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Ireland go down fighting Border writes
Killer used towel to strangle Woolmer?
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India fined for slow over rate
Kumble calls it a day in one-dayers
‘Seniors plotted Patil’s ouster’
Anand overall 2nd
Jeev makes humble start
Paes-Damm in final
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Ireland go down fighting Georgetown, March 30 Andrew Flintoff gave a fine all-round performance, scoring a sedate 43 and then picking up four wickets for 43 runs. Earlier, riding on a disciplined 90 from Paul Collingwood, an uncertain England overcame initial hiccups to post a good total. England blazed in the slog overs after painstakingly building their innings before some disciplined bowling from Ireland. Collingwood missed a well-deserved century, while no other batsman was convincing enough as Ireland managed to keep their big brothers under pressure throughout the day. England had no less than four promising partnerships but none of them were allowed to flourish. Electing to bat first, England got the first jolt in the second over itself as they lost Dublin-born Ed Joyce (1). The former Irish player, who moved to England, did not know much of the very first delivery of Boyd Rankin, which uprooted his off stump. Rankin then removed skipper Michael Vaughan (6) and both England openers were back in the pavilion inside six overs with the scoreboard reading 23. Ireland went all out in the first 10 overs and kept the English batsmen on a tight leash. However, England relied on the experience of Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen as pushed the scoreboard slowly but surely. Pietersen, the world’s No. 1 ODI batsmen, was uncharacteristically restrained and was determined to build on the England innings rather than going flat out. Later, he broke free with a couple of cover drives, Ian Bell too joined in. The duo added 66 runs for the third wicket when Bell departed for 31 edging Kevin O’Brien to Niall O’Brien behind the wicket. England’s hundred came in the 24th over and it was Pietersen who looked to go over the top. The batsman, however, couldn’t survive for long and holed McCallan only to be pouched by Porterfield. He made a run-a-ball 48 with five boundaries. Andrew Flintoff had a reputation to salvage after the night club episode. The allrounder, in the company of Collingwood, began cautiously. Irish captain Trent Johnston brought on as many as six bowlers by the 30th over and rarely allowed the England team any freedom. Collingwood and Flintoff took England to 194 when the latter was castled by Johnston for 43. But Collingwood carried on. His 50 came in 65 balls with five fours. The next 40 came in just 17 deliveries as he hit three more fours and as many sixes. He was run out in the 50th over trying to steal a cheeky run. Scoreboard England Joyce b Rankin 1 Vaughan c Niall O’Brien
b Rankin 6 Bell c Niall O’Brien b Kevin O’Brien 31 Pietersen c Porterfield
b McCallan 48 Collingwood run out 90 Flintoff b Johnston 43 Nixon c Morgan b Botha 19 Bopara not out 10 Mahmood not out 0 Extras
(lb-2, w-13, nb-3) 18 Total (7 wkts, 50 overs) 266 FoW:
1-6, 2-23, 3-89, 4-113, 5-194, 6-245, 7-258. Bowling: Langford-Smith 7-0-38-0, Rankin 7-1-28-2, Johnston 10-0-70-1, Botha 10-1-56-1, Kevin O’Brien 4-0-26-1, McCallan 10-0-38-1, White 2-0-8-0. Ireland Porterfield c Bell b Flintoff 31 Bray c Bopara
b Anderson 0 Morgan run out 2 Niall O’Brien st Nixon b Vaughan 63 Botha c Flintoff b Panesar 18 Kevin O’Brien
lbw Panesar 12 Johnston b Flintoff 27 White c Nixon b Collingwood 38 McCallan b Flintoff 5 Langford-Smith
lbw Flintoff 1 Rankin not out 4 Extras (lb-3, w-9, nb-5) 17 Total
(all out, 48.1 overs) 218 Fall of wickets: 1-6, 2-11, 3-72, 4-116, 5-139, 6-139, 7-197, 8-209, 9-210. Bowling:
Anderson 7-1-35-1, Mahmood 8-2-34-0, Flintoff 8.1-1-43-4, Collingwood 6-0-38-1, Panesar 10-1-31-2, Vaughan 9-0-34-1.
