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Hetmyer cameo powers Rajasthan Royals to top of the table
Rajasthan Royals produced an excellent bowling display but nearly fluffed their lines in a chase of 147 on a slow and two-paced surface at Mullanpur. Eventually what seemed a routine chase came down to the league leaders needing to get 34 off 18. Shimron Hetmyer scored a 10-ball 27* to take the team to their fifth win of IPL 2024 off the penultimate ball. The defeat, the fourth of Punjab Kings’ season, kept them rooted to the bottom half of the table.
A-listers from both sides missed out on this contest due to niggles. While PBKS welcomed back Liam Livingstone, they lost their captain Shikhar Dhawan. Atharva Taide took up the vacant opening slot while Sam Curran assumed captaincy. In the pink corner, Jos Buttler and R. Ashwin missed out with Tanush Kotian and Rovman Powell coming in for their IPL debuts. The visitors, however, had the advantage of playing with a target in front of them after Sanju Samson won an important toss.
Of the five lowest powerplay scores in IPL 2024, three of them belong to the Punjab Kings, underscoring the big pain point of their season so far. Today, they were further hamstrung by the absence of their leader and opener Shikhar Dhawan. His replacement in the XI, Taide, began promisingly with a pair of sweetly-timed boundaries through the covers. But as it turned out, PBKS’ powerplay peaked there. Once Taide fell to Avesh Khan, Jonny Bairstow and Prabhsimran Singh struggled to get the seamers away and PBKS ended the powerplay at a very modest 38/1.
Spin proved a potent option for Sanju Samson in Mullanpur and Yuzvendra Chahal struck in his first over – the first after the powerplay. A familiar, tossed-up delivery from the leggie lured the scratchy Prabhsimran into attempting a big slog across the line. The batter took the bait and his release shot was laden with an extra dose of risk due to it being hit against the wind. Dhruv Jurel settled under the swirler for the first of his three outfield catches.
After Chahal, it was Keshav Maharaj’s turn to strike. He got a delivery to stop and turn on Bairstow in the first over and the Englishman chipped a simple catch to extra cover to fall for 15 off 19. In a miserly spell of bowling, Maharaj also had stand-in skipper Sam Curran mistime a pull to deep mid-wicket and finished with figures of 2 for 23. At the half-way mark of the innings, PBKS were reduced to 53/4 and needed to get Ashutosh Sharma on as an impact substitute to lengthen their batting.
As ever, the Kings turned to their lower middle-order in search of scoreboard respectability. Jitesh Sharma led the revival with an excellent, inside-out six over extra cover off Chahal before a six down the ground off Kuldeep Sen. The returning Liam Livingstone struck a six and a four himself in a 17-run takedown of Sen, but just as the partnership was blossoming than Jitesh fell to Avesh Khan. After Livingstone was run-out courtesy an improvised flicked throw from Samson, the onus was on Ashutosh to provide the finishing kick. And he managed just that. Two sixes came in the 19th over from Avesh Khan before he added a four in the final over to finish with an impressive 31 off 16.
With Buttler absent, Royals sent out all Mumbai pair of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Tanush Kotian to open the chase. The Royals went through the powerplay without losing a wicket for the first time this season, but they managed only a modest 43 runs in this time. Jaiswal was fluent in the 16 balls he faced for his 23 in this period while Kotian made only 18 from the 20 he faced. It took another two overs for him to be put out of his struggles with Livingstone slipping a ball under his legs and cleaning him up for a painstaking 31-ball 24.
The early go-slow didn’t seem to affect the Royals chase as Jaiswal and Sanju Samson continued to keep them ticking, slashing the equation down to a very gettable 66 off 51 before the returning Rabada got Jaiswal mistime an uppercut to third man. After getting to 39 off 28, the prodigious opener couldn’t cash in and it opened a window of opportunity for the hosts. Rabada then sent a pacy delivery onto Samson’s leg and trapped him in front of the stumps. The South African star finished his four overs for figures of 2 for 18 and his final two overs got the visitors to crack under the pressure applied.
The in-form Riyan Parag top-edged a pull off Arshdeep while Sam Curran gave away just six singles in the over prior. It left the Royals needing 34 off 18.
