18 SPORTS
Tuesday, 22 December, 2015
Flying Finn lays Durban Test claim
Barca target further glory after world title
cOURtEsy EsPN Steven Finn may well have bowled himself into the England team for the first Test against South Africa after an impressive display on the first day of the tour match at Pietermaritzburg. On a sluggish pitch and against strong opposition with genuine international aspirations of their own, Finn bowled with pace, control and rhythm to claim four wickets to help England enjoy an almost perfect day. A post lunch spell of three wickets in nine balls was especially impressive and knocked the stuffing of the South Africa A middle order. While Chris Woakes, who has impressed in white ball cricket and in training, was probably pencilled in to play in the first Test before the start of this game, Finn has taken the chance offered with a style that will surely prove hard to ignore. With just two days between the first and second Tests, it bodes well for England to have a group of seamers in decent form. Stephen Cook offered South Africa A’s only consolation as they succumbed for 136 in 56 overs. By carrying his bat for an unbeaten 53 in four-and-a-quarter hours, the uncapped 33-year-old demonstrated the patience, discipline and hunger required to prosper at Test level.
BERLIN AGENCIES
Bayern Munich opened an eight-point lead in the Bundesliga on Saturday with a 1-0 win at struggling Hanover as the Bavarians. Bayern finish 2015 eight points clear after Thomas Mueller converted a 40th minute penalty for his 14th league goal of the season when Hanover captain Christian Schulz conceded the spot-kick after the ball hit his arm. “It was clear that Hanover weren’t going to give any points away, so we’re delighted to get the win,” Mueller told Sky. This was the third game in succession where jaded Bayern have laboured to victory although the Bavarians have still only dropped five points from their 17 games so far for a season’s tally of 46. Second-placed Borussia Dortmund
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ARCELONA striker Luis Suarez warned that the Spanish giants will be hungry for even more silverware after capturing a record third Club World Cup. The Uruguayan fired a second-half double as European champions brushed aside Argentina’s River Plate 3-0 in Sunday’s final in Yokohama before insisting Barca’s appetite for success would not be dimmed after lifting a fifth trophy of 2015. “After a competition like this the majority of teams suffer a dip,” said Suarez. “We have to avoid that and we have that desire to keep on winning titles and show that we’re the best team in the world.” Barcelona president Josep Maria
Bartomeu described Lionel Messi as the greatest ever after the Argentine wizard returned from a bout of kidney stones to score Barca’s opener. “Leo Messi is the best player in the history of football,” he said. “It’s spectacular what we have achieved.” Messi became the first player to score in three Club World Cup finals, after leading Barca to victory in 2009 and 2011, when he netted with a deft flick of his left boot nine minutes before half-time. However, it was the prolific Suarez who stole the show with a second-half double, collecting the player of the tournament and golden boot awards after scoring five goals in two games in Japan. Suarez, who bagged a hat-trick in Barca’s 3-0 semi-final win over Guangzhou Evergrande, has struck 24 goals in 24 games this season, including
17 in his last 11. But the former Liverpool striker is content to let Messi and Neymar, who returned from a groin strain to start against River, take the plaudits. Hunger games: “They are the top two players in the world,” said Suarez. “You know you will get chances to score playing alongside them.” Astonishingly, Messi (47), Suarez (46) and Neymar (41) have plundered 134 goals in 2015 — more than Real Madrid. “Messi could barely stand up a few days ago,” said Barcelona coach Luis Enrique. “But he was desperate to play. He is a leader, our reference point. “But the players with most weight in the dressing room are the first to show their desire,” Enrique added. “That determination rubs off on the rest of the team.” Barcelona fly back to Spain on Monday still top of La Liga, level on
points with Atletico Madrid and two points clear of bitter rivals Real, who pulverised Rayo Vallecano 10-2 at the weekend, and with a game in hand. And Enrique insisted Barcelona, who have collected the European Champions League, La Liga, the Copa del Rey and European Super Cup this year, will hit the ground running. “Clearly it does get more and more difficult to win trophies,” he said. “But if these players have shown anything it is their hunger to do just that.” European teams have won the Club World Cup eight times in the 12 years it has been played, underlining a gulf in class partly explained by the fact that six of Barca’s starting 11 on Sunday were South Americans. River coach Marcelo Gallardo sighed: “We had a game plan. When Messi scored, it went out of the window.”
