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COLOMBO: Sri Lanka closed in on a series whitewash against South Africa on Sunday, leaving the visitors five down and with a mountain to climb after the third day of the second Test.By stumps the spinners had ripped their way through the Proteas batsmen yet again to leave them reeling on 139 for 5 in pursuit of an impossible-looking 490 victory target in Colombo. Against batsmen who clearly decided that attack was the best form of defence, off-spinner Akila Dananjaya and left-arm spinner Rangana Herath took two wickets apiece, with off-spinner Dilruwan Perera also dismissing Dean Elgar.The wickets fell despite repeated errors from Sri Lanka, who dropped two catches and could have had Elgar out twice beforehand had Perera not overstepped when bowling the delivery that dismissed him. But this will likely have only delayed the South Africans’ first series defeat by Sri Lanka since 2006. There are only three recognised batsmen remaining and two full days left to survive.By stumps, number three batsman Theunis de Bruyn, who survived two very close lbw shouts early in his innings, was 45 not out, with a chance of recording his team’s first half-century of the series.Sri Lanka first innings:South Africa first innings: 124Sri Lanka second innings (overnight 151-3)D. Gunathilaka c Elgar b Maharaj 61D. Karunaratne c de Kock b Ngidi 85D. De Silva lbw Maharaj 0K. Mendis run out (Markram) 18A. Mathews c du Plessis b Maharaj 71R. Silva not out 32N. Dickwella not out 7Extras: (1 nb) 1Total: (5 wickets declared, 81 overs) 275DNB: D. Perera, A. Dananjaya, S. Lakmal, R. HerathFall: 1-91 (Gunathilaka), 2-102 (de Silva), 3-136 (Mendis), 4-199 (Karunaratne), 5-263 (Mathews)Bowling: Maharaj 40-4-154-3, Rabada 8-0-42-0, Markram 7-1-18-0, de Bruyn 5-0-20-0, Steyn 11-2-30-0, Ngidi 9-5-9-1, Elgar 1-0-2-0South Africa 2nd innings:D. Elgar lbw Perera 37A. Markram lbw Herath 14T. de Bruyn not out 35H. Amla b Herath 6F. du Plessis c Mathews b Dananjaya 7K. Maharaj lbw Dananjaya 0T. Bavuma not out 14Extras: (8b, 4lb, 4nb) 16Total: (5 wickets, 41 overs) 139To bat: Q. de Kock, K. Rabada, D. Steyn, L. NgidiFall: 1-23 (Markram), 2-80 (Elgar), 3-100 (Amla), 4-113 (du Plessis), 5-113 (Maharaj)Bowlers: Herath 15-1-54-2, Perera 16-4-38-1 (3nb), Dananjaya 10-2-35-2 (1nb)Toss: Sri Lanka Umpires: Nigel Llong (ENG), Rod Tucker (AUS)TV umpire: Paul Reiffel (AUS) Match referee: Richie Richardson (WIS).

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PALEMBANG, Indonesia: Irate Indonesian football fans ripped plastic seats from the stands and hurled them onto the pitch at a stadium scheduled to host the Asian Games next month, an official said Sunday.A league match between Sriwijaya FC and Arema FC ended in chaos Saturday afternoon when the fans tore up seats at the Gelora Sriwijaya Stadium in Palembang on the island of Sumatra.Pictures showed multi-coloured chairs strewn across the outer edges of the ground, which is bordered by an athletics track.“We are very upset with the supporters who ruined the seats in Gelora Sriwijaya during the game,” Rusli Nawi, the stadium’s security supervisor, told AFP. “I’ve been here for nearly 10 years... there has never been damage to the seats like yesterday.”The stadium had been renovated for the Games, which are being held in Palembang and the capital Jakarta from August 18-September 2.Indonesia has been scrambling to prepare venues, finish building work, widen roads and ease traffic congestion.Some 335 seats were damaged, about half of which will have to be replaced with seats ordered from outside Indonesia, Nawi said.Police have arrested four people over the rampage, which was started by Sriwijaya fans upset at their team’s 3-0 home loss, Nawi said.No one was injured.About 11,000 athletes and 5,000 officials from 45 Asian countries will compete in the Games, the world’s biggest multi-sports event after the Olympics.

