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ENGLAND COACH BAYLISSS PICKS RASHID AND FINN Uncapped Yorkshire leg-spinner Adil Rashid and Middlesex fast bowler Steven Finn were both called into a 13-man England squad announced Wednesday for next week’s first Ashes Test against Australia in Cardiff. >C3
Djokovic, Sharapova breeze as Wimbledon endures record heat
EYEING THE BALL: Bernard Tomic of Australia keeps his eye on the ball during his match against Pierre-Hugues Herbert of France. He will face Novak Djokovic in the next round. – Reuters
Defending champion and top seed Djokovic reached the third round with a 6-4, 6-2, 6-3 victory over Jarkko Nieminen which brought down the curtain on the Finn’s All England Club career, while fifth seeded Nishikori pulled out of the match against Santiago Giraldo due to calf injury
LONDON: Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova breezed through at a sweltering Wimbledon on Wednesday where temperatures soared to a record 35.7 degrees while injury-plagued Japanese star Kei Nishikori was forced to withdraw. Defending champion and top seed Djokovic reached the third round with a 6-4, 6-2, 6-3 victory over Jarkko Nieminen which brought down the curtain on the Finn’s All England Club career. Djokovic will take on Australian 27th seed Bernard Tomic for a place in the last 16 as the Serb
continues his bid to win a third Wimbledon and ninth Grand Slam crown. It was Djokovic’s sixth career win in seven meetings against the 33-year-old Nieminen and the two men exchanged a warm embrace at the net once their 92-minute Centre Court duel had ended. “It was his last Wimbledon so I congratulated him on a great career,” said Djokovic after firing 36 winners. “He’s been around for many years and he’s one of the nicest guys off the court and a great fighter on it. It was a pleasure to
play him.” Tomic made the third round by defeating Pierre-Hugues Herbert of France, 7-6 (7/3), 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) Fourth seeded Sharapova, the 2004 champion, outclassed Dutch qualifier Richel Hogenkamp 6-3, 6-1 in just over an hour and next faces Romanian 29th seed IrinaCamelia Begu. Sharapova, 28, hit 23 winners as she booked her place in the third round. With temperatures at Wimbledon at a record high of 35.7 Celsius — beating the previous mark of 34.6C in 1976 — the tournament heat rule was being used in women’s matches. That allows a 10-minute break between the second and third sets although the rule does not apply to men. However, Djokovic, who has played in 40 degrees at the Australian Open, said: “It wasn’t as bad as I thought. People were talking about it and predicting really difficult conditions. But I didn’t find it as difficult as I thought it might be.” Fifth-seeded Nishikori had been scheduled to face Colombian world number 60 Santiago Giraldo on Centre Court for a place in the last 32. But the 25-year-old admitted that the left calf injury he suffered
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Ajinkya Rahane surprised to be named stand-in India captain
GEARING UP: Ajinkya Rahane trains in a gymnasium in Mumbai after being named captain. – PTI
MUMBAI: Ajinkya Rahane admits he was stunned to be named India captain for their upcoming Zimbabwe series, after being dropped just a week earlier, and while he plans to draw inspiration from past skippers he also wants to make his own mark on the team. Rahane, who averages a tad over 30 in One-day Internationals, played the first of India’s three-match series against Bangladesh at Mirpur and scored nine off 25 balls as they went down by 79 runs. He was dropped for the next two matches, with regular captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni saying the 27-year-old’s batting was more suited to pitches offering more pace. But that did not stop India from putting Rahane in charge of a second-string squad for this month’s
tour of Zimbabwe for three ODIs and two Twenty20 internationals while resting Dhoni and a host of other senior cricketers. “The decision of naming me captain did come as a surprise because I wasn’t thinking about captaincy ever,” Rahane, who has played 55 ODIs, told the Indian cricket board’s website (BCCI.TV). “I didn’t know how to react when I heard the news. “Once the news slowly began to sink in, I became really confident of handling this new responsibility.” The 2-1 ODI series loss was India’s first to Bangladesh, and another loss against Zimbabwe would not go down well with the country’s cricket-crazy fans despite the lack of senior players in the touring party. Rahane, a regular in India’s test side, has had the opportunity to play under Dhoni, new Test cap-
