Sports Digest

Other sports news in brief

NUIG successfully defend their senior fours title

ROWING:NUIG's senior four looked fit and mean as they defended their title at the National Championships at Farran Wood in Cork yesterday, reports Liam Gorman. The message was clear: their hard-won eights title will not be wrested easily from them today.

UCD had targeted the four, and with four oarsmen who had won at Henley Royal Regatta, they led through all the key markers to 1500 metres. But the NUIG crew of Paul Giblin, Alan Martin, Cormac Folan and strokeman James Wall rowed through them in the final quarter.

Skibbereen, a club from a relatively small town is now the third most successful in the country in terms of national titles.

“That’s 112 now,” said coach and driving force Dominic Casey within seconds of the victory for his junior men’s coxed four. They zoomed away from Bann B to take Skibbereen’s third title of the day.

The senior women’s four featured a former world champion in Sinéad Jennings and two victors from Women’s Henley (Elaine Fitzgerald and Claire Ludlow). But it was won by three teenagers and 24-year-old Orla Hayes from Skibbereen.

North helps Australia crush Pakistan

CRICKET:Australia completed a record 13th consecutive victory as Pakistan self-destructed against the gentle off-spin of Marcus North at Lord's yesterday.

North took six for 55 to join team mate Shane Watson on the Lord’s bowling honours board, a pairing nobody could have predicted when the first match in a two-Test series started on Tuesday. His figures were the best ever returned by an Australian spinner at Lord’s.

Pakistan, set a record 440 to win, succumbed for 289 before tea on the fourth day to extend a miserable losing streak which started in 1999.

Australia’s 150-run victory put them one ahead of Sri Lanka who have won each of their 12 tests against Bangladesh. Shahid Afridi, captaining Pakistan for the first time in a Test, lasted only four balls.

Aviva opening to draw big crowd

RUGBY:THE composite provincial squads for the first game to be staged at the new Aviva Stadium at Lansdowne Road were revealed yesterday, while 40,000 tickets have been sold for what is essentially an under-20 challenge match. No fully contracted players are available as they are involved in pre-season training ahead of a World Cup year.

The IRFU had initially planned on selling in the region of just 30,000 tickets for the game on July 31st, to allow stadium director Martin Murphy “test the systems” ahead of the visit of Manchester United and their game against an Airtricity League of Ireland selection on August 4th.

However, such was the interest, Murphy and IRFU were happy to up the ticket sales to 45,000, just 5,000 below capacity.

Bolt too good for Powell in Paris

ATHLETICS:World record holder Usain Bolt beat his fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell to win the 100 metres at the Diamond League event in Paris last night in a time of 9.84 seconds. World and Olympic champion Bolt recovered from an poor start to easily outsprint Powell (9.91), with another Jamaican Yohan Blake (9.95) in third.

“I didnt feel as powerful as I wanted to out of the blocks,” said Bolt. I need to go home and work on that.

David Oliver, a bronze medallist at the Beijing Olympics, ran the third fastest 110m hurdles time ever to win in 12.89 – two-hundredths of a second behind the 2008 world record set by Cubas Dayron Robles.