Calm Siddle helps Australia triumph
In matches as close as this, the team which holds it's nerve under pressure is the one which prevails and the hero for Australia this time was Peter Siddle, who bowled a match-winning last over for his team. His match figures of 1-55 from 9 overs were unflattering but his last over was exceptional. Thanks to a superb 8th-wicket stand between Harbhajan and Praveen Kumar, India had come close needing 42 from the last 3 overs. Harbhajan and Praveen Kumar managed 33 of those runs from the first 2 overs as Siddle conceded 13 and Watson conceded 20 in the 48th and 49th over respectively. With Brett Lee unable to bowl due to a sore elbow and Mitchell Johnson having completed his quota of 10 overs, the onus was on Siddle to restrict the onslaught. Siddle bowled a length ball first up which Praveen Kumar failed to dispatch to the boundary even though it was on his pads. The next one was on target and Harbhajan's stumps were shattered as he played an ugly swipe across the line. With 8 still needed from 4 balls, Siddle fired in 3 consectutive yorkers neither of which the Indian batsmen could put away. With 6 needed off the last ball, Siddle bowled another very full delivery to Nehra who could only slam it down to long on as Australia won by 4 runs.
Monday, October 26, 2009
winning moments of the match Ind vs Aus, 1st ODI, Vadodara
Calm Siddle helps Australia triumph
In matches as close as this, the team which holds it's nerve under pressure is the one which prevails and the hero for Australia this time was Peter Siddle, who bowled a match-winning last over for his team. His match figures of 1-55 from 9 overs were unflattering but his last over was exceptional. Thanks to a superb 8th-wicket stand between Harbhajan and Praveen Kumar, India had come close needing 42 from the last 3 overs. Harbhajan and Praveen Kumar managed 33 of those runs from the first 2 overs as Siddle conceded 13 and Watson conceded 20 in the 48th and 49th over respectively. With Brett Lee unable to bowl due to a sore elbow and Mitchell Johnson having completed his quota of 10 overs, the onus was on Siddle to restrict the onslaught. Siddle bowled a length ball first up which Praveen Kumar failed to dispatch to the boundary even though it was on his pads. The next one was on target and Harbhajan's stumps were shattered as he played an ugly swipe across the line. With 8 still needed from 4 balls, Siddle fired in 3 consectutive yorkers neither of which the Indian batsmen could put away. With 6 needed off the last ball, Siddle bowled another very full delivery to Nehra who could only slam it down to long on as Australia won by 4 runs.
Australia hold nerve to edge India in thriller
Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh's batting heroics took India agonisingly close to a sensational win before the hosts slumped to a four-run defeat against Australia in the first match of the seven-ODI cricket series.
At 201 for seven in their pursuit of a 293-run victory target, India seemed heading for a comprehensive defeat before Praveen (40 not out) and Harbhajan (49) came up with a defiant 84-run stand off just 57 balls for the eighth wicket that nearly took them home.
Much to the disappointment of the crowd, India managed 288 for eight falling 5 runs short of the target.
A solid 68 from Gautam Gambhir, complemented by cameos from Kohli and Dhoni had put India well on course towards a victory. However quick wickets during the batting powerplay reduced the team to 201/7 with 10 overs remaining. Harbhajan and Praveen then brought down the target to 30 from the last 15 balls and then nine from the last six.
But once Harbhajan departed, India lost the momentum and Australia stopped the hosts four runs short of their total.
Earlier, Ricky Ponting (74) led from the front and was amply supported by Man of the Match Mike Hussey (73), Tim Paine (50) and Cameron White (51) as the visitors rattled up 292 for eight after opting to bat first on a featherbed track.
Faced with the daunting task of scoring at 5.86 per over, the star-studded Indian line-up came a cropper against some disciplined bowling and tigh
t fielding.
t fielding.Earlier in the innings, Gambhir played the sheet-anchor's role after the cheap dismissal of openers Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar to topscore with 68 off 85 balls with six fours and a six in it.
Dhoni and Kohli made starts before getting out when in their 30s.
After being 167 for three in the 35th over, the Indians lost three quick wickets - Gambhir, Suresh Raina (9) and Dhoni - while adding only 19 runs and soon it became 201 for seven at the fall of Ravindra Jadeja in the 40th over.
Harbhajan and Praveen kept the hosts in the hunt with some lusty hits to raise visions of a come-from-behind victory, but in the end it proved of no avail.
With this win, Australia surged to their second successive victory at this venue over the home team, having beaten the hosts by nine wickets in 2007 at this very ground.
