Dein erstes Forum » omas Berdych?for the eighth and

In my final year at school I was chosen to open the batting for the Transvaal Under-19 side with a big-hearted kid called Craig Norris from a neighbouring school. We had one mid-week warm-up game against a Transvaal Invitation XI at Morningside before flying down to Stellenbosch for the 1982 Nuffield Week, a tournament for South African high schools.I cant remember exactly what we thought but Im sure we assumed that the Invitation XI would be made up of ringers and sundry club unemployables of good standard. Wed negotiate past the fixture with the minimum of fuss and be on that plane down to the Cape in a jiffy.In those days, club cricket in Johannesburg was properly competitive. Several Premier League clubs employed English professionals like Richard Lumb or Ashley Harvey-Walker, sometimes called Ashley Harvey-Wallbanger by the wits of the local scene. Every so often you would encounter a Transvaal player on a soft club weekend, or a Transvaal B player trying to play their way back into form or fitness.Schoolboy cricket was hard-fought but genteel. You played on good wickets in front of gently appreciative fathers and mothers sitting in deck chairs; you wore your blazer to tea, didnt argue with the umpire, and didnt appeal unless you had a good chance of getting it right. Mostly they were heavenly days.As a younger boy, clutching my precious 12th-birthday bat and standing timidly knock-kneed in my recently scrubbed takkies, I remember listening to Lumb and Harvey-Walker in a daze of wonder. If you were lucky enough, your headmaster might select you to attend one of their precious net sessions on Friday afternoons at Balfour Park. I didnt learn many cricket lessons at these sessions, spending the afternoons in a funk of thwarted desire. Lumb, I noticed, was kitted out with St Peter equipment, down to batting mitts that shaped over his hands like boxing gloves. Only boys with rich parents could afford St Peter gear. The rest of us had to be content with sanding the edges out of our Gray-Nicolls bat (sand with the grain, urged my dad), lovingly applying linseed oil in the long months before summer with a lappie (rag) from the kitchen.Sometimes Lumb spoke about Geoff Boycott - or Geoffrey - his Yorkshire opening partner. It was usually in tones of mild derision, but he always managed to find space in his tales for a sort of reluctant admiration. Then he laughed and shook his big head of hair and went back to the far less perplexing business of leading the fielding drills.Harvey-Walker was a different proposition. He was clipped, speaking in a language I identified as English but only partially understood. We must have seemed retarded because we never quite understood what he was saying but didnt have the courage to ask him to repeat himself. Sessions were conducted in a busy miasma of mutual incomprehension as he clucked at us in his Derbyshire accent, and we did the best we could to act on what we thought hed said. Net sessions didnt run particularly smoothly.It was only when Hugh Page came into the schoolboys dressing room as Craig and I were padding up after we lost the toss against the Invitation XI that we began to realise what we were in for. You might want to wear this, Page said to me kindly as he passed me his helmet, an outsized maroon number with a protruding visor that stretched all the way to the Zimbabwe border. I had never worn a helmet before. Mostly we just wore our caps. If you came upon anyone really quick in schoolboy cricket, you reeled in your shot-making and waited for him to blow himself out. This helmet was large and ungainly, with fiddly straps. It was like batting inside a hollowed-out watermelon. Craig, who was better than me and had played more regularly at a higher level - he was playing in the Transvaal Mean Machine side a year or two later - probably took first ball, but before long I was facing Graham Dilley, then opening the bowling for England.Dilley hammered his front foot down like some storybook Gulliver but also had a back-foot drag, so the two sounds arrived fractionally before his deliveries cannoned into the splice of my much-used old County bat. I hopped about the crease like a scalded rabbit, and didnt score anything in front of square for the first hour as I flicked and glided and nudged.Neal Radford opened the bowling with Dilley, and when he realised he couldnt get me to nick off, proceeded to cheerfully bounce me. The forward short leg probably got in on the action but I was too busy trying to survive to listen very carefully. When Dilley and Radford came off, Page replaced them. He was slippery, darting it off the seam, thudding a couple into Craigs midriff and hurting him on the juicy inner part of the thigh. Alvin Kallicharran watched it good-naturedly from the slips. The wickets would come, his indulgent smile seemed to be saying, it was just a matter of time.After a while their pity hardened. Radford bounced us some more. A Warwickshire professional whose name Ive forgotten started to get lippy. We couldnt have been far from a hundred partnership - Alfred 40-odd - when I spooned an inelegant mistimed drive to mid-off. The Warwickshire pro went off, swearing like a sewer.As I walked back to the pavilion, struggling with my helmet, our coach caught my eye. That wasnt so bad, he said breezily, and I could see the relief in his eyes. Cheap Marlins Jerseys .com) - Manchester City midfielder David Silva is expected to miss the next four weeks because of a calf problem. Marlins Jerseys China .C. -- Kemba Walker and the Charlotte Bobcats got off to a fast start, and the Sacramento Kings were never quite able to catch up. http://www.custommarlinsjersey.com/ . -- The proud fathers huddled near the Dallas Stars dressing room, smiling, laughing and telling stories while wearing replica green sweaters of their sons team. Wholesale Custom Marlins Shirts . -- Team after team passed on Andre Ellington in the draft. Custom Marlins T-shirts . -- Cam Newton pranced into the end zone, placed his hands over his chest and did his familiar Superman pose. This is the time of year when players who need a boost have ample opportunity to do just that.Heres a look at some of the hot hands on the respective tours as the season winds down:?