A resounding win of little value

September 21, 2012
Zimb_Win

If South Africa were hoping to ease their way into the tournament, they couldn't have wished for a better surface to open their campaign on than the pitch they encountered on Thursday night in Hambantota. The South Africa seamers might have started paying attention when Dale Steyn's first delivery zipped off the surface and carried well to the keeper, but when Morne Morkel bowled Vusi Sibanda with a vicious indipper, they would have known they would enjoy the evening. Eight wickets for 66 between the four of them, all 16 overs bowled, should have them well satisfied.

But that is partly why this 10-wicket victory means little in the context of the competition. It would be easy to dress it up as a dire warning to the other teams. Of the four wins over minnows so far, this was, after all, the most resounding. South Africa made no major errors in any department; they were ruthless with ball in hand and clinical in their run chase. Still, given the conditions, the result seems a little hollow.

South Africa are now guaranteed a place in the Super Eights, but all of their games in that phase are in Colombo - traditionally the least juicy pitch of the three being used for the World Twenty20. The Premadasa wicket had bounce and carry on its first evening of use, but given the venue will host 16 more matches in the next few weeks, including the women's knockout matches, the square is unlikely to retain that spice for the duration of the tournament. South Africa didn't bowl out either of their spinners against Zimbabwe, but if they are to go deep into the tournament, Robin Peterson and Johan Botha will likely have to play a bigger role.

"It wasn't a typical subcontinent wicket. There was a bit of pace and bounce and quite a bit of seam movement up front with the new ball," Richard Levi said following the match, with AB de Villiers echoing his surprise at the conditions.

It didn't help that Zimbabwe were abysmal either. In captain Brendan Taylor's own words they "were sloppy in the field, leaked runs with the ball and didn't score many runs with the bat". South Africa assessed the conditions well and bullied Zimbabwe into timidity with bursts of short bowling punctuated by mettle-testing fuller deliveries, but they can hardly expect better teams to simply miss unremarkable straight balls, like Elton Chigumbura did in Jacques Kallis' first over. It might appear from their first win that South Africa have no weaknesses, but Zimbabwe were woefully equipped to test them in any department.

To compound matters for both South Africa and Sri Lanka, their match on Saturday now becomes a dead rubber. Both sides will talk up the match as opportunity to gain momentum and build confidence ahead of the Super Eights, but with essentially nothing riding on the encounter, there is little incentive to lift performance, nor can the players prepare themselves for the big-game pressure that is to come. The teams will also be tempted to experiment with new combinations. If the strongest XI doesn't take the field, they have a ready-made excuse for losing, and neither team will take much away from the match.

There is, however, little South Africa could have done better on Thursday. Though the spinners didn't feature, the fast men are humming nicely and have proved they haven't lost their venom on the plane trip from England. Levi too, will be glad of the time in the middle, given the questions over his technique. Zimbabwe's bowling was almost as lackadaisical as their batting, but sometimes an easy opposition can help a batsman play himself into form.

"If there's a bit of liveliness in the pitch, with that sort of South African bowling attack, they're going to be very hard to beat," Taylor said. "Their batsmen are world class too. I see both them and Sri Lanka getting to the semi-finals at least."

If the Premadasa does provide fast surfaces early in the Super Eights, South Africa's attack will make them formidable. But as the tournament progresses, the better teams will ask much tougher questions than Zimbabwe did, and if the pitches change, interrogations will be in a different language as well.




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News Network
February 10,2020

Potchefstroom, Feb 9: Bangladesh clinched their maiden ICC U-19 World Cup title after beating favourites India by three wickets in the summit clash here on Sunday.

Set a revised target of 170 after a brief rain interruption, Bangladesh won the match with 23 balls to spare.

Sent in to bat, India's batting wilted under pressure as a superb Bangladesh bowling attack shot the defending champions out for a paltry 177 in 47.2 overs.

Yasashvi Jaiswal (88 off 121 balls) was once again a standout performer but not for once did he look like dominating the Bangladesh bowling unit whose new ball bowlers Shoriful Islam (2/31 in 10 overs) and Tanzim Hasan Shakib (2/28 in 8.2 overs) literally stifled the Indians for runs.

The third seamer Avishek Das (3/40 in 9 overs) was the most successful bowler in terms of figures but it was Shoriful's first spell with channelised aggression that put the Indians on the back-foot from the onset.

After a short rain break towards the end, the target was revised to 170 from 46 runs but Bangladesh reached 170 for 7 in 42.1 overs to win the match.

Opener Parvez Hossain Emon top-scored for Bangladesh with a 79-ball 47 while captain and wicketkeeper Akbar Ali was not out on 43 from 77 deliveries.

For the India U-19 side, Ravi Bishnoi was the most successful bowler with figures of 4/30 while Sushant Mishra had 2/25.

India thus missed out on a record fifth title in their seventh final appearance.

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News Network
June 2,2020

New Delhi, Jun 2: Manchester United's Paul Pogba on Monday paid tribute to George Floyd, stressing that violent acts of racism can no longer be tolerated and they have to stop.

Pogba took to Instagram to write: "During the past few days I have thought a lot about how to express my feelings about what happened in Minneapolis. I felt anger, pity, hatred, indignation, pain, sadness."

"Sadness for George and for all black people who suffer from racism Every day! Whether in football, at work, at school, Anywhere! This has to stop, once and for all! Not tomorrow or the next day, it has to end today! Violent acts of racism can no longer be tolerated," he added.

Protests erupted in Minneapolis and other US cities on Tuesday after Floyd, an African-American man, died following his arrest by the four officers.

A viral video showed a police officer, Derek Chauvin, pinning 46-year-old Floyd to the ground with his knee on his neck for nearly eight minutes. Floyd died at a local hospital shortly thereafter.

The four police officers were fired. Chauvin was also charged with murder and manslaughter, according to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

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zaki ahmed
 - 
Wednesday, 3 Jun 2020

This photograph in the above mentioned article is of Floyd Mayweather Jr , the world welterweight & super heavy weight champion & wrongly menitoned as Pogba .

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News Network
January 28,2020

Gibraltar, Jan 28: Young Indian Grand Master R Praggnanandhaa pulled off a huge upset, beating former world champion Veselin Topalov in the sixth round of the 18th Gibraltar chess festival to record his fifth straight win here.

The 14-year-old Chennai lad needed just 33 moves to put it across the Bulgarian. He had started with a loss against compatriot P V Nandhidhaa but since then he has been on a winning spree.

Praggnanandhaa, who recently won the world under-18 title, said: "It was very tough to prepare against him."

He is in second spot on five points with six other players and will take on Chinese GM Wang Hao in the seventh round.

Seventeen-year-old Russian GM Andrey Esipenko jumped to sole lead with 5.5 points with a win over Georgia's Ivan Cheparinov

The Russian player would be unpaired in the seventh round as he decided to take a bye.

A bunch of players including Indians — B Adhiban, K Sasikiran, Shardul Gagare, Karthikeyan Murali, SL Narayanan — are in joint third place with 4.5 points.

Adhiban beat Gabriel Flom, while D Gukesh, the world's second youngest Grand Master ever, defeated Martin Percivaldi to move to four points.

Also winning were Karthikeyan Murali against Qi B Chen and Gagare over France's Maxime Lagarde.

Top-seed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov's moderate run continued as he was held to a draw by GM Aryan Chopra.

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