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India save their worst for last
2011 was even worse: MSD |
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Slip fielders stand too close to each other: VVS
London, August 17 With India’s ‘butter fingered’ slip-cordon struggling to hold on to catches, former slips specialist VVS Laxman feels the fielders are standing too close to each other, which is causing confusion between them.
Man City, Liverpool off to winning starts
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India save their worst for last
This completed one of the most amazing changes in fortunes in recent times for any two teams — England looked lost after the defeat in the second Test at Lord's, and India were euphoric. Then England won three in a row, and India's performance became worse with each passing hour. This was another half-hearted display in half-a-match that the Indians played. India batted a total of 90.2 overs in the match, which equates to just one full day's batting — in two innings. The match lasted just 207 overs, much less than the half-way mark of 245 overs for five days. India were that poor. The Indian demise was along the expected lines — five men were caught in the slips or by the wicketkeeper, and two were run out. The conditions were a bit difficult to bat on, yet again, and the bowlers were excellent. James Anderson swung it both ways at good pace, and the batsmen didn't know whether the ball was going to miss the outside edge or the inside edge of their bats. The Indians began the second innings 338 runs in the arrears — that was the lead Joe Root provided to the home with his stunning century in the morning. Murali Vijay failed to connect with one that jagged back sharply and was trapped LBW, India 6/1. Gautam Gambhir, who is certainly not ready for this kind of cricket, tough and testing cricket, was run out. Shane Warne on air suggested that Gambhir was merely trying to get away from the strike - and maybe it was true. He's got four knocks on this tour, and four failures have resulted - today he threw it away by turning the ball into the legside and charging for a run. Chris Woakes had to only steam in, gather the ball and hit the wickets. Woakes hit, India 9/2, effectively -229/2. Cheteshwar Pujara got one that was too good for him — his back-foot was stuck into the crease, and his mind was in a roil, and Anderson bowled one that angled in before straightening ever so slightly. A slight edge and India were 30/3. Virat Kohli, nervous and shaky, survived 54 balls just by fluke — he was beaten umpteen times by Anderson and Stuart Broad, and when he did strike the ball well, which happened no more than four times, he hit it straight to the fielder. Anderson and Broad softened him, Chris Jordan got him. Kohli tried to put a straighter delivery through midwicket, but only edged it to Alastair Cook in the slips. Ajinkya Rahane was caught brilliantly by Gary Ballance, diving to his left and sticking his left hand out. Mahendra Singh Dhoni inside-edged a short one from Woakes on to his thigh pad, and Robson at short leg caught it. India 46/5. Over the four previous innings, India have at times threatened to be bowled out for less than 100, and Dhoni and the tail have rescued them — four times in a row they'd got less than 200. But with the captain gone, even a 100 was out of the question today. Ashwin was caught in the slips by Ian Bell, as was Bhuvneshwar; Varun Aaron ran himself out going for the second when none existed, and India were down to 84/9. The horror ended when Ishant Sharma hit a short one right up into the air, for Moeen Khan to complete the simplest catch of the series. Eight wickets for 64 in 17 overs. Defeat, most horrid and ignominious defeat, was theirs. Their pride was dust. England rejoices, Indian must mourn. India 1st innings 148 England 1st innings Cook c Vijay b Aaron 79 Robson b Aaron 37 Ballance c Pujara b Ashwin 64 Bell c Dhoni b Sharma 7 Root not out 149no Ali b Ashwin 14 Buttler c Ashwin b Sharma 45 Woakes c Dhoni b Kumar 0 Jordan c Dhoni b Sharma 20 Broad c Kohli b Sharma 37 Anderson lbw b Ashwin 1 Extras: (b 18, lb 3, w 1, nb 11) 33 Total: (all out; 116.3 overs) 486 Fall of wickets: 1-66, 2-191, 3-201, 4-204, 5-229, 6-309, 7-318, 8-400, 9-463, 10-486 Bowling Kumar 24-3-86-1 Sharma 30-8-96-4 Aaron 29-1-153-2 Binny 12-0-58-0 Ashwin 21.3-2-72-3 India 2nd innings Vijay lbw b Anderson 2 Gambhir run out (Woakes) 3 Pujara c Buttler b Anderson 11 Kohli c Cook b Jordan 20 Rahane c Ballance b Broad 4 Dhoni c Robson b Woakes 0 Binny not out 25 Ashwin c Bell b Jordan 7 Bhuvneshwar c Bell b Jordan 4 Aaron run out (Ali/Buttler) 1 Ishant c Ali b Jordan 2 Extras: (b 4, lb 10, w 1) 15 Total: (all out; 29.2 ov) 94 Fall of wickets: 1-6 2-9 3-30 4-45 5-46 6-62 7-70 8-74 9-84 10-94 Bowling Anderson 8-3-16-2 Broad 10-2-22-1 Woakes 7-0-24-1 Jordan 4.2-0-18-4
