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USA, Russia enter Davis Cup final
Alla-Vania win Sunfeast title
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Jharkhand Ratna for Dhoni President, PM
laud team
India to get invite for
$5m match
What a hat-trick!
Cairns undecided on joining ICL
I didn’t join ICL for money, says Yousuf
Vishy Anand extends lead
Asian Shooting Championship
PAU land for cricket stadium in Bathinda
Jyoti finishes tied 21st
Army cagers enter final
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USA, Russia enter Davis Cup final
Gothenburg, September 23 The win provided an unassailable lead for the Americans, who went on to make it 4-1 when James Blake defeated Simon Aspelin 6-1, 6-3 in the fifth rubber. The US will host the final against Russia after the defending champions beat Germany 3-2 in the other semifinal in Moscow. “It’s for moments like these you put in your time on the practice courts,” said Roddick, who has shown remarkable form and has not been broken once in his two singles matches over the weekend. Clearly more at ease on the fast indoor carpet surface of the Scandinavium arena, Roddick broke Bjorkman twice in the first set to clinch it 6-2. The Swede raised his game in the next set, winning points with his volleying and matching the American all the way to the tie-breaker. His game let him down there, however, and he allowed Roddick to break him twice for a 3-0 lead. The American had no problems holding his own serve and broke the Swede once again to 7-3 to take the tie-breaker and the second set. One break of serve was enough for Roddick to take the third set. The USA have not won the Davis Cup since 1995 when they beat Russia in the final. Sweden’s loss of Thomas Johansson, who had a stomach bug, was not their first bout of bad luck. Recently, their top-ranked player. MOSCOW: Igor Andreev powered Russia to their second successive Davis Cup final by beating Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-3, 3-6, 6-0 6-3 in the fifth and deciding rubber, giving the champions a 3-2 win over Germany. Earlier, world number 17 Mikhail Youzhny beat 206th-ranked Philipp Petzschner 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 in the first reverse singles to pull the home team level at 2-2. It was Russia’s 14th consecutive home victory, dating back to the 1995 final when they lost to the USA. Kohlschreiber double-faulted on break point in the eighth game as he lost the first set but broke the Russian in the sixth game of the second with a powerful backhand down the line on his way to levelling the contest. But the German, who beat world number four Nikolay Davydenko in a tough five-setter on Friday to give the visitors their first point in the tie, began to tire as the match wore on. Claycourt specialist Andreev, who trounced Germany number one Tommy Haas in straight sets in Friday’s opener, raced through the third in 37 minutes. He then secured the decisive break in the eighth game of the fourth set before serving out the match to bring the home crowd to their feet. — Reuters
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Alla-Vania win Sunfeast title
Kolkata, September 24 Kudryavtseva and King got past their opponents 6-1, 6-4 in the one-sided final before a modest crowd at the Netaji Indoor Stadium. The 22-year-old Korrytseva was second-time unlucky as she went down tamely to fourth-seeded Russian Maria Kirilenko in the singles final earlier last evening. Brianti and Koryttseva had accounted for Australian Monique Adamczak and India’s Sunitha Rao 6-4, 5-7, 10-5 in the semifinal.
