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Need discipline to win, says Dhoni
Ganguly, Laxman increase their base price for IPL auction
Sourav Ganguly: Base price: $400,000 |
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From McDowell to Iniesta — the stars who saved 2010
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Need discipline to win, says Dhoni
Durban, December 31 South Africa and India head to Newlands on Sunday for the deciding Test of the three-match series. "Our bowling, our batting and our fielding have to be at their best if we hope to win the next Test," Sports24 quoted Dhoni, as saying. "We don't have much experience on these types of wickets so it's a big challenge for the side. We know it doesn't always go our way and we last won a Test in South Africa in 2006 so everyone wants to perform really well," he said. Dhoni said it was a concern of theirs after their defeat at Centurion whether India had the capacity to take 20 wickets to win a match. "Whenever we lose a Test match, it has a big impact on the side psychologically. It was a bit of a worry for us to get 20 wickets but our bowlers did really well in Durban. Most of our bowlers are swing bowlers and not naturally talented on flat wickets so it makes it difficult for us to bounce the batsmen out," he said. "The one thing I'm really consistent at is losing the toss. Sometimes it can be really tough. It's always good to win the toss so you give your bowlers a chance if there's something in the wicket," laughed Dhoni, who has lost the last 13 out of 14 tosses. — ANI Newlands to favour batsmen: Curator
Cape Town: The pitch for the series-deciding third cricket Test between India and South Africa starting here on Sunday would favour batsmen and last all five days, according to the curator of the Newlands ground. The series is currently tied 1-1 after India won the second Test in Durban by 87 runs, following the humiliating innings and 25 runs defeat in the first match in Centurion. "The pitch won't change too much from previous years. The match will be played on a good pitch that will last five days," said Evan Flint, Newlands curator. The Newlands pitch is supposed to be more batsman friendly than the pitches for the first two Tests and a high scoring contest is very much on the cards. It has the highest average score of 338.2 for any ground in the country that has hosted more than one Test. That's close to 24 runs more than the average score at next-highest run-scoring ground in South Africa, Kingsmead in Durban. Both the Centurion and Durban tracks favoured the bowlers initially and caused problems for batsmen to adjust on a lively pitch. But, according to Flint, the conditions in Newlands will be vastly different. — PTI |
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Ganguly, Laxman increase their base price for IPL auction
New Delhi, December 31 "Let's be practical. Although Twenty20 is a different format but players of the stature of Ganguly and Laxman would have found it difficult to digest that they have been clubbed in the third bracket of base price. "And since the rule allows them to increase their base price then why not? Now whether the franchises will be game to go for them at that price is a different ball game altogether," a senior official of one of the franchises told PTI today. Ganguly had been KKR's top scorer in the first and third editions while Laxman has had a wonderful season where he has single-handedly won three Test matches for India against Sri Lanka (Colombo), Australia (Mohali) and South Africa (Durban). Ganguly and Laxman are not the first players to have raised their base prices. Former India captains Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid — who were also in the $200,000 have increased it to $400,000. — PTI |
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From McDowell to Iniesta — the stars who saved 2010
Sport always lights a candle in the wind, even when it is blowing most bleakly, and this passing year was no exception: it gave us supreme moments in football, and also Rafa Nadal and Manny Pacquiao. It offered Graeme McDowell's Ryder Cup-winning putt and Tim Bresnan's decisive Ashes delivery and Lee Westwood's reward for stopping and thinking about who he was and who he might be - the top ranking in world golf - and there also the thrilling sight of the mad, magnificent West Country girl Amy Williams hurtling down the ice for gold and Mark Cavendish sprinting phenomenally in the Tour de France. There was also A P McCoy, winning the Grand National and at last recognised by the British public, but then of course there is always A P McCoy. There is little point, though, in avoiding a darker issue. Perhaps as never before had we been in greater need of such joyous and rejuvenating images of superb sportsmen and women. They were, after all, a counterbalance to the sometimes overwhelming sense that sport had never been so poorly directed, never so rotten in its defence of something that has always been capable of lifting the mood of all people, however oppressed and disenchanted. You could take a blindfold and stick a pin in the map of sport and find reason for despair. You might land it in Twickenham, and see the appalling evasions and amorality that came in the wake of the Bloodgate scandal. You might settle on Zurich and revisit the monstrous deliberations of Fifa in its assignments of World Cups stretching all the way to 2022, leaving the world's greatest sports event all locked up for no better reason than money had spoken again in a hard and most cynical voice. A few days later Tiger Woods stood up at an entirely different social occasion in Florida and made a mea culpa for an adulterous past which had been fastidiously concealed. There was much preachy reaction to his plea for forgiveness, many claims that his strings were pulled by his corporate investors, and one American commentator declared, "Tiger, I don't accept your apology," but then who was drawing the moral parameters, and who in the running of sport could claim entirely clean hands? One of them, in the gloom of England's shocking failure in the World Cup, was the ability of Iniesta and the Spaniards to carry a torch for the beauty of football, and the ability of some its most gifted players, to deliver the best and the most creative of talent. Had the Dutch, who had promised so much more, won with their thuggish approach to the final, it would have been an unspeakable crisis for football. By year's end the game could not escape such a fate, but that was not the work of Iniesta, the Little Man from La Mancha, but Fifa president Sepp Blatter and his cronies. They made their big money in South Africa, quite relentlessly, which made it doubly poignant that the South African people, for all their difficulties, still produced a magnificent statement about the value of the tournament that now has passed into the control of the highest bidder. — By arrangement with The Independent
