Super Saina enters final

Bengaluru, Feb 25: India opening batsman KL Rahul will be available for Karnataka's Ranji Trophy semi-final clash against Bengal at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on February 29.

Rahul had asked to be rested from Karnataka's quarter-final match but is now available for the climactic stages of the Ranji Trophy. 

Karnataka had already been strengthened by the addition of Manish Pandey for the quarter-finals, with both Pandey and Rahul having returned from New Zealand after India completed the limited-overs leg of their tour, ESPNcricinfo reported.

Last year's finalists Saurashtra will take on Gujarat in the other semi-final at Rajkot. The other prominent players who will be part of the last four include Parthiv Patel (Gujarat), Jaydev Unadkat (Saurashtra) and Manoj Tiwary (Bengal).

Gujarat, Bengal, Karnataka, and Saurashtra had finished on top of the combined Groups A and B table, and all four progressed to the semi-finals after dominating their respective quarter-final matches.

Rahul has been phenomenal with the bat in the limited-overs series against Australia and New Zealand. He scored one century and four fifty-plus scores in his last ten innings in ODIs and T20Is combined

Mumbai, Jun 13: Vasant Raiji, who was India's oldest first-class cricketer at 100, died in Mumbai in the wee hours of Saturday.

Raiji was 100 years old and is survived by his wife and two daughters.

"He (Raiji) passed away at 2.20 am in his sleep at his residence in Walkeshwar in South Mumbai due to old-age," his son-in-law Sudarshan Nanavati told PTI.

Raiji, a right-handed batsman, played nine first-class matches in the 1940s, scoring 277 runs with 68 being his highest score.

He made his debut for a Cricket Club of India team that played Central Provinces and Berar in Nagpur in 1939.

His Mumbai debut happened in 1941 when the team played Western India under the leadership of Vijay Merchant.

Raiji, also a cricket historian and chartered accountant, was 13 when India played its first Test match at the Bombay Gymkhana in South Mumbai.

Cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and former Australian skipper Steve Waugh had paid a courtesy visit to Raiji at his residence in January when he had turned 100.

It has been learnt that the cremation will take place at the Chandanwadi crematorium in South Mumbai on Saturday afternoon.

Jan 17: Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza cruised into the women's doubles final of the Hobart International with her Ukrainian partner Nadiia Kichenok here on Friday.

Sania and Kichenok sailed past the Slovenian-Czech pair of Tamara Zidansek and Marie Bouzkova 7-6 (3) 6-2 in the semifinal contest that lasted one hour and 24 minutes.

The fifth-seeded Indo-Ukrainian combination will lock horns with second seeds Shuai Peng and Shuai Zhang of China. The Chinese pair got a walkover after Belgium's Kirsten Flipkens and Alison Van Uytvanck conceded the other semifinal match because of injury.

While Sania and Kichenok had to fight hard in the opening set, the second set was a cakewalk for the combination.

The first set was a tough contest between the two pairs, bringing the tie-breaker into the equation after it was level at 6-6.

In the tie-breaker, Sania and Kichenok upped their game by a few notches to outsmart their opponents and take the lead.

The second set was a no-contest as Saina and Kichenok broke their opponents thrice -- in the second, sixth and eighth game -- to easily pocket the set and a place in the summit clash.

Saina and Kichenok got 11 break chances out of which they converted four, while their opponents utilised two out of the five break chances that came their way.

The 33-year-old Sania is returning to the WTA circuit after two years. During her time away from the game, she battled injury breakdowns before taking a formal break in April 2018 to give birth to her son Izhaan. She is married to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.

Before the ongoing event, Sania last played at China Open in October 2017.

A trailblazer in Indian tennis, Sania is a former world No.1 in doubles and has six Grand Slam titles to her credit.

She retired from the singles competition in 2013 after becoming the most successful Indian woman tennis player.