Sports India

SOURAV Ganguly smashed an impressive half century to help Northamptonshire post 264 for seven against Nottinghamshire in the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy one-day match at Trent Bridge.

The former Indian captain, who had an uneventful last outing against Worcestershire, hit seven boundaries and one six in his knock of 71 off 106 balls after Northamptonshire won the toss and elected to bat.

The left-handed batsman opened the innings with SD Peters, who was trapped leg before wicket by GJ Smith after mere seven balls, but Ganguly stood firm to lay a strong foundation and emerge the top scorer for the visitors.

He was caught by Stephen Fleming off GD Clough when northants were 156 for four.

BM Shafayat was the only other batsman to score a half century as he made 53 off 63 balls which included five fours and one six.

Elsewhere, Dinesh Mongia disappointed as he was trapped lbw at a score of 14 while Leicestershire went on to make a huge score of 314 for three in their stipulated 50 overs against Scotland.

Opener DL Maddy hit an unbeaten 167 to while D Robinson (40), HD Ackermann (43) and JL Sadler (41) made useful contributions after Leicestershire won the toss and elected to bat.

Asian Tour leader Jeev Milkha Singh faltered on the back nine but managed to card a level par opening round for a decent tied ninth position at the UBS Japan Golf Tour championship at the par 70 Shishido Hills Golf Club near here on Thursday.

Jeev, who recently rubbed shoulders with the who’s who of the golfing fraternity in the U.S. Open, is enjoying terrific form with seven top 10 finishes and the Volvo China Open under his belt.

The other Indian in the field, Amandeep Johl, playing on a special sponsor’s invite from the UBS group, shot a 2 over 72 to be in tied 39th place.

Murota in lead

Japan’s Kiyoshi Murota leads the pack with a five under 65, followed closely by fellow Japanese Toru Taniguchi and Tommy Nakajima with identical scorecards of three under 67.

Jeev, teeing of on the first hole, started with an excellent front nine of three under par 32, which included birdies on the sixth, seventh and ninth holes.

However, Jeev faltered coming in with a double on the 12th and added another bogey to his scorecard on the 14th hole.

With par’s on the remaining holes he ended up with an even par 70.

“I was disappointed with the back nine, however there are three more rounds to go,'’ Jeev said later.

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Australia’s Nicole Pratt upset 29th seed Tatiana Golovin today to advance to the third round at Wimbledon but Samantha Stosur bowed out of the women’s singles draw.

Pratt, a qualifier ranked 136th in the world, beat the Frenchwoman ranked 133 places above her in the second round 2-6 6-4 6-4.

She will next meet top seed Amelie Mauresmo of France, or fellow Queenslander Samantha Stosur, who were playing on Centre Court.

Pratt broke Golovin in the third game of the second set, but the Frenchwoman broke back immediately to draw level at 2-2.

The Australian broke her opponent twice more for a 5-2 lead, but Golovin broke back again before saving three set points to hold serve in the ninth game.

Pratt converted her second set point in the tenth game to even the match at a set apiece.

In the third set, Pratt made the decisive break in the ninth game.

Serving for the match, she double faulted on match point and the game went to deuce before she took the advantage with a smash and sealed victory when Golovin sent a forehand long.

Samantha Stosur bowed out of the women’s singles draw when she lost to top seed Amelie Mauresmo of France.

The world No.1 beat Stosur, Australia’s highest-ranked player at No. 50, 6-4 6-2 in the second round on centre court.

Mauresmo set the tone when she broke Stosur in the opening game of the match.

The Frenchwoman broke Stosur again in the third and seventh games of the second set to claim victory and set up a third-round match against another Australian , Nicole Pratt.

Stosur’s Wimbledon campaign is not over, however, as she and American Lisa Raymond are the top seeds in the women’s doubles, and she will join Leander Paes in the mixed doubles.

