Sports
Gayanthika, Nilani, Sarangi in contention for Asian Games glory
100th National Athletics Championships
by Reemus Fernando
Long distance veteran Gayanthika Abeyratne, steeplechaser Nilani Ratnayake and long jumper Sarangi Silva produced remarkable feats which put them in contention for international medals as they excelled at the centenary National Athletics Championship at Diyagama.
The event was hampered by rain on all three days forcing Sri Lanka Athletics to postpone a number of events scheduled for Sunday to April 23. Of the completed events the women’s 800 metres, women’s 1,500 metres, women’s 3,000 metres steeplechase and the women’s long jump witnessed performances which were of medal winning standard at Asian level.
Sri Lanka Athletics had set tough selection standards to pick teams for both this year’s Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games. Abeyratne responded positively bettering the standard in one and breaking the national record in the other. She commenced the historic championship with a 4:12.41 seconds feat in the 1,500 metres before clocking 2:01.44 seconds to regain the 800 metres national record which she lost to Dilshi Kumarasinghe last year. With the 800 metres record now in her possession, Abeyratne has three national records against her name (800m, 1500m, 5000m).
The 800 metres final was a treat to watch despite the absence of national record holder Kumarasinghe as a fine mixture of youth athletes and veterans propelled the race pace to record breaking standards. Olympian Nimali Liyanarachchi joined fellow veteran Abeyratne to set the pace and emerging athletes Tharushi Karunaratne, N.A. Kumari and Shanika Lakshani followed them in the fray. Abeyratne led from the start to break the record established in 2021. Liyanarachchi was given a scare by young Karunaratne who shared the second and third places in a photo finish. Karunaratne who had already reached qualifying standards for this year’s World Junior Championships erased the National Junior record held by her senior training partner Kumarasinghe as she clocked 2:04.40 seconds.
Nilani Ratnayake, who missed Olympics participation after being the leading candidate to win the ticket for Tokyo for a better part of the year (due to lack of top grade competitions), produced a new steeplechase national record as she obliterated her previous record with a 9:40.24 seconds finish. She bettered the qualifying standards by some three seconds.
Less than a month after established a new national record in the long jump, Sarangi Silva cleared 6.52 metres to write her name against the championship record as well. It was the second time that Sarangi produced a performance better than the qualifying standard set for the Asian Games.
In the women’s pole vault, Sachini Kaushalya improved her won national record by one centimeter when she cleared the 3.71 metres mark.
While women’s events witnessed as many as three athletes producing locally set qualifying standards for the Asian Games, several men’s events where athletes were anticipating top performances were postponed to April 23 after the entire afternoon session was washed off by rain.
The men’s javelin throw and the men’s 400 metres were among such events.
The men’s long jump which was considered as a potential event for athletes to reach standards for the Asian Games had a feat of 7.69 metres achieved by Janaka Prasad as the beat performance. The qualifying standard set for the Asian Games is 8.05 metres.
A two-paced, up-and-down pitch in Raipur was the stage for one of the most enthralling contests of IPL 2026, and it ended in the most dramatic of last-ball finishes, with Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) breaking a two-match losing streak to go to the top of the table. In doing so they ended the playoffs hopes of not just Mumbai Indians (MI), their opponents on the night, but also Lucknow Super Giants (LSG).
In the end, the finish defied explanation. With RCB needing two to win off the last ball, Rasikh Salam clipped a near-yorker from Raj Bawa back towards the bowler. Bawa fumbled, the ball dribbled into the mid-on region, and when Ryan Rickelton collected the throw and broke the wicket at the keeper’s end, Rasikh had just made his ground, diving to complete the second run.
Perhaps the only explanation was that two players did not deserve to be on the losing side. One was Bhuvneshwar Kumar. He took three wickets in a bewitching new-ball spell, then returned to take out MI’s top scorer at a crucial moment in the death overs, and then, batting at No. 10 with nine runs required from three balls, hit Bawa for a gloriously timed six over the leaping sweeper cover fielder. It was Bhuvneshwar’s first six in the IPL since 2016.
The other was Krunal Pandya. Promoted to No. 5 with RCB 39 for 3 in the sixth over, Krunal took charge of the chase, finding ways to hit boundaries even as everyone around him struggled to middle the ball, and hitting sixes while fighting cramps, and eventually scored 73 off 46 balls.
From the start it was evident that hard lengths would be extremely difficult to negotiate on this pitch. From these lengths, the ball stuck and jumped on some occasions, bringing the leading edge into play, and at other times it skidded and kept low.
After RCB opted to bowl in their first match at their second home for the season, Bhuvneshwar struck in the first over with a hard-length ball. It hit high on Rickelton’s bat as he looked to punch over mid-off, and all he managed to do was hit it to the fielder.
But there was more to Bhuvneshwar’s magic on the night than merely his use of the pitch. His second wicket came off one of the great balls of his IPL career: a knuckle-ball outswinger that made Rohit Sharma reach for the drive, which he edged to the keeper. Next ball, he went back to a traditional good length and closer to the stumps, and found late, late swing to get Suryakumar Yadav nicking to slip for a golden duck.