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London, August 17 He didn’t think so. The lowest, he said, was 2011 here — three years ago India were hammered 4-0 by England, and lost the four Tests by margins of 196 runs, 319 runs, an innings and 242 runs, and an innings and 8 runs. “I think 2011 was the lowest,” Dhoni said. “Because we had the resources in the team, yet we failed, as compared to this team.” That team had, of course, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman in the batting line-up. That is the reason the failure of 2011 stung more. “Why we are not lasting more than one session it’s very difficult for me to answer,” he said. “It can be any of a number of reasons. The batting form kept sliding, and we were never really able to accumulate the runs to compete in the game.” What are the lessons from this series, then? “After the second and third Test, I realised that it’s important to give rest to the bowlers,” he said. “Ishant got a break because he got injured. Bhuvi was the only one who played (regularly). And if you see his bowling, he was a bit tired towards the end. But we never really had anyone who could replace him. Others we replaced — we tried Pankaj in place of Ishant and in place of Shami, we got Varun Aaron, who had more pace.” “Apart from that, there are many things that we have learnt,” he said. “But apart from that, we have to keep what we have learned in our mind, especially when we go overseas. We have to keep practising those things and be prepared for what we may get in a series like this.” He was asked if he’s thinking of giving up captaincy. “Well, you will have to wait and watch,” Dhoni said. “You asked me the same question in 2011. You will have to wait and watch if I’m strong enough or if I am not strong enough. You will get the news.”— PTI
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Slip fielders stand too close to each other: VVS
London, August 17 “Definitely, they are very close. I was the one who used to take the gap between the first slip, second slip and the third slip. When we were playing in sub-continental conditions it was six steps, moment we used to play overseas it used to be seven or eight because in overseas conditions there is more bounce and more carry for the fast bowlers,” Laxman said when asked about India’s woes in the slip cordon against England. “So the distance can be maintained a bit more than in sub-continental conditions. They were very close and that adds to the confusion,” he said in an ESPNcricinfo video show ‘Match Point’. Besides suicidal batting tendencies, India’s cricketers have been afflicted with ‘butter fingers’, dropping easy catches from which England captain Alastair Cook benefited in the fifth Test and in the third match. “I think, slip fielding is a confidence thing like batting and bowling. At the moment, the slip fielders in the current Indian team are low on confidence for obvious reasons because they have dropped a lot of catches but what was good to see is that they are capable of taking the catches. “Murali Vijay showed that, Ajinkya Rahane showed in Southampton,” said Laxman, who was India’s dependable slip fielder along with Rahul Dravid for years. “So they are capable of taking catches but it is about consistency and also it is important for Dhoni not to chop and change the fielders in the slip cordon. You have to have specialist players who are actually in that position.”
— PTI |
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Kapil walks down memory lane... to his parents’ place in Pakistan
London, August 17 Kapil never knew the land of his forefathers, except from the words of his parents, Ram Lal Nikhanj and Raj Kumari. They were in the early years of their marriage when they were uprooted from the Shah Yakka village in what is now Pakistani Punjab. Then, in the year 1978, when he was selected to play for India for the first time, he went to his father's village. Kapil was only 19 at that time and had become the first Indian bowler for half a century to bowl really quick in Test cricket. “I'd heard so much from my parents about where they came from,” says Kapil. “Then, in 1978, I did go there — to Montgomerie (renamed Sahilwal), then Dipalpur, then my father's village, Shah Yakka, by car.” They were relatively innocent times — to look after his security, Kapil was provided with one policeman for his journey. “When we used to be asked about where we were from, it was like this — Shah Yakka the village, then Dipalpur the tehsil, then Sahiwal the district,” says Kapil. A new district of Okara was created in 1982, and the 'home' of Kapil's parents now falls in Okara, not Sahiwal. “Why do we have to change the names of places? It was Montgomery earlier, when my parents used to tell us about it, and was renamed Sahiwal,” the former Indian captain rues. Kapil's father had passed away three years previously, in 1975, and Kapil was reminded of the way he spoke when he listened to the people of Shah Yakka. “Every place has peculiarities of language and words - I could see that the people of Shah Yakka spoke the way my father spoke, which was different from the way Punjabi was spoken in Fazilka or Chandigarh,” Kapil says. '”Ours was the pakka — brick and mortar — house in that village',” my mother had told me,” says Kapil. He had been told that the house was set in a rectangular plot — his father and his three older brothers had their living quarters in the four corners, and in the centre was an open courtyard. Thirty-one