Gia ton Tasso, Re Gamwto

I am very happy to report that our sports correspondent has recently run out of Zivania and has sent us the following curtain-raiser of this afternoon's Pilot Pen Tennis Tournament in New Haven, Connecticut between Marcos Baghdatis and a player whom our correspondent, the adorable Pikifrinos could not identify, as he passed out before he had a chance of telling us.

Here, however is his report, sent to us by the famous courier pigeon known as Lazare Le Noir:

"Marcos is the best thing for Cypriots since souvlaki in a pitta.

OK, maybe since Spyros Kyprianou and Achilleas (of Cyprus, who once lived in a cave for a short while) and, perhaps, Captain Nemo

Even though Baghdatis' name is butchered [by non-Greek barbarians] and our friends from the life saving Non-aligned [?] movement of the 'Den Ksexnw' [alla den ta thelw] camp, he has managed to rise to the top 10 seeding of world tennis. This, needless to say, should be attributed to our present Ethnarch... okay, okay - thanks to the previous one too...the one with the tasty black [and revolutionary] dress.

Baghdatis could have been number 1 in the rankings of the Armed Forces had the brave and patriotic soldiers up at HQ had their way and forced the Bag-man to go through the oh-so tough rigours of oue glorious and meritocratic National Guard.

They were called Froura back then...not sure what they are called now...The TeePee Elite maybe? or TP-6...the number- in this case - has no correlation with their IQ...we hope - to guard our Synors [borders - a.k.a. Dheryneia]

We remain focused on our Greco-Christian idaniques[ideals, to you barbaric non-Greek speakers] and we, as a nation [under the solemn leadership of Tassos Le Kavlante] go to the first match with Marcos, bearing flags (Greek and Cypriot), wearing APOEL soccer shirts and yelling at the top of our lungs: 'Ela Apollona s'agapw Apollona...Sex Town Ole'[Go on Apollona FC, we love you in a respectful manner].

And just like good immor[t]al men of our land of the immor[t]als we always have our little radios next to our hairy ears in case there is some earth-shattering news (in Digital sound) from the supersonic, fast-pace talks between Tzionis and [that smelly Turkish Cypriot] 'pseudo-counterpart'[of his] on the very marketable and profitable (at least for the Paphians) Cyprus problem

...lest we might have to cry out loud...'Essheksiksin',"

Thank you Pikifrino, thank you Ethnarch Tassos, thank you Archbishop Makarios 3.0 and thank you to the leader of the Holy Synod who recently told the press that the elections for a new Archbishop will not have to be postponed just because it happens to coincide with the Cyprus Rally.