Voice Of Jewish Sport: Where next for Israeli tennis?

ISRAELI TENNIS has been in the doldrums for quite a while now, so it’s no great surprise that there’s only one player still involved in the Australian Open. Dudi Sela did claim a brilliant win over a tired Fernando Verdasco, conqueror of Rafael Nadal, but that is a one-off. Slightly greater things were hoped of Jonathan Erlich, who having reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon, had also alongside Chris Fleming, beat the Bryan brothers in a warm-up tournament last week, but the Israeli-GB duo were sent packing in the first round. Three others were beaten in the qualifiers, while another three Jewish players failed to get past Day Three. There was one bright spark as American teenager Noah Rubin not only claimed his first win at a Grand Slam tournament – but did it by beating the number 17 seed Benoit Paire. It’s not much, but it’s something!

AVRAM GRAN’T still can’t seem to do much right as Ghana manager. Criticised, perhaps somewhat understandably, for not selecting Cristiano Ronaldo among his top three for the recent 2015 FIFA Ballon d’Or award, he’s now been accused of not deserving his £28,000 monthly salary. Kwabena Yeboah, president of the Sports Writers Association of Ghana, said: “I have a lot of criticisms against him, I don’t understand why he thinks that we should pay him that kind of money to spend more time in Europe monitoring who and what?” Tough times for the former Chelsea manager.

IT MAY not go down as they greatest ever miss in the history of football, but it’s sure to come pretty close to it. Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Barak Itzhaki’s miss has to be seen to be believed – which it can be at jewishnews.co.uk – when he somehow contrived to miss an open goal from just a couple of yards out. It left the Israeli commentator in a state of disbelief, he can even be heard referring to Ronnie Rosenthal’s epic miss for Liverpool – it was that bad!