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July 8, 2001, Chandigarh, India   |
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Australia on top in first Test
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Mark
overtakes Chappel
Agassi’s glorious run
ends
Planning key to Williams’
success Overweight Greene leaves rivals
behind Argentina chase record 4th
title Shooting contests at SAS
Nagar? B’ball
probables
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Windies beat India by 16
runs
Harare, July 7 Set to score 291 for victory, India could manage only 274 for 8 in 50 overs. Sameer Dighe was highest scorer with 94 runs while Reetinder Sodhi contributed 67. Earlier, West Indies put up their best batting performance of the tournament to pile up 290 for six in their allotted 50 overs against a wayward Indian bowling. The West Indies fired from all guns and set the momentum right from the word go as they dominated throughout the innings after being put in to bat by Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly, who won the toss and elected to field for the fifth time in a row in this tournament. While it was an inspired performance from the West Indians, India produced their worst bowling and fielding show and were responsible for their plight in a major way. They bowled short and wide, especially in the initial overs when openers Darren Ganga and Chris Gayle tore them apart to give their team a flying start, and the fielding, very professional till this match, was mediocre. The West Indies, who had struggled to consolidate in the middle overs in this tournament, applied themselves well and captain Carl Hooper and Shivnaraine Chanderpaul chose the big occasion to make their mark. They made the best use of a fine start by the openers and added 108 runs for the fourth wicket in 19 overs without taking any risks. Except for Wavell Hinds, who was out for 10, the entire top order of the West Indies chipped in with handsome contributions. Ganga topscored with 71 while his opening partner Gayle made 43. Hooper scored a brilliant 66 off 63 balls and Chanderpaul made 50. Wicketkeeper Ridley Jacobs made 26 and remained unbeaten in the tournament. After losing both their league matches with India, the West Indies came up with a thoroughly disciplined batting performance to register the highest total in this tournament. Ganga and Gayle went after the bowlers from the very first over and Debasish Mohanty, very impressive in his earlier two matches, was marked for some special punishment conceding 26 runs in his first three overs. Both openers took advantage of the fielding restrictions and never hesitated to go over the top. They unleashed a flurry of boundaries and the West Indies scored over six runs an over for most part of the first 15 overs. Harbhajan Singh, the most economical Indian bowler with figures of one for 35 from his 10 overs, gave India the first breakthrough when he had Gayle caught by substitute Harvinder Singh at the long-off boundary. Ganga continued to score fluently but new man Hinds was slightly tentative. The West Indies were 120 for one in the 21st over when for a very brief period India fancied their chances of restricting them within a manageable score. Both Hinds and Ganga were out, dismissed by Reetinder Singh Sodhi, while needlessly trying to go for the big shots and the scoring rate went down. However, except Harbhajan Singh, who was running out of his quota of overs, none of the other Indian bowlers posed any problems to the West Indian batsmen and Hooper and Chanderpaul batted sensibly to consolidate on the early gains. They avoid-ed anything foolish and scored through ones and twos though Hooper did not let go the lose deliveries picking up a few fours and even a six off Virendra Sehwag. Scoreboard West Indies: Ganga c Laxman b Sodhi 71 Gayle c (Harvinder) sub b Harbhajan 43 Hinds c and b Sodhi 10 Hooper c Harbhajan b Zaheer 