The Star Online: Sports
The Star Online: Sports |
- Moriya, Blumenherst share LPGA lead
- Cricket: Top Indian officials quit in spot-fixing row
- Olympics: Rogge defends wrestling U-turn
| Moriya, Blumenherst share LPGA lead Posted: 31 May 2013 06:06 PM PDT GALLOWAY, New Jersey: LPGA rookie Moriya Jutanugarn and fourth-year pro Amanda Blumenherst shared the first-round lead on Friday in the ShopRite LPGA Classic. Thailand's Moriya nabbed six birdies with just one bogey in her opening round of five-under 66 to seize a share of the overnight lead for the first time in an LPGA event. While her 17-year-old sister Ariya has garnered most of the headlines this year with a Ladies European Tour win in March, 18-year-old Moriya has been quietly building a solid season on the LPGA Tour. She currently leads the Rookie of the Year race and is eager to take advantage of the steady opening round she delivered on a day when scoring got worse as the round wore on. "This course is going to be really windy in the afternoon, so we're lucky because we played in the morning," Moriya said. "My game today, I hit it in the fairway a lot, so it kept me in the places that are easy to play. "But the greens were getting firmer and firmer. It's in good shape, but you have to see where you can miss it and where you cannot." Blumenherst, who won the 2008 US Women's Amateur championship, had an eagle and four birdies in her round, a confidence booster for a player who has missed the cut in six of her eight starts this season. "It's been a while since I've had a very solid round of golf and felt like I just played well throughout the entire day," the American said. "It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun out there because it's been a challenging start to the season." The leading duo had a one-shot lead over defending champion and world number two Stacy Lewis. Lewis capped her 67 with her fifth birdie of the day on the par-five ninth. Lewis is seeking a third victory of 2013 after wins in Singapore and Phoenix. She also trying to successfully defend a title for the first time, and see if she can gain any ground on world number one Park In-Bee. Park endured her first missed cut since the 2012 season-opening Women's Australian Open in the weather-truncated tournament in the Bahamas last weekend, and she got off to a slow start Friday with a three-over 74 that left her tied for 76th. Two-time LPGA Tour winner Michelle Wie posted her best round of the season, a three-under 68 that gave her sole possession of fourth place. - AFP |
| Cricket: Top Indian officials quit in spot-fixing row Posted: 31 May 2013 06:01 PM PDT NEW DELHI: Two top officials of the Indian cricket board quit on Friday over an escalating spot-fixing scandal, reports said. Sanjay Jagdale, the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and treasurer Ajay Shirke submitted their resignations to the board president, the NDTV news network and other channels said. "I don't want to give any reason, I have sent my resignation to the BCCI president," Jagdale was quoted as saying by NDTV. The resignations of Jagdale, the number two in the board hierarchy, and Shirke were likely to pile on more pressure on president N. Srinivasan to quit. Srinivasan has been under fire to resign after his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan was arrested last week for allegedly betting on Indian Premier League (IPL) matches. Meiyappan, an executive at the Chennai Super Kings IPL team which is owned by Srinivasan's group India Cements, is being probed by a three-member BCCI commission. Meiyappan's arrest came after Test paceman Shanthakumaran Sreesanth and two teammates in his IPL franchise the Rajasthan Royals - Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila - were also taken into custody. The trio, who deny any wrongdoing, are in jail in New Delhi after police accused them of deliberately bowling badly in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars after striking deals with bookmakers. Srinivasan, who was elected as the BCCI president in 2011, has been resisting pressure for him to step down and can only be removed if two-thirds of the board's members vote against him. Earlier this week, India's sports ministry said Srinivasan should quit on "moral grounds" over the widening scandal that has rocked the sport. Police suspect that the betting racket is being controlled by international crime syndicates whose bosses are well aware of the rewards if they can manipulate events on the field in the cricket-mad region. Earlier Friday, Siddharth Trivedi, a paceman with Rajasthan Royals franchise, testifed before a judge in a New Delhi court in the case against his teammates. "His statement is important because he has told us he has information on some of the bookies arrested by us," the police officer, who is part of the investigating team, told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Trivedi's statements will be admissible as evidence in the court. It will definitely make our case stronger," the officer said. Sreesanth, who has played 27 Tests for India, is alleged to have been paid four million rupees ($72,000) to give away around 14 runs in an over while playing against the Kings XI Punjab on May 9. Chandila and Chavan are said by police to have agreed to similar deals in two other IPL matches. Spot-fixing is an illegal activity in which a specific part of a game, but not the result, is fixed. Batting superstar Sachin Tendulkar earlier on Friday voiced distress over the betting and spot-fixing scandal, becoming India's first big-name player to speak out on the issue. "The developments in the last two weeks have been shocking and disappointing," Tendulkar, the world's leading scorer in both Test and one-day cricket, said. Also on Friday, a court in Mumbai ruled that Meiyappan and Bollywood actor Vindu Dara Singh Randhawa, would have to remain in police custody until Monday. Police say Meiyappan passed on match-related information to Randhawa by telephone. - AFP |
| Olympics: Rogge defends wrestling U-turn Posted: 31 May 2013 05:58 PM PDT SAINT-PETERSBURG: International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge on Friday defended the organisation's dramatic U-turn on wrestling. Having removed the ancient sport from the 2020 summer Games programme in February, the IOC then included it on Wednesday, three months later, on a short-list of three sports competing for inclusion in those Games. "I don't see any shortcomings in the system, I don't see any errors in the system," said Rogge at the end of a three-day executive board meeting in St Petersburg. He added: "We do not go for change for the sake of change. We only go for a review of the Olympic programme periodically to take the decision to lead the best Olympic programme. "I cannot forsee the future, (the IOC session) won't go for a new one (sport) just for the sake of a new one. Novelty is not the issue, quality is the issue." Wrestling was part of the original ancient Olympic Games in 708BC and since the modern Games were resumed in Athens in 1896, it has only once been left off the programme, in 1900. Now it has been placed on a shortlist alongside baseball-softball and squash to compete for a single berth. The winning sport will be voted on during the IOC session in Buenos Aires in September, when the host city for the 2020 Games will also be decided. Rogge praised the International wrestling Federation for its reaction to being initially dumped back in February. But he said that criticism and complaints would have been directed at the IOC no matter which sport or sports came under threat. "If you look at the reaction of the federation to their admitted shortcomings, the international federation drastically changed its own governance, including women in the executive board - which was a criticism of the report from the IOC - changing the format of the competition, changing the presentation," he said. "Had we decided to eliminate another sport from the core sports, such as modern pentathlon, we would have been criticised for having betrayed the legacy of Pierre de Coubertin, who invented the sport. "Had we decided to eliminate taekwondo, we would have been accused of betraying the spirit of Asian sport, I mean we would have had criticism for any sport that would have been eliminated." - AFP |
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