting, undercover agents and acclimatisation
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A non-IPL post, for a change. Some ramblings on the latest happenings in the cricketing world.
IPL: Kochi still up in the air, Shilpa Shetty lets fly at the BCCI
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I must admit that the IPL going-ons have all the makings of a soap opera.
It has all the ingredients – money, glamour and sex appeal (courtesy the Bollywood biggies), a decamping honcho, exotic locations, politics and more twists and turns than a pot-boiler.
Add much needed melodrama and you have a hit formula.
A few bytes on the continuing saga:
IPL: Iceland , diplomatic immunity , Kochi , signature campaigns and a Warneing
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Kochi meets the deadline?
There have been conflicting reports in the Indian press and media about the proposal submitted by the Kochi consortium to the BCCI.
The Times Of India (TOI) reports that the Kochi franchisee have requested an additional ten days to come up with a resolution of the ongoing dispute among the consortium members.
IPL Pay Packets May Get Thinner and the IPL Leaner and Meaner
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Pay packets in IPL4 will be much leaner than in the past three editions.
The simple reason is that supply now exceeds demand.
With the reduction in the no. of IPL teams to eight and Kochi showing no signs of having their house in order for the 6 pm deadline on Wednesday, 20th October 2010, IPL4 will be a much leaner, much meaner tournament.
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