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Yearender 5: international cricket Jaideep Ghosh Tribune News Service The 'Final Frontier', if there was ever any such thing, has been battered if not breached. From whichever angle we look at the international cricket calendar for the year past, this series would surely be the one thing holds the imagination of India and most of the cricketing fraternity. As a sideshow, there was the Ashes, which the English rather unsportingly decided before the New Year Test, which made the coming India-South Africa contest at Cape Town that much more tantalisingly and relevant. Sachin Tendulkar was the Man of the Year as far as Indian cricket goes, but since we have all gone overboard with the batsman and his achievements, we will try here to concentrate on the team. It is, irrespective of general perception, a team sport. The team was visible when India came clawing back from the innings loss at Centurion, despite Tendulkar's 50th Test hundred, to put it past the dominant South Africans by 87 runs at Durban. They did what they had to - get wickets in both innings even as the batting largely failed. Barring VVS Laxman, who remains India's eternal crisis man. His 96 was the best score of the Test and South Africa never really were in the race thereafter as Zaheer Khan, S. Sreesanth and Harbhajan came good, setting up a deciding third Test. But all of this had begun rather quietly in February, with India travelling to Bangladesh and beating them 2-0, which was predictable. But thereafter came the ODI tri-series and it was Sri Lanka who came up trumps. But that was just a passing aberration, one of those irritating little series that are thrown in any time the BCCI see a sliver of a gap in the calendar. Then came South Africa, for two Tests and a three-match ODI series. This was the practice for the 'Final Frontier' and on home soil, India didn't quite manage to make their perceived superiority count. This is also where Hashim Amla began raking in runs by the bucketful against India. He cracked 253 in Nagpur as South Africa scored an innings and six-run win. Apart from Amla, Dale Steyn was unplayable, and captured ten wickets. Thereafter, the tables turned dramatically as Virender Sehwag, Tendulkar and Laxman cracked centuries and Harbhajan Singh claimed eight wickets in the match to give India a series-levelling win at Kolkata. After that was a three-match ODI series which became a landmark as Tendulkar broached the 200-mark in ODIs for the first time. In the middle, the months of April and May saw the Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies. India somehow, after the first T20 World Cup, doesn't seem too keen on this format, despite having the biggest such tournament at home, in the shape of the IPL. They failed to make the semi-finals and England were the rather surprising winners. Needless to say, the Indian public banished the tournament from it's memory in a hurry. India series in Sri Lanka in July-August saw them come away with a 1-1 result. In a year of landmarks, Muttiah Muralitharan dramatically reached 800 wickets in his last Test as the hosts won by ten wickets. But thereafter, India were back, once again, as Laxman did what he does best - remaining unbeaten on 103 to guide his team to a win. Then came the Gavaskar-Border Trophy. Not long ago, this was supposed to be the biggest battle of them all, but with many of the stalwarts out of the Australian side, it was always a challenge for them to put it past India. Though they did run the hosts close, ultimately India was better, in both Tests. Mohali was fascinating as both sides scored over 400 runs in their first innings. But the Aussies fell for only 192 in the second, and India were in with a chance. But Australia, even when down, have always been fighters and it was once again left to an injured Laxman, batting with a runner, to nurse the innings and carve partnerships with Ishant and Ojha to take India home. Bangalore also saw 400-plus totals in the first two innings but once again Australia collapsed in the second, handing India the match and the series. Post that was a less-than-flattering series with New Zealand where the Kiwis were denied by Harbhajan - as a batsman. Two back-to-back hundreds from the off-spinner ensured that India didn't actually go down in the series, and by the time they went to Nagpur, the pressure of staving off India told on New Zealand, and they lost the game by an innings and then also were destroyed 5-0 in the following ODI series. Then the stage shifted to South Africa, and 2011 promises to be very captivating indeed, with the great fare to be served at the foot of Table Mountain to set the year rolling.
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Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has said India still needs to be disciplined in batting, bowling and fielding to win the Test aeries against South Africa.
Former India captain Sourav Ganguly and the talented VVS Laxman have increased their base prices for the auction of the fourth edition of IPL which puts them in the top bracket with the likes of Brian Lara, Adam Gilchrist, Rahul Dravid and Anil
Kumble.
Sport always lights a candle in the wind, even when it is blowing most bleakly, and this passing year was no exception: it gave us supreme moments in football, and also Rafa Nadal and Manny
Pacquiao.
Yearender 5: international cricket
Messi is best No. 10: Grondona