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Asia Cup 2025: Sharafu, Waseem headline UAE’s statement win

Published

5 months ago

2025/09/16

Priyan

Alishan Sharafu and Muhammad Waseem gave UAE a rapid start [Cricinfo]

A skillful half-century from Alishan Sharafu and a dogged one from Muhammad Waseem rook UAE to 172 for 5, and then a 42-run victory as well, in their Asia Cup game against Oman on Monday.

Both teams were searching for their first points of the tournament and their challenge in Abu Dhabi was to negotiate a slow and low pitch. Sharafu did so by charging out of the crease. Twelve attempts just within the powerplay fetched all six of his fours.

On the back of that, UAE, who were 11 for 0 after three overs, collected 39 runs off the next three and never looked back. Sharafu’s best shot, though, came outside the field restrictions, an inside-out drive over cover for six against legspinner Samay Shrivastava.

Waseem became the fourth quickest batter to 3000 T20I runs, behind Mohammad Rizwan, Virat Kohli and Babar Azam. He wasn’t really at his best in this game. The 69 off 54 balls was often a struggle, but there were also clever moments, like when he saw a new bowler – Aamir Kaleem – coming on in the powerplay and smashed him for three fours in the over. Waseem went to his fifty with a trademark six down the ground.

Oman didn’t help themselves in the field. They had a chance to dismiss Waseem on 27 off 22 but the fielder wasn’t all the way back on the long-on boundary, and not only did he miss the catch but he also let it go for four. Then with Waseem on 34 off 33, Shakeel Ahmed dropped a dolly at short fine leg.

UAE finished on 172 for 5 with their middle-order players chipping in with crucial runs. Harshit Kaushik and Muhammad Zohaib put together hit 40 off 21 balls.

Jatinder Singh briefly looked like the best batter on show as he found ways to time the ball in slow and low conditions. He raced to 20 off 10 but soon enough hitting through the line on a surface where the ball wasn’t coming on came back to bite him. The Oman captain dragged Junaid Siddique back onto his stumps during a period where his team lost three wickets in 14 balls.

The powerplay was still going and Oman had lost nearly half their side. Four of their top five bagged single-digits and from a start like that – 32 for 4, then 50 for 5 – all they could do was try and play out the overs. Siddique threw a spanner in those works too, taking two wickets in the 16th over and finishing with 4 for 23. Oman were bowled out for 130.

Brief scores:
UAE 172 for 5 in 20 overs (Muhammad Waseem 69, Alishan Sharafu 51, Muhammad Zohaib 21, Harshit Kaushik 19; Hasnain Shah 1-34, Jiten Ramanandi 2-24, Samay Shrivastava 38) beat Oman 130 in 18.4 overs (Jatinder Singh 20, Aryan Bisht 24, Vinayak Shukla 20, Jiten Ramanandi 13, Shakeel Ahmad 14*; Junaid Siddique 4-23, Muhammad Rohid 1-27, Haider Ali 2-22, Muhammad Jawadulla 2-18) by 42 runs

[Cricinfo]

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Eight skiers found dead after California avalanche

Published

2 hours ago

2026/02/19

Priyan

Rescue teams combing through the backcountry of California’s Lake Tahoe region say they have found the bodies of eight skiers who went missing in an avalanche on Tuesday.

The search for a final missing skier continues but that person is presumed dead, Nevada County Sheriff Shannan Moon said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Officials said one of the deceased was the spouse of someone on one of the search-and-rescue teams, making continued rescue efforts “challenging emotionally”.

Fifteen skiers were reported missing on Tuesday after a “football-field” sized avalanche came barreling down in the Castle Peak area around 11:30 PST (19:30 GMT). Six have been rescued.

“I want to offer my condolences to the family in this very trying time,” Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo said on Wednesday.

The bodies of the eight dead skiers are still trapped in the snow and can’t yet be recovered due to “pretty horrific” conditions, officials said.

Since the avalanche, another 3ft (.9m) of snow has fallen on the area, Tahoe National Forest supervisor Chris Feutrier said.

“The hazard remains high,” he said.

Once the bodies are recovered, they will be transported to the Placer County morgue.

Families of the deceased have been notified. Authorities have not yet released any of their names.

Officials say the victims are seven women and two men.

Sheriff Woo said the rescue operation was a joint effort involving two teams and roughly 50 crew members who had to traverse “extreme weather conditions” using specialised equipment.

At 17:30 local time on Tuesday, search teams arrived to an area roughly two miles (3.2km) from where survivors were sheltering in make-shift tents, and had to ski in from there.

Two of the six survivors had to be carried back and “could not walk because of the injuries they sustained during the avalanche”, Sheriff Moon said. They were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Among the survivors, one was a guide and five were clients of the Blackbird Mountain guided tour.

The entire ski group consisted of a mix of 11 recreational skiers and four ski guides.

The avalanche on Tuesday occurred as they were making their way back at the end of a three-day trip.

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said in a post on X that state authorities were “co-ordinating an all-hands search-and-rescue effort” with local emergency teams.

Conditions on Wednesday remained dangerous, multiple officials said, with Woo describing the climate as “treacherous”.

“Avoid the back country,” he said. “Please allow us to focus all of our resources on continuing to recover these bodies for the family and bring them home.”

The avalanche that trapped the skiers was rated as a D2.5 on a destructive potential scale of D1 to D5, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center, which would mean it was over half a mile in length and would have a deposit of around 6.5ft (2 metres).

