There was a time when the relationship between Sri Lanka and Australia hit the rock bottom. In 1996, Australia refused to play its opening match of the World Cup in Colombo, citing security fears after a bomb exploded in the Sri Lankan capital the previous month killing more than 80 people. Later that year, Australia refused to play a two-match Test cricket series in Sri Lanka in August. Read More
The Indian football team reaped a good harvest from its impressive Asian Cup qualification campaign as it gained two places to jump to 104th in the latest FIFA world rankings released on Thursday. The Blue Tigers are placed just below New Zealand (103), who missed out on a 2022 FIFA World Cup spot after losing 0-1 to Costa Rica in the intercontinental play-off earlier this month. Read More
Pakistan will look to try out few combinations but won’t experiment too much in the ODI home series against Zimbabwe as it is part of ICC’s one-day Superleague, the qualification process for the 2023 World Cup, said head coach and chief selector Misbah-ul-Haq. The home series against Zimbabwe will consist of three ODIs and three T20 Internationals beginning with the first one-dayer in Multan on October 30. It will be followed by the second and third ODI on November 1 and 3 respectively. “We are very excited to be playing our first ODI series after more than a year at home and we will try a combination of experienced and young players but we don’t intend to experiment too much,” Misbah said. The former Pakistan captain noted that the national team had not played any 50-over games for one year now and it was important to have a good series against Zimbabwe. Pakistan’s last ODI series was against Sri Lanka at home in October 2019 and it was also scheduled to play alone ODI against Bangladesh in April in Karachi but that match was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We have to keep in…
It was very much in keeping with his slightly incurious nature that Trevor Bayliss, in his final press conference as England head coach, had no idea the man who hired him four years ago had been knighted in the previous evening’s honors list. Andrew Strauss, now Sir Andrew Strauss, recruited Bayliss in 2015 off the back of a trophy-laden record in limited-overs cricket but also because of his reputation as an old-school Aussie who would relax the players after the more intense regimes of Andy Flower and Peter Moores. The mission, Bayliss was told, was to help a promising generation of England players win their first men’s World Cup and it was accomplished on 14 July this summer when Eoin Morgan lifted the trophy at Lord’s after the gut-wrenching super-over drama of that final against New Zealand. Two months on, Bayliss heads into his last Test as head coach and while his place in English cricket history is secured by that glittering piece of ICC-branded silverware, that the Ashes urn figuratively remains in Australian hands leaves a slight sense of disappointment. It is one he shares too. “I’m a traditionalist,” replied Bayliss, when asked about…
The long ball. It is the oldest tactic in the football playbook and one that Indian football has long been adapted to playing. H Noor Basha, however, has other plans. “You boys are young. So long ball is fine now. But as you grow up, you will need to refine your passing technique… play more short passes. We’ll be learning how to push past in the coming days,” he tells an attentive group, aged between five and 15. We meet in the playground of a private school in Valasaravakkam on Sunday, where Basha — a physical education teacher employed with a private school in Adyar — is attempting to train children in the way of possession football (a playing strategy used by teams). It is what the young football coach does during his time away from work — train more children. Chasing dreams Having spent his childhood growing up in Vyasarpadi, Basha, 29, understands the impact that sport, especially football, can have on children from economically disadvantaged sections of society. Vyasarpadi had an image… one of the drugs, murder, and rampant alcoholism. Today, the place is synonymous with sport… like carrom and football,” he says.…
Even our families and friends that attended our first Women’s Super League game of the season against Tottenham on Sunday were saying “wow, you’re playing at Stamford Bridge” because it’s a change from playing at Kingsmeadow. We are getting bigger and bigger and eventually we want to be at the same level as the men’s game in terms of playing in big stadiums more regularly, but we need fans to keep buying in, coming to matches and filling them. We know it won’t happen straight away but we have shown the quality we have got. This is where we have to drive for women’s football to grow. We talk a lot about increasing the number of people who attend games but in order to do that we have to be at bigger stadiums. Even with 25,000 in a 40,000-seater Stamford Bridge, I felt there was an atmosphere. I could hear the fans throughout the whole game. When the goal went in it was electric! It was a really special occasion. It’s an honor to know that the club put this on for us. The numbers are only going to grow. We want more days like…
Following a disappointing performance at the World Cup and thereafter a complete whitewash against India, Cricket West Indies (CWI) has reportedly decided to sack Jason Holder and Carlos Brathwaite as skippers of ODI and T20I teams and have named Kieron Pollard as captain in limited-overs cricket. According to a report in Trinidad & Tobago Guardian, the decision was taken by CWI Board of Directors on Saturday, the first day of their two-day regular quarterly meeting in Port of Spain. According to the report, Pollard was the player proposed by the selection committee and when the vote was taken, he got the support from six directors while the other six abstained. The 32-year-old last played an ODI in 2016. He was kept in the reserves for the 2019 World Cup and then featured in the T20Is against India. The big-hitting all-rounder has so far played 101 ODIs, in which he has scored 2,289 runs at an average of 25.71 with three centuries and nine fifties. He has also scalped 50 wickets in this format. In T20Is, he has played 62 matches, scoring 903 runs at an average of 21.50 and has snared 23 wickets. West Indies…
When Raees Ahmadzai first became aware of cricket he was eight years old and living in a refugee camp in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. It was 1992 and Pakistan were about to win the Cricket World Cup. Like millions of other Afghans, Raees and his family had sought refuge in neighboring Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of 1979. There, cricket was already an established passion. “I was in school at the refugee camp when Pakistan won the 1992 World Cup … Everyone was happy, the teacher was happy, people were celebrating. We’d say, what’s this World Cup” Raees recalled. Little did Raees know that the game he was watching, but barely understood, would go on to change his life. “‘Slowly slowly we started playing cricket … For maybe five or six years we played cricket without shoes, or without anything. Even in 45 or 50 degrees heat. That was tough.” Raees quickly excelled. He started playing league matches in Pakistan and became a central figure in the emerging Afghan cricket team. Games such as cricket and football were banned and condemned by the Taliban in the early years of their austere rule, which began in…
Former India batsman Rahul Dravid has been appointed by the BCCI as the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru. Dravid has been the coach of India A and India’s U-19 men’s teams since 2015, following on from a playing career that saw him represent India in 164 Tests, 344 ODIs and one T20I between 1996 and 2012. He coached India’s U-19 men’s side to World Cup glory in 2018, with a side featuring Prithvi Shaw and Shubman Gill beating Australia by eight wickets in the final to secure a fourth U-19 Men’s World Cup title. Read More
Cricket, is known as ‘the gentleman’s game.’ While India versus Pakistan cricket sees bitter rivalry every time the World Cup rolls around, the game doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. The spirit of the game may be competitiveness, and that shone through in the ICC World Cup 2019 India versus Pakistan match yesterday, but there was also another essence captured: the one of cricket. A Canadian couple who were at the stands at the Manchester stadium were sporting a unique jersey to express this sentiment of cricket: a half-and-half stitched jersey of India and Pakistan. The couple, who were from India and Pakistan and wore a stitched jersey, one half for India, and one half for Pakistan. The reason behind it? The point of the celebration of the game was cricket and not the bitter rivalry. Read More