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Ganguly’s fitness test today
Indian team better than Pakistan,
Indian, Pakistan players in
festive mood
Australians flay ICC chucking report
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Cabinet decision to give fillip to
match fixing probe
Rasquinha, Tirkey to play as sweepers
MDU clinch wrestling title
Parnita to lead the field in
N. India golf
Jalandhar, Chandigarh
schools in final
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Ganguly’s fitness test today
Kolkata, November 11 Meanwhile, Ganguly came out for practice with the rest of the Indian players at the Eden Gardens and looked in good shape. The Indian skipper started with two laps at the ground and followed it up with light exercises. Ganguly later had a long stint at the nets, showing no signs of discomfort. The Indian skipper, who had opted to play in the four-day Ranji Trophy match for Bengal against Karnataka which ended yesterday, had already declared his fitness for Saturday’s platinum jubilee one-day match against Pakistan. A final decision about Ganguly playing in the high-voltage match will, however, be taken by Leipus following the fitness test. Ganguly could not play the last two Test matches in the just concluded four-Test home series against Australia due to a thigh injury. Afridi predicts a thriller Pakistan’s hard-hitting batsman Shahid Afridi expects Saturday’s India-Pakistan encounter to be a nail-biting thriller.
“We have won three matches in a row against India and want to make it four in a row,” Afridi told newsmen here today but went on to add, “India will be looking for revenge and we expect them to come back hard”.
Emphasising that the young players in the team were fired up for the one-off match at the Eden Gardens to mark the Platinum Jubilee of the Indian Cricket Board, he said: “It (match) is going to have a very close finish”. Asked to name a potential threat among the Indians, he said, “I don’t want to name any individual player but the fact is that they (Indians) have a very strong batting line-up”. Apart from this, the Indian team also has the advantage of playing at home ground and with crowd support, he said. Asked to predict the winner of the match, he only said, “Anything can happen. Both sides are strong”. Among the Indian bowlers, Afridi said, both Irfan Pathan and Zaheeer Khan have been bowling very well lately. Incidentally this is Afridi’s second visit to the city within a year as he was here in last December with Pakistan-A side after which he made a comeback to the senior side as a middle-order batsman.
— PTI |
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Indian team better than Pakistan, says Imran
New Delhi, November 11
They may have lost to Australia but that does not mean that this is not a very good Indian team,” said Imran, ahead of the one-day clash between India and Pakistan in Kolkata on Saturday.
“They proved it in Pakistan and Australia. The Pakistan team today has far more problems than the Indian side,” the former Pakistan captain told NDTV. According to Imran, India were competing with England for the second spot behind Australia in world cricket. “I think they are fighting with England for the number two slot. Pakistan, on the other side, I don’t think is in the same bracket,” he was quoted as saying in a NDTV press statement. “Our domestic structure is not as good as India’s. That is why we are struggling to throw up quality batsmen”, he said. “We just don’t have the competition at the domestic level to enable batsmen to make the next grade easily, I think batsmen like Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman are really a great line-up.” Imran also said he felt that Sunil Gavaskar was the best Indian batsman ever. “I didn’t play much against Sachin but I think Gavaskar had the better technique and was a more difficult batsman to get out.”
— PTI |
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Indian, Pakistan players in
festive mood
Kolkata, November 11 “This is more of a celebration match for improving relations between the two countries and it does not matter much who wins or loses,” remarks Pakistani captain Inzamamul
Haq. “But we are confident that we will give our best and present a rare Id gift to our people in Pakistan,” he says. * * *
Players of both teams today enjoyed together Bollywood classic
“Mughal-e-Azam”, whose special show was held at the Swabhumi auditorium near Salt Lake city. Most of the Pakistani players and the guests were accompanied by their wives and children.
