Sportsdesk | May 23, 2013
Well, not so much flying as much as breeding. And no, we’re not talking about Usain, the now-legendary Jamaican Olympian. It’s a pigeon. We explain: Like his human counterpart, “Bolt” the racing pigeon is a record-setter in every sense, fetching €310,000 (Dh1.4 million) from a Chinese buyer impressed by his winning pedigree and successes. Named after six-times Olympic champion, Jamaican Usain Bolt, the pigeon was put up for auction on the Belgian specialist site pipa.be — which comes in several language versions, including Japanese and Chinese, reflecting the sport’s global appeal. “Bolt is a super pigeon,” owner Leo Heremans was [...]
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Sportsdesk | May 22, 2013
Manchester City have headed west for a Major League Soccer tie-up with the New York Yankees. We look at some statistics that define the sport in the US. 18,807 The average attendance in Major League Soccer cited for the 2012 season, across 19 teams. That put the sport third in the list of best-attended professional sports in the United States, behind NFL and MLB but ahead of the NHL and NBA. 10 The first MLS season, in 1996, was competed by 10 different teams. Of those, only one, the Tampa Bay Mutiny, no longer exists, having folded in 2001. Four of [...]
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Kumar Motwani | May 21, 2013
In the slam-bang Twenty20 format of cricket many reputations can be tarnished, and then some can be enhanced given the huge amounts of money and fan following the Indian Premier League attracts. As the sixth season draws to a close with the knockout stages left, we look at those who had a successful outing over the last two months, as well as those who flopped given their experience or the hefty price tags that they carried: HIT XI MS Dhoni (captain, w.k) – Chennai Super Kings A must-have name to lead a side in any pressure-cooker situation even if Chennai [...]
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Chitrabhanu Kadalayil | May 17, 2013
2008 Differences with ECB The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) refused to sign No Objection Certificates permitting its contracted cricketers to play in the IPL’s inaugural season. What is essentially a domestic tournament, the IPL’s dates coincided with those of the County Championship, which is organised by the ECB. England players, with a few exceptions, continue to skip the annual competition while the two boards still share an awkward equation. Media restrictions The IPL surprised media outlets when it enforced guidelines on covering matches. They restricted the use of images during the event unless they were purchased from cricket.com, [...]
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Gary Meenaghan | May 14, 2013
Our man in Dubai, Gary Meenaghan, comes face to face with ‘the blonde falcon’ who will help generate publicity for October’s Fifa Under 17 World Cup, to be held across the Emirates. He did not quite fly in through the window of the Burj Al Arab’s 27th floor, but he did seem to magically appear from nowhere. Yesterday, in a plush ballroom close to the top of the world’s only seven-star hotel, local organisers unveiled a furry falcon that will become increasingly familiar as the UAE’s Fifa Under 17 World Cup approaches. Following a short, untranslated speech in Arabic by [...]
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Graham Caygill | May 13, 2013
Troy Deeney, whose goal ensured the English Championship side are one win away from Premier League qualification, empathises with Leicester, who they beat in the semi-finals of the second-tier competition. Hull City rode the emotions of despair and joy before achieving their place in the English Premier League last weekend, and the side they edged out to achieve automatic promotion, Watford, went through the same levels of drama in the space of 20 seconds on Sunday to keep their own aspirations of elevation alive. While Hull claimed the second of two automatic promotion spots on the final day of the [...]
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Paul Oberjuerge | May 10, 2013
As an American fan of football, I am predisposed to like David Moyes for this: he twice brought over Landon Donovan for winter spells with Everton, in 2010 and 2012. Donovan is the greatest player in the history of the American game, easily better than Clint Dempsey, who is erratic and less-than-selfless when playing for the national side. Donovan, however, had been dogged for much of his career by a segment of US fans for his perceived failures in Europe, particularly in regards to his signing with Bayer Leverkusen at age 16, when he pined and withered during a winter [...]
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Sportsdesk | May 7, 2013
Shah Rukh Khan does have a sense of humour. Or does he? The Bollywood superstar is joking about sneaking into Mumbai’s Wankhede cricket stadium – in disguise – for tonight’s Indian Premier League (IPL) game between Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders. Why? The 47 year old has been banned by the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA), who owns the stadium, after he picked up a fight with security personnel during an IPL game there last year. Shah Rukh, whose Red Chillies Entertainment company owns a little over 50 per cent stake in the Knight Riders, lost his temper when he [...]
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Sportsdesk | May 6, 2013
The Real Madrid great Alfredo Di Stefano, who will be 87 in July, has proved he still has plenty of life by announcing plans to marry a Costa Rican woman 50 years his junior. Considered one of football’s greatest players, the Argentina-born Di Stefano said he will marry 36-year-old Gina Gonzalez in the next few weeks “because I want to, and I have been a widower for eight years. “Each madman to their own,” he was quoted as saying in the El Mundo newspaper. “I am in love and I am marrying Gina. I am 86, but I have a [...]
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Sportsdesk | May 5, 2013
Kobe Bryant is in a court battle to keep his mother from auctioning off mementoes from his high school days in Pennsylvania and his early years with the Los Angeles Lakers. A New Jersey auction house has filed a lawsuit in US District Court for the right to sell the items after the NBA star’s lawyers wrote the firm telling it to cancel a planned June auction. The disagreement is a high-value, high-profile version of a question many families face: can a mother get rid of the stuff a grown child left at home? In this case, the 900 mementoes [...]
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