Curran could have bowled the 18th over himself but threw the ball to Harshal Patel. The Haryana bowler dismissed Dhruv Jurel but ended that over with two soft balls which Hetmyer swung away for a four and a six. Rovman Powell then hit Curran for a brace of fours to start the 19th over. That meant four straight balls had cost 18 runs and even though Curran came back well to dismiss Powell and Maharaj in his last over, Arshdeep was left to defend just 10 off the final over. The left-armer bowled two dots to start but missed his yorker at the third time of trying and conceded a six. Hetmyer helped himself to another six off a full toss to condemn PBKS to another close defeat.
Brief scores:
Punjab Kings 147/8 in 20 overs (Ashutosh Sharma 31; Keshav Maharaj 2-23, Avesh Khan 2-34) lost to Rajasthan Royals 152/7 in 19.5 overs (Yashasvi Jaiswal 39, Shimron Hetmyer 27*; Kagiso Rabada 2-18, Sam Curran 2-25) by three wickets
(Cricbuzz)
Through Dane Paterson’s five-fer, Corbin Bosch’s four-wicket haul on debut and Aiden Markram’s gutsy 47*, South Africa ended Day 1 of the first Test against Pakistan in a better position compared to the visitors. They finished at 82 for 3 at Stumps, trailing Pakistan’s 211 by 129 runs.
Despite Kagiso Rabada being the best bowler in terms of line and length for the hosts, he remained wicketless after testing the batters on both sides of the willow.
The hosts quickly managed to pick up the last wicket of Khurram Shahzad three balls into the final session bringing a strange Pakistan innings to an end who were aggressive despite losing regular clumps of wickets.
Markram then got South Africa’s innings underway with an elegant straight drive to the boundary but Shahzad accounted for his partner Tony de Zorzi as he rattled the stumps. With a peach of a delivery, Shahzad got one to seam inwards and had de Zorzi bowled for just two. Ryan Rickelton survived a review after he shouldered arms to a ball which came inwards but fortunately for him was missing the off-stump.
Markram punished two poor deliveries for four off Mohammad Abbas as he moved into double digits but Shahzad scalped his partner, getting him to nick behind to the ‘keeper. Markram and new batter Tristan Stubbs steadied the ship with a 44-run partnership which was dominated by the former. Markram played the ball with soft hands and guided testing deliveries to the fence along with pouncing on any width on offer.
Stubbs, who made only nine, was dismissed in an unfortunate manner with the ball keeping low and trapping him LBW. Skipper Temba Bavuma and Markram then played out the remaining overs to take South Africa to Stumps without any further wickets.
Earlier on, Pakistan survived the first hour of play unscathed but the introduction of Bosch changed the course of the game immediately. Shan Masood drove loosely away from his body, edging one to Marco Jansen at gully, off Bosch’s first ball in Test cricket before Paterson picked up Saim Ayub.
Babar Azam scored only four while Saud Shakeel played a strange six-ball 14 in a mindlessly aggressive innings as Pakistan had fallen to 56 for 4 before Lunch.
Kamran Ghulam and Mohammad Rizwan resurrected the innings with an 81-run stand but the former threw his wicket almost immediately after reaching his milestone, as Paterson struck in the first over of his fresh spell. Ghulam had played a wild swipe to deep backward-square leg.
Salman Agha too raced off the blocks with a boundary but Rizwan fell soon after edging one to slips as Paterson picked up his fourth. Salman and Aamer Jamal attempted to resurrect the innings with a mini partnership of 47 runs in quick time before a mini collapse ensued as Jamal chopped one back on to his stumps before Salman and Naseem Shah departed within the next eight balls.
Brief Scores:
Pakistan 211 (Kamran Ghulam 54, Aamer Jamal 28; Dane Paterson 5-35, Corbin Bosch 4-24) lead South Africa 82/3 (Aiden Markram 47*, Tristan Stubbs 9; Khurram Shahzad 2-28, Mohammad Abbas 1-36) by 129 runs.
With his family and well-wishers watching along from the Queens Sports Club balcony, Zimbabwe’s veteran batter Sean Williams celebrated his fifth Test ton in Bulawayo to give the hosts the upper hand in the Boxing Day Test against Afghanistan, as they finished on 363 for 4.
