A round-up of other sports stories.
Moriarty upbeat
Ireland's Colm Moriarty has teamed up with coach Pete Cowan as he bids to follow the lead of Cowan's star pupil, Henrik Stenson of Sweden, who won the European Challenge Tour rankings before going on to become one of European golf's dominant forces in 2006.
As he prepared for his first Challenge Tour event of the season at the Estoril Challenge in Portugal this week, having not played a competitive stroke since Qualifying School back in November, Moriarty was in upbeat mood.
"I'm looking forward to getting going again," said the 26-year-old. "I'm hitting the ball well after making a few changes with Pete Cowan. I think I needed a bit of a change to freshen things up and I feel working with Pete has done that for me."
Tourists succumb
New Zealand recovered from a top-order batting collapse to beat West Indies by three wickets in the second one-day international at Queenstown yesterday.
The Kiwis looked to be heading towards certain defeat when they collapsed to 13 for four chasing 201 for victory after the touring side made 200 for nine from their 50 overs.
But Peter Fulton (49) and Brendon McCullum (45) steadied the New Zealand innings, before Daniel Vettori steered the home team to victory with eight overs to spare. Wavell Hinds earlier scored 76 to rescue the West Indies from a poor start, but his performance was not enough to prevent the tourists falling 2-0 behind in the five-game series.
Bangladesh scored 213 for six in 47 overs to beat Sri Lanka by four wickets in the second one-day international yesterday.
A match to love
Lindsay Davenport thrashed Russia's Elena Likhovtseva 6-0 6-0 at the Dubai Open yesterday, the 700th singles victory of her career. The defending champion, playing her first match at the tournament, struggled to win an opening game that went to five deuces, but then powered away to a clinical victory.
"You see the draw and I thought Elena was a tough opponent to get for my first match, so I took it obviously quite seriously," said Davenport, the only active player to have recorded 700 wins.
It was only the fourth time the second seed had achieved a 6-0 6-0 victory in her career, the previous occasion coming at Indian Wells last year when Maria Sharapova was her victim.
Martina Hingis beat sixth seed Anastasia Myskina 6-4 6-3.
Low notes for Jazz
Bookmakers were unimpressed with the performance of Noel Meade's Jazz Messenger at Punchestown yesterday and have pushed him out in the betting for the Cheltenham Festival.
Quoted before the Irish National Hunt Festival Novice Hurdle as a 14 to 1 shot with some firms for the Anglo Irish Bank Supreme Novice Hurdle, he is now available at nearly double those odds.
Sent off the 8 to 13 favourite to beat seven rivals, he began to look in trouble after a slow leap three out and never reeled in long-time leader Drunken Disorderly (4 to 1) and went down by three lengths.
William Hill have now pushed the six-year-old out to 25 to 1 from 16 to 1 for the Cheltenham contest. Meade's Sweet Wake is 3 to 1 favourite for the race with the same firm.