MI were 28 for 3 in three overs.
With the pitch behaving as it did, Naman Dhir and Tilak Varma began an old-school rebuild, knowing that even 180 would be an excellent total. And they set up perfectly for that final push, putting on 82 off 57 balls.
But RCB dismissed both just when they were looking dangerous. Dhir had just struck Rasikh for a pair of pleasing back-foot fours through the off side when a shooter did him in. Then, in the 18th over, Bhuvneshwar dismissed Tilak, who played on while looking for the scoop over short fine leg. It took away one of MI’s most dangerous death-overs hitters with two overs remaining; they only scored 11 runs off those two overs, as Josh Hazlewood and Rasikh kept extracting misbehaviour from hard lengths.
Virat Kohli had been out for a duck in RCB’s previous game, the victim of a peach from Prince Yadav. On Sunday he was out for a golden duck; this time he looked to impose himself on a wide outswinger from Deepak Chahar, but ended up mishitting it to mid-off.
Chahar was erratic – he conceded 14 in his first over, with Jacob Bethell putting him away for back-to-back fours off his first two balls – but continued to bowl good balls. In his second over, he sent down a jaffa that squared up Devdutt Padikkal and nicked him off, straightening after angling into the left-hander from round the wicket.
Then, in the final over of the powerplay, RCB lost their third wicket; this time, Corbin Bosch made full use of a pitch made for his strengths. He banged it in short, got the ball to hurry and cramp Rajat Patidar on the pull, and the top-edged ballooned to the keeper.
The fourth-wicket partnership of 55 was a study in contrasts. Bethell did not hit another boundary after the two he’d hit off Chahar at the start of his innings, and struggled to pierce the field while limping to a run-a-ball 27. At the other end, Krunal exuded a sense of certainty right from the time he pulled Bosch for six off just the third ball he faced.
His handling of spin was particularly crucial to how the chase unfolded. He used his reach to sweep and slog whenever the chance presented itself, and this may have made Suryakumar Yadav – standing in in the continued absence of Hardik Pandya with a back issue – hesitate to use Raghu Sharma, the legspinner MI had brought on as their Impact Player. Instead, he turned to Bawa’s military medium; his first over went for just eight runs, but Krunal and Jitesh Sharma took his second over, the 14th of RCB’s innings, for 16 runs.
That left RCB needing 57 off 36 balls.
Jitesh, coming into this game with an average of 8.00 for the season, played an important cameo, 18 off 12 including an eye-catching back-foot punch off Jasprit Bumrah in the 15th over, and a hooked six off Bosch in the 16th.
Just as the contest seemed to be tilting RCB’s way, though, Bosch hit back with two wickets in two balls. Jitesh sliced him into deep point’s hands, and Tim David fell for a first-baller, toe-ending an attempted pull to the keeper, undone by a ball that stopped on him. MI gained more control as Chahar conceded just six off the 17th over, using his slower bouncer expertly.
With 30 to get off the last three, and with Bumrah to bowl one of those three, the 18th over became crucial. And AM Ghazanfar nearly became a hero, inducing a mishit from Krunal only for Naman Dhir and Tilak Varma – converging from deep midwicket and long-on respectively – to mess up a possible relay catch via miscommunication.
Krunal was actively cramping at this stage, but he somehow found the reserves within him to hit two sixes off the next three balls, falling to the floor in agony after completing his shots. A third six off the final ball of the over would have left RCB needing 12 off 12, but this time Tilak judged and executed the running, juggling catch perfectly at long-on.
This meant Bumrah bowled the 19th to two new batters. And neither Romario Shepherd nor Rasikh had much of an answer to his mix of hard lengths and yorkers; only three came off the over, of which one was a leg bye.
It was the perfect assist. All that remained was for the final-over bowler to finish it off. But the three seamers had bowled out, and Suryakumar wasn’t going to use a spinner. So it was Bawa who stepped up, and he did a decent job under the circumstances; he overstepped once, and there were three wides, but these were the result of sticking to a wide-line plan. And Shepherd struggled against his round-the-wicket angle, losing shape while trying to muscle the ball, and he eventually fell off the third legal ball of the over, leaving Nos. 9 and 10 to score 10 off three balls.
On most days, you would back the bowling team to close it out. On this day, Bhuvneshwar was an irresistible force.
Brief scores:
Royal Challengers Bengaluru 167 for 8 in 20 overs (Jacob Bethell 27, Devudutt Padikkal 12, Krunal Pandya 73, Jitesh Sharma 18; Deepak Chahar 2-33, Corbin Bosch 4-26, A M Gazhanfar 1-33, Raj Bawa 1-39) beat Mumbai Indians 166 for 7 in 20 overs (Rohit Sharma 22, Naman Dhir 47, Tilak Verma 57, Will Jacks 10, Raj Bawa 16; Bhuvneshwar Kumar 4-23, Josh Hazelwood 1-33, Rasik Salam 1-42, Romario Shepherd 1-18) by two wickets
[Cricinfo]
Urvil Patel played the kind of innings that erased a bit of history and created a bit of history. In 2025, team after team came to Chepauk and breached it and the crowd got used to leaving early. On Sunday evening, 32,825 people – some of whom might have seen the morning show where one of Tamil Nadu’s most popular actors took charge as the chief minister – were given double delight as Chennai Super Kings (CSK) chased down their first 200-plus target since 2018 and one of their future stars announced himself with the IPL’s joint fastest half century.
