Brits win around the world – Weekend round-up

A host of different victories at opposite ends of the earth for our plucky Brits abroad today, as Andy Murray sealed arguably the biggest win of his career to date at the Miami Masters, and Jenson Button made it back-to-back victories with an unusual win at the Malaysia GP. Meanwhile in the Grand National Liam Treadwell rode 100-1 outsider Mon Mome to a comfortable win on his debut yesterday, and earlier today Peter Ebdon beat John Higgins 10-8 in the final of the practically ignored China Open. Honorable mention also to Northern Irish golfer Micheal Hoey, who won his first European Tour event in the Estoril Open de Portugal.

Murray triumphed over Novak Djokovic in straight sets (6-2, 7-5) to give further credit to the possibility of overtaking him in the world rankings before the grass court season starts. Trouble is, that plays havoc with my strong desire to see a Murray-Nadal final at Wimbledon, as you’d expect the third and first seeds to play on the same side of the draw. Might be a thunder-stealing semi-final instead…

Button’s win in Malaysia was one of the stranger episodes of Formula 1: the race was ended after 31 laps due to a torrential downpour. After waiting nearly an hour, race director Charlie Whiting decided there was no chance of resuming the race and awarded victory to Button. But, as less than three-quarters of the race had taken place, only half points were awarded. Nick Heidfeld and Timo Glock made up the podium finishes, with Lewis Hamilton picking up a point for his seventh-place finish.

In other news: Manchester United came from behind to beat Aston Villa in one of the season’s most exciting matches so far. With so much riding on the game – renewed pressure to compete with Liverpool after Yossi Benayoun’s last-minute goal against Fulham yesterday, as well as the desire to avoid three consecutive league defeats (something that hasn’t happened since 2001) – United were left in the debt of reserve team sensation Federico “Kiko” Macheda as the 17-year old scored an astonishing injury-time goal to complete a 3-2 win. The Quintuple dreams live on!

England vs Ukraine – match predictions

England are playing Ukraine tonight at Wembley in a World Cup qualifier – kick off in just under an hour, and I’m going to massively over-exert my clairvoyant capacities and predict the following:

England will win 3-1 (1-0 at half time)

Gerrard, Agbonlahor and Rooney will score – perhaps even in that order. At least one Beckham assist (that’s right, another cap for Becks)

Fate-tempter: Shevchenko WON’T score

And…oh, I don’t know…3 yellow cards for each team, at least one shot will hit the woodwork and the commentators will make a terrible April Fool’s joke within the first three minutes, possibly combined with a remark about England’s new kit.

How wrong can I be? Post your own predictions below:

World Map of Sport

Check out my new google map showing British sporting acheivements across the globe. It’s just a bit of fun, but I thought it would be interesting to see just how far-flung our sportsmen and women are all year round, not just during major events. More additions will follow soon.

Shearer new Newcastle manager

Alan Shearer has been named as the next Newcastle United manager, taking charge immediately until at least the end of the season. That makes him Mike Ashley‘s fourth managerial appointment in one season, after Kevin Keegan, Joe Kinnear and Chris Hughton, which must be some kind of record.

Blatter Separates Fifa from football logic

Being Sepp Blatter‘s head of communications must be a constant nightmare, a hair-pulling, desk-pounding, heart-attack-waiting-to-happen bastard of a job. Imagine the exertion required to ensure that Sepp doesn’t spend all day, every day, exposing his laughably one-sided beliefs and shocking lack of knowledge concering the world of football. Maybe the answer is that he doesn’t employ any communications staff. It would certainly explain the regular appearance of comments in the press such as these.

Mid-season comeback

I must apologise. Two weeks without the internet has rendered this blog as relevant as Wales’ Grand Slam hopes. The world of sport has been spinning faster than Monty Panesar in my absence, so I’m going to do a quick rundown of the best and worst before resuming business as usual:

Good:

• English clubs all look set to progress to the next stage of the Champions League. Premiership: best league in Europe.
• Tiger Woods returning victorious to matchplay golf. Not Brit-related but great to see him back on the fairway.
• Formula 1 testing new cars – Ferrari’s in particular looks great. Will be interesting to see how the new technological developments affect racing – more blogging on this in the months to come, I’m sure.
• Manchester United winning the Carling Cup and slimming down the quintuple odds day by day. Just a matter of personal bias, this one.

Bad:

• The attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team. Not British but momentous, an awful intrusion of terrorism into the world of sport, and a terrible loss of life.
• England failing to understand that there are rules to rugby. Our spectacular lack of discipline - 10 yellows in 4 games – has become a weakness everyone knows they can exploit.
• James DeGale being booed in his first professional bout. Ok, so he didn’t perform at his best, but he won every round. Give the guy a chance, it’s his first pro fight…
• Andy Murray pulling out of the Davis Cup with a virus.

That’s all for now, but rest assured, some genuine blogging is on its way.

Hiddink for Chelsea

Image via Wikipedia

You heard it here first folks – looks like my powers of prediction are improving. Guus Hiddink is being lined up to take charge at Chelsea, the BBC are reporting.  Roman’s been bending the ear of the Russian FA, by the sound of things.

Extreme weather? Just strong Windies…

Where do you start? England’s cricketers looked as helpless as Devon drivers in the snow against the West Indian bowlers. I had intended to use the test to explain cricket to my Chinese housemate, who despite my attempts to demonstrate in the kitchen with a frying pan is still hazy on the aim of the game (I know, unbelievable. I will get round to posting the rules and history of kitchen cricket here one day). But I couldn’t quite face the conversation. “And when the bowling side has got all the batsmen out, they add up the runs and see who’s the winner.*” “So is 51 a good score?”

Fifa rules not ok

Ok, quick rant. Why, why why does the rule exist whereby if a premier league official has seen an event take place but has not drawn attention to it at the time – I’m thinking of Jose Bosingwa’s studs in Yossi Benayoun’s back (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/7869305.stm) – then it is impossible for any retrospective disciplinary action to be taken?

If a referee’s decision can be overturned, why can’t indecision be similarly punished? I’m not saying there should be a panel with the power to indiscriminately dish out penalties and suspensions arbitrarily, but in obvious cases of foul play there should be a system to look at incidents individually.

The idea that if an offence went unnoticed completely, it can be retrospectively punished, but not if someone saw it but didn’t do anything about it is nonsensical.

Sepp Blatter, sort it out.