— PTI |
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Small-town boys make it big
Chandigarh, September 24 It is a welcome win after the Indian team had failed to even enter the Super Eight round at the ODI World Cup in West Indies. This win should put Indian cricket on the right track because this victory has been achieved by a team young in age and lacking in experience. They played their hearts out in a format which was totally alien to them before they landed in South Africa. These youngsters should serve Indian cricket for a long time to come provided the national selectors repose the same faith in them as they had done when selecting them for this tournament. The last time that India was on top of the world cricket stage was in 1983 when Kapil’s Devils overwhelmed the then world champions West Indies to win the World Cup. And prior to the 1983 victory, the Indians had taken part in two World Cups, and had come back without leaving any impression on the other teams. If the 1983 victory was unexpected, then tonight’s victory was more so because when the team for the South African tournament was selected, nobody, not even the diehard fans of the game, gave the team any chance of winning, specially, since not only did the team have a brand new captain but even the players were relatively new and raw. The similarities between Kapil Dev and Dhoni are many. Kapil was the first Indian cricket captain to come from a small town, Chandigarh, and Dhoni too is a small town boy, hailing from Ranchi. Not only that. Both became captain of the Indian team at a relatively young age and both play their cricket more by intuition rather than by the traditional coaching manual. And both lead by personal example. But this team of Dhoni is something which Indian cricket has rarely seen. Most of its players come from small centres and non-metros. While the captain is from Ranchi, his deputy Yuvraj Singh hails from Chandigarh, a non-metro city whose cricket tradition is rich and goes back into decades. Not only that. His speedsters too come from small towns. While Joginder Sharma is from Rohtak, a dusty town of Haryana, Rudra Pratap Singh hails from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh, Sreesanth is from Cochin in Kerala, a state where cricket is not the best-loved sport. The Pathan brothers are from Baroda while Harbhajan Singh is from Jalandhar and had trained in his younger days in Chandigarh. In fact, the players from the metro cities, the tradition centres from where players have emerged to represent the country, are being replaced by boys from smaller towns whose passion for the game is second to none. What does this combination of players mean? For one it must go to the credit of the Board that it had helped spread the game across the length and breadth of the country and the day is probably not far when somebody from the Northeast will also wear Indian colours. Second, this trend goes to prove that the passion of the game is no less in small-town boys and what they might lack in coaching facilities or playing grounds is more than made up by their guts and hard work. And this augers well for Indian cricket in the future. |
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Patna, September 24 According to reports received here from Ranchi, which seven years ago was part of the then undivided Bihar, Dhoni will be the first recipient of the newly instituted award. Jharkhand Deputy Chief Minister Sudhir Mahto said at a function in Jamshedpur today that the award would be presented to Dhoni on the 7th foundation day celebrations of the state on November 15. — TNS
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New Delhi, September 24 In a message to team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the President said his team played positive cricket and their victory was an inspiration to the youth of the country. The Prime Minister said, “Team India played well and made us all proud.” — UNI
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India to get invite for
$5m match
Johannesburg: Twenty20 World Cup winners India will be invited to play in a $5 million match against the Stanford Super Team in the West Indies next year.
Allen Stanford, the creator of a domestic Twenty20 championship in the Caribbean, announced that India will be asked to play the winner-takes-all match against a West Indies select team in Antigua in June 2008. Twenty-one Caribbean islands and territories will vie for the world’s biggest prize in domestic cricket in January-February 2008. The best players will be chosen for the Super Team.
— Reuters
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What a hat-trick!
Chandigarh, September 24 In the past two months, India has not only won two championships in ball games at home - Nehru Cup Football Tournament and Asia Cup Hockey Tournament for men - but has capped it with a glorious win in Twenty20 cricket. India’s emergence as a new force in team events, especially in ball games, may act as a catalyst in rejuvenating Indian sports a year before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. Though the world is viewing India and China as emerging economies, the emergence of the former as a new force in sports, especially in events, which enjoy worldwide following, strengthens the emerging Brand India. India had little to show to the world in football after it made to the Olympic semifinals in 1956. But its title triumph with a solitary goal win over Syria in the Nehru Cup has been a great morale booster, which considerably improved its FIFA rankings. Equally befitting had been India’s splendid big win over current Asian games champions South Korea in the Asia Cup hockey final at Chennai which makes the seven-time Olympic champions the continental champions for the second consecutive occasion. The win gives India automatic qualification for the next World Cup, which India is going to host in New Delhi in 2010. Triumphs in hockey, football and cricket — all basically team sports in which the lower middle and middle class dabble — may revive diminishing interest in the games.