Bayern beat Hannover96 to go eight points clear of Dortmund Australia’s Khawaja set
are now eight points behind Bayern after crashing to a 2-1 defeat at Cologne as the hosts scored twice in the final 10 minutes. Dortmund took the lead after just 18
minutes when Greece centre-back Sokratis Papastathopoulos headed home a corner swung in by Henrikh Mkhitaryan. But Cologne took the three points
when Simon Zoller fired home from close range on 83 minutes before Anthony Modeste earned a yellow card for ripping off his shirt, yelling a primal scream, after hitting the 90th-minute winner. Bayer Leverkusen climbed to fourth in the table with a 1-0 win at Ingolstadt as Mexico striker Javier Hernandez kept up his stunning scoring run. “Chicharito” claimed his 17th goal in Leverkusen’s last 14 games in all competitions when he stabbed home his 11th league goal of the season since joining from Manchester United. Europa League side Augsburg picked up their third straight win to move away from the relegation places into mid-table with a 1-0 victory at Hamburg thanks to Jan Moravek’s headed equaliser.
for Boxing Day return MELBOURNE AGENCIES
Usman Khawaja said Monday he was confident his recurring hamstring problems were behind him as the batsman works towards a recall to the Australia team for the second Test against the West Indies. Khawaja returned from a spell on the sidelines in Sunday’s Big Bash League Twenty20 match, scoring an explosive 109 off 70 balls for the Sydney Thunder in their one-run win over the Melbourne Stars. “I’m very happy I got through the game. I feel really good today,” Khawaja told reporters. “Just normal general soreness, the hammies feel really good.”
BOLT THRIVES DESPITE ATHLETICS’ ANNUS HORRIBILIS
PARIs AGENCIES
Jamaican sprint superstar Usain Bolt shone at the Beijing world championships, but athletics was later mired in a
shocking doping-linked corruption scandal that plunged the Olympics’ number one sport into crisis. Bolt bagged an unprecedented fifth treble gold medal haul at a global championship in the Chinese capital in August, suitably in the same Bird’s Nest stadium where his career took off in in the 2008 Olympics. But the towering Jamaican’s feats were overshadowed by revelations that threw track and field’s world governing body, the IAAF, into turmoil. At the same Beijing world champs where Bolt shone, former British double 1500m Olympic champions Sebastian Coe beat Sergey Bubka in a vote to take over from Lamine Diack as IAAF president. No sooner was Coe installed than Diack was revealed to have accepted bribes worth up to one million euros to allow doped Russian athletes to compete. A “horror show”, in Coe’s words. Coe, who was IAAF vice-president
for eight years under Diack and had previously described the Senegalese as the sport’s “spiritual leader”, insisted he had had no inkling of corruption within his organisation. Diack remains under investigations by French authorities, while the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) is also preparing a report on allegations of corruption within the IAAF. Such was the external pressure, Coe ended his 38-year association with US sportswear company Nike, for whom he worked in the lucrative role as an ambassador, in a bid to eliminate any possible conflict of interest. The BBC had published an email from a senior Nike executive that suggested Coe had lobbied Diack for the 2021 World Championships to be awarded to Eugene, Oregon, where Nike was founded. When asked if it had been in Nike’s interest for the event to be awarded to Eugene — which it was, without a formal
CMYK
bid process — Coe said: “I don’t conclude that.” The IAAF also provisionally suspended athletics powerhouse Russia in November, and both RUSADA (Russian anti-doping agency) and Moscow’s antidoping laboratory were banned over the bombshell WADA report alleging systematic state-sponsored doping. Russian officials have vowed to reinstate the national athletics federation in time for track and field athletes to compete in next summer’s Olympic Games and to fight the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport. “We are against any kind of doping, first of all because doping destroys people’s health,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “Those who resort to doping, of course, must be punished accordingly.” After Russia, there were also shocking revelations in Kenya, an east African giant of the track that topped the medals table in Beijing. The IAAF ethics commission suspended Isaiah Kiplagat, who
led the national athletics federation for more than 20 years, along with his vicepresident David Okeyo and former treasurer Joseph Kinyua over suspicions they had siphoned off sponsorship money from Nike and subverted anti-doping controls. The question remains whether Coe is the man to instigate change. Prior to becoming IAAF vice-president in 2007, the 59-year-old Briton was appointed as the first ethics commission chairman for world football’s governing body FIFA, an organisation currently mired in corruption allegations of its own. With links to two of the biggest scandals in modern sport, Coe nevertheless remained bullish when asked why people should believe that he is the right person to clean up athletics. “Have there been failures? Yes. Will we fix them? Absolutely. I’m absolutely focused on doing that. If we don’t do that, there are no tomorrows for my sport. This is the crossroads.