India defeated Australia by 320 runs in 2nd Test Match at Mohali

India drubbed Australia by 320 runs at Mohali to take a 1-0 lead in the Border-Gavaskar series. This is India's biggest ever Test win (excluding innings victories).

India dominated this match with everybody chipping in significantly. Debutant Amit Mishra had 7-wicket match haul, while Sourav Ganguly and Gautam Gambhir slammed centuries in first and second innings respectively. But the 'Man of the Match' was the captain himself. MS Dhoni was given the award for his knocks of 92 and 68*.

Earlier, Australia, who resumed the play on Tuesday with their overnight score of 141/5, were bundled before the lunch in reply to India's 515 runs on the last day of the second Test.

Zaheer Khan fastened India's winning bid as he took three quick wickets of Brad Haddin, Cameron White and Brett Lee while Amit Mishra wrapped up the proceedings by claiming Mitchell Johnson and Michael Clarke.

Zaheer struck in the very first over of the fifth day and dismissed Haddin for 37 runs after he added 84 runs with Clarke for the sixth wicket. A good length ball from Zaheer came back to beat Haddin and crash into the middle and off-stump.

In his next over, he got White come forward for the drive. The ball took an outside edge and Dhoni took a good catch behind the wicket. Lee didn't even last a ball. Zaheer pitched a short stuff that beat Lee and uprooted the off-stump.

After Lee fell, India hoped to finish it quickly but a 50-run partnership between Johnson and Clarke frustrated the hosts. Mishra then foxed Johnson with his flight caught him off his own bowling. Clarke, who slammed a fighting 69, fell as the last wicket as he pulled a good length ball from Mishra and Sehwag at midwicket pouched it safely.

Australian coach Tim Nielsen had confessed after the close of fourth day's play that team played for a win but the gameplan backfired. Of course, with 515 runs to chase in four sessions on a spinning track can never be easy and playing aggressively cost Australian heavily.

Scorecard

Man United thrashed West Bromwich, EPL roundup

Wayne Rooney continued his remarkable goalscoring run as Manchester United kept the pressure on Chelsea and Liverpool with a 4-0 victory over West Bromwich at Old Trafford on Saturday.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Dimitar Berbatov and Nani were also on the mark for United as Sir Alex Ferguson’s side came up with the perfect response to victories from leaders Chelsea and second placed Liverpool earlier in the day.
Rooney, so impressive in England’s World Cup victories over Kazakhstan
and Belarus last week, also had what appeared a perfectly valid first half strike ruled out by referee Mark Halsey.
But that hardly mattered when the United forward extended his extraordinary scoring sequence to eight goals in the last six games for club and country.
A golden period of three goals in 15 minutes started in the 56th minute when United broke out of defence, Berbatov sprung Rooney with a pass from the halfway line and the forward powered into Albion territory, easily sidestepping Ryan Donk, before beating the keeper with an unstoppable near post shot.
In the 69th minute, any lingering hope Albion had of rescuing a point from their visit disappeared when Ronaldo doubled the home team’s lead.
Again, the goal showcased United at their most devastating and lethal best, hitting Albion on the counter-attack with Darren Fletcher's short pass beinghelped into the path of Ronaldo by Rooney and the Portugal winger easily scored the goal.
Two minutes further on, and Berbatov netted a goal, nonchalantly turning in the ball at the far post after Jonas Olsson had failed to deal with Nani’s low cross. Nani completed the rout on the stroke of normal time, turning in Rooney’s far post cross after Ryan Giggs and Berbatov had launched another flowing attack.
On Sunday, Hull City gatecrashed the Premier League’s top four again with a 1-0 home defeat of West Ham United thanks to Michael Turner’s 51st minute goal.

