Sporting News and Events

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Basketball is fast emerging as one of the most widely followed and watched game on this planet. With legendary players like Michael Jordan, who has his own Nike Air Jordan trainers brand, to the current Allen Iverson that are instantly recognisable in a lot of countries the world over, the game has reached an entirely new level. Due to the high level of skill involved many youngsters start training from an early age. Though it still is important to promote the game and support the players by giving them a platform to showcase their talent. Solihull Basketball Academy a sixth form college, gets all set to play host England’s under 16 teams in Solihull next week.

The best young players from around the country will be coming to the Academy to compete in a triangular tournament. The skilled Reading team that finished third in the Under-18 England basketball competition will complete the triangle. This small tournament is supposed to be sort of a boot camp for the young players as they get set to compete in the FIBA Under-16 Men’s European Championship that is to be held in Portugal in August.

Academy Head Coach Richard Parker said that “We are pleased to be able to support the England Under-16 National Team programme in their preparation for the European Championships. For our students and athletes to be able to see and compete against them will be an excellent experience.” The under 16 teams that will compete in this mini tournament are Sheffield Junior Sharks, London Pioneers, Plymouth Marjons Cannons, Manchester Magic, Torbay Tigers, Southend Swifts Eastside Eagles, Milton Keynes Lions, Brentwood Fire, Manchester Magic, Ipswich Tomcats, and the Sheffield Junior Sharks.

Opportunities like this are a welcome relief to talented players that have no platform to develop and master their talent.

David Beckham, the former England captain broke Bobby Moore’s appearance record. In Saturday’s friendly match against Slovakia, Beckham became the most capped outfield player by winning his 109th cap. In his recent interview he is full of praises for the England squad.

But the 33-year-old said: “It would be special but I would rather get the team to the World Cup than anything else.” Beckham further found quoted saying that he is more interested in getting his team England to the 2010 World Cup rather than breaking the record of Bobby Moore.

But the speculation this time around is that will Beckham get a chance to break the record. Coach Fabio Capello is still to decide over the matter. There are bright chances for Beckham to get selected as Arsenal winger Theo Walcott has been ruled out because of the injury and Manchester City’s Shaun Wright- Phillips is struggling with an ankle problem.

Beckham added: “I didn’t believe I would play for England once I was taken out of the team.”

“When I was left out of the squad by [former coach] Steve McClaren I just allowed myself to be proud of the number of caps I had.”

Beckham almost lost his heart when over two years ago he thought his international career seemed to come to an end. But David Beckham’s career came back into action when there was a move from Los Angeles Galaxy to AC Milan secured his short- term future in the squad. Beckham further said “Once we’ve qualified I need to stay fit and get in the squad.” He is right now only concentrating on staying fit and to securing his place in the squad.

Ahead of their tour to South Africa a discussion has started about who should lead the Lions. Gavin Hastings the former captain of Scotland is of the opinion that Brian O’Driscoll should be chosen as the skipper of the Team as he was playing exceptionally well this year and has lifted the First Grand Slam for Ireland in 61 years. He said that though there has always been a trend that the squad consists of more than a couple of players who are competent to provide the leadership but there would be a straight competition between Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell for who will be providing the honour of leading the Lions.

Hastings who in the year 1993 was the skipper of Great Britain and Ireland when they went on their tour to New Zealand added that Paul O’Connell is also a great leader but they should offer the captaincy to Brian O’Driscoll which will be a tribute for his outstanding performance this year.

He gave his suggestions ahead of the Lion’s head coach Ian McGeechan’s visit to Ireland for a meeting with Declan Kidney. The meeting will be dominated with the discussions for deciding on the captaincy issue.

Meanwhile Ian McGeechan may be having different criteria for choosing the skipper of Lions for the South Africa tour as he has done in the past when he declared Martin Johnson for the previous South African tour simply because he could intimidate the opponents.

Both the players are certain for appearance for this summer and both will also see a decent number of fellow Irish players in the match, however, Hastings has given his advice for a larger participation of English players. But who will grab hold of the Gilbert Rugby Match Dimension ball and lead his team, as captain, to victory, remains to be decided. Moreover, with the season ending on a good note it appears that the era of Martin Johnson’s influence is slowly fading away.

In a major move by Sale Sharks, Ben Cohen has signed a deal for a period of two years, which has opened up the way him to play for his country. The recent wave of the successful English players shifting to France to play Rugby in their 41 Top clubs has been reversed by Ben Cohen who has exercised his option to quit Brive and join Sale Sharks. Although the reasons for such a transfer given by the previous Northampton player Ben Cohen are due to family but there are speculations that it could be as a result of Jason Robinson, who is appointed recently into Sale’s coaching team. The World Cup winner has played a key role in bringing Cohen to Sale as he is supposed to be close to Cohen.

