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| Soderling scores first win over Federer • Swede comes from set down to win 6-7, 7-6, 6-2• 'I always said the more times I play him, the closer I'll get'Robin Soderling claimed his first victory over the world No1, Roger Federer, at the 13th time of asking in Abu Dhabi, coming from behind to win in three sets to reach the final of the Capitala World Tennis Championship.The Swede already had a game under his belt, having begun his season yesterday with victory over Federer's Swiss compatriot Stanislas Wawrinka at the exhibition tournament. But the 15-time grand slam champion began well in his first match of the campaign, taking the opening set on a tie-break and then breaking in the opening game of the second.Soderling is a different prospect since reaching his first grand slam final in France last year, though, and he broke back in game six before levelling in a one-sided second tie-break.Although the Swede lost to Federer in Paris, he built on that breakthrough and impressed in November's ATP World Tour finals in London, reaching the semi-finals.Soderling gained the crucial break in the third game of the decider and then saved four break points in the next game before breaking again to seal a 6-7 (6-8), 7-6 (7-1), 6-2 victory."I always said the more times I play him, the closer I'll get, and here I am today," said the 25-year-old Soderling. "So far so good, but it's going to be a long season for sure, hopefully I'll get to play against Roger a few more times."Federer reflected on a tough opening to his 2010 season, saying: "Obviously it's hard to start playing against him but I had fun."TennisRoger Federerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Arsenal v Bolton Wanderers postponed because of bad weather The Barclays Premier League match between Arsenal and Bolton Wanderers at the Emirates Stadium this evening has been postponed due to the weather. feeds.timesonline.co.uk |
Barney Ronay: Is the IPL auction exciting or stupid? Discussion over batting and bowling averages have been replaced with players' value in hard cashThis week saw a clearing of the decks – including the traditional last-minute wrangle with the England and Wales Cricket Board over who owns Paul Collingwood – ahead of Tuesday's 2010 IPL player auction. It's hard to know what to think about this. The IPL is still a confusing event even for the halitosis-ridden, Pot Noodle-reared, format-promiscuous cricket obsessive, for whom I feel I can cautiously speak. Fashionable opinion holds that the IPL is a form of cricketing revolution, a decisive power-shift from wonkily extrapolated Victorian lawn game to subcontinental billionaire's beano; a post-colonial land grab set to the music of Haddaway and Maroon Five and spiced with lingering shots of bored well-groomed women in big sunglasses.English cricket, on the other hand, has tended to see the IPL in the same way the English once viewed America, as an essentially silly thing that will, with any luck, soon blow over or go away. Three years into its strangely dreamlike and fevered existence, it still feels as if the IPL could go either way. Is it a fatally underrated agent of change? Or something entirely self-sustaining, a goons' rodeo of careening self-importance, Ozymandias in pyjamas?Maybe the auction will offer some more hints. This is, after all, an event that has a voodoo grip on England's Test team, for whom every thunk of the price-tag gun is like a hatpin to the heart. Last year's auction overlapped with England being bowled out for 51 in Jamaica. This time around we've already seen auction hopeful Jonathan Trott flailing about like a half-cut gamekeeper chasing squirrels with a yard broom during the collapse at the Wanderers.The auction is unlike anything that has ever happened in any sport, but entirely in tune with the IPL's flat-packed transactional theatre. The IPL needed a transfer market: and here is one in its most literal form, a clearing house where cricket's traditional measure, statistics, is replaced by an unarguable cash value.It must be thrilling, and frightening, to have your worth so mercilessly totted up. Perhaps not for Trott and Eoin Morgan, hard-bitten hired guns for whom the IPL is a natural home. But you fear for the Scratchcard hopefuls Usman Afzaal and rank outsider Anthony McGrath, whose defiant yen to play at the IPL after resigning the Yorkshire captaincy brings to mind the kind of ballsy middle-aged divorcee who gets her hair done and buys a sports car with the number plate PARTIGRL and goes off on a riotous waiter-fellating cruise of the Greek islands.The IPL is clearly important. But is this just because it's new and rich? It has always seemed shocking that cricket could go from an aura of august and starchy reserve to prostrating itself before a podium-gyrating version of sporting mammon, Big Money Twenty20's pure sporting pornography, a thrusting, gurning shortcut to an endless money shot, in this case the pinch-bludgeoned, cow corner switch-scoop. Not that our auction lots will be concerned as they flex and grin for the casting panel. The IPL is important, but it seems increasingly unlikely to destroy anything. It's too sui generis, too one‑track and – with an exhausting 60 matches over 40 days – too bloated with its own founding greed to look like an exclusive version of the future.IPLCricketBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Bill McLaren obituary BBC sports commentator