Weekly Sports Round Up: Djokovic wins Australian Open singles title

Australia was the epicenter of sporting action last week with 3 major tournaments of poker, tennis and cricket culminating parallelly. While Manny Stavropoulos was battling out for the Main Event title and Phil Ivey was in race to take down the $250,000 challenge at the Crown Casino, Novak Djokovic was sweating out on the tennis turf to clinch the Australian Open singles title. Meanwhile, Australian Cricket team played against England at the historic Perth ground in the finals of Carton-Mid tri-series.

Tennis 
World no #1, Novak Djokovic triumphed the challenging final of 2015 Australian Open against the 4^th seed Andy Murray at Melbourne park. The Serbian tennis star beat Murray 7-6(5), 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-0 to win his 5^th Australian Open title. Murray couldn’t capitalise on early break points and faced the defeat in finals which was his fourth at the Melbourne. Indian tennis ace, Leander Paes won the mixed doubles title with her partner and tennis legend Martina Hingis. This was the first grand slam for the duo while the 15^th grand slam title for Paes and the 16^th for the Swiss Miss Hingis.

Cricket

After beating Team India in the last qualifying ODI, England faced the mighty Australians in the Finals of Carlton-Mid Tri-Series at Perth cricket ground. In the first innings, Australians put on 278 runs on the board with the help of a partnership between Maxwell (95) and Marsh (60) and a quick 50 by Faulkner in the end. Stuart broad bagged three wickets completing 500 international wickets. English batsmen couldn’t have imagined in their worst dream that they would fall by mere 166 runs in the chase. The duo of Maxwell and Johnson shared 7 wickets in this fantastic bowling performance. With this win, Australia took over India in the ODI rakings to the top.

Football

Football fans around the world got to see the clash of the titans in the English Premier League this weekend when the 2^nd seed Manchester City played against the point table leader Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea took the initial lead 1-0 just before the half-time when Remy found a slot in the empty net of Man City. But, this lead did not stand long as Silva leveled it up in the last minute before the Half-time. The 2^nd half of the match went dead without any goals and the match ended up in a draw 1-1 with Chelsea retaining its top position on the points table. In other matches, Arsenal thrashed Aston Villa by 5-0 while Liverpool gained some points by beating West Ham 2-0.