Mr Jagmohan Dalmiya said a cultural bonanza has been arranged for the Pakistani delegations tomorrow on the eve of the match. Prominent artistes will entertain the audience with ghazals and Hindi film songs. Noted tabla maestro Bikram Ghosh will also give a performance. * * *
So far, there has no mad rush for tickets but the BCCI authorities hope the demand for tickets will go up tomorrow. People in the city are now more busy in obtaining tickets for the ongoing international film festival, which Union Information and Cultural Minister Jaipal Reddy opened at Nandan last evening. films are being screened at about 70 cinema houses in the city and districts, where film fans are queuing up every day for buying tickets and there has been less crowd in front of the CAB or any other club house premises for cricket tickets. Moreover, Id fasting will continue when the match takes place and hence there may not be as much demand for tickets as the BCCI has anticipated. According to the
BCCI, a large number of Rs 1500 tickets still remain unsold and no sports clubs have come forward to collect their quota. There has also not been any demand for tickets from the state government and other offices which will remain closed till the weekend on the occasion of Divali and subsequently Id. Hence, there has been an apprehension of quite a large number of tickets going unsold. However, hundreds of tickets priced at Rs 700 and Rs 500 have been sold out to the small clubs and various other institutions. * * *
There is still a large demand for club house tickets from corporate and business houses and they are selling at exorbitant prices. The police arrested two middlemen for selling club house tickets on the black market. A CAB official was also hauled up and questioned in this connection. * * *
Indian captain Sourav Ganguly has now turned hotelier with the opening of a restaurant at Park Street, named
Sauravs, which another cricketer-turned hotelier Sachin Tendulkar inaugurated today in the presence of a host of Pakistan and Indian players, including
Haq, Shoaib Akhtar, Rahul Dravid and former captain Sunil Gavaskar. Saurav’s wife, Dona, welcomed the
invitees. Dravid and Laxman were also present at an exhibition at the newly opened city centre at Salt Lake city, while several other cricketers spent the day with their wives or girl friends at the Victoria Memorial Hall, zoo gardens or the city’s shopping plazas. |
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Australians flay ICC chucking report
Sydney, November 11 Under the proposed new ruling, which will be put to the ICC Chief Executives’ Committee of the 10 Test-playing countries at its next meeting in Melbourne in February, almost all modern bowling actions would be legal. If the move is adopted, it would effectively end the controversy over Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan and allow him to again bowl his
‘doosra’, the delivery that turns away from the normal off-break. “It seems like they are playing around and changing these rules all the time,” Australian captain Ricky Ponting said. “What that says to me as well is that Murali will be able to bowl his ‘doosra’ again.” The world’s leading Test wicket-taker Shane Warne went to lengths to avoid saying that Muralitharan would specifically benefit from the decision, but he believed it would lead to more confusion in world cricket. “I think it might create confusion. How does an umpire tell if it’s 12 degrees, 10 degrees, nine, 13, 14, whatever it is when it happens like that” Warne said in
Melbourne. Warne said he would not take issue with the elastic-wristed Muralitharan bowling his
‘doosra’, if the proposal was rubber-stamped by the ICC Executives Committee. “What they say... whatever they basically say, we, as players, have to abide with it,” he said. “You’ve got to look at the laws and what the laws say — it’s pretty hard to bowl a ball, given the way the law is,” Warne said. Despite the committee including former Test bowlers Michael Holding, Tim May and Angus Fraser, the move has prompted accusations that the ICC is bending the rules to accommodate Muralitharan’s contentious bowling
action. Muralitharan is nine Test wickets behind Warne with 532 scalps and is out of international cricket due to injury and citing the need for rest but is set to return in the new year. The recommendation have stunned others here. Test cricket’s leading run-scorer Allan Border said: “I’m a bit from the old school — throwing is throwing. If you straighten your arm, it’s a throw.” Prof Bruce Elliott, one of three biomechanics who conducted the research into Muralitharan’s bowling action, denied the issue was specifically about the Sri
Lankan. “That is wrong and what’s more illegal throwing is a far bigger problem than that,” said the Perth-based human movements academic. “There was no thought by anybody that Muralitharan was the issue that was being discussed. We were looking at data from possibly 80 bowlers around the world.” Cricket Australia was sanguine about the ICC proposal. “It’s a significant change from the current arrangements, but we all acknowledge perhaps they weren’t correct. So we think it’s a step forward,” said CA general manager of cricket operations Michael Brown. NEW DELHI: Cricketer-turned-commentator Geoffrey Boycott lambasted the International Cricket Council
(ICC) for its proposal to relax rules on chucking and construed it as a move aimed at legalising Muralitharan’s controversial “doosra” delivery. “I think it’s been brought in through pressure from Sri Lanka and Murali’s supporters,’’ BBC Sport quoted Boycott as saying.
— AFP, UNI |
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Cabinet decision to give fillip to
match fixing probe
New Delhi, November 11 Briefing reporters, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said similar treaties had already been signed with the USA, UK, Canada, Russia and several other countries.