66 Chanderpaul b Nehra 50 Jacobs not out 26 Sarwan b Nehra 6 Samuels not out 3 Extras (lb-2, nb-1, w-2) 5 Total (6 wkts, 50 overs) 290 Fall of wickets: 1-86, 2-120, 3-130, 4-238, 5-252, 6-285. Bowling: Mohanty 5-0-43-0, Nehra 10-1-60-2, Khan 10-0-63-1, Harbhajan Singh 10-2-35-1, Sehwag 7-0-48-0, Sodhi 7-0-31-2, Ganguly 1-0-8-0. India: Ganguly lbw b Collymore 28 Tendulkar c Ganga b Collymore 0 Laxman c sub (Garrick) b Collymore 18 Dravid b King 30 Shewag c sub (Garrick) b Dillon 2 Sodhi c Dillon b Collymore 67 Dighe not out 94 Harbhajan b Gayle 12 Khan b Gayle 0 Mohanty not out 8 Extras: (1b 4, w 1) 5 Total: (8 wickets, 50 overs, 203 mins) 274 FOW: 1-9, 2-35, 3-58, 4-74, 5-80, 6-181, 7-209, 8-209. Bowling:
Collymore 18-1-49-4, Dillon 8-1-31-1, King 10-1-47-1, Hooper 10-1-63-0, Samuels 3-0-26-0, Gayle 9-0-54-2. |
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Mohali to host first Test against
England New Delhi, July 7 Sources said here today the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) tour and programme fixtures committee, which met in Jaipur today, finalised the itinerary of the visiting England and Zimbabwe teams, and Mohali’s coming back into reckoning for the Test and one-day matches, after being blacklisted by the BCCI, is a good augury for the game in this part of the country. The meeting was chairmed by BCCI Vice-President Kamal
Morarka, and attended by P.M. Rungta, M.P. Pandov, T.M. Mate, Kishore
Rungta, R.K. Kelkar, C.K. Khanna and BCCI secretary Jayawant Lele (convenor). England will play three Tests and five one-day internationals. The Tests will be held at Mohali, Kanpur and Bangalore while the ODIs will be played at Chennai, Calcutta, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. The Zimbabweans will play two Tests, at Ahmedabad and Delhi, and five ODIs at Mohali, Guwahati, Kochi, Faridabad and Jamshedpur. |
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Australia on top in first Test
Birmingham, July 7 Australia extended their overnight 332 for four to 576 all out midway through the final session, giving them a 282-run first innings lead, before England’s reply of 48 for one was cut short by bad light. Martyn’s 105 and Gilchrist’s highest Test score — after he had been dropped on 14 — came in their first appearance against England as they shared a sixth wicket partnership of 160. Australia began on 332 for four, with Martyn 34 not out. But they did not have an easy start. Both Gough and Andrew Caddick bowled with greater accuracy than they had done during the bulk of yesterday’s play, which was halted by bad light and finished off by rain. England (first innings) 294 Australia (first innings) (overnight 332-4) Slater b Gough 77 Hayden c White b Giles 35 Ponting lbw b Gough 11 M. Waugh c Stewart b Caddick 49 S. Waugh lbw b Gough 105 Martyn c Trescothick b Butcher 105 Gilchrist c Caddick b White 152 Warne c Artherton b Butcher 8 Lee c Artherton b Butcher 0 Gillespie lbw b Butcher 0 McGrath not out 1 Extras (b-3 lb-7 nb-23) 33 Total (all out, 129.4 overs) 576 Fall of wickets: 1-98 2-130 3-134 4-267 5-336 6-496 7-511 8-513 9-513 Bowling:
Gough 33-6-152-3, Caddick 36-0-163-1, White 26.4-5-101-1, Giles 25-0-108-1, Butcher 9-3-42-4. England (2nd innings): Atherton c Waugh b McGrath 4 Trescothick not out 21 Butcher not out 15 Extras (nb-8) 8 Total (one wicket, 13 overs) 48 Fall of wicket: 1-4 Bowling: McGrath 5-2-11-1, Gillespie 4-1-28-0, Warne 3-2-3-0, Waugh 1-0-6-0.
Reuters
Birmingham Waugh, in his 185th innings, went past Greg Chappell’s mark of 7,110 runs from 151 innings with a stylish cover driven four off Craig White that Chappell, one of the most elegant players of the 1970s and early 1980s would have appreciated. World record holder Allan Border (11,174 runs), Waugh’s twin brother Steve — batting at the other end when Mark struck White, Mark Taylor (7,525) and David Boon (7,422) are the four Australians still ahead of Waugh.