Though India came close, their top-order batting, bowling as well as fielding were thoroughly exposed by the Australian team which is riding on a high after whipping England 6-1 and then retaining the Champions Trophy in South Africa.
In the morning, the Australia top-order took a heavy toll of the listless Indian bowling attack to raise a big total. Although Australia suffered an early blow, when Watson fell off the eighth ball, a superb partnership worth nearly a hundred between Ponting and Paine helped the team back on track.
The sound beginning was built upon by half-centuries from White and Hussey as the Indian bowling, which has struggled of late, was put to the sword in merciless fashion.
The Indian chase began in style with Virender Sehwag hitting Lee's first two deliveries for successive boundaries. But the bowler had the last laugh by getting rid if the DelLee eventually settled score by getting rid off Sehwag by having the batsman caught for 13 in 11 balls.
India lost another big wicket when Sachin Tendulkar drove a wide ball from Watson up into a packed off-side field and Ponting took a blinder at short cover-point.
Virat Kohli, playing in company of Gambhir, steadied the innings with a stand of 58 in 75 balls and the pair raised the 100 in the 19th over when Kohli fell to Adam Voges.
Gambhir and Dhoni then strung a partnership of 64 runs with diligence for the fourth wicket before Mitchell Johnson first removed the left-hander and then took a catch off his own bowling to dismiss Suresh Raina. which left India at 183 for five in the 37th over.
It was left to Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja to guide India home but the skipper got out soon, trying to loft Watson and giving a tame catch to Lee at mid on.
For Australia, Johnson led the bowling with two for 59, while Watson secured 2 for 70. Surprisingly brett Lee was only given 6 overs to bowl during which he gave away 28 runs while picking up the key wicket of Sehwag.
The thrilling victory put the visitors 1-0 up in the series ahead of the second day/night encounter at Nagpur on October 28.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Nadal Falls to Cilic in China Open Semifinal
Marin Cilic upset second-ranked Rafael Nadal in the semifinals of the China Open on Saturday in Beijing.
The eighth-seeded Cilic cruised to a 6-1, 6-3 victory against Nadal, setting up a final against Novak Djokovic, who defeated Robin Soderling, 6-3, 6-3.
In the women’s draw, Svetlana Kuznetsova beat her Russian compatriot Nadia Petrova, 6-1, 6-3, to reach the final against Agnieszka Radwanska, who beat Marion Bartoli, 6-4, 6-3.
Cilic broke Nadal’s serve twice, racing to a 5-0 lead. Nadal struggled to respond to the 21-year-old Cilic’s booming serve and aggressive returns. Cilic had six aces in the first set, with a first-serve percentage of 83 percent.
He continued to baffle Nadal in the second set, breaking serve in the first game and again in the sixth, wrecking Nadal’s timing and outpacing him with his groundstrokes.
“From the beginning of the match until the end I didn’t let my level of play drop and definitely I came into the match really good,” Cilic said. “I was aggressive when I had to be.
The best thing I did today: I didn’t back off, I was just stubborn with my style of play.”
Cilic has lost all three of his previous matches against Djokovic.
Nadal said he had felt under the gun throughout the match.
“He was serving unbelievably, and his returning was very fast and playing winners all the time,” Nadal said. “The worst thing for me was that when I had a little bit of a chance to come back to the match, I didn’t play very well, either.
“If you’re losing, 6-1, 6-3, there are a lot of things you’re doing wrong in that match. I can accept to win, I can accept to lose, but 6-1, 6-3 is — mentally, I probably wasn’t there.”
Djokovic broke Soderling in the first game and, after double-faulting on deuce at 4-3, fired three consecutive aces to hold serve and won the set.
Djokovic broke Soderling’s serve in the second set at 4-3, then served out the match with an ace.
“I assure you that it was a lot more difficult because he’s a big server, a big hitter, and he was very aggressive throughout the whole match,” said Djokovic, ranked No. 2 in the world. “So I was very patient and I waited for my chances that were given to me, and I used them at the right time.”
Kuznetsova had little difficulty dispatching Petrova, who had ground through three-set battles with Serena Williams and Peng Shuai to get to the semifinals.
“I tried to move her around. I knew it was her weakness,” said the sixth-seeded Kuznetsova, winner of the 2006 China Open said of Petrova.
DAVIS CUP FINAL IN BARCELONA The Davis Cup final between defending champion Spain and the Czech Republic will be played in Barcelona.