EPL results for 18th, 19th, 20th October'08

Saturday 18th October

Chelsea 5 - 0 Middlesbrough
Arsenal 3 - 1 Everton
Liverpool 3 - 2 Wigan Athletic
Manchester United 4 -0 West Bromwich Albion
Aston Villa 0 - 0 Portsmouth
Bolton Wanderers 0 - 0 Blackburn Rovers
Fulham 0 - 0 Sunderland

Sunday 19th October

Hull City 1 - 0 West Ham United
Stoke City 2 - 1 Tottenham Hotspur

Monday 20th October

New Castle United 2 - 2 Manchester City

Hamilton won the chinese GP, Moves closer to world title

Shanghai: Lewis Hamilton won the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai to put himself on the verge of becoming the youngest world champion in the motorsport’s 58-year history. McLaren driver Hamilton, in his second season in Formula One, led from the start as title rival Felipe Massa finished more than 14 seconds behind in second place at the Shanghai International Circuit on Sunday.
The 23-year-old Hamilton won his fifth race this year to
move seven points clear of Ferrari’s Massa and needs to only finish in the top five of the November 2 season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix to be sure of securing the championship.
Fernando Alonso became the youngest champion in 2005 as a 24-year-old.
Ferrari moved closer to retaining the team title as world champion Kimi Raikkonen took third place and fellow Finn Heikki Kovalainen of McLaren got a puncture on lap 35 and dropped out on lap 50. Ferrari has 156 points to McLaren’s 145. Robert Kubica saw his mathematical chance of winning the title disappear as the Pole steered his BMW to sixth place.
Hamilton will need to avoid a repeat of last season when he finished one point behind Raikkonen after heading the standings entering the final two races. He had a four-point lead over Alonso and sevenpoint advantage over Raikkonen before the last race in Brazil and could only finish seventh then.
Sunday’s victory — matching Massa’s five wins this season - - never looked in doubt as Hamilton made a clean start from pole position and built a four-second lead after 10 laps. The only uncomfortable moment came on lap 12 when he oversteered on turn two yet retained control to make his first of two pit stops ahead of Raikkonen in second and Massa in third.
At the halfway point, Hamilton led Raikkonen by 6.6 seconds and Massa by 15.4 seconds. The top-three remained unchanged until Raikkonen let his teammate overtake him with six laps remaining, boosting Massa’s chances of delivering his first title in front of his home fans in Brazil.

ForceIndia's bad run continue

Force India’s search for the elusive maiden point in the current Formula One season continues as Adrian Sutil failed to finish the race and Giancarlo Fisichella finished 17th in the Chinese Grand Prix here on Sunday.
Fisichella began from the last position of the grid and gained three places when he took the chequered flag in the 56-lap penultimate race of the season. Sutil encountered a gearbox problem on lap 14 and was forced to pull off the track before one third distance. The German driver, beginning at 19th position, had graduated to 17th but had to face his second consecutive failure.

Murray the Madrid's Master

Madrid: Andy Murray lifted his second major title in three months by winning the Madrid Masters with a 6-4, 7-6 (6) victory over France’s Gilles Simon.
The victory in just over 90 minutes saw the big serving Scot fire 10 aces. The fourth seed became the first British player to win four ATP titles in the same season.
His Madrid success came just three months after he won
the first Masters shield of his career at Cincinnati. He also claimed the 2008 titles in Doha and Marseille.
Murray, who has already booked his place in the seasonending Masters Cup in Shanghai next month, encouraged Simon, who stands provisional ninth in the race for the last four spots in the eight-man field.
After both men knocked out Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal respectively in dramatic semifinals, the title matchup was short on major drama.
Murray made the opening move in the fifth game of the first set as he put Simon under heavy pressure with three break points. The Frenchman saved the first two but not the third as he reached for an overhead backhand, which put Murray into position to force an error and earn the 3-2 break.
The margin was enough for Murray to ease through as he wrapped up the opening set in 34 minutes on his third ace.

Sachin becomes highest run-getter in Test Cricket

The long wait is finally over! India's prolific batsmen Sachin Tendulkar surpassed Brian Lara's record to become highest run-scorer in Test cricket history. He achieved this milestone against Australia in the second Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Mohali.

