A team based upon their powerful Test bowling lineup had enough power to carry them to victory over their determined New Zealand opponentsAustralia’s relationship with Twenty20 international cricket has always been strained. When Ricky Ponting captained the first ever match in 2005, with players in fancy dress wearing contrived nicknames on their shirts, even smoking an unbeaten 98 couldn’t stop him looking like an unimpressed cat unable to bring up a hairball.Influential people shared his disdain, but even after taking the format seriously, and developing one of the better domestic leagues, Australian teams in T20 World Cups fell flat. It was easy to dismiss the importance of the condensed form, but for a dominant Test power that also collected 50-over...
The year’s first grand slam will not produce a fair competition with many players forced to compete without a proper warmupNo tennis player across the world attracts drama like Yulia Putintseva. The story goes that at just 16, she lost in the finals of the US Open junior event, stormed off the court and when officials beckoned her to return she dramatically proclaimed: “It’s not safe to be around me.” She once flipped off an Australian Open crowd on her way out after a loss. Her deliciously petty handshakes, so entertaining for onlookers, are detested across the sport. Related: Extra women's tennis tournament scheduled for quarantined Australian Open players Related: Andy Murray 'devastated' as he shelves Australian Open plans Continue...
A regime with one of the world’s worst human rights record is staging the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games and the IOC – like Australia, which will be represented – is silentThe city of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan is famous for two characteristics. It has the highest concentration of marble buildings in the world and is capital of one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The two are not unrelated: all-powerful central Asian dictators with natural resource wealth are able to construct ostentatious monuments to themselves with little concern for their citizens.But the current Turkmen leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has grown tired of building with marble. On Sunday the 60-year-old dentist’s newest vanity project will be unveiled: the latest...
The belief that England could defeat Australia for the first time since 1995 was crushed by the way the Kangaroos easily outsmarted and overpowered Wayne Bennett’s sideIt’s the hope that hurts the most. The anticipation and the creeping belief that England can finally knock off Australia, rugby league’s answer to the all-conquering All Blacks.Even with the return of the talismanic Sam Burgess and the appointment of the master coach Wayne Bennett, with nearly half of their team now playing in the elite NRL competition and not on home shores in Super League, they have again fallen agonisingly short. Related: Australia simply too good as England denied place in Four Nations final Continue reading...