B’desh girls win AFC U-14 title
KATHMANDU, Dec 20, (AFP): Bangladesh on Sunday clinched the AFC U-14 Girls’ Regional Championship title for the south and central zone, defeating holders and home favourites Nepal 1-0.
Marzia, who uses just one name, scored the winning goal in the 16th minute to help Bangladesh win the title for the first time.
“We are very, very happy and proud to bring the title home,” Bangladesh’s skipper Krishna Rani Sarkar told AFP after receiving the winner’s medal from Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.
“We worked so hard for this,” Sarkar said. On the way to the title clash, Bangladesh defeated Iran while Nepal got the better of India in the semi-finals held in April.
The final was earlier scheduled to be held on April 25, the day a powerful 7.8-magnitude quake shook Nepal killing almost 8,900 people.
Seven teams, including India, Bhutan, Maldives, Iran and Sri Lanka, participated in the championship.
Swiss starlet Belinda Bencic stretched the advantage by a game after the 18-year-old fought off a gritty challenge from Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova to claim the women’s singles, 6-5.
The pair put on an absorbing display despite never looking comfortable on serve, with three breaks apiece in the opening 10 games sending the contest into a “shootout” (identical to a tiebreak), which Bencic claimed 7-3 to put Singapore 12-9 ahead.
Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka of Singapore Slammers hits a return against Australia’s Bernard Tomic of Indian Aces during their men’s singles tennis match at the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) tournament in Singapore on Dec 19. (AFP)
The Aces, however, struck back in the mixed doubles with their strong Indian pairing of Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna storming to a 6-2 victory over a shell-shocked Dustin Brown and Karolina Pliskova to put the defending champions 15-14 ahead.
Russian-born Australian Arina Rodionova has fallen one match short of gaining a wild-card entry into January’s Australian Open, losing the deciding match a day after her marriage.
Teenager Maddison Inglis beat Rodionova 6-4, 6-2 in the women’s wild-card final Sunday to gain entry to the main draw of the Grand Slam tournament beginning Jan 18.
Rodionova had won her semifinal on Saturday morning which was re-scheduled to accommodate her afternoon wedding to Australian Football League player Ty Vickery.
There was also some family drama in the men’s final: James Duckworth won by walkover when his opponent, Ben Mitchell, had to rush back to Brisbane to be with his partner for the birth of their first child.