Williams not only negated Afghanistan’s spin challenge comfortably but also dominated the other bowlers to finish unbeaten on 145. His control percentage of 90 on a surface that offered decent turn right from the start of play displayed just that, with the inexperienced Afghanistan bowling attack – the visitors were missing Rashid Khan for the Test owing to personal reasons – looking both deflated and bruised by the end of it.
Walking in at the start of the second session to face his first ball with Zimbabwe at 92 for 2, Williams relied on his footwork to get on top of the bowling. Usually a frequent sweeper, Williams, on this occasion, took to the cuts, drives and pulls to shepherd the Zimbabwe innings. With Afghanistan not offering anything too full knowing Williams’ love for the sweep, he countered the bowlers’ lengths by rocking back or going on to the front foot with equal ease.
When Williams charged down the track, he lifted sixes over long-on and long-off. When he hung back, he created the time to slap boundaries through the off side. Williams’ enterprising batting earned him a half-century off 58 balls, and a century off 115.
But Williams’ innings wasn’t the only one to help Zimbabwe finish the day on a high. Opener Ben Curran, one of three Zimbabwe debutants and one of six across the two XIs, set the tone early with 68 off 74 balls. He welcomed fellow debutant Azmatullah Omarzai into Test cricket with a boundary off the allrounder’s first ball in the format, before unleashing ten more boundaries.
Curran was the majority contributor in a 43-run opening partnership with Joylord Gumbie (9), and a 49-run second-wicket stand with Takudzwanashe Kaitano (46), but fell to teen debutant AM Ghanzafar in the last over before lunch after a wrong’un sneaked through his defence to knock his stumps back.
Kaitano and Dion Myers (27), batting at No. 5, could not make full use of their starts, but their time in the middle ensured Zimbabwe lost just one wicket apiece in the two sessions after lunch. With Williams, Kaitano added 78 for the third wicket, while Myers put on 50 for the fourth.
Myers’ dismissal in the 56th over, caught and bowled by Ghazanfar for his second strike, brought in Zimbabwe’s captain Craig Ervine at No. 6, and he made certain that Afghanistan finished the day with way more questions than answers. With Williams showing how to score freely, Ervine dug in and quietly brought up his sixth Test fifty with a leg-side dominant innings.
Ervine’s knock was chanceless, unlike Williams, who, when on 124, needed the aid of a no-ball from Zahir Khan to continue batting. However, Ervine’s 56 in an unbeaten partnership of 143 for the sixth wicket was equally crucial for Zimbabwe to stamp their dominance on the day.
Play was called off five overs before the scheduled stumps owing to bad light, with Zimbabwe ending the day with a run rate of 4.27.
Brief scores:
Zimbabwe 363 for 4 in 85 overs (Sean Williams 145*, Ben Curran 68, Takudzwanashe Kaitano 46, Craig Ervine 56*; AM Ghazanfar 2-83) vs Afghanistan
[Cricinfo]
Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh has died at the age of 92.
Singh was one of India’s longest-serving prime ministers and he was considered the architect of key liberalising economic reforms, as premier from 2004-2014 and before that as finance minister.
He had been admitted to a hospital in the capital Delhi after his health condition deteriorated, reports say.
Among those who paid tribute to Singh on Thursday were Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who wrote on social media that “India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders”.
Modi said that Singh’s “wisdom and humility were always visible” during their interactions and that he had “made extensive efforts to improve people’s lives” during his time as prime minister.
Priyanka Gandhi, the daughter of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and a Congress party member, said that Singh was “genuinely egalitarian, wise, strong-willed and courageous until the end”.
Her brother Rahul, who leads Congress, said he had “lost a mentor and guide”.
Singh was the first Indian leader since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after serving a full first term, and the first Sikh to hold the country’s top post. He made a public apology in parliament for the 1984 riots in which some 3,000 Sikhs were killed.
But his second term in office was marred by a string of corruption allegations that dogged his administration. The scandals, many say, were partially responsible for his Congress party’s crushing defeat in the 2014 general election.
Singh was born on 26 September 1932, in a desolate village in the Punjab province of undivided India, which lacked both water and electricity.
After attending Panjab University he took a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge and then a DPhil at Oxford.
While studying at Cambridge, the lack of funds bothered Singh, his daughter, Daman Singh, wrote in a book on her parents.
