Sports
Arshdeep magic trumps Suryakumar magic in super fun run-fest
Punjab Kings’ innings was going nowhere. After 14 overs, they were 105 for 4 with Harpreet Singh Bhatia batting on 15 off 16 and Sam Curran on 8 off 12. But in the next six overs, they ransacked 109. Bhatia ended with 41 off 28, Curran 55 off 29, and Jitesh Sharma 25 off just seven. That lifted Kings to a formidable 214 for 8.
In response, Mumbai Indians were always in the contest, thanks to Rohit Sharma’s 27-ball 44 and Cameron Green’s 43-ball 67. Suryakumar Yadav then threatened to snatch the game from Kings with his blazing half-century. That’s when Arshdeep Singh rose to the occasion. He dismissed Suryakumar in the 18th over, and then with 16 required from six balls, he conceded just two while breaking the middle stumps of Tilak Varma and Nehal Wadhera with back-to-back deliveries.
The 13-run win took Kings to fifth position with eight points from seven games. In fact, the top five teams all have eight points each, only the net run rate separating them.
Rohit and Green keep Mumbai on track
Before his heroics at the death, Arshdeep dealt Mumbai an early below by sending back Ishan Kishan in the second over of the chase. Rohit and Green didn’t let that deter them and kept finding boundaries at regular intervals. They hit five fours and three sixes in the powerplay to take Mumbai to 54 for 1 after six overs. The pair added 76 off 50 balls before Rohit spooned a return catch to Liam Livingstone in the tenth over.
Green and Suryakumar press on further
With Mumbai needing 127 in the last ten overs, Suryakumar didn’t waste any time. He swept his third ball for a four before hitting Livingstone for a hat-trick of fours. It was a typical Suryakumar innings – he hit a 26-ball 57, with 33 of those runs coming behind square on the leg side.
At the other end, Green too switched into the next gear. In the 15th over, he hit Rahul Chahar for a six and four, bringing up his half-century in the process and reducing the equation to 66 needed from 30 balls.
Ellis and Arshdeep show their skills
Green started the 16th over by hitting Nathan Ellis, Kings’ Impact Player, for a four and six. But Ellis had him miscuing a back-of-the-hand slower one, and Curran settled under it near extra cover.
Despite that, Mumbai were very much in the contest. In fact, Suryakumar’s six and four off Curran in the 17th over put Mumbai ahead. With 40 needed from the last three overs, Tim David hit Arshdeep’s first ball – a full toss – for a six but the bowler conceded only three off the remaining five balls. One of those balls also took out Suryakumar. It was a low full toss that the batter flicked towards midwicket, where Atharva Taide leapt to his left to pluck the ball.
David still threatened to pull it off for Mumbai. In the penultimate over, he hit an Ellis full toss for a 114-metre six but apart from that, he struggled to middle the ball. In the final over, he took a single on Arshdeep’s first ball, and then spent the rest of the over at the non-striker’s end watching a death-bowling masterclass.
Prabhsimran, Taide revive the powerplay
Earlier, Kings had a quiet start after being sent in. Matthew Short tried to take on Green in the third over, flicking him over square leg for four. He eyed another boundary on the next ball, but his attempted pull failed to clear Piyush Chawla at short midwicket.
After three overs, Kings were 20 for 1. The next three, however, produced 38. Jason Behrendorff bowled a couple of short balls in the fourth, and Prabhsimran Singh duly dispatched them over the short square-leg boundary. From the other end, Taide ramped Jofra Archer for his first six.
Rohit introduced Chawla in the sixth over, and the two batters picked up a boundary each off him as well to lift Kings to 58 for 1 by the end of the powerplay.
Tendulkar, Chawla drag Kings back
It was a bit of a surprise when Arjun Tendulkar, who swung the new ball, was taken off after just one over. When he came back for his second, in the seventh of the innings, he had Prabhsimran lbw with an excellent yorker, the ball sneaking underneath the bat to hit the back shoe.
Chawla hurt Kings further with his double-strike in the tenth over. First, seeing Livingstone come down the track, he slipped one down the leg side to have him stumped. Three balls later, he beat Taide on the sweep. The ball hit the pad and went on to disturb the stumps. That left Kings 83 for 4 after ten overs.
The calm, followed by the carnage
Bhatia and Curran consolidated for a while, scoring only 22 from the next four overs. But then came the acceleration, and how. Hrithik Shokeen’s 13-run over, the 15th of the innings, was a bad omen for Mumbai. But instead of bringing back Chawla, who had figures of 2 for 15 from three overs, Rohit went ahead with Tendulkar. Curran and Bhatia smashed him for four fours and two sixes, taking 31 from the over that also featured a wide and beamer.
Two overs later, Green came in for the punishment. Curran started it with two successive sixes. After a single on the third, Green dismissed Bhatia, but Jitesh launched him for two more maximums to make it 25 from the over.