years had passed, and Kapil realised that change had been at work at his father's village. “Now many more houses were pakka houses,” he says. Then he met the people of Shah Yakka. He went to his father's house, and was immediately surrounded by the people who lived there. “I was asked whose son was I — and when I told them that I was the son of the youngest of the four brothers, they informed me that my father was the one who was a keen horse-rider, and who used to love hunting, and was good with guns,” says Kapil. “My father must have been quite young when he left Pakistan — about 25, I think,” Kapil adds. “There were no definite records of births, but he could not have been over 25. So people's strongest memories of him were that of a young boy and a young man, who was very shararti, (naughty and a prankster) and carefree.” Kapil met people who knew his parents. The village barber who knew his father and uncles was brought to him. “He remembered my family well, and told me he used to cut the hair of my father and uncles!” Kapil says. “We are four sisters and three brothers, and my four sisters were born in Shah Yakka,” Kapil remembers. He says a few of his siblings died at a very young age. “I never really knew how many — one can't make older people remember those times, they become very sad and sentimental. So we never could be sure how many of my siblings had died as little children.” “The people of Shah Yakka remembered my mother, who they mentioned was a very fair-complexioned young woman,” adds Kapil. Kapil's mother belonged to Pak Pattan, a city which is closer to the India-Pakistan border than to Lahore. Pak Pattan is most famous for the shrine of the Sufi saint, Baba Farid. “My parents came over to Fazilka, where two of my brothers were born,” says Kapil. Fazilka is in Punjab, close to the border with Pakistan. An uncle of Kapil's stayed back in the land of his forefathers. “A maternal uncle, my mama, of mine stayed back — dil ka maamla thha, he loved a girl there,” Kapil says. “We learnt that he got married to the Muslim girl and took that family's name.” Kapil relates stories that he's inherited from his parents, stories that seem to come from an alien country in an alien age. He heard some family stories, about their clan, from the pandas of Varanasi. “Before Partition, the ashes of people who had been cremated were kept in urns and suspended from peepal trees,” he says. “All the urns were taken for immersion into the Ganges at a certain time. They wouldn't go alone — it was a long journey, over several days, to Varanasi. So you had a large group of people travelling, for safety. They would be from the same family or clan or region. Then at Varanasi, they would get the family mews recorded with the panda — the deaths and the births in the family. Our family history, going back several generations, is recorded there.” “My grandfather must have been a simple villager, but it's quite amazing that he had shares of the Tata firms,” says Kapil. Perhaps it's that business acumen that helped his father rebuild his life in India, and helped Kapil in his own business ventures. Kapil's family lived in Fazilka for several years before his father began to explore a business opportunity. “A friend of my father, who was in the timber business in Jammu, then told him about this new city that was being built,” says Kapil. It was the early 1950s, and the new city was Chandigarh. “Chandigarh needed timber, because of the large number of houses that were being constructed there,” Kapil says. “So my father moved to Chandigarh, alone, and started in his timber business.” His father's friend assured him that he'd supply the timber to him from Jammu, and that he'd have to be the local supplier of wood in Chandigarh. His father worked hard and business grew. “So if he had only a couple of houses to supply timber to in Chandigarh, that was enough for a decent bit,” says Kapil. His father did well in the business there, and the family moved to Chandigarh, where Kapil was born, on January 4 1959, in their family home in Sector 16. There started the Kapil Dev story, the story of India's greatest cricketer. But surely, the genesis of that story lies in Shah Yakka, Sahiwal, Punjab, Pakistan. |
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Herath takes four more as Lanka edge towards victory
Colombo, August 17 Pakistan, chasing 271 to level the series, were struggling on 127 for seven wickets by the close of the fourth day of the second Test. Sarfraz Ahmed (38) and Wahab Riaz (2) will resume at the crease on the fifth day with Pakistan trailing by 144 runs. Sri Lanka lead the two-Test series 1-0. Pakistan began their run chase after tea but they struggled from the outset and fast bowler Dhammika Prasad snapped up the wickets of openers Khurram Manzoor (10) and Ahmed Shehzad (8). Herath, who took nine wickets in the first innings, continued to torment the Pakistan batsmen and had Azhar Ali (10) and out-of-form captain Misbah-ul-Haq (3) both caught at slip by Jayawardene before Younus Khan (8) was trapped lbw. Brief scores: Sri Lanka: 320 & 282 (Sangakkara 59, Jayawardene 54; Riaz 3/76, Ajmal 3/89); Pakistan: 332 & 127/7 (Herath 4/46).
