I do not: Warne hasn't popped question to Hurley

Warne and Hurley ... deny marriage rumours. Photo: Getty Images

It had all the potential to be the one Australian wedding greater than Scott and Charlene's nuptials on Neighbours.
But those waiting with bated breath to hear a confirmation that Shane Warne has proposed to Liz Hurley will be sorely disappointed.
A spokeswoman for Warne's manager, James Erskine, denied a report in yesterday's Daily Star newspaper that the former international cricketer popped the question during a Spanish cruise.

"It's not true, it's just rumours," the spokeswoman said.
The couple have been reported to be engaged several times this year after getting together in December.
The pair, who let their relationship play out on Twitter, stayed silent on the subject and did nothing to quash the latest rumour in recent days.

Djokovic sets record with Rogers Cup win

MONTREAL — Novak Djokovic made history on Sunday when he defeated Mardy Fish 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 in the final of the Rogers Cup men’s tennis championship.
The top-seeded Djokovic has been near-perfect this year with 53-1 record and he became the first player to win five ATP Masters 1000 events in a year. That feat is even more impressive because there are still three such events remaining on the schedule.
Fish said he may have been intimidated by Djokovic.
“I had so many chances early,” said Fish. “Maybe if I hadn’t thought about who I was playing against.”
“I think there’s some to that,” Djokovic, of Serbia, said when asked about the Novak Effect. “But at the same time, there’s pressure and expectations that coming with being No. 1.”
Djokovic broke Fish three times, including once to take a 3-2 lead in the deciding set.
“I thought I played well at the start and I got a couple of breaks but then I lost my serve and he made a match of it,” said Djokovic. “In the third set, I was able to break him once and that was the match.”
Fish said getting to the final of a Masters 1000 event takes a physical and emotional and that the loss “hurt.”
“I’ve been in this position four times and I’ve lost every time, all by three sets,” he said.
Fish, the No. 6 seed from the United States, said prior to the final that he couldn’t beat Djokovic from the baseline and those words proved prophetic. When he served well and reached the net, he was competitive but he wasn’t able to do it often enough. And he wasn’t able to take advantage when Djokovic struggled with his serve. He had 10 break-point opportunities and converted only two of them.
“His rallies are just so solid,” said Fish. “His second-serve returns leave you on your back foot. And I think if you look, he leads the tour on break points saved.”
Fish was the better player early in the first set. He won his first two service games easily while Djokovic had to fight off two break points in the third game and three more in the fifth.
But the match turned quickly in the sixth game. At 30-30, Fish came to the net on the next two points and found himself looking at two half-volleys at his feet. He put both of them into the net to give Djokovic the break.
Two games later, Fish opened with a double fault and Djokovic broke him at love to win the set.
Fish knotted the match at a set apiece when he broke Djokovic in the fifth and ninth games of the second set. Fish had to battle to take a 5-3 lead in a game which went to deuce four times before Fish ended it with an ace. He then broke Djokovic at love for the set.
Fish was on a roll of his own coming into the final. While Djokovic took a month off after reaching the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, Fish played Davis Cup against Spain, defended his title at an ATP event in Atlanta and reached the final in Los Angeles.
The victory was worth $450,000 US for Djokovic while Fish earned $224,000.
France’s Michael Llodra, who pulled out of the singles event in the second round with a rib injury, teamed with Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia to win the doubles title. The fourth-seeded team upset the top-seeded American brother act of Bob and Mike Bryan 6-3, 6-7 (5), 10-5. The victory was worth $140,000 while the losers split $70,000.
Llodra and Zimonjic beat the second-seeded team of Torontonian Daniel Nestor and Max Mirnyi of Belarus 6-3, 6-4 in Saturday’s semifinal. The 39-year-old Nestor has won 73 doubles titles but has never won in Montreal. He won the event in Toronto with Sebastien Lareau of Boucherville, Que., in 2000 and with Zimonjic in 2008.
Montreal Gazette
Source: National Post

Stop the malaise in Indian cricket

India’s craven and humiliating surrender, not only of the four-match Test series against England by the third game itself, but also of the much-vaunted numero uno ranking among Test-playing countries has raised a raft of troubling questions. And this a mere four months after India scaled the peak of World Cup success! Not only were Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men played off the park by a tough and resilient England, it was clear they were struggling to find answers to their opponents’ relentless aggression, and England’s dogged unwillingness to let slip the slightest advantage. In the first two games, at Lord’s and Trent Bridge, India at least had their moments but could derive no advantage from them. At Edgbaston, they were in a completely different — and far inferior — league. So glaring was the difference in Birmingham that it seemed there was only one cricket team on the ground, and a ragtag bunch of amateurs facing them. This, mind you, in the presence of batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Venkatasai Laxman and Virender Sehwag, not to mention Gautam Gambhir and the captain himself. Edgbaston brutally exposed the difference in form, approach, discipline and hunger between the two teams. The figures are shocking: defeats by 196 runs at Lord’s, 319 runs at Trent Bridge, and now by an innings and 242 runs in Birmingham. These are numbers not easily digested — or indeed expected from — the world’s top-ranked team, but they also tell a story of an ever-increasing distance between the two rivals.
Quite naturally, given the enormous expectations and involvement the average Indian invests in the national team, answers are called for. Even an improved showing — however improbable that may sound now — in the fourth and final Test at the Oval and in the five-match ODI series that follows will do little to balance the scale of the three defeats. Post-mortems of this hammering there are bound to be in plenty, but former skipper Sourav Ganguly made a significant point when he said he had not seen an India team as poor as this one in the last 10 years. There were signs in the West Indies where India could not even once cross the 300-run mark in the six innings of the Test series. It was variously put down to the absence of regular openers Sehwag and Gambhir, Tendulkar’s decision to concentrate on getting ready for the England tour, and an unsettled middle order, and that helped hide the fact that the Indians had failed to effectively tackle a below-par Caribbean attack. Against an Ashes-winning bowling combination, it was always going to be a different ballgame altogether, and that’s exactly how it played out.
The mandarins who run Indian cricket have as always maintained a sphinx-like silence, but at some point they will have to come up with explanations — on fitness, scheduling and whether, as the captain has indicated, Team India were indeed playing too much cricket. Other than the break after the IPL, most members of the national squad have been in action almost nonstop, and even though the cricket board has brought in a policy of giving breaks to players who feel the heat of such tight itineraries, that has not paid off either. Clearly, the malaise goes much deeper, the rot is far more widespread than previously suspected or believed, and there are no easy answers to be had in the face of such a fearful mauling. Better scheduling? Wholesale personnel changes? Splitting of the captaincy? None of these seem adequate at the moment. For now, it can only be hoped that a change in format will bring in its wake altered fortunes.

