Rafael Nadal loses his edge on grass courts

July 3, 2015

Wimbledon/England, Jul 3: After having reached the final here in five consecutive appearances in the last decade, Rafael Nadal suffered his fourth consecutive loss at Wimbledon to a player ranked outside the top 100.

Rafael NadalIt begs the question: Is Nadal done on grass?

"I cannot explain my relationship with the grass," a dejected-looking Nadal said Thursday after losing to 102nd-ranked qualifier Dustin Brown of Germany 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4. "The past couple of years I didn't have the best relationship possible with it. At the end of the day today, I lost."

Nadal is 5-4 at Wimbledon since 2011, having gone 32-3 in the six years before that.

He won his first grass-court tournament at a warm-up in Stuttgart two weeks ago. Before that, it had been nearly five years since his last grass title — at Wimbledon in 2010.

It was from 2006 to 2011 that Nadal reached final after final at the All England Club, claiming two Wimbledon titles in that span and fell to Roger Federer (twice) and Novak Djokovic in three other finals (he didn't play in 2009 because of injury).

Will he ever reach another final here? Will he ever win it?

"I'm never going to say Rafa is done in any scenario, but I will say that Wimbledon is by far his most challenging major championship moving forward," said Justin Gimelstob, a former player and Tennis Channel analyst who works as a coach for John Isner.

"He struggles to figure out how to get into the right positioning on the return on grass, and he's not getting free points on his serve," Gimelstob added. "He's vulnerable against attacking players on the grass."

Brown proved that true Thursday, playing the kind of charge-the-court tennis that Lukas Rosol (2012) and Nick Kyrgios (2014) used to beat Nadal previously. It's boom-boom tennis in an era that Nadal — along with Djokovic and Andy Murray — have built to be a grind from the baseline.

The grind has left Nadal grounded on the grass, however.

"(Grass) makes it a lot easier for me to play my game and take time away from him," Brown said of facing Nadal on this surface. "It makes him have to hit shots that he doesn't normally have to."

Since 2011, when he made the last of his Wimbledon finals, Nadal has gone 10-7 on grass overall, with four of those wins coming at a lower-level ATP event two weeks ago in Stuttgart, Germany.

"There's no doubt that there's a locker room aura when they're playing well or when they're struggling on a certain surface," Gimelstob said. "Players are definitely taking the court with more confidence against Nadal, especially on the grass. You still have to play excellent tennis to beat him, but he's not as invincible as he once was."

Nadal leaves the grass courts of Britain for North America's hard courts, another surface on which he has ups and downs

Will the records of the past speak any volume in the future?

"Don't forget I played five finals (at Wimbledon). I don't know how many players did that," Nadal said. "Those were probably some of the most important moments of my career, and that was here, no?"

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Agencies
April 14,2020

Tokyo, Apr 14: Tokyo organizers said Tuesday they have no B Plan in the event the Olympics need to be postponed again because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Masa Takaya, the spokesman for the Tokyo Olympics, said organizers are proceeding under the assumption the Olympics will open on July 23, 2021. The Paralympics follow on Aug. 24.

Those dates were set last month by the International Olympic Committee and Japanese officials after the coronavirus pandemic made it clear the Olympics could not be held as scheduled this summer.

We are working toward the new goal, Takaya said, speaking in English on a teleconference call with journalists.

We don't have a B Plan. The severity of the pandemic and the death toll has raised questions if it will even be feasible to hold the Olympics in just over 15 months. Several Japanese journalists raised the question on the call.

All I can tell you today is that the new games' dates for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games have been just set up, Takaya said.

In that respect, Tokyo 2020 and all concerned parties now are doing their very best effort to deliver the games next year." IOC President Thomas Bach was asked about the possibility of a postponement in an interview published in the German newspaper Die Welt on Sunday.

He did not answer the question directly, but said later that Japanese organizers and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe indicated they could not manage a postponement beyond next summer at the lastest.

The Olympics draw 11,000 athletes and 4,400 Paralympic athletes and large support staffs from 206 national Olympic committees.