and 'the voice of rugby union' for nearly 50 yearsIt was said that Bill McLaren, who has died aged 86, was the voice of rugby. Of course, it was never said quite like he would have said it himself, in his honeyed, Borders burr, tinged with the impishness that suggested that none of this was to be taken too seriously. He would never have said anything about himself in such a way, for he was famously modest, a son of Hawick for whom a day away from his home town was a day wasted. But in truth, he was much more than rugby's voice, more its full-blown orchestra, devoted to the works of the Romantic movement, and only the Romantic.For a year short of a full half-century, first on radio and from 1962 on BBC television, Bill's voice washed over rugby union, soothing and harmonious. He saw no evil and spoke no evil. If there was violence, it was never anything more than "brief shenanigans", and nobody ever kicked a ball badly, but merely made it look a bit like one of Bill's own "scruffy nine irons".He played golf every day, come hail or shine, with his wife, Bette, whom he met at a local hop in 1947. When his body – never his voice – began to show signs of age and the second finger of his right hand curled down permanently into his palm, he was told that a simple operation might restore it to the vertical. He decided to leave well alone, since it seemed to improve his grip on his clubs.As a rugby player, he was, to borrow one of his phrases, a "tearaway flanker", a forward with the Hawick first XV, hugely promising by all accounts and fanatical from the day his father took him to see the New Zealand All Blacks at Mansfield Park, Hawick. I remember interviewing him once about his early influences, and he mentioned being impressed by the great Jack Manchester, captain of the All Blacks, in 1935. We searched and searched for images of the player and came up with a few grainy, jerky frames that stood in stark contrast to Bill's sharp recollections.The son of a knitwear salesman, during the second world war Bill found himself in Italy, a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. He was a forward spotter deep in hostile territory, often on his own, identifying enemy targets and relaying the information back to his unit. One day, drawn by the smell of decay to a village cemetery, he rounded a corner and was confronted by a mound of 1,500 corpses. The image would haunt him for the rest of his days.In 1947 he was back in Hawick and playing in a Scottish trial. But in that same year he contracted tuberculosis, and so began the second fight for his life. At the East Fortune sanatorium in East Lothian, he was selected as one of five patients to take part in trials for a new antibiotic, streptomycin. Three of the five died. Bill survived.While he convalesced, he began to commentate on table tennis for hospital radio. When he was discharged, he supplemented his work as a PE teacher with rugby reports for the Hawick Express, and was recommended from there to the BBC, joining the corporation in 1953.He had some tests along the way, especially when his son-in-law, the scrum-half Alan Lawson, or later his grandson in the same position, Rory Lawson, were playing for Scotland. Or when some of his former pupils, such as Jim Renwick, Colin Deans or Tony Stanger, scored for Scotland. But his impartiality was never questioned. The Welsh golden age of the 1970s would not have been so gilded without the soundtrack of Bill to the exploits of Gareth Edwards.Bill's preparation was meticulous and involved a lot of card-play. He would shuffle a deck and flash through the cards, matching a player with a number. Having memorised the names, he then liked to watch the players in training, listening to them. It hurt him just before his retirement in 2002 that he was once denied access to an Australian training session. Professional rugby has not always been kind to the romantics.In 2000 Bill and Bette lost their daughter Janie to cancer. It troubled him that he was not by her side when she died, but Janie had ordered him to the commentary box.It was there that Bill became music. I worked with him for a decade, one of his many "second voices". He would offer us that curled hand in a two-finger shake and a bag of Hawick balls, round brown sweets boiled in peppermint oil. He would then resume his consultation of his match chart, a mass of tiny notes in many colours, before, at kick-off, turning his back on us. It was nothing personal. It was just that Bill, given the choice of two television monitors, liked to hunch over the one closer to him. "Give me a wee tug on the sleeve, son, if you want to come in." Sometimes you had to tug away for a wee while.It simply did not matter. I suppose somebody had to be alongside him, to offer the odd jarring note, but once the game and Bill were in full flow, they were best left to themselves. Rugby for orchestra and full voice, and nobody made a sound quite like Bill McLaren.Appointed CBE in 2003, he is survived by Bette and his daughter Linda.• William Pollock McLaren, teacher and rugby commentator, born 16 October 1923; died 19 January 2010Rugby unionEddie Butlerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Andy Murray ready to win, say three wise men THE DRAMA at the Australian Open is played out on the courts of Melbourne Park, but the heart of the event is the players’ lounge where, hour upon hour, day upon day, contestants and their confidants sit and analyse. feeds.timesonline.co.uk |