tain Virat Kohli and also former skipper Rahul Dravid while playing for the Rajasthan franchise in the Indian Premier League. He said he would tried to emulate different qualities from all of them. “Firstly, playing under MS Dhoni I would observe how he would be calm on the field. He has a very peculiar and calm way of handling situations,” the Mumbai batsman added. “I would like to take that quality from him. “What I would like to take from Virat Kohli would be controlled aggression. You can see that quality in his batting and his captaincy. “And finally, Rahul bhai is someone who likes to keep things really simple on the field, which I got to know while playing under him with the Rajasthan Royals. “Having said that, I have my own set of ideas and I know what I have to do on the field.” - Reuters
COOL GOING: Russia’s Maria Sharapova returns to Netherlands’ Richel Hogenkamp during their women’s singles second round match. – AFP
last month in Halle, which had forced him to retire in the semifinals, was still a factor during his five-set win over Simone Bolelli in the first round at Wimbledon on Monday. “It got worse in the fifth set of that match, it hurt so much,” said Nishikori. “It hurt to walk and run today so I decided not to play.” As Giraldo goes on to face either German teenager Alexander Zverev or American wildcard Denis Kudla for a third round spot, Nishikori was left contemplating another injury setback in his career. Raonic faces Kyrgios Nishikori, the US Open runnerup last year, didn’t play from April 2009 until April 2010 after undergoing surgery on his right elbow. Last year, he was forced to quit his Madrid Masters final against Rafael Nadal with a back injury which was still affecting him by the time the French Open came around. Nick Kyrgios, the temperamental Australian who knocked out Rafael Nadal last year, ranted and raved at officials for the second match in succession as he beat Argentina’s Juan Monaco 7-6 (7/5), 6-3, 6-4. The 26th seed faces Canadian
seventh seed Milos Raonic who hit the third fastest serve in tournament history of 145mph in his 6-0, 6-2, 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (7/4) win over 37-year-old German Tommy Haas. Raonic, a semifinalist in 2014, hit 29 aces and 61 winners. Later Wednesday, fourth seed and French Open champion Stan Wawrinka takes on world number 48 Victor Estrella Burgos, only the second Dominican Republic player to take part in a Grand Slam. In other early second round matches, Bulgarian 11th seed Grigor Dimitrov defeated Steve Johnson of the United States 7-6 (10/8), 6-2, 7-6 (7/2), Belgian 16th seed David Goffin saw off Britain’s Liam Broady 7-6 (7/3), 6-1, 6-1 and French 21st seed Richard Gasquet got the better of compatriot Kenny De Schepper 6-0, 6-3, 6-3. Cilic survives scare A double fault by the narrowest of margins allowed Marin Cilic to complete a great escape at Wimbledon on Wednesday as the U.S. Open champion lived to fight another day with a 6-3 4-6 7-6(6) 4-6 7-5 victory over journeyman Richard Berankis. The Lithuanian appeared to be on the verge of pulling off a shock
upset when he held two break points at 5-5 in the fifth set. But Croatian Cilic saved the first with a forehand winner and blew out his cheeks in relief when he saw Berankis’s forehand drop long on the second. One game later it was all over as Hawkeye confirmed Berankis’s second serve at match point down had missed the line by millimetres, allowing Cilic to book a third-round clash with American John Isner. Haas not to quit Tommy Haas once had the tennis world at his feet. Unfortunately it’s been his right shoulder that has tripped him up. Haas has been under the knife so often that he jokes having titanium in his shoulder might be the only solution to his career-long injury horrors. But the 37-year-old Floridabased German insists he has no plans to quit a sport that has brought him joy and heartbreak in equal measure and came to its latest halt in a second round Wimbledon defeat on Wednesday. Haas lost to Canadian seventh seed Milos Raonic, buried beneath a barrage of 29 aces and 61 winners. — Agencies