SNOOKER: Ken Doherty won the last two frames for a 5-4 victory over Stephen Hendry in the quarter-final of the Players Championship in Glasgow last night.
Down 2-0 early on Doherty hit back to square the match at 2-2 at the break. Hendry eased ahead again at 3-2 and 4-3 but an 84 break in the eighth frame squared the match at 4-4.
And in a close final frame Doherty held his nerve to win 65-31 and set up a semi-final meeting with Paul Hunter.
Earlier, Jimmy White had double reason for celebration after reaching the semi-finals.
The Whirlwind breezed through to the last four of a major tournament for the fourth time this season with a 5-3 victory over Preston's Ian McCulloch.
And White is now guaranteed to remain as part of the game's elite top-16 ranked players for another season.
"I've become tired mentally because I've got too involved in thinking about the rankings, but now I've got to where I want to be I can chill out a bit," said White, who will turn 42 next month.
"It's a magic feeling to be going to the world championship without having to think about the top-16."
In the other quarter-finals Ronnie O'Sullivan crashed out 5-2 to Hunter while Mark Williams went down to Irish Masters champion Peter Ebdon 5-3.
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CRICKET: England wicketkeeper Chris Read has paid the price for his poor form with the bat by being dropped for the fourth and final Test against West Indies which starts in St John's, Antigua, tomorrow.
Read, who has made only 36 runs in the series to date, is replaced by the uncapped Geraint Jones in the side as England look to complete a first whitewash over the home side in the Caribbean.
The rest of the team are unchanged, although left-arm spinner Ashley Giles has a stomach bug and could be replaced by off-spinner Gareth Batty.
Captain Michael Vaughan said the decision was solely based on Read's lack of runs.
CYCLING: British rider Dean Downing (recycling.co.uk-MG X Power) was first to the line at the end of yesterday's 52-mile opening stage of the Credit Union Rás Mumhan, outsprinting David O'Loughlin (Hibernian Team Ireland) to take the first leader's jersey of the race, writes Shane Stokes.
Downing's team-mate Rob Sharman was third, 12 seconds ahead of Cidona Carrick Wheelers' Timmy Barry.
The four had gone clear after 10 miles of the stage, joining with Aidan Crowley (Cycleways Lee Strand) and Micheal Concannon (Killorglin Credit Union) to open up a minute's lead.
Crowley and Concannon cracked on the Sliabh Mish climb, with Barry and then Sharman also losing some time before the finish. Downing proved too fast for O'Loughlin in the final sprint, but the Mayo rider and the rest of the Hibernian Team Ireland squad will go out with all guns blazing on today's gruelling Ring of Kerry stage to try to claim yellow.
It promises to be a fascinating battle; Downing's recycling.co.uk team have four riders in the top 10 and seem very capable of taking the fight to the home riders.
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ATHLETICS: Russian sprinter Anastasiya Kapachinskaya, 200 metres gold medalist at the world indoor athletics championships, has tested positive for a banned steroid, a Russian Olympic Committee official said yesterday.
Nikolai Durmanov, head of the committee's anti-doping division, said the athlete had tested positive for stanozolol, an anabolic steroid.
He said Kapachinskaya's second sample would be tested at the end of the month. "The second test will be carried out at the end of April and after that the question of sanctions will be discussed," Durmanov said.