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SINGAPORE: Taiwanese badminton star Chou Tien-chen stormed to a 21-13, 21-13 win over compatriot Hsu Jen-hao to clinch the Singapore Open men’s singles title on Sunday.Serving deep, cross-court smashes at high speeds, the world number seven easily claimed the first game. Hsu initially looked stronger in the second game, taking an 8-4 lead, but Chou bounced back impressively by winning seven consecutive points.The 28-year-old went on to win easily at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, sealing victory in 43 minutes.“I felt like I had good control at the start,” Chou, the top seed in the tournament, said after the match.“There were several times that Hsu took the lead, but I managed to fight back and I knew when and how to take charge of the game.”The win follows his German Open triumph in May and serves as a confidence boost for the upcoming World Championships in Nanjing.Chou acknowledged that he will face stiff competition from top players, such as Danish world number one Viktor Axelsen and rising Japanese star Kento Momota, who both gave the Singapore tournament a miss.“They are amazing players with great skills. I need to find a way to beat them,” he said.In the women’s singles, fifth seed Sayaka Takahashi of Japan overcame a slow start to pick up her third title of the year, beating China’s Gao Fangjie 25-23, 21-14.The 25-year-old won the Swiss Open in February and the New Zealand Open in May.Japan won another title with women’s doubles pair Ayako Sakuramoto and Yukiko Takahata beating compatriots Nami Matsuyama and Chiharu Shida 16-21, 24-22, 21-13.In men’s doubles, Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan of Indonesia cruised to a 21-13, 21-19 win over China’s Ou Xuanyi and Ren Xiangyu.In mixed doubles, Malaysian duo Goh Soon Huat and Shevon Jemie Lai fended off strong competition from Olympic champions Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir, defeating the Indonesians 21-19, 21-18.

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LAHORE: Some hope for the sports horizon rose higher in January this year at a detailed press conference. The Pakistan Olympic Association said that coaches would accompany teams going to the Asian Games being held in August this year.“The federations will send the CVs of the coaches to ascertain their eligibility. This is to eliminate the practice of favouritism and jeopardising the rights of those who work with the athletes throughout the training but at the end are dropped,” POA Secretary Haji Khalid Mehmood told pressmen at the time. His comments followed a meeting between POA Chief (Retd) Lt. Gen. Arif Hasan and the president and secretaries of the national sports federation.At around the same time the POA, with the federations, had, following the Olympic Agenda 2020, initiated a programme to safeguard athletes from harassment and abuse in sports. This of course is particularly important in Pakistan where there have been periodical allegations, notably involving female cricketers in 2013 and hockey players in late 2017. While the online courses on awareness were completed by at least some federations, the issue of dispatching coaches alongside teams remains something all federations simply do not recognize as important. The tradition of sending ‘favourites’ on tours is of course a long established one.The Pakistan Athletics Federation will be dispatching an experienced coach and an official of the federation Asghar Ali Gill along with his squad to Jakarta. Gill has in the past coached Pakistan’s top athletes including Naseem Hameed, the girl from Lyari who stunned the world by winning the 100m gold at the 2010 South Asian Games in Dhaka. She says ‘coaches are vital to the success of any athlete and at meets they can encourage and support.’The Pakistan Swimming Federation does not appear to have made up its mind however on how important good coach is for a national squad. Other federations may too opt to set out without a qualified coach. This is a matter which needs to be discussed at the upcoming meetings between the POA, PSF and federations. According to available reports, the officials included in the swimming contingent do not include a coach who has, as POA suggest, worked with national level players over a period of time and owns the requisite qualifications.Commenting on this to The News, John Leonard, Executive Director of the American Swim Coaches Association, said ““NO successful sporting nation would send a team of athletes ANYWHERE without a swimming coach. This is simple fact demonstrated on deck by every team with an athlete on the Podium.”Backing Leonard’s opinion, FINA coach Miguel Lopez, who heads the FINA excellence programme in Phuket told this publication in Thanyapura “The support of a coach is extremely important. Without the coach going to a meet there is much higher chance of failure, disappointment and even swimmers abandoning the sport.” He added “not sending a coach to a major meet is, simply put, nonsense”.The football and baseball federations seem set to dispatch coaches as would be the case with most other team sports. The boxing federation, also running an individual sport, will also be dispatching a coach according to reports available to this newspaper so far as will weightlifting and wrestling – though names and qualifications are still to be confirmed.A former Pakistani athlete who ran 400m at international events for his country prior to 2000 told The News “it is hard for anyone involved in competitive sport to even imagine managing without a coach. This is especially difficult for inexperienced Pakistani athletes.”While the Pakistan Olympic Association, the PSB and the federations will no doubt be sorting out the problem, there are also bigger problems. Sports is not a priority in Pakistan. Financial constraints could force a cut in the size of the contingent which currently stands at 397 members, with unaffiliated federations paying for themselves. It is hoped that in the cuts coaches and naturally athletes will be put in first place behind officials who often treat even the most important international meets only as pleasure ride.