Kingsley Jones director of rugby was extremely delighted after signing Cohen and said it was nothing less than a coup for their club. He is also of the opinion that the 30 year old player is still very young to represent the English Team.

Similarly Ben Cohen, who has in 57 caps a record of 31 tries for his country, is of the belief that after two years in Brive, his return will definitely have a stake for his comeback at the international level. He further added that he was feeling very proud to be a part of the squad who are very confident and ambitious for winning trophies and titles. England will definitely be happy to have him suit up his rugby body protection on the international. Cohen hopes that there are bright chances of his return in the next season at the international level with the support and help of the management, coaches and the players.

Marc Lievremont, the Coach of the French Rugby Team, made an announcement on Monday that there is no change in the squad that got a humiliating defeat against England. Therefore it will be the same squad that will be representing in the final match for France in the Six Nation series Tournament. This match is being played in Rome on Saturday and France will be facing Italy.

On Sunday this French Squad was flattened by the English with a score of 34-10 at Twickenham that left the Coach Marc Lievremont shocked and he had given an indication that there would be changes in the squad for their next match with Italy. However it appears that the announcement of change was an emotional decision in the heat of the moment.

Now when he has made the final announcement there has been a change of heart and he has made no change. Justifying his decision he said that if they thought that this squad is competent to play the match against England then he can find no reason why they are not competent to win the match against Italy.

If we analyse this statement it appears that Lievremont is trying to prove that the win that England got was a fluke and he wants to prove that French squad is superior to the English squad. If by retaining the same squad for the next match, they register their win against Italy he will be able to justify his selection of the squad against England. However if they lose, things will get worse for the coach, the squad and of the future of French Rugby. Hopefully fans won’t start wearing Adidas France home shirt for football to the rugby games in the future, but the outlook is admittedly bleak for the national rugby team. This is a gamble that Marc Lievremont is taking, the outcome of which lies in the hands of the future.

There is a general feeling that Flintoff the iconic figure of the England’s cricket team might retire from Test matches. In the past several years one of the best bowlers of England Cricket has been Andrew Flintoff. He has rarely bowled badly and even when he is not attacking and instintively has to bowl just to keep things tight, he has been right on target in his bowling.

He has many times bowled magnificently for England when his fans have wished Flintoff to bowl from both ends. He is a strong person both physically and mentally which was seen from the fact that inspite of a hip injury he bowled very hard in Antigua.

In recent times it has been observed that the frequency of Flintoff’s injury has increased. Simultaneously fast bowling really is becoming a demanding job. Flintoff is a heavy person and his bowling action uses his body weight down on the crease for bowling. Inspite of his being a spirited man the alarming frequency of his injury will force him to rethink his decision for playing for a test match on a long term basis. Even if he is able to quickly stretch and get fit using machines like the Kettler Apollo Gravity Trainer, the test matches still put a lot of pressure on his body. Therefore many people are anticipating that after Ashes 2009, Flintoff may shift his focus to 20-Over game and 50- Over game. These days so much of cricket is being played that without playing Test Matches Flintoff can extend his cricketing career by many years.

With the Indian Premier League, the International events like the Champions Trophy, the World cup Twenty20, and the World Cup Flintoff will have his hands full. There is also news floating around that Andrew Flintoff should back out from IPL to take rest for Ashes but in fact in IPL bowling maximum of 4 overs would keep him fit for Ashes.

The disappointment on the face of Andrew Strauss, captain of England cricket team was quite apparent when he admitted that failing to defeat West Indies in the third Test match by the slightest of margins was not less than a feeling of getting defeated. He further added that when one is so close in winning the match and cannot overcome the final hurdle, it becomes very difficult to accept the result and you get a feeling as if you have lost the match.

The England team could not succeed in breaking the final partnership of Fidel Edwards and Daren Powell of the West Indies. In spite of the fact that they had about 34 minutes of play time to take the final wicket for winning the match, they were forced to accept the match as a Draw just after the clock struck 6 pm on the “Antigua Recreation Ground” and the gloom on the evening of Thursday set on the English players as they walked back to their dressing room with the feeling that it was just not their day with Lady Luck being on the sides of the West Indies. The final result would even be unexpected if one were playing International Cricket Captain 2007 on the PC, however, for the West Indies to draw with England so closely in real life is truly impressive. However he also mentioned that once you get over the emotions, and look back in a positive perspective you find that you played some outstanding cricket. He further hoped that the momentum has been shifted away from the home team in the series and if they keep on improving, they are sure to win the series.