— Agencies
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Border writes I suppose it would not be too much to expect Australia to start today’s game against Bangladesh as the overwhelming favourite. Ponting and his team have found the lost touch at just the right time. The big guns are firing, with Matthew Hayden leading the way. He could not have delivered a better response to his detractors, who had claimed before the tournament that he was past his best. His batting at the top of the order has been stunning to say the least. Brad Hogg is another player who has impressed. Like Hayden, his place in the squad was in doubt, with some people making out a case for Cameron White. But Hogg has silenced the doubters with some excellent bowling. These players apart, the usual suspects – Ponting, Gilchrist, Clarke and McGrath – are in good nick. Shaun Tait has proved his capabilities as a strike bowler. There are several match-winners in the side, and an Australian fan would be very, very comfortable. I get the feeling they need to beat only two more sides to confirm a semifinal berth. But they will certainly like to keep the ball rolling against the Bangladeshis. There will be a temptation on their part to send Mike Hussey up the order. He was in great form before the World Cup, but has looked a bit off-colour during the competition. His cause has not been helped by the fact that he hasn’t been able to spend a lot of time in the middle, what with all the batsmen preceding him in the batting order being in splendid form. It will be a good idea to promote him to No. 3 or No. 4 to enable him to get a feel of the conditions and get his feet moving. But it won’t be smooth sailing for the Aussies. The Bangladeshi team has improved tremendously. They have some exciting young talent and have displayed signs of coming to terms with cricket at the highest level. Their performance against India underscored their passion and commitment. They will have their task cut out against the defending champions, but the challenge won’t deter a character like Dav Whatmore. He will plan, plot and strategies, and ensure that his boys are in the right frame of mind to take on the heavyweights. Teams have displayed a preference for bowling first in this competition, the objective being to exploit the early-morning moisture in the track. But the Australians have been quite comfortable with batting first. I know the Bangladeshis like to bowl first, but they should try to draw the Australians out of their comfort zone. Habibul Bashar should look to bat first and call upon his batsmen to survive the initial period when the ball will wobble around. They will be well placed if they take the team through that period. But it ultimately boils down to a team’s assessment of its respective strengths and weaknesses. If a team does feel that it possesses the firepower to make the most of the helpful conditions, then it should opt to bowl first if it wins the toss. Bangladesh will know that the Australian batsmen will come hard at them, regardless of whether they bowl first or second. They will need to come up with something special to beat the cup-holders. — PMG
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Killer used towel to strangle Woolmer?
Kingston/London, March 30 As the Jamaican police continued to look for clues 12 days after the sensational murder of Woolmer in his hotel room, the theory that a towel or a piece of cloth was used for the murder has added a fresh angle to the case. British newspapers reported that Woolmer was strangulated with a towel, or ligature, in what seemed a mafia-style killing probably to prevent the coach from blowing the whistle on match-fixing. The papers quoted Jamaica’s deputy commissioner of police Mark Shields as saying that it was “common sense” that something was used to prevent the throat being marked. “If it is some form of manual strangulation and there are no physical marks, there may have been something between the hands of the assailant and the neck. That’s as far as I will go,” Shields said. He confirmed that towels were found in the 12th floor hotel room where Woolmer’s body was found on March 18, hours after Pakistan’s shock World Cup defeat at the hands of minnows Ireland. The fact that the killer wanted not to leave any mark suggests it was a well-planned murder. Shields also said the police now had “video grabs” of every person who had entered Woolmer’s 12th floor hotel corridor on the night he was killed. He said the police were focusing on four things by which they were trying to correlate and catch the killer in what he described as “trying to piece together a big jigsaw.” By comparing witness statements in which players and guests were asked to account for their movement, the CCTV images, data from room key cards and room service orders, the police hope to zero in on the killer. The Pakistani team, which has now left the island, were interviewed, fingerprinted and gave DNA samples, and the police wanted to do the same for the all the guests and players who were staying at the Pegasus hotel on the night of the killing. A police report has been sent to the Kingston Coroner Patrick Murphy and he would also carry out his own inquiry. Investigators are still waiting for the results of toxicology and blood test, which would give them an indication of the exact time of the death. “Once that is established, we would be able to narrow the study of CCTV footage of the entrance to elevator and the corridor on the 12th floor,” Shields said. — PTI
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India fined for slow over rate
St John’s, March 30 ICC match referee Jeff Crowe imposed the fines after Rahul Dravid’s side was judged to be one over short of its target at the scheduled finish of Sri Lanka innings when time allowances were taken into consideration, the ICC said in a statement. In accordance with the ICC Code of Conduct regulations governing over-rate penalties, the captain was fined 10 per cent of his match fee and rest of the team five per cent of their match fees. Peterson reprimanded
Georgetown: South African Robin Peterson was officially reprimanded by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for smashing wickets after hitting the winning boundary in the match against Sri Lanka. After Lasith Malinga took four wickets off as many deliveries, the match was poised for a close finish and Peterson hit the winning boundary. In celebration, he smashed the stumps at non-striker’s end to invite ICC’s wrath.