Urvil got there in 13 balls. When he walked into the middle, CSK’s chances of winning were 38.13%. When he walked out, to a standing ovation from the crowd and his coaching staff, CSK’s chances of winning were 93.02%. He single-handedly changed the game and powered CSK to fifth spot.
Mitchell Marsh had taken first strike in eight out of 11 Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) matches. Here he gave it up so that Josh Inglis could do his thing. One of the best spin hitters in the world threw the opposition’s bowling plans off when he targeted Akeal Hosein, hitting him for three successive boundaries in the first over. CSK turned to pace, which suited Marsh better and which Inglis harnessed to play some of the coolest ramps ever seen and he went for them over and over.
According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, nobody has tried more ramps (four) inside the powerplay. Even when he missed one, he created scoring opportunities. Because Anshul Kamboj, having seen what he wanted to do, went fuller instead of camping on a good length area and got smacked through the covers. Inglis’ ease in accessing the ‘V’ behind the wicket opened up easier scoring shots in front of it. He was 77 off 25 after six overs. Only Suresh Raina (87 vs PBKS in 2014), Travis Head (84 vs DC in 2024) and Jake Fraser-McGurk (78 vs MI in 2024) have scored more inside the field restrictions.
But with the field spreading, CSK unleashed the season’s joint-second-highest wicket-takers (12 each) in the middle overs on LSG. Noor Ahmad aced his match-up with Nicholas Pooran (two runs off nine balls for three dismissals). In his first three games this season, he had 0 for 111 at an economy rate of 11.1. In the next eight, Noor has picked up 12 for 215 at an economy rate of 7.16. In the background, MS Dhoni had suggested that the Afghanistan wrist-spinner focus more on his legbreak than just going googly all the time. That’s had a knock-on effect of Noor targeting the stumps a little more and it’s worked for him.
This was the same pitch where CSK won their first game of the season against DC. Just like that day, Jamie Overton played a big role. Inglis, who had faced 25 of the first 36 balls of the innings and hit nine fours and six sixes, could only get on strike for eight of the 19 balls since the powerplay. Antsy to keep the rate up, he went for a scoop against Overton and got caught behind. Hitting the deck with both pace on and off, Overton delivered 10 dots in his first 18 balls and provided two wickets. LSG were 56 for 5 in 50 balls after the field restrictions. Shahbaz Ahmed helped LSG recover a bit, hitting the last ball of the innings for six, to push the score past 200.
There is a sign of respect that a bowler gives a batter in T20 cricket. Bowling wides. Hiding the ball away from his hitting arc because he keeps walloping everything. Andre Russell has experienced this. Kieron Pollard has experienced this. And for one glorious moment, Urvil experienced this when Digvesh Rathi speared a ball practically down into the next pitch in the sixth over. This was because Urvil had sent the previous four balls he had faced out of the ground.
Urvil came into the game with a balls-per-boundary ratio of 2 in the IPL but his longest innings was 19 balls. He will likely persist with this method, trying to whack everything for six, because India have won a T20 world title with batters playing the exact same way. Also, LSG didn’t really give him a reason to take a backward step. They kept bowling the ball to which he could clear his front leg and swing to midwicket. Seven of his eight sixes went there. He was barely 10 minutes into his innings when had a chance to hit six sixes back to back. Three off Avesh Khan. Two of Rathi. When the sixth ball that he carved over point bounced in front of the boundary, he threw his head back in utter disappointment.
At 41 off 8, Urvil had the chance to break the IPL’s record for the fastest fifty. But he ended up scoring just nine off the next five balls and had to settle for sharing the title with Yashasvi Jaiwal. When he finally fell for 65 off 23, CSK needed 78 runs in 64 balls.
Veer could’ve been dismissed twice off two balls in the 19th over off Avesh but Rathi and Pooran dropped straightforward chances. Veer capitalised by hitting a six to bring the equation down to 10 off the last over. LSG went to Aiden Markram, figuring an offspinner turning the ball away from the two left-hand batters in the middle might work. It didn’t. Dube, on 3 off 5, hit back-to-back sixes to finish the game
Brief scores:
Chennai Super Kings 208 for 5 in 19.2 overs (Sanju Samson 28, Rutraj Gaikwad 42, Urvil Patel 65, Kartik Sharma 20. Dewald Brevis 10, Shivam Dube 15*, Prashant Veer 17*; Digvesh Rathi 2-45, Avesh Khan 1-44, Shahbaz Ahmed 2-30) beat Lucknow Super Giants 203 for 8 in 20 overs (Josh Inglis 85, Mitchell Marsh 10, Rishabh Pant 15, Akshat Raghuwanshi 18, Shahbaz Ahmed 43*, Himmat Singh 17; Anshul Kamboj 2-47, Noor Ahmad 1-24, Jamie Overton 3-36) by five wickets
[Cricinfo]
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