Sports
Mumbai win third IPL title under Mahela’s charge
Former Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has had an impressive run as Head Coach of Mumbai Indians and on Tuesday, he led the franchise to yet another title as Mumbai overcame Delhi Capitals by five wickets in the final in Dubai. Jayawardene (43) joined Mumbai in 2017 and has now won three IPL titles in four years. He is on par with Stephen Fleming, who has also won three titles with Chennai Super Kings. However, the former New Zealand skipper has had a longer association with CSK.
Earmarked as one of the brightest brains in the game as a teenager, Jayawardene was made vice-captain of the Sri Lankan cricket team at the age of 23 and he had two highly successful stints as the national cricket team’s captain. Under him, Sri Lanka reached the finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2007 in the Caribbean and the finals of the ICC World T-20 in Colombo.
Since retiring in 2015, Jayawardene has taken to coaching like a duck taking to water and has been highly successful.
In the final, Rohit Sharma and Trent Boult impressed as Mumbai put up a splendid show securing the win comfortably. The franchise owned by Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani were too good this season topping the group stage winning nine of their 14 games.
Mumbai were off to a cracking start in the final. Trent Boult struck on the first ball, dismissing Marcus Stoinis, who edged one to the wicketkeeper. The left-arm pacer picked his second wicket in his next over as Ajinkya Rahane was strangled down the leg side.
The defending champions then introduced spin into the attack in the fourth over and the move worked straightway as Jayant Yadav got Shikhar Dhawan out after the left-hander missed his slog-sweep.
Delhi needed Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant to do a rebuilding job and the two delivered when their team needed it in the all-important final.
While Iyer got a life in the sixth over after Ishan Kishan, despite his brilliant effort in the field, could not complete a difficult catch, he and Pant took DC past 40. The two added 18 runs in the next three overs before Pant clobbered two sixes off Krunal Pandya as the two completed a 50-run stand, taking Delhi closer to 80 after the end of 10 overs.
Delhi brought up their hundred in the 14th over before Pant completed a fine counterattacking fifty in the next over. However, the wicketkeeper got out in the same over after being holed out at fine-leg off Nathan Coulter-Nile.
Two overs later, Iyer hit two fours and completed his third fifty of the season before Boult, bowling his final over of the night, picked his third wicket of the match, dismissing Shimron Hetmyer. While Iyer remained not out on 65, Delhi eventually posted 156/7 on the board.
Rohit Sharma made a superb 68 off 51 balls to guide his side to the comfortable win with eight balls to spare.
Brief Scores: Mumbai Indians
157/5 (Rohit Sharma 68, Ishan Kishan 33*; Anrich Nortje 2/25) beat Delhi Capitals 156/7 (Shreyas Iyer 65*, Rishabh Pant 56; Trent Boult 3/30) by five wickets.
It’s taking longer than most expected, but Bangladesh are inevitably moving towards history. Bangladesh and Pakistan will go into a fifth day in Sylhet, with Bangladesh on the cusp of another 2-0 clean sweep of Pakistan. They need just three wickets to get there, with Mohammed Rizwan, unbeaten on 75, the final, valiant point of resistance for a visiting side who still need an improbable 121 for victory.
It was thanks primarily to Rizwan, and his 134-run partnership with Salman Agha in the final session, that kept Bangladesh waiting for so long when they appeared to be on course to finish Pakistan off. But two crucial wickets from Taijul Islam – who bowled more than a third of the overs on Tuesday – in the final half hour saw that partnership broken, and the hosts burrow deep into Pakistan’s tail.
Rizwan and Agha got together off the back of three quick wickets, and a resurgent Bangladesh sniffing for a quick knockout. Instead, they held them at bay for over three hours, counterattacking early on before seeing off wave after wave of spin and seam from Bangladesh. Even as Bangladesh attacked with the field, the duo kept run-scoring front and centre of their survival strategy, using their feet against spin and timing the ball expertly when pace returned.
That the stand had begun to frustrate Bangladesh became evident when tempers flared in the final hour, with Litton Das taking exception to Rizwan slowing play down after disturbances from the sightscreen. The contest took on a distinct edge, but the Pakistan pair did not lose focus, inching their way towards stumps.
No more wickets might have given Bangladesh a sleepless night, but Taijul put them at ease. With Nahid Rana operating with a new ball from the other end, Taijul produced an arm delivery that skidded through Agha’s defences and knocked back his stumps, prompting wild celebrations from the hosts, who understood the importance of the moment. Hasan Ali, whom Rizwan curiously decided against shielding from the strike, posed little resistance, leaving Bangladesh just three wickets adrift.
Brief scores:
Pakistan 232 and 316 for 7 (Shan Masood 71, Babar Azam 47, Salman Agha 71, Mohammad Rizwan 75*; Taijul Islam 4-113, Nahid Rana 2-58) need another 121 runs to beat Bangladesh 278 and 390
[Cricinfo]
Sri Lanka Cricket’s new transformation committee has had “cordial and constructive” discussions with Imran Khwaja, the ICC’s deputy chair, according to a member of the new SLC committee.
Khwaja had been in Ari Lanka over the last few days to gather information as the ICC decides what its response to the sweeping government-led changes at SLC should be. During the course of that visit, Khwaja not only spoke with members of SLC’s transformation committee, but also met with Sri Lanka’s president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, whose government had installed the committee after ousting the previous board.
Sidath Wettimuny one of the committee’s nine members, said SLC’s new administrators were hopeful the ICC would continue to treat the board as a regular Full Member.
But the ICC has a track record of reprimanding SLC because of perceived government interference. In 2023, SLC was suspended over “extensive government interference” and, in 2015, the ICC had also frozen payments over a previous “interim committee” having been appointed by the then government.
This current committee, however, has said its goals were to replace SLC’s archaic constitution, before making way for a new set of elected officials.
The ICC has so far made no comments on the change of administration at SLC.
The committee, formally unveiled on April 30, has nine members, including Kumar Sangakkara, Wettimuny and Roshan Mahanama. The majority of the members, though, hail from corporate, legal, and political spheres, with former member of parliament Eran Wickramaratne appointed as chair.
“Our immediate priority is a total overhaul of the governance framework at SLC,” Wettimuny had said after the committee members were named. “The cornerstone of this effort will be the implementation of the new constitution, ensuring it serves as a robust, modern foundation for the sport.”
The committee’s second priority would be to ensure “excellence on the field,” Wickramaratne had said. “We will focus on establishing the structures, world-class facilities, and incentive models necessary to empower our national teams. Our goal is to enable our players to consistently deliver world-class performances and elevate Sri Lanka back to the top tier of international rankings.”
[Cricinfo]
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