— PTI
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Kumble calls it a day in one-dayers
Bangalore, March 30 “I wanted to go with the ball in my hand. It did not happen in the last World Cup. It feels a bit different to be a part of the team and not play. I was hurt at not being a part of the eleven but took it in my stride. “I spoke to my colleagues and stayed on. This World Cup we had a good chance but unfortunately it did not go our way. Its time for me to end and pass the mantle to young players,” said 37-year-old Kumble. The expected announcement came a day after his return from the disastrous World Cup in the Caribbean. “It has been a one long journey that started in 1990. Today I formally announce my retirement from one-day cricket,” Kumble told a press conference here. “I thought of giving up ODIs four years back. Actually right throughout my career I was fortunate enough to be a part of the team. It became a habit to be a part of the team,” said Kumble, who has 337 ODI wickets from 271 one-dayers at an average of 30.89.
His Test figure reads 547 wickets in 113 matches with an average of 28.65. Of late, Kumble was bogged down by a recurring shoulder injury, which often needed pain-killing injections, and he had reached the career crossroad where he had to take this decision to prolong his Test career. A proven match-winner in the longer version of the game, Kumble, surprisingly, was never an automatic choice in one dayers and he often had to pave way for younger spin colleague Harbhajan Singh in the ODIs. In this World Cup too, Kumble played just one match, picking up three for 38 against Bermuda, while Harbhajan was preferred for India’s matches against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Incidentally India’s lone win in the World Cup came against Bermuda. “It’s always nice to finish on a high note. Unfortunately, it does not seem to happen. There is not always a fairytale end. Hopefully it will happen when I leave Test cricket,” he said. Ironically, for someone who was not a certainty in one-day cricket, Kumble boasts of the best ODI figure by an Indian bowler. It was back in 1993 when he grabbed six wickets for 12 run in the final of the Hero Cup at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata and it’s yet to bettered. For someone who started as a medium pacer, it was almost inevitable that Kumble developed a faster delivery, which often gate-crashed through batsman’s bat and pad to rattle the stumps. Kumble was a perfect teamman too. In the 2002 Antigua Test, Kumble had his jaw fractured by a Mervyn Dillon snorter but that could not stop him from taking to the field again to bowl, jaws heavily strapped, and make a brave statement. But the greatest moment of his career came in 1999, when he became the only second bowler, after Jim Laker, to claim all 10 wickets in a Test innings against Pakistan in Delhi. Kumble never played to the gallery and never gave up even in the face of harsh criticism. His deliveries would skid, rather than spin, and that did not woo the fans but perfectly served the team. He does not have Muthiah Muralitharan’s turn or Shane Warne’s guile but his probing accuracy, variation in pace and the ability to extract bounce from dead pitches saw him return with respectable figures. Ace leggie to write book
Anil Kumble will unravel the mystery of his bowling, which bemused batsmen with his unorthodox style of leg spin that had more speed than spin, through a book. “I’ll be writing a book on my style of bowling and my cricket career in general,” the techie-cricketer told newspersons here today. He would pen down his cherishing moments, milestones and experiences in the book, interspersed with photographs, Kumble said, hoping that it would come in handy for the budding cricketers. “I still have some cricket left in me. I am available for the country to play tests. The book may take shape after my cricketing career comes to an end,” he said. Kumble had passed his mechanical engineering degree with distinction from a city college.