The Spanish tennis federation announced on Saturday that the best-of-five series scheduled for Dec. 4-6 would be held on the clay courts at Palau Sant Jordi.
The choice was made after the International Tennis Federation rejected Tenerife in the Canary Islands and the southern port city of Malaga because they were open-air courts. Malaga’s stadium also fell under the minimum seating capacity of 12,000.
LPGA - 2009 Schedules and Scores
| Upcoming Tournaments | ||||
| Date | Tournament/Course | 2008 Champ | Purse | |
| Oct. 30- Nov. 1 | Hana Bank KOLON ChampionshipSky 52 GC - Ocean Course Incheon, South Korea | Candie Kung | $1,700,000 | |
| Nov. 6- Nov. 8 | Mizuno ClassicKashikojima CC Shima, Japan | Ji Yai Shin | $1,400,000 | |
| Nov. 12- Nov. 15 | Lorena Ochoa InvitationalGuadalajara GC Guadalajara, Mexico | Angela Stanford | $1,100,000 | |
| Nov. 19- Nov. 22 | Stanford Financial Tour ChampionshipThe Houstonian Houston, Texas | |||
Internationals Look to Upset U.S. in Presidents Cup
Since its inception in 1994, the biennial Presidents Cup competition, which matches a team of 12 golfers from the United States against a dozen from an International team, has been as lopsided as a broken jaw. That has been the figurative parting gift for International teams, which have not won since 1998.
Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
U.S. team members, from left, Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker, Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink, open Presidents Cup play Thursday.
The familiar winning formula — jump to an early lead in opening-day foursomes and ride it to victory — has worked well in the United States team’s 5-1-1 domination. And by most statistical formulations, the Americans are an overwhelming favorite to continue their mastery when the two sides meet in the eighth Presidents Cup starting Thursday at Harding Park Golf Course.
Eight players from the United States team that defeated the favored European team in the 2008 Ryder Cup are on the squad. Tiger Woods, who missed that Ryder Cup while recovering from knee surgery, is on form. Phil Mickelson is coming off a win two weeks ago in the Tour Championship. And eight members of the team have won this year.
But could a Presidents Cup change be riding in like the fog that slithered ashore off the San Francisco Bay on Wednesday afternoon? Some feel strongly that it can. The International team captain, Greg Norman, has been telling his team all week that it can, and some of his confidence seems to be rubbing off.
“If you see our team get out front early, they could be dangerous,” said the International team assistant captain, Frank Nobilo, a three-time Presidents Cup competitor. “If we can get out to a quick start, it could be the confidence boost we need.”
The Presidents Cup lacks the pressure, the history and the extraordinarily intense rivalry of the Ryder Cup, which was first played in 1927. But the International team appears ready to at least ratchet up the intensity. Even the Colombian “rookie” on this year’s team, Camilo Villegas, got into the act this week, talking about wanting to turn the tide.
The only team match-play experience Villegas, 27, has had came in college at theUniversity of Florida and in the South American Championship in which he played for Colombia. But he has been inspired by the camaraderie this week and looks forward to playing for all of South America when he teams with the reigning Masters champion,Ángel Cabrera of Argentina, against Kenny Perry and Zach Johnson in foursomes on Thursday.
“I walk in my room Sunday night, I look at all of the uniforms, and all of a sudden it’s memories of kind of college golf and the South American Championship,” Villegas said. “And trust me, I’ve got a lot of good memories. So I think it’s time to step it up and add some more good memories about team golf and team competition.
“It’s a new year, it’s a new tournament,” Villegas said. “Why are we going to keep thinking about the past? You know what, there’s going to be a lot of people rooting for us, and we will be giving our best to play as good as we can and have a good outcome and keep growing the game of golf in South America, keep motivating those kids that are coming up.”
Among other intangibles that could align for the International team: the golf course, Harding Park, is a compact, classic layout that is familiar to most of the International players. And San Francisco has a huge international population that could lessen the home-course advantage for the United States.
The three International rookies, Villegas, Y. E. Yang and the 18-year-old phenom Ryo Ishikawa, do not have any of the scar tissue from losing in match play. Ishikawa has been practicing well and will go under the gun early in foursomes paired with Geoff Ogilvy and playing against Woods and Steve Stricker.
Far from being cowed by the pairing, Ishikawa said he was looking forward to playing against Woods. Yang, who defeated Woods down the stretch at the P.G.A. Championship at Hazeltine in August, has also practiced well this week. He and Retief Goosen will take on Jim Furyk and Justin Leonard.
