Other Sports

Now we all know that the Rugby World Cup is going on right now but Today, Nine has announced their 2023 Cricket World Cup content ahead of the tournament’s start on Thursday October 5 between England v New Zealand next month.

Unlike the Ashes a few months ago in England, they will be sharing the rights with Fox Cricket as the free-to-air partner that will see them broadcast air all Australian matches & Finals. Plus, they will also air a handful of key International matches since Nine lost the home International domestic rights to Seven & Fox back in 2018. Although there won’t be full match replays, but there will be mini matches to look back on-demand in addition to live coverage on the main channel (Channel 9) & 9Now. 

It’s the same rights-sharing arrangement that has been going on for such a long time including last year’s T20 World Cup on home soil, as this could be the last time Nine would be airing one of the ICC events in the Cricket World Cup ahead of the next rights cycle going into 2024. As per usual, we will be getting the world feed commentary team since cricket is a different sport that includes several people rotating every half-hour rather than soccer/rugby where you’re allowed to aseemble your own commentary team.

Meanwhile, Nine will always have pre-game, post-game & mid-break studio coverage back in Sydney on top of the world feed commentary with just Roz Kelly (Host) & Mark Taylor (Analyst). They may have a bit less analysts than usual but these two know their stuff every well where Mark was a great opening batsman back in his day for Australia including his long-running association providing cricket commentary with the network for over two decades now, while Roz is more than just a decent sportscaster via her husband Morne Morkel whom they have two young boys as a family together.

The scheduling is great even though all of the matches are going to be held over in India from 7pm at night apart from the final Australian group stage game v Bangladesh where it will be begin at 3.30pm on Saturday, November 11. It’s gonna be a great one to watch on what has been a big World Cup year of sport, then once the CWC is done we’ll have to wait and see whether or not if Nine would stay on airing ICC events for the next four or eight years contract cycle with Fox since Nine now has their own paid streaming arm of Stan Sport.

Well, we got a women’s singles grand slam champ at last from the US of A in Coco Gauff who defeated Aryna Sabalenka from a set down to a terrific comeback that secured her a home grand slam title at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York. What a moment it has been from the young American, having ended a long wait for a winner to lift the US Open women’s singles title on home soil since Sloane Stephens in 2017. For the new World No.1 ranked player in Sabalenka, she had an easy start during the first stage. However, she just couldn’t keep it up from a resurgent Gauff at the next restart before it was too late.

Final score: 2-6 to Sabalenka, 6-3 & 6-2 to Gauff.

Meanwhile in the men, how good was seeing Novak Djokovic win his grand slam title No.24 here as it’s been a few years since he last lifted the men’s singles US Open title back in 2018. He did so well in the beginning, then he overcame such a huge 2nd stage set of battles after that tiebreak against Daniil Medvedev before the light was there at the end of the tunnel. And on the 21’ champ Medvedev, it took him a while to get going where he showed some fight throughout the 2nd set but just lost it all along towards the end.

Final Score: 3-6, 6-7 with 5-7 tiebreak & 3-6 to Djokovic.

After seeing four grand slams, the 2023 season has now came to a fantastic close for this next book featuring some terrific performances & upsets along the way.

There will be some Tennis towards the end of the year beginning with the Davis Cup Finals during the Group Stage portion where Australia will take on Great Britain, France & Switzerland – let’s hope they can take it all the way & go one better come the knockout stages in late November.

The 2023 US Open weekend’s main event singles finals is all set now that is gonna be a bit different this time around where we will get to see a new women’s champ, while two of the top men’s players will square it off after we saw some excellent semi-final match ups over the last two days at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York.

We’ll go with the women’s first and has been a bit of a non-starter after the opening stage when it comes to off the court between Coco Gauff & Karolina Muchkova due to some climate change protest that halted play for almost an hour. But back to the action now where action now & both players did so well with Muchkova eventually getting the ball rolling to try & stay in there, but at the end of the day, it was Gauff who was superb from start to finish with patience that puts herself in the Final for America (6-4, 7-5).