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With Thursday play nearly completed, Wimbledon is back on schedule…Roger Federer handed Tim Henman his 11th career bagel, and first at Wimbledon. Federer also upped his grass win streak to 43 and earned his 100th career Grand Slam win…Equal prize money advocates Venus, Maria, Justine and Amelie all rolled in with wins under an hour yesterday…Janko Tipsarevic was 0-9 on break point chances. If he had converted just a couple of those he’d have beaten Andy Roddick, who had a surprisingly shaky outing Wednesday…Amelie Mauresmo scored her third career double bagel Wednesday at Wimbledon…Roger Federer again wore his Prada/Nike jacket on entrance and exit off Centre Court Wednesday…ESPN’s Mike Ryan, who oversees the network’s tennis coverage, speaking with USA Today: “Frankly, I’m a little concerned about the emergence of Eastern Europeans because it’s harder for them to become stars in the U.S. The next generation (of Americans) isn’t there yet."…From Jim Courier blogging on his Champions Series website: “Andre [Agassi] is an emotional being and it will be interesting to see him walk off of Ashe Stadium after his last match. I suspect there will be tears in a lot of people’s eyes, including his and certainly mine. For my generation of players AA was the first to light the pro torch and now he is finally extinguishing it, years after we have all moved on, as he competes for the last time for a Grand Slam title. Sure, he will likely play some exo’s down the road and maybe even join us on the Outback Series for some friendlier competition but he will not gun for the crown at Wimbledon or the other majors after the ‘06 Open. I have said in the past that when Andre leaves the Tour that for me it will feel like when your last friend finally graduates from college and you have to face the fact that you’re not a kid anymore. Well, it’s official. I have to grow up now…"…From the ATP: “ATPtennis.com, the official Web site of men’s professional tennis, has launched a new and improved “Doubles Revolution.” The redesigned Web section dedicated exclusively to ATP Doubles can be found at www.ATPtennis.com/doubles. The new-look Doubles Revolution, first introduced on ATPtennis.com in January as the Doubles Alley, further incorporates the ATP Doubles Revolution’s campaign imagery and themes. The doubles section continues to provide up-to-date news and information while incorporating new features in photo galleries and redesigned team profile pages. Additionally, each doubles story that runs on ATPtennis.com now sports the distinct Doubles Revolution trademark.” – Should have kept it Doubles Alley, or even Back-Alley. Is anyone excited by this, or agree that it is working? Is it getting you excited about Martin Damm and Leander Paes? Does it make you want to buy their trading cards?…From the X-Discussion board’s consafos: “(Wimbledon radio’s) Joe Stahl sounds like a real deep thinker. So its “hesitation” that loses matches for [James] Blake? Ah, well, that’s an easy enough fix. Just go for it Blake! Hit a winner every time! Yeah, cause he never actually misses any shots. They’re all winners or unreturnable, except when he hesitates. Right. What’s even funnier is the reason that Blake has been having more successful is because he stopped going for so much so often. Is this guy getting paid to be retarded? Because he should send his resume to ESPN."…From Brian Viner of The Independent: “The former Wimbledon champion Michael Stich, in a newspaper column earlier this week, suggested that as a classic serve-volleyer he would have beaten Roger Federer had he played him in 1991, the year he overcame both Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg on the way to winning the title. For what it’s worth, I agree with him. It would have been a close-run thing, but I think he would have just about edged it, given that Federer was only nine years old at the time. Otherwise, Stich is surely kidding himself."…Andy Murray writing in his blog: “I walked down the stairs before I went on to the centre court and [Nicolas] Massu stopped to go to the toilet. I like to think he was a bit nervous! As I was standing there I read the inspirational quote “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters the same". Sounds great but I didn’t really understand it. Had a little look at the list of past champions – [Bjorn] Borg, [John] MacEnroe (sic), [Roger] Federer, [Pete] Sampras, [Andre] Agassi – and I was like I would love to be up there one day. Maybe I need to understand the quote first…"…From UPI: “Officials at Wimbledon in Britain are looking into irregular betting on a low-level match where a player ranked 259th beat one ranked 89th. Betfair, and online gambling company, said the patterns of betting placed on Richard Bloomfield to beat Carlos Berlocq Tuesday were unusual, The Mirror reports. Bloomfield, the No. 7-ranked British player, beat Argentina’s Berlocq in an off-court match that wasn’t televised. He said he didn’t bet on himself and said he wasn’t part of any gambling scheme. The Lawn Tennis Association didn’t answer reporters’ questions and the head of the International Tennis Federation Grand Slam Committee said they wouldn’t comment beyond admitting Betfair passed on secret gambling information to it."…Jerry Magee writing for the San Diego Union-Tribune: “Samantha Stevenson says she is writing a novel. That would be the tennis community you just saw cringing. What Samantha, mother of Alexandra Stevenson, has in mind is a roman a clef that would be to tennis what “The Devil Wears Prada” is to women’s fashions. Think of “The Devil Wears Nike.” “It’s something I know,” Samantha says of what is savory and what is not in tennis. She says her novel, with her daughter helping with the writing, is due out in time for Wimbledon 2007. Samantha is not a devil. Consider her a pushy dame if you would. Many do. She is a mother who does everything she can to further her daughter’s career, which has not been flourishing since she suffered the shoulder injury that for more than two years has severely handicapped her."…British Prime Minister Tony Blair has come out backing equal prize money for women at Wimbledon…Greg Garber writing for ESPN.com: “[Venus] Williams has always followed an eclectic fashion accessory path, but on Wednesday she was upstaged – in a bad, bad way – by [Bethanie] Mattek’s retro-Suzanne Somers biker look. In the past, Mattek has worn a leopard-print dress, a 50 Cent-influenced hat and was once fined for coming onto the court at the U.S. Open wearing a cowboy hat. Clearly unaware of her dubious place in the fashion food chain, Mattek sported a pierced left eyebrow, big dangly earrings, a bandanna and, worst of all, some high-top white socks that cost her 10 pounds at Harrods. “I was going for kind of the soccer theme,” she said. “All the players in the locker room are like, ‘Oh, my God, Beth, what are you wearing today?’ I’m not sure how it went over. I just pretty much went on my gut, just…what I felt like wearing today. Hopefully, it was good.”