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Cairns undecided on joining ICL
New Delhi, September 24 “ICL, what’s that?” Cairns joked when asked about his reported desire to be a part of the league. “Well, on a more serious note, there have been some queries from them but let me tell you I have not spoken directly to anyone. I have my agents in New Zealand who take care of all this.” “I know what’s happening on that front but I am far from signing up with them. I am enjoying my time away from the game and I have no plans to come out of retirement as of now. There has to be an irresistible offer for me to come back to the game.” “If a good offer comes, I will consider it but I will have to start training and lose some weight before taking the plunge,” he quipped. On the BCCI-backed Indian Premier League, which also has the support of the ICC, Cairns said he was unsure about what would be the outcome of the tussle between the two Twenty20 series. “I have been reading about this war of words between the ICL and the BCCI. Obviously the BCCI came out with the IPL after that and its an ongoing battle between the two sides. I guess we will have to wait and watch,” he said at the launch of the Lotte Super Skills cricket series here. The 37-year-old was excited about the shortest format of the game and felt the administrators will have to work overtime to prevent one-day cricket from falling out of popularity. “Twenty20 is great and I think it would put tremendous pressure on one-day cricket. Authorities will have to keep a lid on the number of Twenty20 games because it has caught the imagination of the general public,” he explained. The lanky Kiwi, one of the most successful all-rounders of all time, felt there was a dearth of his breed right now. “There is no one you can call the world’s best all-rounder right now. Andrew Flintoff is struggling with injuries and so is Jacques Kallis. Our very own Jacob Oram has not been that consistent. So if I had to choose from the current lot, I would say Shaun Pollock but then we don’t know how long he would play,” he said. —PTI
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I didn’t join ICL for money, says Yousuf
Karachi, September 24 “I didn’t join the ICL for money. If it was about money, I have been getting lucrative offers to play county cricket. If it was about money, I can earn more in Pakistan than what I am getting from the
ICL,” Yousuf said in an interview today. The right-handed batsman who scored record-breaking 1,788 runs last year in 11 Tests with nine hundreds indicated there were other reasons for his drastic decision. “For me, Pakistan remains the top priority. Whatever I am today is because of Pakistan. How can I go against my country?” he said.
— PTI
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Vishy Anand extends lead
Mexico City, September 24 With this draw and respective loses of his closest rivals, the Indian Grandmaster extended his lead to a full point with five more games to go. Numero uno Anand began his hunt for the championship title with his second-round opening win with black pieces against Armenian Grandmaster Levon Aronian. After yesterday’s day off, leader Anand came back in the match prepared against his Armenian counterpart's Marshal Ruy Lopez, but failed to make his white pieces count for a win. He tried hard to secure full points, but even his novelty went in vain. Realising that the game will not produce any result, the players agreed to split the point.
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Asian Shooting Championship
New Delhi, September 24 Asian Games double gold medal winner Jaspal Rana was, however, conspicuously absent from the team comprising 23 men and 14 women, who will vie for 28 quota places at the event which would be the last chance for Indian shooters to qualify for the Olympics. Nine Indians — Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, Sanjeev Rajput, Anjali Bhagwat, Avneet Sidhu, Samresh Jung, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Manavjit Singh Sandhu and Mansher Singh — have already booked Olympic quota places. Rathore had won a silver medal for India at the 2004 Athens Olympics. — PTI
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PAU land for cricket stadium in Bathinda
Ludhiana, September 24 The project is the brainchild of Sukhbir Singh Badal, MP and acting president of the Shiromani Akali Dal. The Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have given their approval for the construction of the stadium. Dr M. S. Kang, Vice-Chancellor, PAU, said the matter would be finalised by the university’s management board before the transfer of land took place. “We are dealing with the Chief Minister’s Office in Chandigarh, not with the BDCA,” he said. The management board will meet on September 27 to finalise the transfer of land to the state government. Earlier, Rahul Bhandari, the then deputy commissioner, Bathinda, had written to the PAU authorities that the district administration had identified a site belonging to the Punjab Wakf Board for the construction of the stadium, but it wasn’t approved as it was not considered suitable for an international stadium. The PAU Research Station land was regarded as suitable for the stadium. Bhandari had written that “the ownership of the land be transferred to the BDCA or it may be leased out for 99 years so that the project can be started at the earliest.” In another communication to the PAU, the state government pointed out that the land had to be transferred to the BDCA as it was affiliated with the PCA. However, the PAU authorities maintained in a letter to the Chief Minister, “The land can be acquired by the government by paying compensation to the PAU. The university has to get the approval of the management board so that the land can be transferred.” The PAU authorities are hoping that the state government would give some land in lieu of the 29 acres of the research station.
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Jyoti finishes tied 21st
Belfry (UK), September 24 Briton Lee Westwood won the tournament with a flawless final round of seven-under-par 65. Resuming on the 30th spot, Randhawa aggregated three-under 285 and earned 29,038 euros for his 21st place, the best since tied seventh at the Open de Alstom in France on July 1. The Indian now has 758,262 euros and is lying 33rd on the European Money List. —
PTI
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Army cagers enter final
Gidderbaha, September 24 The Army men won 52-40, as the scoring remained low in all the four quarters due to strong defence on both sides. In the women’s section, South East Central Railway, Pillai, thrashed South Central Railway, Secunderabad, by 73-54 to reach the final.
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