The Germans

The Germans. I’d written off Bayern for the UCL in the last blog. How wrong can you be ? Barcelona, widely considered one of the all-time great club sides, were handed an incredible 7-0 hiding on aggregate in the semi-final. Dortmund were equally impressive in seeing off Madrid. I would still rate the Spanish national side over their German counterparts though. With hindsight, Man City finishing third in their UCL group behind Madrid & Dortmund doesn’t look like such a bad result now.

Bayern are 20 points clear in the Bundesliga. Unlike the Bavarians, Man United have not won the plaudits but despite not having an outstanding season, performance-wise, won the league at a canter.

When Lukas Rosol famously knocked Nadal out of Wimbledon last year, many people, including me, thought it would be the highlight of his career. Instead, since then he has climbed the rankings (from 100)  to world no. 35 and the best may be yet to come for the Czech.  There was a pleasing symmetry last Sunday with both Rafa & Rosol winning clay-court tournaments in Barcelona & Bucharest. An emotional Rosol dedicated the win to his late father who’d died only two weeks before.

The GB Davis Cup team had a great result at the start of April, beating a top nation despite being without Andy Murray. Youzhny, Russia’s top-ranked player, wasn’t in the Russia team but still the Russians, Donskoy(80) & Tursunov (67) were ranked far higher than the Brits, Ward (214) & Evans (325).

Novak Djokovic ended Rafa Nadal’s  incredible eight year win streak on the Monte Carlo clay. Andy Murray lost in the second round to Wawrinka. I  feel Murray can never get to world no. 1 with his inconsistent clay court results, he’s yet to make a final on clay.  

Performance of the Month

Robert Lewandowski’s four-goal haul in the first leg against Madrid.

Honourable mention:

Chris Gayle hit the fastest ever first class century, off 30 balls, for RCB in an IPL match. No cutting edge sports nutrition for Gayle either, he did it on an old school sports breakfast of omelette, pancakes & hot chocolate.