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Agassi’s glorious run ends London, July 7
The 31-year-old started the year like a house on fire streaking to victory in the Australian Open in Melbourne and following up with big wins at Indian Wells and Miami. There was premature talk of the Grand Slam of all four majors, only achieved twice before by Don Budge and Rod Laver. He was a runaway leader in the ATP Champions race. But that was when the wheels started to come off. A break from tournament play and Agassi found it hard to rediscover his form when he returned for the clay-court season. He did go on a run at the French Open in May/June, but came to grief in the quarterfinals losing to France’s Sebastien Grosjean in the infamous Bill Clinton match when the former US President’s comings and goings appeared to negatively affect his form. And at Wimbledon all was going well in the semifinals against Australia’s Pat Rafter until he blew his service game for the match at 5-4. Four games later it was all over for another year and Agassi’s dream of a second Wimbledon title nine years after his first was in tatters. Agassi struggled to conceal his frustrations at his post-match press conference saying “there wasn’t much more I could do.” “I thought I was playing really well. I had so many opportunities. He just kept coming up with the goods at the right time,” he said. “At the end of the day, he played better at the most important moments,” Agassi said. Praise indeed for old rival Rafter who also defeated him in last year’s semifinals, but Agassi was less complimentary toward the rest of the Centre Court entourage. Two disputed line-calls at the end of the fourth set infuriated the American. At the change-over he demanded unsuccessfully that the chair-umpire change the offending line-judge. And in the following game he appeared to smash a first serve in the direction of the same line-judge. “Listen, while we can always say there’s bad calls, it’s hard to play a match where one player doesn’t feel that way,” he said. To compound matters Agassi near crunch-time in the fifth set was reported by another line-judge for a verbal obscenity which appeared to unsettle him in the last three games. Walking to the net to shake Rafter’s hand at the end of the the match, he appeared to take aim with racquet and ball at that line-judge before pulling back. Asked if he felt the swearing warning was unfair, Agassi shot back “Yeah, big time. Big time. I blame her husband for that.” An ugly way to end what otherwise had been a commanding tournament for the American. Next stop the American hard court season leading into the US Open which he has won twice, in 1994 and 1999.
AFP
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Planning key to Williams’ success London, July 7 His daughters, Venus and Serena, are now among the most famous athletes on earth — and it’s all down to planning according to Richard Williams. Williams decided his daughters would be tennis professionals when he saw Virginia Ruzici playing on television more than 20 years ago and was staggered to hear she had just earned $ 40,000. The problem was none of his three daughters showed any aptitude for tennis. So that was when the planning started. “I went to my wife the next day and said ‘We need to make two more kids”, says Williams (59). “There was a plan from two years before Venus was actually born as to how I would raise my kids with the help of my wife their education, their food and most of all their tennis.” “I am the master planner, no one is going to outplan me”. Richard has been as visible as ever at Wimbledon this year, a one-man support staff for Venus and Serena, who has spent his time photographing his girls, filming the crowd and interviewing anybody famous that turns up to watch. He will be at Centre Court on Saturday, with his wife Oracene, when defending champion Venus plays Belgian teenager Justine Henin in the women’s final and a repeat of last year’s dance on the commentary box roof is definitely a possibility. In London he also launched a documentary, to be shown later this month on British television, after he a gave producer Terry Jarvis unprecedented access to his family. Richard, and his daughters, are controversial figures on the tennis circuit. He has not been slow to voice his opinion on several subjects, including racism. Critics say he has driven his girls too hard and the whole Williams family is too arrogant. But watching the documentary and listening to Richard reveals a man who really doesn’t care what other people think — it’s the family that matters. He began his business carrier by following his mother into the cotton fields and secretly using his boss’s trailer to transport the cotton he stole every night. His father had “lots of girlfriends” and he faced the brutalities of racism many times. “Mama taught me I was not a nigger. ‘You’re just a man’,” Williams said this week. He made money in property but his — and Oracene’s — life was turned upside down once he decided to put his girls on the tennis stage.