West Indies batting great Brian Lara scored 11953 runs in 131 Tests at an average of 52.89 while the Indian maestro reached this mark in 152* matches at an average of 54.11 runs.

In his 19-year-old career, Sachin made and broke many records. Sachin made his Test debut in 1989 at karachi against Pakistan then he was only a 16-year-old boy.

He's come a long way since then and has been India's batting mainstay for years. The 35-year-old is already the world's top-scorer in One-Day Internationals (16,361) and has the most centuries in Test matches (39) and one-dayers (42). He has scored 49 Test half-centuries and 89 ODI fifties.

Sachin crossed 12000 run mark in Test Cricket

Sachin's Career Records

I salute and congratulate to Sachin (The greatest cricketer ever) for his phenomenal achievement.

First Test Match ended in a draw

A target of 299 in a minimum of 83 overs, after Ricky Ponting had declared the Australian second innings at 228 for six after just five overs of batting on the final morning, the Indians finished at a comfortable 177 for four after six of the 15 last hour mandatory overs had been bowled when the two teams decided to shake hands and call it a day and match.
It was a tension filled-day for the Indian batsmen, whose reputation had taken a beating in the last series in Sri Lanka. Ponting had also timed the declaration well, giving himself the option of taking the second new ball for at least a few overs if it was required. The overnight batsmen Brad Haddin and Shane Watson were clearly under instructions to hit out. As many as 35 runs were added in a mere five overs before the bowlers were given the task of bowling the Indians out.
It is not very often that the Indian batsmen have come to the party in the fourth innings, be it batting out time or achieving a target. Monday was different even if wasn’t so at the beginning. With Virender Sehwag again finding the lone slip, Mathew Hayden pouching him low off Stuart Clark and the one man born to kill time, Rahul Dravid uncharacteristically falling to a catch at short midwicket, the stage seemed set for the usual ten pin like fall.
The fifth day pitch, with its varying bounce and wide cracks, and the Australian wisecracks were all dealt with ease. Young Gautam Gambhir (29) played his part in a 53-run third wicket stand with Tendulkar (49) but it was the master’s day even if he missed overtaking Brian Lara’s Test aggregate of 11,953 by 15 runs.
Its Tendulkar's calm batting that set the tone for Laxman (42 not out) and Ganguly (26 not out) to follow.

Scorecard

Its back to back win for Alonso

Fuji (Japan): Twotimes world champion Fernando Alonso claiming his second successive victory by winning an incidentpacked Japanese Grand Prix.
As the main championship protagonists licked their wounds on a day of errors, collisions and penalties, the Spaniard steered his Renault home just two weeks after winning in Singapore for his 21st career triumph.
Alonso took full advantage of a bad day for title rivals Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa as he came home 5.2 seconds clear of second placed Pole Robert Kubica of BMW Sauber.
Defending drivers world champion Kimi Raikkonen finished third for Ferrari.
Alonso, the champion in 2005 and 2006 for Renault before departing for an inglorious season with McLaren last year, has yet to agree a deal for next season, but is likely to stay with the French team.
Brazil’s Nelson Piquet Jr was fourth in the second Renault ahead of Italian Jarno Trulli of Toyota and the Toro Rosso of Germany’s Sebastian Vettel.
Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais was hit with a 25 second penalty after the race for running Massa off the track, relegating him to tenth from sixth. It was good news for Massa who was bumped up to seventh from eighth.
Championship leader Hamilton failed to score a point for McLaren after a poor start from pole position and some impetuous moves which cost him dearly.
These saw him overrun the first corner and go off the track together with Raikkonen, who outpaced him off the grid at the start, and later hit by Massa’s Ferrari as he attempted to pass him.
Hamilton was given a drivethrough penalty for his part in the first corner melee and Massa was given the same punishment for ramming Hamilton into a spin in the second incident.