Tony Blair has joined those calling for women’s prize money at Wimbledon to be brought into line with the men’s.

Wimbledon, where the men’s champion is paid £30,000 more than the women’s champion, is now the only Grand Slam tournament in which men and women are paid unequal prize money.

The issue has been brought into the spotlight in the past week since the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell wrote to the All England Club urging them to close the gap.

There have also been calls by the defending women’s champion Venus Williams, the veteran player and nine-times champion Martina Navratilova and - embarrassingly for the All England Club - Roger Draper, chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association.

Mr Blair was asked if he supported the calls during his Commons questions yesterday by the Labour MP Janet Anderson.

She said: “Thirty years on from the introduction of the Equal Pay Act by a Labour Government, the winner of the women’s singles at Wimbledon will receive £30,000 less in prize money than the winner of the men’s singles.”

Mr Blair replied: “I was somewhat coy on that yesterday, not having realised that the Culture Secretary had already pronounced on it.

“So I’m very happy to be bolder today - welcome what you said and endorse it fully.”

On hearing Mr Blair’s comments, Venus Williams said: “It’s really very exciting because this is something I personally feel very strongly about.

“The fact that Mr Blair finds this cause extremely important really gives credence to the free world. It is something that needs to be done.”

The former champion Maria Sharapova said: “I think men and women should be treated equally.”

However, Judy Murray, mother of 19-year-old British favourite Andy Murray, argued against equal pay.

She told Radio Five yesterday: “I’m in favour of men getting more as they’re on court for longer. If both men and women played five sets then fair enough, but not at the moment.”

Leander Paes, the Indian doubles player, said he thought 80 per cent of women players would not be able to play five-set matches.

Former captain Kapil Dev on Thursday, said the Indian team management should desist from frequently chopping and changing the team and focus on building the players’ confidence so as to get back to its winning ways.

“I don’t know what the problem is, but I am surprised that an all-rounder of the calibre of Irfan Pathan is not finding a place in the team,” Kapil said.

“The management’s job is to give confidence to the players. How come someone like Pathan is not having confidence?”

Kapil, who held the Indian record for most wickets with 434 Test scalps for more than a decade before Anil Kumble surpassed him in 2004, said that with two all-rounders - Pathan and Mahendra Singh Dhoni - in the team, five bowlers could be played.

“When you have two all-rounders, you don’t need seven batsmen. Five will do,” the 47-year-old, who led India to its only World Cup win in 1983, said.

“What I can’t see is how experienced players like Harbhajan Singh and Irfan Pathan are not playing. Something is going wrong. People who have done well for the team are not playing,” he told reporters here.

Asked what he made of coach Greg Chappell’s comment that Pathan was low on confidence in the series, he said “I wouldn’t say (make such a comment). I will keep a hand on his back and tell him that he can perform better than he has done.

“Such comments can break a player’s confidence. Cricket is a game of confidence", he added.