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Overweight Greene leaves rivals behind Paris, July 7
The man known as the Kansas Comet came home in 9.96 seconds for his third time under 10 seconds this season while his compatriot and womens’ 100m Olympic champion Marion Jones got over a terrible start to win in a world best for the year of 10.84 seconds and extend her unbeaten 100m record which stretches back to September 1997. There was disappointment for the 58,000 strong crowd, who will have been giving Paris a timely boost ahead of the International Olympic Committee’s decision as to who wins the right to host the 2008 Olympics in Moscow later this month, as Morocco’s two-time world 1500m champion Hicham El Guerrouj failed to break his own world record finishing over two seconds outside the 3 minutes 26.00 seconds mark. Greene, who will be 27 later this month and has warned he will review his schedule after the world championships with a view to cutting back on his racing, never looked in danger of going down to defeat as he eased away from American champion Tim Montgomery and John Smith stablemate Bernard Williams. “I am about 3 kg overweight but I will get that off before the world championships. As for my knee I felt it was a bit tight just before the start but I blocked it out of my mind but my body feels a bit tired right now after two races in three days,” he said.
Jones, who has recently split up from her disgraced drugstaking world champion shot putting husband CJ Hunter, was slow out of the blocks but gathered up her momentum and sped past her training partner Chandra Sturrup, whom she had only touched off in Lausanne on Wednesday. The 25-year-old two-time 100m world champion eased home with Ukraine’s 1997 200m world champion Zhanna Pintusevich taking second and Sturrup third. “It’s great to run a time like that with such a poor start,” she beamed. “Thankfully I can still rely on picking it up midway through the race and it doesn’t half help having 55,000 people aiding you in the stadium.” El Guerrouj, who will take his final bow in the 1500m at the world championships in August as he attempts to win a third successive title, took the pace up with a circuit to go but it was asking too much of him to run a 50 second last lap. “Sadly I promised a world record but the wind was too strong to allow me to fulfil it,” the 27-year-old triple world record holder said. America’s Olympic 400m hurdles champion Angelo Taylor likes leaving it late as he did in the Olympic final and again yesterday he had to claw back a 5 m advantage from the final hurdle to overhaul France’s 1997 world champion Stephane Diagana. Both collapsed over the line but it was Taylor who got the nod from the judges. “Stephane did a hell of a job pulling us all along but I knew from my experience at the Olympics that if you stay calm and come late victory can be yours,” the 22-year-old said. Diagana, who missed the Olympics because of a knee injury, took heart out of the narrowness of the defeat given his woeful last year spent nursing injuries and low morale. “That’s two good battles I’ve given Angelo in two meetings so it is very encouraging looking towards the world championships in August,” he added. While Diagana looks to be returning to the top another great athlete looks to be on the spiral downwards from the top of the ladder. Romania’s 5000m Olympic champion Gabriela Szabo’s hold over the 3000m event took another large knock as she was left looking one-paced for the second successive time in the wake of Russia’s Olga Yegorova. The 29-year-old Russian, who had enjoyed years of mediocrity till she dethroned Szabo for the world indoor 3000m title in March, produced an astonishing piece of acceleration to burst away in the final 200 metres and lead in a Russian 1-2-3 with Szabo a shadow of herself in fourth. However, 25-year-old Szabo embraced the theme of Mark Twain in that news of her demise had been greatly exaggerated. “She was strong today but we’ll see what happens over the longer distance of 5000m in the world championships .. for me the other races don’t matter,” she added defiantly. However, while Szabo wilted in front of the extraordinary Russian onslaught her bitter enemy and compatriot Violeta Beclea Szekely, who sued Szabo for slander earlier this year, won the 1500m to show at 36 she still is the one to beat in the event — though she was anything but happy. “To run a time like that (4 minutes 01.55 seconds) is shameful,” she said.