— TNS |
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Rasquinha, Tirkey to play as sweepers
Chandigarh, November 11 Though India finished seventh at Athens, they made it to the Lahore tournament after Olympic gold medallist Australia pulled out citing security reasons. “No team will give us any chance in the tournament. So we are working out on new innovations in training. Instead of two fullbacks, we will go for only one,” coach Gerhard Rach said here today during a prize distribution function at a school. He said Viren Rasquinha and captain Dilip Tirkey would play as sweepers. There would be three players in the forward line. However, two linkmen would join the forwards while attacking the opponents, explained Rach, who is yet to sign a contract with the Indian Hockey Federation. “'Today, I introduced the wall practice for two hours. It is just like a playing volley against a wall in tennis. It was a touch quick passes practice session,” he said. With Oliver Kurtz of Germany joining the camp here on November 15 for two weeks, more stress would be on the penalty corner hits, he informed. “Oliver was with us in the Athens Olympics but our players lacked penalty corner practice. He is a penalty corner expert and our players would learn the art from him. I am also trying different penalty corner variations.” He rated the present 18-member squad as the “the real team for the future”. Firmly ruling out inclusion of more players in the ongoing coaching camp, the chief Indian coach said he did not want to disturb the present lot. When a trainee asked why mercurial forward Dhanraj Pillay and Olympian Baljit Singh Dhillon were not included in the team, Rach asked, “Can your father or grandfather represent the country?” “What about Gagan Ajit Singh and Deepak Thakur?” another trainee wanted to know. Rach said, “Let them prove their worth.” Another trainee was eager to know about the fate of drag-flicker Jugraj Singh. The chief Indian coach said ,''He cannot play the competition of this stature now.”
— UNI |
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MDU clinch wrestling title
Rohtak, November 11 Newly established Chaudhary Devi Lal University (CDLU) finished runnersup with 12 points and BS Ambedkar Marathwarda University, Aurangabad, remained third. MDU had entered the fray as heavyweights in the championship as the university was being represented by several grapplers of international calibre. Mandeep Singh (MDU) defeated Pardeep of CDLU in the 60kg category 6-2. Paramjeet Singh, silver medallist at the senior national championship last year and two-time member of the Indian squad in the world championship, emerged winner in the 74kg class to fetch another gold for MDU. He defeated Birajdar Jiwan of Aurangabad University 4-1. Manoj of CCS University, Meerut, and Varinder Singh of Punjabi University, Patiala, won the bronze. In the 96kg category, Narender (MDU) trounced Parvesh Mann (Nagpur University) 5-0. MDU’s Narender (84 kg) won the gold by defeating Rinku (Punjabi University). In the 66kg class, Naresh of CDLU lost to Mandeep of MDU. In the 55kg category, Kashid Amod of Aurangabad beat P. Subhash of Shivaji University, Kohlapur. The 50kg class gold went to Vikas of CDLU, who defeated Pawan of the host university 5-4. In the 120kg class, Amritsar university grappler Jasdeep Singh defeated Sanjay Kumar to emerge on top. The Vice-Chancellor of MDU, Prof R.S.Dhankar, presented the trophy to the winning university and medals to the individual winners. Over 450 grapplers from 82 universities participated in the tourney. |
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Parnita to lead the field in
N. India golf
New Delhi, November 11 Parnita will encounter competition from Anjali Chopra, Shruti Khanna, Pakistan ladies champion Shalini Malik, besides Vandana Agarwal and Irina Brar, who recently won her sixth consecutive Punjab Open title. The 72-hole open strokeplay event will be sponsored for a record 18th time by the Siddharth Shriram group. Rs 5,000 would be given to every sub-par score in the championship. The championship has attracted a record field, including four players from the Iranian Federation and Tessa Covell of Zimbabwe. She has been a regular in the Ladies Northern India Championship since 1981. The Northern India championship is one of the seven regional championships played under the aegis of the Indian Golf Union. |
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Jalandhar, Chandigarh
schools in final
New Delhi, November 11 In the first semifinal, Government Model Senior Secondary School, Jalandhar, trounced SGPS Academy, Sri Bhaini Sahib, 6-0 while Government Model School, Chandigarh, blanked Birsa Munda Vidyapitha, Rourkela (Orissa), 4-0 in the second semifinal. The Jalandhar school opened the account in the 18th minute of the first half through Amritpal Singh, and knocked in four goals in a 10-minute scoring blitz. Hardeep Singh converted a penalty corner to get the second goal and Hardeep Singh Sr scored the third goal two minutes later. Deepak Sharma accounted for the fourth and sixth goals while Amritpal Singh chipped in with the fifth goal to complete his brace. |
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