Massa also struggled through a day of collisions, errors and penalties on his way to finishing seventh to claim two points.
This reduced Hamilton’s championship lead to five points with two races left in China and Brazil. Hamilton has 84 points and Massa 79.
In the constructors’ championship, Ferrari jumped back in front with a seven points lead over McLaren. Ferrari have 142 and McLaren 135.
Hamilton’s McLaren teammate, Finn Heikki Kovalainen, retired with a blown engine in the early stages when he was running well.

Force India

Sutil was steaming along in 10th place after six laps, thanks to the way the first corner incident reshuffled the pack. But after eight laps his right rear tyre burst, probably as a result of damage inflicted by debris. Fisichella also made a strong start, but dropped out early with gearbox problems.

Ponting slammed his maiden ton in India in the first Test Match on Day1

Riding on skipper Ricky Ponting's 123 runs, Australia were 254 for the loss of 4 wickets at the close of day's play in Bangalore Test.

Ponting, who averages a little over 13 against India on their soil, had vowed to break the jinx before the series commenced and he did it in style as he slammed his maiden hundred on the Indian soil in the first Test.

This was his 36th Test century and sixth against India. Putting a 166-run partnership with opener Simon Katich, he strengthened Australia's position in the match. After Katich went, Mike Hussey joined him and added 60 runs.

Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh continued to be Ponting's nemesis as he got rid of the Australian skipper for the ninth time in Tests. Harbhajan pitched the ball outside the off-stump; Ponting expecting it to rise, tried to sweep, but the ball kept low and hit his pad. Vice-captain Michael Clarke joined Hussey (46*) after his departure and added 28 runs for the fourth wicket but Zaheer Khan trapped him for 11 runs in the last over. Umpires called it a day with four balls to spare.

While his captain's innings remains the highlight of day, Katich's contribution was no less significant as he kept one end intact and allowed Ponting to score freely. He scored 66 runs before Ishant Sharma got him caught behind.

Katich's opening partner, Hayden had a disappointing day as he perished to Zaheer for a zilch. Put in to field first, Zaheer struck with the third delivery of his first over. A fuller delivery forced the Australian to play it and wicketkeeper MS Dhoni made no mistake behind the stumps when the ball brushed past Hayden's bat.

Highlights of the day:

Ricky Ponting, playing in his 200th Test innings, posted his 36th hundred - his sixth against India and his first in India.

Ponting's 123 off 243 balls is his highest score against India in India, eclipsing his 60 at Kolkata in 1997-98.

Harbhajan has dismissed Ponting nine times in 10 Tests - the most times he has been dismissed by any bowler.

The 166-run stand for the second wicket between Katich and Ponting is Australia's best for this wicket-position at Bangalore, outstripping the 78 between Allan Border and Andrew Hilditch in 1979-80.

Cameron White became the 402nd Australian player to make his Test debut.

Scorecard

Bangladesh registered first ever victory overNZ in the first ODI

Dhaka: Zunaed Siddique and Mashrafe Mortaza scripted Bangladesh’s first-ever victory over New Zealand in One-Day cricket with a comfortable seven-wicket win in the opening match here on Thursday.
Left-hander Siddique scored a brilliant 85 for his maiden halfcentury to anchor his team’s successful chase of a 202-run target in 45.3 overs at the Shere-Bangla National Stadium after paceman Mortaza took four for 44 to jolt the tourists.
Mohammad Ashraful notched a return-to-form 60 not out to guide Bangladesh to their first win over the Black Caps in 12 One-Dayers, as the home team skipper and Siddique added 109 for the third wicket to upset their formidable opponents.
Mortaza and left-arm spinner Abdur Razzak (three for 32) set up the sensational win by restricting New Zealand to 201 for nine in their 50 overs. Jacob Oram top-scored with a solid 57 and added 70 runs for the seventh wicket with Vettori (30), but that was not enough for New Zealand to avoid their lowest One-Day total against Bangladesh.
Their previous lowest total against Bangladesh was 224 at Chittagong in 2004. Bangladesh lost opener Tamim Iqbal (12) early but Siddique and Mushfiqur Rahim (30) added 67 for the second wicket before Ashraful sealed the fate of the match.
Siddique hit eight boundaries during his 139-ball knock while Ashraful hit five boundaries and a six in his rapid 56-ball innings. In the morning it was Mortaza who jolted the New Zealand top order after Bangladesh won the toss and elected to field.
Mortaza was brilliantly supported by Razzak as both grabbed five of the first six wickets to fall after New Zealand raced to a solid start of 47 through Jesse Ryder (34) and Brendon McCullum (14).
Bangladesh derailed the tourists once Mortaza dismissed McCullum in the ninth over as five more wickets fell in the space of just 32 runs.