The Boreal Mountain Ski Resort, which is near where the accident occurred, has reported over 30in (76cm) of snowfall since Tuesday.

The resort decided to close on Tuesday because of high winds and low visibility.

The storm has also closed several highways, including Interstate 80 and Highway 50.

[BBC]

Latest News

Advisory for low pressure area in the Southwest Bay of Bengal to the south-east of Sri Lanka

Published

2 hours ago

2026/02/19

Priyan

Location of the low-pressure area in the Bay of Bengal Sea area

Advisory for low pressure area in the Southwest Bay of Bengal to the south-east of Sri Lanka.
Issued by the Natural Hazards Early Warning Centre of the Department of Meteorology at 03.00 pm on 18 February 2026

Multiday boats fishermen and naval community are warned that the low-pressure area still persists over the Southwest Bay of Bengal to the south-east of Sri Lanka. Under the influence of this system, heavy showers or thundershowers, Strong winds about (50-60) kmph, and rough or very rough seas can be expected in these sea areas.

The Meteorological Department is constantly monitoring the behavior of the system.

The naval and fishing communities are requested to be attentive to the future forecasts and bulletins issued by the Department of Meteorology in this regard.

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Dube’s death-overs batting fuels India’s fourth win on the bounce

Published

4 hours ago

2026/02/19

Priyan

Shivam Dube was the chief catalyst who propelled India to a match-winning total [Cricbuzz]

For some time on Wednesday evening in the biggest cricket ground in the world, Netherlands dared to dream of causing the biggest upset of the World Cup. They had India on the ropes until Shivam Dube began to dispatch balls in his arc, and outside of it, to the boundary en route to a 30-ball 66 that led India to 193/6.

That score was initially beyond India’s imagination against Netherlands’ multiple sleights of hand – slower ones, cutters and knuckle balls, that tied down an otherwise explosive batting order. It worked for long, until Dube took advantage of some of the predictability that came with change of pace, and the skewed square boundary dimensions (60m and 68m).

India’s innings didn’t take off until the 12th over, and even then it looked like a flash in a pan. Life leading up to that point was a constant struggle for India’s top-order as Netherlands’ bowlers nailed their lengths while bowling to their fields. Abhishek Sharma fell for a third successive duck and Ishan Kishan suffered a slice of misfortune – both bowled by off-spinner Aryan Dutt who bowled three exceptional PowerPlay overs for just 17 runs.

Netherlands’ medium-pacers then frustrated Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav for long stretches of play. The middle-overs were a toil against slower ones bowled into the pitch outside the off-stump. A stunning blinder-of-a-catch from Roelof van der Merwe then broke this partnership that was going nowhere as Tilak trudged back for a 27-ball 31. Suryakumar was looking for an outlet to flip the complexion of his and India’s innings like he did against USA, but that didn’t quite come.

On the last ball of the 12th over, Suryakumar ended a 19-ball boundary drought by hitting a six over his favourite fine leg region, and Dube then got in on the act against Colin Ackermann in the 13th over after a scratchy start. He took the medium pacer for two sixes and a four in the over, but Kyle Klein hit back in the 14th. He had Suryakumar caught at long leg for a 28-ball 34, bringing Hardik Pandya to the middle just before the death overs.

Even he, however, couldn’t middle as well as he would’ve liked. But Dube batted like he was playing in a different postcode. He rose from 6 off 11 and raced to a 25-ball half-century. Netherlands’ bowlers offered him a buffet of bad balls at the death – full tosses and slot hit-me deliveries that he gleefully sent to the stands over mid-wicket and long-on.

He went after Logan van Beek in the 20-run 17th over, hit Klein for a four in the 18th and got another six against van Beek in the 20th before being caught on the fine leg boundary by substitute fielder Timm van der Gugten for a 31-ball 66 in the same over. Hardik whose timing was topsy-turvy, managed to connect on three sixes for his 21-ball 30. India added 75 off the last five overs to push the game beyond Netherlands’ reach.

Netherlands opener Max O’Dowd did just about enough to avoid giving his wicket to Jasprit Bumrah in the PowerPlay, but was undone by Varun CV, who cleaned him up in the sixth over. Hardik then struck to remove Michael Levitt as Netherlands’ chase meandered in the middle. Colin Ackermann tonked a couple of sixes to add a spark to the chase, but Varun sent him and Dutt packing off successive deliveries. Dube, who went for a few runs, broke through next, dismissing Bas de Leede for a 23-ball 33.

At the start of the death overs, Netherlands lost Scott Edwards to Bumrah, but threw their bats around to narrow India’s victory margin. Noah Croes and Zach Lion-Cachet took 11 runs off Washington Sundar, 12 off Arshdeep Singh and 18 off Hardik before Dube broke the stand in the final over. In the end, Netherlands fell short by only 17 runs.

Brief Scores:
India 193/6 in 20 overs (Ishan Kishan 18, Tilak Varma 31, Suryakumar Yadav 34, Shivam Dube 66; Hardik Pandya 30; Aryan Dutt 2-19, Logan van Beek 3-56, Kyle Klein 1-38) beat Netherlands 176/7 in 20 overs (Michael Levitt 24, Max O’Dowd 20, Bas de Leed 33, Collin Ackerman 23, Scott Edwards 15, Zach Lion-Cachet 26, Noah Croes 25*; Jasprit Bumrah 1-17, Varun Chakravarthy 3-14, Hardik Pandya 1-40, Shivan Dube 2-35) by 17 runs

[Cricbuzz]