Latest News
Miller and Baartman help South Africa end Netherlands jinx in low-scoring nail-biter
South Africa made heavy weather of a modest chase in New York before David Miller and Tristan Stubbs dug deep to save them from a third straight defeat at Netherlands’ hands at an ICC tournament.
Miller and Stubbs added 65 for the fifth wicket to lift them from the pits of 12 for 4 on a pitch that didn’t play anywhere as badly as the scorecard suggested, even though there was enough in it for quick bowlers – 13 of the 15 wickets fell to them, while there were two run outs.
As he walked out to bat, Miller might have had a flashback of Adelaide 2022, where his wicket, with 47 needed off 28 balls, shut the door on South Africa and gave Netherlands a 13 run win. On Saturday, Miller stayed the course and remained unbeaten on 59, flicking on his best six-hitting self in the penultimate over with South Africa needing 16 off 12.
In the end, in a game where 209 runs were scored in 38.5 overs, South Africa won with enough to spare.
Quinton de Kock was run out without facing a ball. Reeza Hendricks got a peach from Logan van Beek that angled in and straightened to hit the top of off. Vivian Kingma had the first of a double when he strangled Aiden Markram down leg to leave South Africa 3 for 3. And when Heinrich Klaasen’s rush of blood had him picking out Tim Pringle attempting a pull off Kingma, Netherlands dared to dream – or maybe just expected the expected, considering the recent results between the two sides at ICC events.
Both Miller and Stubbs are instinctive batters who love taking the bowlers on. But the situation they walked out to was not for that sort of batting, it was a crisis. A mis-step could have meant curtains. So they chose caution, saw off the powerplay without any further damage, and hit only a further two boundaries until the ten-over mark to leave South Africa needing 72 off the last ten overs.
Stubbs was on 9 off 21 at this point, struggling to force the pace, especially when the ball was dug in to the pitch. A hint of grip for the spinners also made it difficult for him to hit out. So when Bas de Leede came on in the 11th, Stubbs gave him the charge and enjoyed a massive slice of luck as a thick inside edge flew wide of the midwicket fielder.
Miller, too, rode some luck. A big hit down the ground off left-arm spinner Pringle only just eluded the long-on fielder in the 12th over with South Africa still needing 57 off 50.
Stubbs finally shrug off the pressure that had built around him with a hoick for six off Vikramjit Singh, and then launched van Beek down the ground three balls later to turn the tide South Africa’s way.
It should have been a smooth ride from there, with South Africa needing 29 off 30. But there was another twist. First, Paul van Meekeren delivered a maiden over to Miller, and the pressure showed when Stubbs holed out to deep midwicket in the next, off Bas de Leede. Then, in the 18th, van Beek came back after being walloped for six by Miller to dismiss Marco Jansen.
But, with South Africa needing 16 off 12, de Leede erred in line. Miller began the penultimate over by dispatching a half-tracker over fine leg, and then finished the game with a sequence of 2, 0, 4 and 6 – cue a roar and wild fist pumping.
Miller had tamed the demons of Adelaide 2022.
Sybrand Engelbrecht who represented South Africa at the Under-19 World Cup in 2008 and only recently made his Netherlands’ debut, top-scored with a 45-ball 40 on surface where the next best among the top seven was 12.
At the toss, Netherlands were put in to bat seemingly because South Africa wanted to exploit the morning conditions, and had them tottering at 32 for 4. South Africa’s four-pronged pace attack, led by Marco Jansen was breathing fire at that stage, with pace and bounce off the pitch for assistance.
South Africa’s hostility didn’t end there, with Ottneil Baartman and Anrich Nortje ensuring there weren’t any freebies. This resulted in Netherlands attempting to manufacture strokes, like Scott Edwards did when he executed a reverse scoop for six, but they simply didn’t have enough.
It came down to Englebrecht’s patient knock and his 54-run association with van Beek to get them into three figures. It would have been inadequate on most days, but Netherlands can give themselves a pat on the back for making a match out of it to keep Group D very open.
Brief scores:
South Africa 106 for 6 in 18.5 overs ( David Miller 59*, Tristan Stubbs 33; Vivian Kingma 2-12, Logan van Beek 2-21, Bas de Leed 1-34) beat Netherlands 103 for 9 in 20 overs (Sybrand Engelbrecht 40, Logan van Beek 23; Ottneil Baartman 4-11, Anriche Nortje 2-19, Marco Jansen 2-20) by four wickets
[Cricinfo]
For a man who spent most of the past 20 years in exile, and the past eight months in jail, the figure of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra still looms large over Thailand.
His release from prison at the age of 76 after serving part of a one-year sentence for corruption and abuses of power during his terms as prime minister from 2001 to 2006, was headline news in Thailand.
