Indian Wells, California  - Lleyton Hewitt shrugged off hip worries while Andy Murray plans to fight through the after-effects of a virus as play on the ATP side of the Indian Wells Masters got underway on Thursday.

Hewitt, a two-time (2002, 2003) former champion at the desert venue and the 2005 finalist against Roger Federer, ignored the hip niggle which bothered him at weekend Davis Cup in Bangkok as he defeated Czech Jan Hernych 7-6 (7-3), 6-3 to reach the second round.

Madrid  - The French daily Le Monde will have to compensate Real Madrid with 330,000 euros (421,000 dollars) over allegations of doping, the Spanish club said Thursday.

A Madrid court said a piece by the journalist Stephane Mandard in which the defending champion of La Liga was linked to the doping scandal around Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes was not suitably based on evidence.

London  - The current doping test in sport for the steroid testosterone is not suitable because of ethnic variations, a Swiss study published on Thursday revealed.

The study was commissioned by the ruling football FIFA and carried out among 171 players around the world.

The results were examined at the Lausanne, Switzerland, lab approved by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and published in the "British Journal of Sports and Medicine."

Are, Sweden - Austrian ski veteran Hermann Maier missed a 15th World Cup trophy on Thursday, but said shortly after the day's super-g race that he may continue his skiing career until the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Maier, 36, even suggested he may still be around for the 2011 world championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, where he won the first of his 54 World Cup races back in 1997.

"Everything is possible in theory. There is a tendency to continue. Olympic Games naturally are a big goal," Maier said.

Frankfurt - The German Bundesliga had its most successful financial year ever in the 2007-08 season and is well prepared to handle the current global economic slowdown, the German Football League (DFL) said Thursday.

The presentation by the DFL board showed that the 36 first and second division clubs registered a record turnover of 1.93 billion euros (2.45 billion dollars) and reduced their combined liabilities to just under 470 million euros.

London, Mar. 12 : The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) Chairman, Giles Clarke, has outlined a series of reforms that aim to alter the way the game is governed.

The moves represent an attempt by the ECB to get back on to the front foot in the wake of the divisive Pietersen-Moores affair and the damaging Stanford episode.