We also saw another American in action for the 2nd semi straight after the first match named Madison Keys who had an outstanding first stage unchallenged v Aryna Sabalenka. From there though, now she was almost there to set up an All-American final with Gauff when given the chance a few times including the 3rd set decider. But sadly, things just wasn’t easy when it comes to the execution for Keys as Sabalenka went on to rebound from 1-0 down to a brilliant finish of the night (6-0, 6-7 – 1-7 tiebreak & 6-7 – 5-10 tiebreak).

Then earlier today in the first of the two men’s last four matches Novak Djokovic was too good during the first half after the opening two sets. Although American’s own Ben Shelton never gave up to try & turn things around throughout the 3rd stage, but it’s still always the Djoker who always gets it done in the end (3-6, 2-6, 6-7 – 4-7 tie). And finally we finish off the last men’s semi between the 2021 & 2022 champions Daniil Medvedev & Carlos Alcaraz. Alcaraz started not bad where he won some brilliant battles including the 3rd stage, but his inconsistency sadly let him down that gave Medvedev the upper hand (6-3 – 3-7 tie, 1-6, 6-3, 3-6). The Spaniard will now have to sit out by watching both Medvedev & Djokovic take centre stage for the men’s US Open title.

It all comes down to just two amazing single finals matches left of this tournament. Will we see Gauff be the next American to win a title at home v the next World No1 player in Sabalenka who is exceptional on the hard court? How about Medvedev making up lost time following his 2021 US Open title win or else see Novak winning a major here for the fourth time since 2018 in New York? Can’t wait to finish off this grand slam season like this!!

The opening four rounds over the last week has gone down to eight and now we have four left after a brilliant last two days of US Open Tennis at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York. Let’s start with the women’s singles bracket and there’s going to be two of their own players to get behind them in Coco Gauff & Madison Keys.

Gauff had a very easy outing against Jelena Ostapenko from Latvia (0-6, 2-6), while Keys staved off a late threat in the 2nd stage off current Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova (Czech Republic) also following a great start to the match (1-6, 4-6). Their next respective opponents for the last 4 tomorrow will be Karolina Muchkova (Czech Republic) & Aryna Sabalenka (Belarus) where both of these players also fought off so well at the same time against Sorana Cirstea (Romania) by Muchkova (0-6, 3-6) & Qinwen Zheng by Sabalenka (1-6, 4-6).

Over in the men’s, there’s another set of Americans on show in the last 8. Although one has gone through guaranteed where Ben Shelton responded well to Francis Tiafoe’s 2nd set with the win after four sets (2-6, 6-3, 6-7 via 7-9 tie & 2-6), while the other couldn’t get past Novak Djokovic (Serbia) all along in Taylor Fritz (1-6, 4-6, 4-6). Yes, it’s gonna be a tough one for sure for Shelton where he will take on Djokovic, even when he had some hamstring issues during the mixed doubles QF game with Taylor Townsend also earlier today against Jessica Pegula & Austin Krajicek. But if Shelton can get the job done, then he will be the first American to play in a final since Andy Roddick in 2006. That opening semi match-up between Djokovic & Shelton will be in the early hours of Saturday AM AEST time.

And lastly, we will have two US Open champions both from last year & 2021 going head-to-head in the 2nd semi-final also later on Saturday AM between Carlos Alcaraz (Spain) & Daniil Medvedev (Russia). They too got the job done without a lot of hassle to wrap up the last 8 earlier today against their respective opponents Alexander Zverev (Germany – 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 by Alcaraz) & Andrey Rublev (Russia – 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 by Medvedev).

All in all, we saw few straight sets match-ups here & there that saw them punch their ticket to the semis where we will have a new women’s champion, while we had a terrific four-set all American showdown.

Now there are 2-3 Americans hoping to go all the way into the weekend’s main event against one of the elite & best grand slam players out there as they all seek to finish off the grand slam year of 2023 on a huge note. All four key semi-final match-ups will be found out at Arthur Ashe Stadium where the city never sleeps in New York.