Relaxed and ready, the United States team has been enjoying itself all week, bonding in the team room, playing table tennis and pool and hanging out with the honorary assistant captain, Michael Jordan, the golf fanatic and retired N.B.A. star who was recruited by the team’s captain, Fred Couples.
Whether the relaxed United States team can keep its edge against a fired-up International squad, whether it can come out and blitz the Internationals in the foursomes as it did in 2007 at Montreal — when it went out to a 5 ½- ½ lead on Day 1 and won the Saturday foursomes, 5-0 — will go a long way toward telling whether it can keep its winning streak alive.
For Obama, Golfing Is a Very Leisurely Pursuit
Bill Clinton was famous for the creative way he kept score. Both George Bushes would speed-golf through 18 holes as if they had to beat the clock, not the course.
Jason Reed/Reuters
President Obama spent two and a half hours on Tuesday at Mink Meadows Golf Club in Vineyard Haven, Mass.
And President Obama?
Long, slow rounds. A lot of time hunting for balls in the woods. All dished up with a dollop of trash-talking.
The First Golfer brought his duffer’s game to Martha’s Vineyard this week. By Thursday, Mr. Obama had logged three golf games in four days, appearing at one island course after another. He spent five hours on Monday afternoon playing 18 holes at the Farm Neck Golf Club here, two and a half hours on Tuesday playing nine holes at Mink Meadows Golf Club in Vineyard Haven, and several hours playing Thursday afternoon at the Vineyard Golf Club in Edgartown.
While Mr. Obama has indulged in other vacation activities — he took his family bike riding Thursday morning, went to the beach on Wednesday and took his wife to dinner Tuesday night — golf has been the only recurring one.
So, clearly, the president likes to hit the links. But is he any good at it, especially compared with his predecessors?
“His golf games are long because he’s not very good,” said Don Van Natta Jr., a reporter for The New York Times who wrote “First Off the Tee: Presidential Hackers, Duffers and Cheaters From Taft to Bush” (PublicAffairs, 2003).
Unlike Mr. Clinton, who had a reputation for shaving strokes off his score, Mr. Obama “doesn’t fudge his scores,” Mr. Van Natta said, adding: “If he shoots an 11 on a hole, he will write down 11.” (Mr. Obama shoots in the 90s on a good day, Mr. Van Natta said.)
White House officials, trying to protect their boss from guffaws, refuse to divulge Mr. Obama’s scores. The president himself envelops his golf game in a cloak of secrecy. Unlike the drill with many of his predecessors, who allowed reporters to watch them play the first hole, and then return to the 18th to watch the grand finish, the White House press pool covering Mr. Obama is kept far away from the action.
“The verdant entry to the entry road to the entrance of the Vineyard Golf Club is as close as we get to Potus right now, colleagues,” Elizabeth Williamson of The Wall Street Journal wrote Thursday in the report on the president’s activities that she shared with other White House reporters.
(Much to the disappointment of the press corps, reports that there might be a vacation game with Tiger Woods look to be false.)
The official word on Thursday from the White House deputy spokesman, Bill Burton, was that Mr. Obama has been enjoying his golf game.
But some White House aides — who, to be fair, were not on the golf course with the president on Thursday — said that those who were there mentioned a lot of trash-talking coming from the First Mouth, despite his less-than-Masters-level play. Mr. Obama, whose first sports love is basketball, took up golf seriously in 1997, when he was in the Illinois State Senate. It has been a love affair ever since, and Mr. Obama is now the 15th of the last 18 presidents to play golf, Mr. Van Natta said. “The only nongolfers since Taft are Carter, Hoover and Truman,” he said.
Mr. Obama is notorious for dragging his staff members onto the golf course with him, including the White House trip director, Marvin Nicholson; the White House spokesman,Robert Gibbs; and Ben Finkenbinder, the baby-faced press aide who also happened to play golf at Macalester College in St. Paul, when he was studying there a mere two years ago. On Martha’s Vineyard this week, Mr. Obama was playing with Mssrs. Nicholson and Finkenbinder, along with the chief executive of UBS, Robert Wolf; and Eric Whitaker, a Chicago pal.
This is the first summer vacation that the Obama family has taken with the White House press pool on hand to chronicle Mr. Obama’s every move, and therefore, the first vacation providing an opportunity to get a handle on Mr. Obama’s golf scores. Alas, White House officials continued their veil of secrecy, and would not say. Which means he is probably still in the 90s, respectable for a weekend golfer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
search here
="">
Custom Search
Earn here