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Argentina chase record 4th title Buenos Aires, July 7 Argentina are the favourite in tomorrow’s match following its unbeaten run through the championship and an impressive 24-4 goal record. But Ghana, who lost to Brazil 1-2 in the 1993 final, are bubbling with confidence, their biggest advantage being the contagious sense of festive happiness and mirth which radiates from the squad. “Against Argentina we will play to the death,” said Ghanian coach Emmanuel Afranie. “But above all else, we’ll be going out to have a good time. For us, both life and death are reasons to be happy, it’s part of our way of life.” Such a comment would never come from the mouth of Argentine coach Jose Pekerman, a serious, quiet-spoken man who measures every word and action. To date, his methods have served him well, winning two of Argentina’s three World Youth Cups in 1995 and 1997 in his seven years in charge. “We always knew we would make it to the final,” said Pekerman. “We have watched Ghana and knew they would be there at the decisive moment. We weren’t wrong. We are aware that physically they are very strong.” Argentina have displayed an awesome tactical strength combined with a dazzling forward line that includes new FC Barcelona star Javier Saviola, the tournament’s leading scorer with 10. Ghana, meanwhile, possess an abundance of technical skills, and what they lack in tactics and strategy they makes up for with a seemingly endless stamina and determination that has left most of their opponents exhausted. No African team has won the tournament since its first edition in 1977. In the two cities where Ghana have played in this tournament, Mar del Plata and Cordoba, they have been cheered on by local fans. On Wednesday, the team had the Cordoba fans whooping with delight when they put on a song and dance display after downing Egypt in the semifinals. But tomorrow, Ghana may expect little support from the estimated 50,000 fans packing the Velez stadium in Buenos Aires. On Thursday, plans to sell match tickets for the finals were postponed a day after police found it impossible to control a crowd of some 20,000 people who gathered outside the ticket office. Hundreds then formed queues overnight yesterday to get in first.
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Shooting contests at SAS
Nagar? Chandigarh, July 7 Confirming this, Raja K.S. Sidhu, secretary-general of the PRA, said Mr Badal being a shooting fan, had already taken the initiative to start a Sports Authority of India training centre for girls at Badal village. Mr Sidhu was of the opinion that over the past four decades, Punjab could not get the desired shooting range despite the fact that state had been in the forefront at the national and international level. He said at present only the rifle and pistol events were possible in Punjab and the Ranjitgarh Rifle Club, Phillaur, was capable of hosting national meets and camps in these events only. But there was no provision for trap and skeet ranges at Phillaur. He said a few days back there were rumours that shooting would be hosted at Phillaur, but the initiative taken by Mr Badal who directed the officers concerned in Punjab to expedite the construction of range had revived hopes of SAS Nagar getting the final nod. He said earlier the surplus land at Government College, SAS Nagar, was identified for the proposed range and global tenders were floated with Markfed as the agency responsible for execution of the project. But the Education Department, under whose jurisdiction the land falls, had reservations and the project ran to rough weather. He said now they needed only three acres where the range for rifle, pistol, trap and skeet events could be made. Moreover, there was enough vacant space across the college and the used pellets could fall in the choe flowing behind the proposed range. Mr Sidhu said a sum of Rs 60 lakh was budgeted for the shooting event and Rs 30 lakh had already been released by the Centre. He further revealed that once the final go-ahead was given, they required not more than 45 days to make it functional for hosting the shooting events |
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B’ball
probables Ludhiana, July 7 The probables Men: Parminder Singh (sr), Parminder Singh (jr), Gagnesh Kumar, Pritpal Singh, Gursharanjit Singh, Maninder Singh, Pretinder Singh, Singh Sivraj, Harminder Singh,Vipin Kumar, Mahesh Mishra, Varinder Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Davinder Hooda, Lakhvinder Singh, Jasjeet Singh, Harsimren Singh, Amit Prashar, Damandeep Singh,Pavandeep Singh, Amrinder Singh, Arunashish Gill and Gurlal Singh. P.S.Teja and Dr. S. Subramaniam will the coaches. Women:
Mandeep Brar, Rajni Sahota, Kiranjeet Dhillon, Savitri Guleria, Kamaljit Kaur, Reena Rani, Mandeep Khaira, Rajvinder Kaur, Monica, Kulvinder, Rajvinder Kaur, Gurvinder Kaur, Mukti, Varsha, Vijaita, Suman, Sarabjit, Kulwinder Kaur, Lovraj Kaur, Poonam, Ahinsa, Geetu, Harpreet Kaur and Amandeep Kaur. The two coaches are Manpreet Kaur and K.K.Jaggi. |
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London, July 7