“His tuition and living expenses came to about £600 a year. The Panjab University scholarship gave him about £160. For the rest he had to depend on his father. Manmohan was careful to live very stingily. Subsidised meals in the dining hall were relatively cheap at two shillings sixpence.”
Daman Singh remembered her father as “completely helpless about the house and could neither boil an egg, nor switch on the television”.
His unexpected appointment capped a long and illustrious career as an academic and civil servant – he served as an economic adviser to the government, and became the governor of India’s central bank.
In his maiden speech as finance minister he famously quoted Victor Hugo, saying that “no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come”.
That served as a launchpad for an ambitious and unprecedented economic reform programme: he cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatised state-run companies and encouraged foreign investment.
The economy revived, industry picked up, inflation was checked and growth rates remained consistently high in the 1990s.
Manmohan Singh was a man acutely aware of his lack of a political base. “It is nice to be a statesman, but in order to be a statesman in a democracy you first have to win elections,” he once said.
When he tried to win election to India’s lower house in 1999, he was defeated. He sat instead in the upper house, chosen by his own Congress party.
The same happened in 2004, when Singh was first appointed prime minister after Congress president Sonia Gandhi turned down the post – apparently to protect the party from damaging attacks over her Italian origins. Critics however alleged that Sonia Gandhi was the real source of power while he was prime minister, and that he was never truly in charge.
The biggest triumph during his first five-year term was to bring India out of nuclear isolation by signing a landmark deal securing access to American nuclear technology.
But the deal came at a price – the government’s Communist allies withdrew support after protesting against it, and Congress had to make up lost numbers by enlisting the support of another party amid charges of vote-buying.
A consensus builder, Singh presided over a coalition of sometimes difficult, assertive and potentially unruly regional coalition allies and supporters.
Although he earned respect for his integrity and intelligence, he also had a reputation for being soft and indecisive. Some critics claimed that the pace of reform slowed and he failed to achieve the same momentum he had while finance minister.
When Singh guided Congress to a second, decisive election victory in 2009, he vowed that the party would “rise to the occasion”.
But the gloss soon began to wear off and his second term was in the news mostly for all the wrong reasons: several scandals involving his cabinet ministers which allegedly cost the country billions of dollars, a parliament stalled by the opposition, and a huge policy paralysis that resulted in a serious economic downturn.
LK Advani, a senior leader in the rival BJP party, called Singh India’s “weakest prime minister”.
Manmohan Singh defended his record, saying his government had worked with “utmost commitment and dedication for the country and the welfare of its people”.
Singh adopted the pragmatic foreign policies pursued by his two predecessors.
He continued the peace process with Pakistan – though this process was hampered by attacks blamed on Pakistani militants, culminating in the Mumbai gun and bomb attack of November 2008.
He tried to end the border dispute with China, brokering a deal to reopen the Nathu La pass into Tibet which had been closed for more than 40 years.
Singh increased financial support for Afghanistan and became the first Indian leader to visit the country for nearly 30 years.
He also angered many opposition politicians by appearing to end relations with India’s old ally, Iran.
A studious former academic and bureaucrat, he was known for being self-effacing and always kept a low profile. His social media account was noted mostly for dull entries and had a limited number of followers.
A man of few words, his calm demeanour nevertheless won him many admirers.
Responding to questions on a coal scandal involving the illegal allocation of licences worth billions of dollars, he defended his silence on the issue by saying it was “better than thousands of answers”.
In 2015 he was summoned to appear in court to answer allegations of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and corruption related offences. An upset Singh told reporters that he was “open for legal scrutiny” and that the “truth will prevail”.
After his time as premier, Singh remained deeply engaged with the issues of the day as a senior leader of the main opposition Congress party despite his advancing age.
In August 2020, he told the BBC in a rare interview that India needed to take three steps “immediately” to stem the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic, which had sent the country’s economy into a recession.
The government needed to provide direct cash assistance to people, make capital available for businesses, and fix the financial sector, he said.
History will remember Singh for bringing India out of economic and nuclear isolation, although some historians may suggest he should have retired earlier.
“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament,” he told an interviewer in 2014.
Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.
[BBC]
Paterson, Bosch and Markram put South Africa ahead
Williams’ unbeaten 145 leads Zimbabwe’s domination against Afghanistan on Boxing Day
Manmohan Singh, Indian ex-PM and architect of economic reform, dies at 92
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