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/ 18 January 2007
Second seed Rafael Nadal got a wake-up call on Thursday but title contenders Maria Sharapova, Kim Clijsters and Martina Hingis were in a class of their own, breezing into the Australian Open third round. Clay court specialist Nadal, drawn to face world number one Roger Federer in this year’s final, was given a marathon workout by 61st ranked German Philipp Kohlschreiber.
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/ 18 January 2007
Australian Open organisers will review their heat policy after scathing criticism by top players and concern from Women’s Tennis Association boss Larry Scott. It follows disturbing scenes on Tuesday when top seed Maria Sharapova wilted in the 40 degrees Celsius temperatures and said afterwards she was ”delusional” in her match against Camille Pin of France.
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/ 18 January 2007
Kim Clijsters and Martina Hingis have developed a friendly rivalry over who can dispose of their opponents quickest in the Australian Open’s early stages. The two former world number ones have both been in dominant form at the season-opening Grand Slam, where a scheduling coincidence has meant they took to the court at the same time for their matches in the first two rounds.
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/ 17 January 2007
Roger Federer stepped up his relentless march to another Australian Open title on Wednesday, sweeping into the third round alongside draw cards Amelie Mauresmo, Andy Roddick and Serena Williams. The world number one blasted past veteran Swede Jonas Bjorkman 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 in just 95 minutes as he chases his third Australian crown and 10th Grand Slam.
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/ 17 January 2007
Roger Federer made sure he did not repeat his lapses from his opening match in Wednesday’s second-round win over Jonas Bjorkman at the Australian Open. Andy Roddick also lifted his act, and Serena Williams moved into the third round with another straight-sets win.
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/ 16 January 2007
Russian top seed Maria Sharapova survived a massive scare in sapping heat at the Australian Open on Tuesday as other top names avoided the worst of the weather to make short work of their opponents. On a scorching Melbourne day, with temperatures touching 40 degrees Celsius, the women’s top seed, who needed treatment for cramps, squeezed past unseeded Frenchwoman Camille Pin.
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/ 16 January 2007
All-rounder Andrew Flintoff lifted a jittery England to a drought-breaking three-wicket win over New Zealand in the triangular series one-day international on Tuesday. England were forced to work hard to beat New Zealand’s modest total of 205 and secure their first victory since arriving in Australia in early November.
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/ 16 January 2007
Police flooded the Australian Open on Tuesday to prevent further clashes between Serb and Croat fans as players and the media ganged up to condemn the ethnic violence that marred the first day’s action. ”A Disgrace”, the Melbourne Herald-Sun said on its front page beneath photographs of rival fans kicking each other and swinging flagpoles as weapons.
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/ 16 January 2007
David Nalbandian has urged a review of the Australian Open’s extreme-heat policy after winning the match against wilting opponent Janko Tipsarevic in scorching heat on Tuesday. The Argentine eighth seed reached the second round when the world number 64 Serbian, labouring in the intense heat, called a halt early in the fifth set.
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/ 15 January 2007
Defending champions Roger Federer and Amelie Mauresmo overcame early jitters to negotiate the first round of the Australian Open on Monday on a day overshadowed by brawling Serbian and Croatian fans. Unseeded seven-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams breezed through her match against Italian 27th seed Mara Santangelo 6-2, 6-1.
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/ 15 January 2007
In a lycra revolution, a cover-all swimming costume is bringing Muslim women on to Australian beaches as lifeguards, unzipping racial tensions which divided parts of Sydney little over a year ago. The two-piece ”burqini” is proving key to reshaping surf lifesaving down under — once a bastion of white Australian culture and still a heartland of the country’s sun-bronzed, heroic self-myth.
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/ 15 January 2007
Police ejected about 150 spectators from the Australian Open on Monday after an ugly brawl broke out between Serbian and Croatian fans inside the ground. Fans wearing the national colours of the bitter Balkan rivals clashed in the Rod Laver Arena after taunting and hurling insults at each other.
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/ 13 January 2007
Andy Roddick notched only his second career victory over arch-nemesis Roger Federer by winning the Kooyong Classic 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 on Saturday. The victory in one hour, 20 minutes at the eight-man special event snapped an eight-match losing streak against the Swiss world number one going back to 2003.
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/ 12 January 2007
Australia beat England by eight wickets in the first one-day tri-series match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday. Set a target of 243, Australia chased down the total with 4.4 overs to spare after opener Adam Gilchrist struck a rapid 60 and skipper Ricky Ponting a steady unbeaten 82 in front of a boisterous home crowd.
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/ 12 January 2007
Pity the new Australian Open tournament director, Craig Tiley. With less than a week to go before the first Grand Slam of the year gets under way, Tiley had his first taste of the annual rush of injury scares and sick notes that threatens to undermine the tournament before a ball has been struck.