The final day of the test match started with England requiring seven wickets and gave a victory target of 503 runs to the West Indies. For over seventy five minutes wet weather held up the play and possibility of victory did not look good as Guyanese and Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul kept on up to the 37th over of the day but Stuart Broads success in breaking the fourth-wicket partnership and after tea some continuous successes were just short of getting a victory in the match.

He also admitted that winning a test match is tough and with the wicket not deteriorating as expected on the final day, he did not hold the bowlers responsible for this draw and remarked that it was a day when events did not go their way.

Alan Phillips team manager of Wales felt let down by their six rugby stars Lee Byrne, Mike Phillips, Jonathan Thomas, Rhys Thomas, Andy Powell and Henson as he stated that they had broken the protocol of the team by venturing out on Sunday. These six players had gone out to “Queen’s Vaults Pub” which was facing the “Millennium Stadium” where they were involved in an incident and police had to be called.

He regretted and was aggrieved that after winning over England 23-15 and celebrating their win on Saturday by allowing a few beer cans in controlled fashion, going out on Sunday was unnecessary which has taken away the focus from the superb performance of their team. He also mentioned that this incident has disturbed their mind making life difficult for at least the next couple of days and warned that those boys would be intelligent enough and understand the fact that it will not be easy for them if they repeated the incident.

However, Alan Philips did not clarify if they had taken disciplinary action against the involved players and he mentioned that it is an internal matter that will not be disclosed. He only mentioned that life will be made little more hard for those six players in the coming next week and he assured that in the coming four weeks a lot of good will come from those players. We can imagine these 6 players will be forced to stay longer at practice and do more sets in the gym on machines, like the Marcy SM4000 multi-gym, as punishment. He also mentioned that those boys were also going through hard times as it was not easy for them when they found that they had hit the newspapers. He said he expected the players to be super-clean.

A striking reason given by the team manager Alan Philips was that in spite of the win for their team Rhys Thomas, Jonathan Thomas and Henson who were involved in the incident were frustrated as they could not play the match and this frustration led to their deciding to break the protocol of the team but hoped that they will learn from these mistakes.

On the fourth day of play at the St. John’s, Antigua a test match between England and the West Indies, Andrew Flintoff had suffered an injury to his right hip, which forced him to have an anti-inflammatory injection on Wednesday. The next day saw him still suffering where he just managed three over with difficulty.

The English team has a target of 503 runs to win to make the series 1-1, but without the assistance of Andrew Flintoff. As a gesture of goodwill and appreciation to Andrew, English fast bowler Steve Harmison requested team mates to put in that extra effort and achieve victory for all rounder Andrew Flintoff.

Steve Harmison further added that all knew the pain that he was going through and it would be nice if victory was achieved for him even though he has not carried up the bowling line up. He needed the other lads to do their stuff and collect those seven wickets. Bowling under illness is not easy, it takes courage and shows character of a person to go out on the field and perform for his mates. England has to take out seven pins with the help of their bowling team on day 5. The Cricket team is confident that they can do it, although the two big guns Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul are still at crease. The idea will be to send one of them back to the pavilion early in the morning which in turn will apply pressure on the others as they come along.

The second day began where the first day left off, England had a fantastic game with Paul Collingwood making his eight test hundred to add to a massive total of 566 for eight wickets.

The day saw Collingwood making a total 113 runs whilst his team mates also helped in the mounting total. Kevin Pietersen who came in from the previous day made 51 runs, Stuart Broad made 44, Matt Prior securing 39 runs and Graeme Swann who was not out with 20 runs to his credit.

West Indies saw Jerome Taylor taking two wickets for 73 runs in his bowling spell of 28 over. Fidel Edwards managed to acquire two wickets giving away 75 runs from his 26 overs that he bowled. Finally the last wicket taker that caused some damage to the British was Ryan Hinds who also got two great wickets of his 22.2 over spell while giving away 86 runs.

West Indies came in to bat after the declaration with Chris Gayle and the Indies captain Devon Smith as openers. Gayle began his excellent cricketing taking his score to 30 before he was caught at mid-off.

So at the end of day two at St. John’s we saw England declaring at 566 for eight with Paul Collingwood earning his eight Test hundred and the West Indies team while making a slow start managed to reach 55 runs for the one wicket of Chris Gayle. West Indies legends Brian Lara and Sir Vivian Richards will probably not be pleased with Windies performance, although at least this time around the Antigua stadium field was in better condition.