Scorecard

Saurav Ganguly anounced his retirement from test cricket

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly is to retire after the upcoming Test series against Australia in India.

Sourav Ganguly has said he will retire after the upcoming Test series against Australia. His statement, a moment of unscripted drama at the end of a routine press conference in Bangalore, ends widespread speculation over his future.

"Just one last thing lads, before I leave, I just want to say that this is going to be my last series," Ganguly said after taking the last question of his press conference. "I've decided to quit. I told my team-mates before coming here. These four Test matches are going to be my last and hopefully we'll go on a winning note."

With that, he got up and walked out, offering no explanation for what led to the decision.

Ganguly, 36, has played 109 Tests, 49 as captain, amassing 6,888 runs at an average of 41.74, including 15 hundreds and 34 fifties.

He played 49 Tests as captain, the most by an Indian. The 21 matches won during his tenure is also an Indian record, and his win percentage of over 40 is the highest for players who have captained India in more than one Test.

In 311 ODIs, he scored 11,363 runs at 41.02. He captained India in 147 ODIs. His last ODI was against Pakistan in Gwalior on November 15, 2007. He is one of only three players to complete the treble of 10,000 runs, 100 wickets and 100 catches in ODIs, Sanath Jayasuriya and Sachin Tendulkar being the others. Along with Tendulkar, he formed a prolific partnership at the top of the order, with 6609 runs at an average of nearly 50 per stand in 136 innings.

Ganguly made his debut in international cricket in 1992 by being selected for the one-day team and later entered the Test format in 1996.

His highest Test score was 239 and ODIs 183. In the latest shorter version of the game -- Twenty20 -- he scored 726 runs, at an average of 25.92, the highest being 91.

Starting with a hundred on debut, Ganguly's Test average has never dipped below 40.

"I salute to the southpaw for his remarkable contribution and achievement that felt us(Indian) proud. "

Torres double strike helps a thrilling comeback win for Liverpool against Man City in EPL

Liverpool 3 (Torres 55' 73', Kuyt 90') Man City 2(Ireland 18', Garrido 41')

Liverpool went through ecstasy and agony against Man City - celebrating a fabulous fightback but losing Martin Skrtel with a serious knee injury.

After being two goals down at City, Dirk Kuyt's last-gasp goal sealed their best comeback win since the Champions League Final in Istanbul.

But Skrtel (right) - hurt making a superb tackle to deny Ched Evans with the score at 2-2 - will be out for months with ligament damage.

Seconds after the defender was taken off on a stretcher, Kuyt stabbed in the winner.

City were flying when Stephen Ireland opened the scoring and Javier Garrido doubled the lead just before half-time.

But Fernando Torres pulled a goal back for the visitors and City then had Pablo Zabaleta sent off on 67 minutes for a stupid lunge at Xabi Alonso.

City were fuming when Skrtel got away with a kick to Jo's back which disrupted their plans by forcing him off. Gelson Fernandes came on to replace him.

Liverpool were soon level through Torres's second goal of the game and completed their turnaround when Kuyt struck in injury time.

Other matches in EPL:

Tottenham 0-1 Hull City

Blackburn 0-2 Manchester United

West Brom 1-0 Fulham

Wigan 0-1 Middlesbrough

Everton 2-2 New Castle

West Ham 1-3 Bolton

Chelsea 2-0 Aston Villa

Portsmouth 2-1 Stoke City

Sunderland 1-1 Arsenal