— Reuters |
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Indrajit wins shot put gold
Patiala, August 17 Abraham, who holds the national record at 49.51s, had to be content with the second place with a timing of 50.75s. In the women’s 400m hurdles, however there were no surprises with Commonwealth and Asian Games gold-medallist Ashwini Akkunji taking gold. In another sensational finish, Indrajit Singh, silver-medallist at the World University Games, beat national record-holder Om Prakash Singh Karhana in the shot put. The Haryana-based Indrajit produced his personal best throw of 19.89m to take the top honours, while Om Prakash, who has been struggling in recent times, finished second with a best throw of 18.89m. Manipur produced its first-ever sprint champion at this level with Jyoti Sankar Debnath of the army upsetting the fancied Krishna Rane, to win the 100 metres final in 10.50 seconds. Rane finished runners-up in 10.62s, while Amiya Kumar Mallick finsished third in 10.65s. In the women’s 100m final, Sharadha Narayana proved her dominance, winning in 11.72s. Her timing of 11.39s at the National Inter-State Championships earlier this year is still the second-fastest time in Asia in this calendar year. Sajeesh Joseph produced his personal best of 1:46.81 to win the 800m final, while in the absence of Tintu Luka, Sushma Single won the women’s 800m race. In the men’s javelin throw, Haryana’s Ravinder Singh took the top spot with a throw of 79.32m while Punjab’s Davinder Singh finished second with 78.57m. ONGC’s Rohit Kumar took the bronze medal with 76.61m. Earlier in the first event of the day, Rani Yadav of UP won the women’s 20km race walk, clocking 1:42:24. |
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Federer, Ferrer set up title clash in Cincinnati
Cincinnati, August 17 Federer won all 16 of his service points in the first set and closed out the match in 68 minutes, sending a clear message to his rivals that he is in top shape heading into the US Open. The Swiss, in a rematch of the Wimbledon semifinal that he won in three sets, improved to 6-0 against the Canadian and will be playing in his second final in seven days after he lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at last week’s Rogers Cup in Toronto. For Raonic, 23, his usual booming serve produced six aces to Federer’s two, but he also had three double faults compared to none by his opponent. Sixth seed Ferrer, playing his first semifinal in 11 trips to Cincinnati, breezed past Frenchman Julien Benneteau 6-3 6-2 to move one win away from his 22nd title and second of the year. Ferrer, who has reached at least the quarterfinals of all four tournaments he has played since crashing out of Wimbledon in the second round, needed just 71 minutes to earn his sixth victory in 10 meetings with Benneteau. Serena, Ivanovic in final
Serena Williams rallied past Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki to reach final where she will face Ana Ivanovic, an upset winner over French Open champion Maria Sharapova. Top-seeded Williams had to overcome a sluggish start to beat Wozniacki 2-6 6-2 6-4 while Serbian ninth seed Ivanovic eventually prevailed in a rollercoaster 6-2 5-7 7-5 win over the Russian fifth seed that lasted nearly three hours. The Cincinnati tournament is the last of the key tune-ups ahead of the Aug. 25-Sept. 8 US Open, where Williams will defend her crown. Next up for Williams is an opponent she has dominated her entire career having taken six of seven matches versus Ivanovic, including a quarterfinal win in Stanford earlier this year. But Ivanovic will take plenty of confidence into the match having held her nerve against a determined Sharapova.
— Reuters |
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Man City, Liverpool off to winning starts
London, August 17 Ivorian powerhouse Yaya Toure and Edin Dzeko combined to set up Spaniard David Silva before halftime at St James’ Park, while Argentine Aguero added a second in injury time after his first effort was saved. While the performance was far from vintage, City manager Manuel Pellegrini will be pleased with the three points after last week’s 3-0 Community Shield loss to Arsenal indicated his side may have some early season rust. Earlier, last season’s runners-up Liverpool eased past a stubborn Southampton 2-1, goals from Raheem Sterling and Daniel Sturridge either side of Nathaniel Clyne’s thunderbolt ensuring the post-Luis Suarez era at Anfield got off to a positive start. On Saturday Manchester United began life under Louis van Gaal with a disappointing 2-1 defeat by Swansea City, while Arsenal needed a stoppage time Aaron Ramsey goal to beat Crystal Palace 2-1. — Reuters
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The Indian batsmen, crushed and dispirited, played like half-alive zombies to subside to the biggest defeat of the series. They lost 10 wickets in their last Test innings in this series for 94 runs, lost the match by an innings and 244 runs, lost the series 1-3. 
Ravichandran Ashwin said yesterday that the Indian players was trying to enjoy the game, trying to tell each other that the match could still be saved, but really, mentally, they were gone. No one enjoyed this, not even the diehard England fans, who would have preferred to see at least a semblance of a fight from the Indian batsmen.