Curran brought up his fifty, off 26 balls, with a four off Archer before getting out in the same over. Jitesh wasn’t done yet, though. He hit two more sixes in the final over, bowled by Behrendorff, to take Kings to what proved to be just the winning total. (cricinfo)
Scores:
Punjab Kings
214 for 8 wickets (Sam Curran 55, Harpreet Singh 41, Atharva Taide 29; Piyush Chawla 2/15)
Mumbai Indians
201 for six wickets (Cameron Green 67, Suryakumar Yadav 57; Arshdeep Singh 4/29)
Three more members of the Iranian women’s football delegation – who were given humanitarian visas to stay in Australia – have changed their mind and will return home.
The trio have been named by human rights activists in the Iranian diaspora as Zahra Soltan Meshkehkar, Mona Hamoudi, and Zahra Sarbali.
Concerns grew for the Iranian team after they were silent for the country’s anthem in their opening Asian Cup match against South Korea on 2 March – which led to them being branded “war traitors” in Iran.
Confirming the decisions, Australia’s home affairs minister said his government had done everything it could to ensure the women were given the chance to have a safe future in the country.
“Australians should be proud that it was in our country that these women experienced a nation presenting them with genuine choices and interacted with authorities seeking to help them,” Tony Burke said in a statement.
“While the Australian government can ensure that opportunities are provided and communicated, we cannot remove the context in which the players are making these incredibly difficult decisions.”
Iran’s sports ministry also earlier confirmed the news, first reported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked Tasnim News Agency, in a statement.
“The national spirit and patriotism of the Iranian women’s national football team defeated the enemy’s plans against this team,” the statement says, also accusing Australia’s government of “playing in Trump’s field”.
Tasnim said the three were on their way to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to join the rest of the squad and were “returning to the warm embrace of their families and homeland after withdrawing their asylum application in Australia”.
It said they had resisted “psychological warfare, extensive propaganda and seductive offers”.
It means that, of the seven who initially said they wanted to stay in Australia, only three now remain as defectors. One of the players made the same decision to return to Iran on Wednesday.
Hamoudi and Sarbali were among the original five who refused, after giving minders the slip at the team’s hotel on the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane, last Monday and being taken to a safe house by Australian Federal Police.
Zahra Soltan Meshkehkar, a member of the team’s technical staff, was one of two more women from the group to seek asylum the next day. The other – Mohaddeseh Zolfi – changed her mind hours after being given the right to stay. She is understood to have already rejoined the team.
There was concern in Australia that members of the team and their families might face repercussions in Iran after the players refused to sing the national anthem.
One conservative commentator on Iranian state media accused them of being “wartime traitors” and called for a harsh punishment.
The team did sing the anthem in their last two games before they were eliminated on Sunday, leading critics to believe they had been told to sing by government officials accompanying them during the tournament.
The remaining Iranian players left Australia on Tuesday night local time – two days after they were knocked out of the Asian Cup.
[BBC]
Our cricket bosses didn’t earn many admirers for their choice of chairman of selectors, but they have certainly struck a chord with students of the game like us, and more importantly with the fans, in their appointment of the national team’s head coach. In Gary Kirsten, Sri Lanka have brought in a man with a proven pedigree and it looks like a step in the right direction.
As an opening batsman for South Africa, Kirsten never quite possessed the charm, elegance or textbook technique of his older brother Peter Kirsten. Gary’s success was forged the hard way. He thrived on grit, discipline and a stubborn refusal to give in, the sort of qualities that don’t always make headlines but win you matches. Once asked to follow on by England, he dug in for more than 14 hours at the crease and churned out 275, the highest score of his career. That innings summed up the man perfectly. When the going got tough, Gary simply rolled up his sleeves and got going.
Those very traits travelled with him into coaching, where he carved out an enviable reputation. Managing a star-studded Indian dressing room featuring Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and MS Dhoni is no walk in the park. Handling so many big personalities requires more than tactical nous; it demands man management. Kirsten passed that test with flying colours. Under his watch India climbed to the No.1 ranking in Test cricket and, of course, lifted the 2011 World Cup, breaking 21 million Sri Lankan hearts in the final in Bombay.
Kirsten was hugely popular with Indian supporters. Many wanted him to stay on, but he knew better than to overstay his welcome and bowed out gracefully.
Soon after, South Africa came calling and true to form he went about the job methodically, guiding the Proteas to the top of the world rankings. Wherever he has gone, results have tended to follow.
That said, simply because Kirsten has joined our ranks does not mean Sri Lanka will suddenly start knocking over the top sides week in, week out. Kirsten carries no magic wand. A coach, after all, can only take the horse to water; it is the players who must drink.
For a cricket team to flourish, the entire system needs to be rock solid. It starts with the players themselves, their hunger to improve, their willingness to leave their comfort zones and put in the hard yards. The next crucial cog in the wheel is selection. In years gone by, men like Michael Tissera and Sidath Wettimuny had the foresight to look beyond the obvious and the courage to make unpopular calls when necessary. A selection panel that continues to back Dasun Shanaka as captain, however, is asking for trouble. It’s a bit like appointing Sagala Ratnayake as National Security Adviser.