On the close of the fourth day of the third Test, West Indies were 113 for 4 in their second innings, rattling along at almost five runs an over, for an overall lead of 332 against visitors India here.

The West Indies dismissed India for 362, 219 behind their first-innings score of 581, but skipper Brian Lara did not enforce the follow-on.

When Lara declares the Indies second innings Monday, what target he will set India, if he does at all, is anyone’s guess.

Given the nature of the wicket, the lack of a specialist spinner in his side and the groin injury which saw Pedro Collins leave the field towards the end of India’s innings, he might well let things drift and take their own course.

Earlier a Laxman hundred, and a 47-run last wicket stand between Harbhajan Singh and Munaf Patel - they batted together for 73 minutes - however, ensured that India did not stay in the shadows all day.

At stumps on the fourth day of the third Test it appeared that a draw would be the most likely result and that the teams would go even-even to Kingston, Jamaica, for the fourth and final Test, from June 30-July 4.

Laxman’s 10th century in Tests, his 77-run seventh wicket stand with Anil Kumble (43) and the last-wicket stand between Harbhajan (38 not out) and Patel, gave India some respite after Jerome Taylor struck decisive blows early in the morning.

Taylor removed Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh and Mohd Kaif in the space of six deliveries in his first two overs of the day.

The Indians might have been surprised that three of their first four batsmen to fall on Sunday - Dravid, Kaif and Mahendra Singh Dhoni - were given out leg before by umpire Brian Jerling, especially given his reluctance to raise his finger on the first two-and-a-half days when the Indians had several good shouts turned down.

But while Jerling, standing in his first Test, might not have been consistent, he could not be faulted on accuracy.

Only Kaif could consider himself unlucky not to get the benefit of doubt. The ball that got him, cut back sharply and seemed to be missing leg.

Dravid looked a little late coming down and missed the line of one that cut back sharply from Taylor while Yuvraj nibbled lazily at one angled across and edged to Ramdin.

Dhoni was trapped in front by Corey Collymore, missing the ball as he shuffled and tried to play it on the legside, after he and Laxman had put on 61 for the sixth wicket.

Laxman and Kumble then seemed to be steering India to safety. They tackled the second new ball effortlessly. Laxman hit Taylor for 12 in one over. Kumble outdid him in the next, getting 14 off Collins.

Then Laxman got out, the ball after he got his hundred.

Perhaps he did not regain his concentration after reaching the landmark. He just poked at a ball from Collins, angled away from him, nicked it and wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin, diving, took a good catch.

Like so many of his big innings, this too was vital to the interests of his team. It was full of grit and determination, and flair, too. Fifteen boundaries, in a stay of 338 minutes in which he faced 231 balls, were testimony to that.

The dismissal would have left Laxman with mixed feelings.

There has been increasing pressure on him over the last year or so and after three poor scores in the series, this century would have done wonders to his morale. But he would have been disappointed that he had not got his team out of the woods.

Harbhajan and Patel’s stand, however, ensured that India did escape. They came together almost 40 minutes before tea, with India 315, still 67 short of the follow-on target of 382.

Had West Indies separated them early, Lara might well have enforced the follow-on and, as he had wished at the start of the Test, the tables would well and truly have been on India.

They would have been struggling to save the Test on the final day of the Test, just as West Indies were forced to do so on the final day of the first two Tests.

Former India captain Kapil Dev Thursday pulled up the Indian team management in the West Indies for dropping experienced players in the ongoing Test series.

Kapil, India’s only World Cup-winning skipper, was particularly surprised at the omissions of left-arm pacer Irfan Pathan and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh from two of the three Tests played so far in the four-match series.

‘They (management) are supposed to build up the confidence of the players who are not doing well. But they have shattered the confidence,’ he said, referring to India coach Greg Chappell’s remark that Pathan was lacking confidence after he was axed for the first Test in Antigua.

‘I am surprised that an all-rounder of Pathan’s calibre can’t find a place in the team,’ he said on the sidelines of a press conference called to announce a reality cricket show.

‘How come a player like Pathan does not have confidence?’

Kapil, who had 434 Test scalps, said with wicket-keeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, also a hard hitting batsman, and Pathan qualifying as all-rounders, the management should pick five bowlers in the XI.

‘When you have two all-rounders in Dhoni and Pathan, you do not need seven batsmen.’