Hundreds of supporters wearing red cheered as Thaksin emerged from Bangkok’s Klong Prem jail on Monday, wearing a white shirt and short cropped hair.
Thaksin told reporters soon after his release that he was in good health and was “relieved”.
He was greeted outside Bangkok’s Klong Prem prison by family members, including his daughter and protege, former prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra.
Thaksin’s party Pheu Thai’s insistence that from now on he will remain in the background could not stop feverish media speculation over what role he might still play in Thai politics.
This is hardly surprising.
From the moment he swept to power in January 2001 Thaksin, a brash, self-made billionaire, has sought to reshape his country, winning devoted supporters and bitter opponents in equal measure. His parties kept winning elections, even after he was deposed by a coup in September 2006, but fear of his vaunting ambition in the powerful royalist establishment led to multiple court rulings against his allies, years of violent street clashes, and another coup in 2014.
Yet he refused to step back. He continued to run his party from abroad, and, after an apparent “grand bargain”, his conservative opponents allowed him to come home in 2023, to direct it once it was back in government again.
His continued popularity was evident outside the prison where his supporters had gathered.
One of them – Maysa Lombuarot – had driven 700km (435 miles) to see him released.
“Today I brought him 20kg of lychees. I know he likes them. Now that he’s free, I want him to eat something good,” she told the BBC, adding that she hoped he would continue his political career.
“I want him to help the country, to help the people who are suffering so much right now… only he can deliver what he promised,” she said.
And Thaksin does seem incapable of taking a back seat, whatever he may say about spending more time with his grandchildren.
This time, though, it really could be different.
Thaksin was jailed ;ast September, after the Supreme Court ruled that the six months he spent in a police hospital after his return to Thailand had been a ruse to avoid serving his sentence.
This verdict followed the collapse of the Pheu Thai-led coalition government less than two weeks earlier, when the Constitutional Court dismissed his daughter Paetongtarn as prime minister over a leaked phone conversation she had had with the Cambodian leader Hun Sen over how to handle the border dispute between the two countries. Once again, the powerful, conservative courts were determining his party’s fate, as they have so often in the recent past.
While Thaksin was behind bars, Pheu Thai had its worst-ever result in the February general election. It was pushed down to third place behind the reformist People’s Party, and eclipsedby the conservative Bhumjaithai party, which benefited from a surge of nationalist sentiment after the border war with Cambodia. Pheu Thai has been forced to accept being a junior coalition partner in the new government.
“Thaksin emerges from prison to a new political environment”, says political analyst Ken Lohatepanont.
“Pheu Thai has been sidelined as just a mid-sized party. You can never count Thaksin out, but the challenge that he and his Party face is of a different magnitude to those he has faced in the past. Pheu Thai will have to decide whether a public comeback for Thaksin will boost the party, or whether the party might be better served by placing the spotlight on their newer generation leaders.”
The jury is still out in Thailand over why the “grand bargain” with royalist forces which had allowed Thaksin to end his long exile in 2023 collapsed so quickly.
Had the conservatives always intended to use the courts to cripple the governments his party led? His first choice of prime minister was also dismissed by the courts on a seemingly trivial pretext.
Or were they provoked into moving against him by his refusal to stay in the background, his determination to drive his party’s agenda and to explore new and controversial areas of business?
Either way, the mistrust between Thaksin and Thai conservatives is now probably insurmountable. Even if he does still hanker after a prominent political role, he will almost certainly be barred from getting one.
The past 25 years in Thailand could reasonably be called “the Thaksin era”. That era is almost certainly over.
[BBC]
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]
Thailand’s divisive ex-PM is out of jail, but is the Thaksin era over?
Andy Flower fined for ‘use of an audible obscenity’ during Mumbai Indians clash
Royal Challengers Bengaluru eliminate Mumbai Indians and go top after tense finish
Car bomb attack and ambush in northwest Pakistan kill at least 21 police
Overton, Urvil power Chennai Super Kings to fifth spot with third straight win
Showers about 100 mm are likely at some places in the Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central, Uva, Southern, North-western, Northern and North-central provinces and in Trincomalee district.
‘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
-
News5 days agoMIT expert warns of catastrophic consequences of USD 2.5 mn Treasury heist
-
News6 days agoCJ urged to inquire into AKD’s remarks on May 25 court verdict
-
News1 day agoLanka Port City officials to meet investors in Dubai
-
Editorial4 days agoClean Sri Lanka and dirty politics
-
Opinion6 days agoSecurity, perception, and trust: Sri Lanka’s delicate balancing act
-
News2 days agoSLPP expresses concern over death of former SriLankan CEO
-
Editorial4 days agoThe Vijay factor
-
News6 days agoDevelopment Officer bids Rs. 48 mn for CPC’s V8 at auction