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DAEJEON, South Korea: South Korea’s Jang Woo-jin won the men’s singles and doubles titles at the Korea Open Sunday, the first player in the history of the ITTF World Tour event to secure three golds in the same tournamentThe previous day he had won the mixed doubles by pairing with North Korea’s Cha Hyo Sim.On Sunday he partnered Lim Jong-hoon to success in the men’s doubles. The number 6 seeds beat the top seeds Hong Kong’s Ho Kwan Kit and Wong Chun Ting 11-8, 19-17, 9-11, 11-9.Jang closed the curtain by overcoming China’s Liang Jinkun 11-8, 11-9, 11-7, 11-3 in the men’s singles final.“This is beyond my expectations. I’m very happy. This would have been impossible without support from fans,” he said. Liang said his strategy had been faulty but acknowledged that Jang had “played very well”.China’s Zhu Yuling beat compatriot Chen Meng in five games 11-4, 8-11, 11-8, 11-5, 11-9 to win the women’s singles title.China’s Cheng Meng and Ding Ning won the women’s doubles title by beating compatriots Wang Manyu and Zhu Yuling 14-12, 9-11, 11-9, 13-11.The tournament featured four unified teams from North and South Korea -- in the men’s and women’s doubles and two mixed doubles teams. The unified Korea team won the mixed doubles and took a bronze in the men’s doubles.It was the first gold medal won by an joint Korean sports team in nearly three decades. A women’s joint table tennis team scored a shock victory over reigning champion China in the world championship in Japan in 1991.

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DHAKA: Bangladesh plans to crack down on players who use “pretexts” to avoid playing domestic first-class cricket in an effort to boost its woeful Test squad, an official said Sunday.Bangladesh have won just 10 out of 108 games since getting Test status in 2000, losing six of their last seven, including a thrashing by the West Indies this month. They failed to score 200 runs in any of their last six innings and were bowled out for 43, their lowest-ever total, in the Caribbean in the first Test.According to Bangladesh Cricket Board officials, a major reason for the crisis is players’ lack of interest in playing Test and first-class cricket. “We have got a long-standing policy that the players will not be considered for the national team unless they play domestic first-class cricket. But whenever it comes to playing National Cricket League or other first-class matches our players show family reason or other pretexts to avoid it,” said BCB spokesman Jalal Yunus.Jalal’s comments came two days after BCB president Nazmul Hassan revealed that star players Shakib Al Hasan, Mustafizur Rahman and Rubel Hossain were reluctant to play Test cricket.

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ISLAMABAD: The South Asian Olympic Committee (SAOC) has added cricket and paragliding for men and women to the 13th South Asian Games’ disciplines.The South Asian Games will be held in Kathmandu (Nepal) from March 9-18.The decision was taken in the SAOC meeting held in Kathmandu on Saturday.Talking to ‘The News’ from Kathmandu, Pakistan Olympic Association Secretary Mohammad Khalid Mehmood said two sports were added to the total disciplines.“Now cricket and paragliding will also be a part of the South Asian Games programme,” he said. “The committee also approved amendments to the SAOC constitution.”The committee further decided to hold its next meeting during the course of the Asian Games in Jakarta and approve the amendments to the constitution and other modalities of the South Asian Games. The POA delegation included Khalid Mehmood and Mohammad Shafique.

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