Kapil said he had high expectations from the team when it left for the West Indies for five one-day internationals and four Tests.

‘We thought they would win both the one-day and Test series,’ he said, on the eve of the fourth and final Test to be played at Sabina Park in Kingston, Jamaica.

India surprisingly lost the one-day series 1-4 to Brian Lara’s side but came close to winning the second Test before weather intervened. The Test series is deadlocked 0-0.

Kapil also backed batsman V.V.S. Laxman, who finally came good on the tour with a century and a half-century in the drawn third Test in St. Kitts this week, and leg-spinner Anil Kumble.

He did not rule the two veterans out of the 2007 World Cup to be held in the West Indies, saying that every player ‘wearing white clothes is in the fray’ for the quadrennial tournament.

Usually delivered with a wry smile, coach Greg Chappell’s standard pre-match line will have at least two people in Team India hanging on by a thread this time. Unfortunately for the team, they happen to be two of its brightest performers over the last year: Yuvraj Singh and Irfan Pathan.

Will both play? Will they climb back to where they should be? With India’s West Indies journey wobbling on the edge, the answers will depend on a crucial equation that will be worked on and maybe reworked even after you have read this.

After three frustrating draws — yet to take 20 wickets in a match — if India finally decide to go into the final Test with five bowlers, the first batsman on the block would be the only one who hasn’t fired so far in this series. And if that number is four, the same yardstick may be used to size up the team’s bowlers, as it was in the last Test. In both cases, it’s those two names once again: Yuvraj and Irfan. And to think that till a few months ago, both would have been among the first eight on any team list.

They say it’s a loss of form, of confidence, even focus. But the fact is both have withered away, match by match, ever since the team landed here in the second week of May: 72 runs in three Tests for Yuvraj, 2/93 in the only Test that Irfan has played so far.

Irfan, who has appeared in only one Test out of three, is understood to be suffering from an overdose of cricket that has left him drained and quite frustrated at the little things that have then gone awry, especially in the run-up, the wrist position. The result: loss of line, length, pace and that world-famous outswing.

The 21-year-old is also believed to be at that crucial phase of his career where he’s caught in the wedge between pace and swing. The Indian team management is quite clear that his strength lies in swing, and it is a realisation that he’s now trying to come to terms with while dealing with the crushing hype and the overwhelming distractions that come along with it.

According to Chappell, Irfan probably didn’t realise how draining it had been — of the 243 overs he bowled in 11 Tests last season, 216 came in the last six during the Pakistan tour and the England visit — till the support staff found out how “tired” he was.

After his economy rate topped the 5 mark in each of the first four games of the one-day series, he was “rested” for the last match. And from then on — he was out of first and third Test XIs too — it has been a sequence of special one-stump sessions, with sports psychologist Dr Rudi Webster and pace legend Andy Roberts chipping in.

If Irfan is the big picture case for India, looking ahead to the World Cup and beyond, Yuvraj’s 72 in three Tests is the immediate hurdle. Striding into this series with a great one-day streak behind him — two centuries and three fifties — that fantastic 93 brought India to within a run from victory in the second one-dayer and pumped up hopes that the 24-year-old would drive the team across the Caribbean.

But immediately after that match, he walked out with a “bad back”, missed the next game at St Kitts, came back with a 51 in Trinidad and has never been the same since. There has been no visible signs of that injury thereafter out in the pitch or at nets, but he has struggled since to middle the ball, move his feet. His Test drive so far has been a disaster.

Like VVS Laxman, he looked solid before throwing it away for 23 and 39 during the first Test in Antigua, but it has been a black hole since. And unlike Laxman, the comeback is still to come: 2 in St Lucia, 0 and 8 from 50 balls in St Kitts.

But then, Virender Sehwag and Mohammed Kaif emerged smiling from similar holes recently, and as Chappell put it, “Players go through spells like this where they don’t make runs or take wickets. But if they are good players, we expect them to bounce back. And we expect him (Yuvraj) to bounce back.” Hinting that all is not lost for the left-hander here, the coach added, “In his case, we’d prefer him to bat and make runs.”

Skipper Rahul Dravid, in fact, hopes that Yuvaj will come up with a “series-winning performance” in the last Test. The evening before the team list, Yuvraj was hunched over his laptop, focused, peering into the screen; Irfan was in his room. Both winding up for the next five days that will, hopefully, turn the series India’s way, their way.