Source: The Asian Age

London riots cast pall over Olympics

The wave of riots and public disorder sweeping the United Kingdom has prompted Olympic organizing chiefs to seek increased security measures ahead of next summer’s London Games.
Following the fatal shooting by police of a man in the North London suburb of Tottenham last Thursday, a surge of criminality has spread to the rest of the capital and other major cities, with shops being looted, cars burned, people beaten and houses ransacked.

The shocking scenes have caused a drastic rethink on Olympic policing, with a source revealing to Yahoo! Sports that officials from Games organizing committee LOCOG will meet with police bosses once the current carnage dies down.

Original plans that would have seen around 9,000 police officers on the streets of London during the Olympics may be scrapped, and figures closer to the 16,000 brought in under this week’s emergency measures are now likely.
Olympic planning had previously run smoothly and on budget, yet the spread of violence to the London borough of Hackney, just a brick’s throw from the central hub of the Games, has led to concern and uncertainty less than 12 months from the lighting of the flame.
London has never witnessed anarchic scenes of this kind at any time in its recent history, with the most worrying aspect being the way the discord spread so rapidly and brutally. Just a few months on from the joyous celebrations which marked the Royal Wedding of Prince William and his new bride the Duchess of Cambridge, the historic grace of one of the world’s proudest cities has been shattered in front of the very eyes of its citizens.

Horrific tales that point to a true breakdown in society have been regaled: passers-by ordered to strip naked while having their clothing stolen by muggers, the victim of a beating being robbed by tormentors who he believed were helping him to his feet. After Prime Minister David Cameron returned early from an Italian vacation to order police onto the streets, details emerged which showed that a school worker, a postman and an 11-year-boy were among those arrested for looting.
Normally, sports may be the furthest thing from most minds at times like this. However, it is the way they have been affected in this sports-obsessed nation that has truly brought home the extent of the crisis.
The England soccer team saw its international fixture against the Netherlands at Wembley Stadium on Wednesday canceled as a direct result of the riots, while the squad issued a mass appeal for calm. With the English Premier League season due to commence on Saturday, there is a huge cloud of uncertainty hanging over the opening weekend’s games. Three EPL matches are scheduled for London, with capital-based clubs Tottenham, Fulham and Queens Park Rangers (QPR) all due to play at home.
Talks with police will continue and a decision on most matches is expected on Thursday. “We are in ongoing discussions with our London-based clubs [and] the Metropolitan Police … in regard to the coming weekend’s fixtures,” said a joint statement of the EPL and the Football League, which governs the three divisions below it.
Tottenham’s White Hart Lane stadium is less than a mile from where the initial rioting began on Saturday, two days after local man Mark Duggan was shot and killed, and its box office was damaged in the ensuing fracas. Of all EPL games, it is Tottenham’s clash with Everton which is the most likely to be called off, with even the team’s own players urging a postponement.

“It would be preferable to postpone the match for the sake of fans’ safety,” said Tottenham defender Younes Kaboul.
“The chaos present there is unbelievable,” added midfielder Rafael Van der Vaart.

Following a night of riots, a sign hangs at Wembley Stadium stating the England vs. Netherlands game has been called off.
(Getty Images)

However, such a stance is not shared by everyone. Bernie Ecclestone, head of Formula One motorsport and co-owner of QPR, insisted that shutting down soccer, even temporarily, would mean that the miscreants had won.
“It would send a terrible message to the rest of the world,” said Ecclestone. “You imagine if this happened when the Olympic Games started. It would be terrible.”
Several leading English sports figures have spoken up and urged for normality to be restored. Midfielder Steven Gerrard issued a statement pleading for no violence in his home city of Liverpool, which has fought hard to rise above social problems in recent years.
“What’s all this in aid of?” England soccer captain Rio Ferdinand wrote on Twitter, while suggesting that bringing in the army could be a way of controlling the violence. “Innocent people’s homes and livelihoods have gone up in smoke. Why?”
Trouble also flared up in other major cities, although England’s cricket international against India in Birmingham was allowed to take place.
Greater caution has been necessary in London though, some of it with an inherently Olympic theme. A pre-Games beach volleyball tournament at the iconic Horse Guards Parade was concluded early so that fans could get home more safely. There is also a pre-Olympic cycling race scheduled to take place around the streets of London this weekend, which looks almost certain to be called off.
The IOC has reinforced its faith in the British police authorities but there is no doubt that LOCOG will want to act quickly to give further reassurances.
However, the tricky part might be in striking a balance between the need for a strong security presence while averting overt and obtrusive measures when the world comes to visit. If, indeed, they do come to visit.
As world marathon record holder Paula Radcliffe told the Daily Mail: “In less than a year we welcome the world, and right now they don’t want to come.”
Source: Yahoo