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/ 11 January 2007
Roger Federer honed his razor-sharp tennis to near-perfection on Thursday as he stormed into the final of the Kooyong Classic with a 6-3, 7-6 (7/2) defeat of Russian rival Marat Safin. The contest, which lasted just over an hour, was a sharp contrast to the laboured victory the world number one earned just 24 hours earlier.
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/ 10 January 2007
They were thrashed in the Ashes and their recent limited-overs record is abysmal, but England hope the return of captain Michael Vaughan will boost their fortunes in the triangular one-day series in Australia. With the World Cup just months away, the tournament, starting on Friday, is an important chance for England, Australia and New Zealand to hone their one-day skills.
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/ 10 January 2007
An Australian zoo is claiming a world first by putting humans on public display in one of its enclosures. Six humans took up residence in a disused Adelaide Zoo orangutang enclosure last week for a month-long experiment dubbed ”the human zoo”.
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/ 10 January 2007
Amelie Mauresmo has admitted she has work cut out winning a second Australian Open title after tumbling out of the last major warm-up event on Wednesday. Mauresmo’s hopes of some valuable match practice hit a major stumble when he was knocked out of the Sydney International by in-form Serb Jelena Jankovic.
Australia inflicted more misery on England with a record-breaking 77-run victory in their one-off Twenty20 match on Tuesday. Despite missing almost half the team that humiliated England 5-0 in the Ashes Test series, Australia racked up a world-record total to leave the visitors without a win in any form of the game since arriving down under more than two months ago.
Dinara Safina made it fourth time lucky when she overcame top seed Martina Hingis to clinch the Australian Women’s Hardcourt tennis championship 6-3, 3-6, 7-5 on Saturday. The 20-year-old Russian has participated in the tournament since 2004 and her best result until this year was a semifinal appearance in 2006.
England coach Duncan Fletcher said on Saturday he would like Shane Warne to cross the great cricket divide and work as a spin doctor for Australia’s old Ashes enemy. The champion leg-spinner played his 145th and final Test in Australia’s 10-wicket victory over England in the fifth Sydney Test on Friday to claim an 86-year-old 5-0 Ashes clean sweep.
Russia raced to their first Hopman Cup title after singles wins for Nadia Petrova and Dmitry Tursunov gave them an unassailable 2-0 lead over Spain in the final on Friday. World number six Petrova gave the top seeds the momentum with a 6-0 6-4 demolition of Anabel Medina Garrigues before Tursunov sealed the tie with a 6-4 7-5 victory over world number seven Tommy Robredo.
All video footage showing Australia’s ”Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin dying from a stingray barb to the heart will be destroyed now that it is no longer needed by investigators, Irwin’s manager said. The footage, in which Irwin is seen being attacked by the stingray, was returned to his widow, Terri Irwin, last month.
Australia beat England by 10 wickets to win the fifth Test in Sydney on Friday to complete the first 5-0 Ashes series whitewash in 86 years. England capitulated on the fourth morning to score just 147 runs in their second innings to leave the Australians needing 46 runs for victory to claim a slice of history.
An Australian bank has blushingly admitted issuing a credit card to a cat. Messiah, a ginger tom, was given a credit limit of Aus$4Â 200 ($3Â 300) dollars. Messiah’s owner applied for an additional Visa card in his name on her account with the Bank of Queensland to test its identity security system — and was astonished when it was granted.
England were just 12 runs in front of Australia with five wickets left in their second innings as the spectre of an Ashes whitewash loomed large in the fifth Test at Sydney on Thursday. Shane Warne was the man again, topscoring with the bat and then grabbing the big wicket of skipper Andrew Flintoff just before stumps.
Australia’s south-west was bracing on Thursday for a destructive weather front that could link with remnants of a tropical cyclone to create a ”perfect storm”. Military and emergency teams on standby in Western Australia state expected a deep low-pressure system to cross the coast mid-afternoon, bringing 120kph winds and heavy rain.
England fought back from another batting collapse on Wednesday to grab four wickets before Australia began to reassert their control on the second day of the fifth and final Ashes Test. England blew their chance of posting a big first-innings total when they lost their last six wickets for just 46 runs in the morning to be all out for 291.
Phil Glendenning has had guns jammed in his ribs as he scours the globe to check the fate of asylum seekers his nation rejects. Fed up with what he believes is the Australian government’s hollow promise that thousands of people rejected in recent years would be safe in their homelands, Glendenning searches for rejected asylum seekers to tell their harrowing stories.
Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen rescued England from a shaky start to reach 149 for two at tea on the opening day of the fifth Ashes Test on Tuesday. The pair shared an unbroken third-wicket partnership of 91 runs after Australia had dismissed England’s openers cheaply.
Australian captain Ricky Ponting has praised the work of coach John Buchanan for much of the team’s success and believes his successor has an enormous role to fill. While the headlines ahead of Tuesday’s fifth and final Ashes Test against England have been dominated by the retirements of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer, Buchanan will also be the team coach for his last Test match.