— PTI, UNI
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‘Seniors plotted Patil’s ouster’
Mumbai, March 30 “Several players, including four seniors from the present team, wanted us to remove Patil and we had no option but to appoint Madan Lal as the new coach overnight in 1996,” said the official. “Patil then went on to coach other teams and guided Kenya to the semifinals of the World Cup,” he said. He named Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Sourav Ganguly, Javagal Srinath, Ajay Jadeja and the then captain Mohd Azharuddin as the players who had revolted against Patil. — PTI
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Parnita makes the cut in men’s tournament
Kathmandu, March 30 Parnita created history by making the cut in her first ever professional tournament with a two-day total of 165. Meanwhile, Nepalese golfers stole the show with four locals figuring in the top five at the mid-way stage of the event. Deepak Thapa Magar shot a three-under 69 which handed him a four-stroke lead over the field at five-under 139. Sabin Sapkota (72) was placed second at one-under 143 and Deepak Acharya third (72) at 144. Overnight leader Suleiman Ali, Feroz Ali, local Ramesh Nagarkoti were tied sixth at 146. Amateur Tashi Ghale and Ravi Khadka were tied for the lead among the amateurs at five-over 149. Ghale shot a 76 while Khadka shot a 75. — PTI
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Anand overall 2nd
Monaco, March 30 His old rival Vladimir Kramnik won blindfold section and emerged overall champion. Anand, who will become the world No. 1 in FIDE rankings tomorrow, topped the rapid section with 8.5, two points clear of four-man pack of Kramnik, Carlsen, Leko and Ivanchuk, while Kramnik finished with nine points out of 11 in blindfold and 15.5 overall, thus claiming both the titles. Anand shared seventh spot with Radjabov in blindfold with 5.0 points. In the last round against Gelfand, Anand had to settle for a draw in both blindfold and rapid versions, the later being regarded his pet game. However, in the blindfold section, Anand lost a winning chance with black and introduced an early novelty that gave him an equal game. He then followed it up with his natural game and drew parity easily, but after only 19 moves, surprisingly both the players agreed for a draw. Anand has won the rapid title five times earlier — last time in 2006 when he shared it with Alexander Morozevich —whereas with this year’s win, Kramnik has bagged the blindfold section for the sixth time. Meanwhile, in other games of the blindfold section, Levon Aronian defeated Vasily Ivanchuk in what can be termed as the longest game of the section, while their rapid game ended in a draw.
— UNI
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Jeev makes humble start
Humble (Texas), March 30 Things were, however, much better for his old friend Daniel Chopra. Chopra, a former Asian Tour regular, shot a four-under 68 with five birdies and just one bogey in his first round to be tied 10th. At the top of the leaderboard, there was a three-way tie for lead with Kevin Sutherland, Stuart Appleby and Johnson Wagner shooting identical rounds of 66. Four others, including Justin Leonard and Bob Estes, were one shot behind at 67. An erratic Jeev, who next week becomes the first Indian to tee up at the Masters, had three
birdies and four bogeys in his round. His birdies came on the fourth, 10th and 12th holes, and he dropped a shot each on third, ninth, 11th and the closing hole. In contrast, Chopra had a brilliant stretch of five holes between seventh and 11th, when he birdied four. He had birdies on seventh, eighth, 10th and 11th and added one more on 14th. He also had one of the best shots of the day, when his tee shot on the par-three 14th hole came within a foot of the cup. He duly got his birdie there.
— PTI
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Paes-Damm in final
Miami, March 30 Paes and Damm, the reigning US Open champions, needed 93 minutes to go past their French opponents 6-4, 3-6, 12-10 to set up a title clash with second seeded American siblings Bob and Mike Bryan. The Paes-Damm pair saved one match point at 9/10 in the match tie-break for a passage to the final, while the Bryan brothers repeated their 2006 Wimbledon final victory over Fabrice Santoro and Nenad
Zimonjic, this time the score reading 7-5, 6-2. Paes and Damm will become the new Stanford ATP doubles race leaders if they defeat the Californian twins, current leaders, in tomorrow’s final. If they manage to win tomorrow, Paes and Damm, who won in Indian Wells, would notch up their second consecutive ATP Masters Series title and their third title from their past four tournaments. Paes and Damm are in fine form in this tournament and they had knocked out two-time defending champions Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi to reach the semifinals.
— PTI
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Talukdar dropped
New Delhi, March 30
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I suppose it would not be too much to expect Australia to start today’s game against Bangladesh as the overwhelming favourite. Ponting and his team have found the lost touch at just the right time. The big guns are firing, with Matthew Hayden leading the way.