There are also questions about frozen travel, rebooking hotels, cramming fans into stadiums and arenas, securing venues, and the massive costs of rescheduling, which is estimated in Japan at 2 billion- 6 billion.

Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto addressed the issue in a news conference on Friday. He is likely to be asked about it again on Thursday when local organizers and the IOC hold a teleconferene with media in Japan.

The other major question is the cost of the delay; how much will it be, and who pays? Bach said in the Sunday interview that the IOC would incur several hundred million dollars in added costs. Under the so-called Host City Agreement, Japan is liable for the vast majority of the expenses.

This is impossible to say for now, Takaya, the spokesman said.

It is not very easy to estimate the exact amount of the games' additional costs, which have been impacted by the postponement."

Tokyo says it's spending 12.6 billion to organize the Olympics. But a Japanese government audit published last year says the costs are twice that much. Of the total spending, 5.6 billion in private money. The rest is from Japanese governments.

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Agencies
February 12,2020

Mumbai, Feb 12: Former Indian greats Kapil Dev and Mohammad Azharuddin have been left disappointed by the behaviour of the Under-19 team after the World Cup final where they were involved in an altercation with their Bangladeshi counterparts.

After Bangladesh won the final beating India by three wickets (via DLS) at the Senwes Park on Sunday, the players of the two teams were seen engaging in an exchange of words and even some pushing and shoving on the field.

"I would like to see the board (BCCI) take some strict action against the players to set an example. Cricket is not about abusing the opponent. I am sure there is enough reason for these youngsters to be dealt with firmly by BCCI," Kapil was quoted as saying by The Hindu.

"I welcome aggression, nothing wrong in it. But it has to be controlled aggression. You can't cross the line of decency in the name of being competitive. I would say it was unacceptable that youngsters put up such an obnoxious display on the cricket field," he added.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has sanctioned five players, including three from Bangladesh -- Towhid Hridoy, Shamim Hossain and Rakibul Hasan --and two from India --Akash Singh and Ravi Bishnoi for the scuffle.

Azharuddin also reiterated what Kapil said, insisting that players need to be disciplined.

"I would take action against the errant Under 19 players, but I also want to know what role has the support staff played in educating these youngsters. Act now before it is too late. The players have to be disciplined," Azharuddin said.

Earlier, Bishan Singh Bedi has lashed out at the Priyam Garg-led team, saying their behaviour was disgusting and disgraceful.

"You bat, bowl and field badly�happens, but there's no excuse for behaving badly. The behaviour was disgusting and most disgraceful. The innocence of that age was not visible at all," Bedi told Mid Day.

Bedi, who represented India in 67 Tests and 10 ODIs, said the behaviour of the Bangladesh cricketers is not our problem.

"Look, what Bangladesh do is their problem, what our boys do is our problem. You could see that there was abusive language used," he said.

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News Network
June 13,2020

Mumbai, Jun 13: Vasant Raiji, who was India's oldest first-class cricketer at 100, died in Mumbai in the wee hours of Saturday.

Raiji was 100 years old and is survived by his wife and two daughters.

"He (Raiji) passed away at 2.20 am in his sleep at his residence in Walkeshwar in South Mumbai due to old-age," his son-in-law Sudarshan Nanavati told PTI.

Raiji, a right-handed batsman, played nine first-class matches in the 1940s, scoring 277 runs with 68 being his highest score.

He made his debut for a Cricket Club of India team that played Central Provinces and Berar in Nagpur in 1939.

His Mumbai debut happened in 1941 when the team played Western India under the leadership of Vijay Merchant.

Raiji, also a cricket historian and chartered accountant, was 13 when India played its first Test match at the Bombay Gymkhana in South Mumbai.

Cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and former Australian skipper Steve Waugh had paid a courtesy visit to Raiji at his residence in January when he had turned 100.

It has been learnt that the cremation will take place at the Chandanwadi crematorium in South Mumbai on Saturday afternoon.

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