@ptbodo:? Petra Kvitova may be the most infuriating tennis player out there, at least when it comes to players with a capacity to disappoint. A two-time Wimbledon champion, she routinely takes puzzling losses. This year, shes been beaten by, among others, Madison Brengle, Shelby Rogers and Jelena Ostapenko (the latter took her down twice).Kvitovas ranking rose to a career-high of No. 2 in October of 2011, after she won her first Wimbledon. She was within a few swings of the No. 1 ranking and could have locked up the prestigious year-end No. 1 ranking as well. Sure, she was just an exceedingly shy 21-year-old at the time. It helps explain how badly she faded. But shes 26 now and has never been up near that summit again.Kvitova did become a regular in the top 10, and she won another Wimbledon (2014). But she has never really mastered the art of consistency.This year, Kvitova slumped significantly. This summer, her ranking dropped as low as No. 16. The 6-foot tall left-hander, who hits some of the most stupefying winners as well as some of the most wince-inducing errors, seemed to be done for the year when Angelique Kerber rolled through her with ease in the fourth round of the US Open on her way to the No. 1 ranking.Kvitovas response, once again, appears to be a plea for everyone not to write her off just yet.At Wuhan last week, still ranked a lowly No. 16, Kvitova beat Kerber in the third round in one of the best matches of the WTA year. Kvitova went on to take the title with wins against women ranked above her. In succession, they were: Johanna Konta, Simona Halep and Dominika Cibulkova.Kvitova remains one of the most erratic but electric talents in the game. As Kerber herself told the press after her loss in Wuhan: I think we both played on a really high level over three hours. At the end I think theres no loser. I did everything today. I was fighting until the end.For her part, Kvitova admitted: I need this kind of consistency all year, which to be honest, I dont think I can really do that. Im probably the player who has up and downs. Of course, Im going to try to be better in the downs. But I dont really think that I can be consistent all season. Im just how I am probably, and I cant really change.Give Kvitova point for honesty -- and one oversized game that may still yield more Grand Slam titles.@CarlBialik: Ryan Harrison is getting into tournaments the hard way -- and benefiting from the hard work.dddddddddddd The 24-year-old American broke into the top 50 four years ago, but has struggled to get back into the upper ranks of mens tennis since. In his breakout year of 2012, Harrison feasted on wild cards, getting five and each time winning his first match in the main draw.But since then, he has won matches in just six tournaments that he entered via wild card. And with younger Americans emerging as contenders, Harrisons wild-card well has run dry. He hasnt received one directly into a tour-level event since last years US Open. So now when Harrisons ranking isnt good enough for direct entry into a tournament, he usually tries to get in via qualifying. And its paying off. Six times this year, Harrison has qualified for a tournament.Five times, he has gone on to win his first match, including three instances since Wimbledon. The sixth time is this week in Tokyo, where hed have to upset Nick Kyrgios to keep his streak alive. Even if Harrison doesnt pull off the upset, all that work of qualifying is making him match-tough.Its taken top players to knock out of the past four tournaments hes qualified for -- Marin Cilic, Steve Johnson, Tomas Berdych and Bernard Tomic. In the Tomic loss, last week in Shenzhen, Harrison won a higher percentage of return points than his much higher-ranked opponent, but couldnt convert enough big ones to win.Turn around some matches like that one, and Harrison could soon re-enter the top 100 for a sustained period for the first time since early 2014.@mattwilansky: The race for the year-end championships is in full swing. On the ATP Tour, Rafael Nadal holds a slim lead on?Tomas Berdych?for the eighth and final spot to make the prestigious London finale.Nadal takes the court in the China Open this week and is steadfast on having a successful fall, historically the weakest part of his season.In his pretourney presser in Beijing, Nadal told the press how important it would be for him to win the ATP World Tour Finals, an event, which surprisingly, hes never captured.On the womens side, Madison Keys?holds a paltry 85-point lead on Carla Suarez Navarro. This time of season seems well-suited for Keys, given many are played on fast, indoor conditions.Svetlana Kuznetsova and?Johanna Konta?are also in the mix for the championships, which start in three weeks in Singapore. Konta is hoping to become the first British player in 32 years to reach the year-end finale. ' ' '