CRICKET
Formosa trounce TCA
Formosa yesterday trounced TCA in their Group B Taiwan Premier League match at the Yinfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei’s Songshan District. Formosa won the toss and elected to bat, putting together 141-4 in their 20 overs. Man of the match Sandeep Patel hit 43 from 36 deliveries, his five boundaries all sixes as he top-scored for Formosa. In reply, TCA slumped to 80 all out, with none of their top eight batsmen reaching double figures. Himanshu Rathee returned the best bowling figures of 3-19 to help his side win by 61 runs. In the afternoon match, TCA made 139-7 batting first against the Raging Bulls, who were 94-3 in 12.1 overs when it began to rain, ending play for the day.
BOXING
Davis predicts winning KO
Gervonta “Tank” Davis on Saturday night made a triumphant return to the ring after more than a year away, once again showing why he is one of the top pound-for-pound boxers. Armed with a punching power not typically associated with a lightweight, Davis made full use if his skills in dominating Frank Martin and knocking him out at one minute, 29 seconds of the eighth round to retain the WBA championship. “I knew the way he fell he wasn’t getting back up,” Davis said. Davis delivered a right and two lefts to Martin’s face to send the Indianapolis resident to the canvass for his first career loss after winning his first 18 fights. Davis again proved to be one of boxing’s most ferocious punchers, improving to 30-0 — all but two by knockout. He predicted before the fight that its would end in an eight-round knockout. “I was just throwing that out there. Next fight in the first round,” Davis said, smiling.
OLYMPICS
Swimmer’s family scammed
British Olympic freestyle gold medalist Matt Richards has urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to do more to help families of competing athletes attend events at the Paris Olympics after his parents lost money in an online ticket scam. Richards took gold at Tokyo 2020 in the 4x200m freestyle relay and could be competing in six events this summer. He won individual 200m gold at the last year’s World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. “I do find it crazy that when competing at an Olympic Games, the families of the athletes have to source and fund tickets themselves,” Richards wrote on Instagram, addressing @Olympics. “Given that you won’t pay the athletes who compete in the event (that creates billions every year in revenue) due to it ‘not being the Olympic spirit’... do you not think it’s time that you support the families of the people competing, by giving them tickets to the events that their family members are competing in?” Richards then apologized for the “rant,” but said he felt it was a really important subject. Richards’ mother Amanda told the BBC separately that the family had been scammed of ￡2,500 (US$3,165) by a ticket Web site that “looked perfectly legitimate.” They had been unable to afford tickets in the official ballot where only the most expensive were left by the time they got their turn. “We couldn’t afford to buy tickets for everything he’s swimming in, but we wanted to be there for sort of the important ones,” she said. “We don’t have masses of savings. We just don’t have the money to be able to just buy another set of tickets. We’re devastated... I feel like a fool.”
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
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