Sri Lanka Cricket deserves credit for trimming down the number of teams competing in the First Class tournament, but the worrying reality is that the number of international games Sri Lanka play each year has shrunk alarmingly. Last year the country played a grand total of four Test matches, hardly enough cricket for a side hoping to stay relevant in the longest format. The Test calendar needs beefing up and the Lanka Premier League must return to the fold if Sri Lanka are to stay competitive in white-ball cricket.
For a team to succeed consistently, cricket has to run like a well-oiled machine. In Sri Lanka’s case, however, the wheels tend to wobble. Ahead of almost every major tournament our leading bowler seems to be nursing an injury. That is hardly the hallmark of a smooth operation.
Kirsten, to his credit, has struck all the right notes since being appointed. He has spoken about improving Sri Lanka’s rankings, winning overseas and developing a strong bench, the sort of forward thinking the game desperately needs here.
Just look at India for an example of depth. Sanju Samson walks in as their back-up wicketkeeper and ends up as Player of the Tournament in a World Cup. They can hand the gloves to Ishan Kishan, while players of the calibre of Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul struggle to find a place in the squad. Any one of those four would walk into most international sides as the first-choice keeper. Such is the luxury of India’s bench strength.
There’s no point envying them. The smarter move is to learn from them.
Kirsten, therefore, has plenty on his plate. And if he is looking for a place to begin, he might start with a rather pressing issue, figuring out how Sri Lanka’s batters plan to play spin, a challenge that has been turning our innings into a procession far too often in recent times.
by Rex Clementine ✍️
Salman Ali Agha said that he would have done things ‘differently”, after Mehidy Hasan Miraz ran him out in controversial circumstances in the second ODI in Dhaka.
Agha, who made 64 from 62 balls, had been backing up at the non-striker’s end when Mohammad Rizwan drove the ball back towards him. He was still out of his ground as Mehidy swooped round behind him in an attempt to gather, and Agha had appeared ready to pass the ball back to the bowler before Mehidy reached down to grab it first and throw down the stumps.
Agha reacted furiously to the dismissal, throwing his gloves and helmet down in disgust at the decision. However, he later came to the post-match press conference, ahead of captain Shaheen Shah Afridi and player of the match Maaz Sadaqat, to clear the air.
“I think sportsman spirit has to be there,” Agha said. “What he [Mehidy] has done is in the law. I think if he thinks it’s right, it’s right, but if you ask me my perspective, I would have done differently. I would have gone for sportsman spirit. We haven’t done this [type of thing] previously, we would never do that in the future as well.”
Agha explained that he had been trying to pick up the ball to give to Miraz, thinking it was likely to have been called dead. “Actually, the ball hit on my pad and then my bat,” he said. “So I thought he can’t get me run-out now, because the ball already hit on my pad and my bat.
“I was just trying to give him the ball back. I was not looking for the run or anything like that, but he already decided [to make the run-out].”
Agha however regretted his angry reaction. “It was just heat-of-the-moment kind of stuff,” he said. “If you ask me what would I have done, I would have done things differently. But it was everything, whatever happened after that, it was in the moment.”
He was also involved in a robust exchange with Bangladesh wicketkeeper Litton Das, though he didn’t divulge many of the details.
“I can’t remember what I was saying and I can’t remember what he was saying,” he said. “I’m sure I wasn’t saying nice things, and I’m sure he wasn’t saying nice stuff as well. But it was just heat of the moment, so we are fine.
Asked if he had patched things up with Mehidy, Agha said: “I haven’t yet, but don’t worry, I’ll find him.”
Pakistan won the match by 128 runs via the DLS method.
[Cricinfo]
‘Gruesome’ war bets fuel calls for crackdown on prediction markets
Three more Iran football team members change minds over asylum
Trump urges UK and other nations to send warships to Strait of Hormuz
Addressing the drug issue in the country must be treated as a national priority – PM
QR code system will be implemented for fuel with effect from 06.00 a.m. today (15th)
Showers will occur at several places in the Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central, North-western and Uva provinces and in Galle, Matara, Mannar and Anuradhapura districts after 2.00 pm.
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
Sunday Island 27 December – Headlines
#SundayIsland 17th December – Headlines
Sunday Island – 28th March
Sunday Island Headlines – 21 March
Sunday Island – 21st February – Headlines
-
News6 days agoRepatriation of Iranian naval personnel Sri Lanka’s call: Washington
-
Features6 days agoWinds of Change:Geopolitics at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia
-
News5 days agoProf. Dunusinghe warns Lanka at serious risk due to ME war
-
Sports4 days agoRoyal start favourites in historic Battle of the Blues
-
News3 days agoHistoric address by BASL President at the Supreme Court of India
-
Sports3 days agoThe 147th Royal–Thomian and 175 Years of the School by the Sea
-
Business4 days agoBOI launches ‘Invest in Sri Lanka’ forum
-
News4 days agoCEBEU warns of operational disruptions amid uncertainty over CEB restructuring