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Sehwag completes triple century

          Multan: Virender Sehwag created history by becoming the first Indian to crack a triple century and Sachin Tendulkar struck an unblemished unbeaten century as India posted the third highest Test score ever to take a firm grip on the opening Test against Pakistan here on Monday. Sehwag (309) and Tendulkar (194 not out) took centrestage on the second day as they re-wrote the record books with several individual and partnership milestones during a marathon 336-run third wicket association before the visitors declared the innings at an imposing 675 for five on yet another eventful day at the Multan Cricket Stadium. Faced with an uphill task, Pakistan were 42 for no loss at stumps with Taufiq Umar batting on 20 and Imran Farhat on 17.

ODI results 'engineered' to help (Go To Top)

         Vajpayee: Religious leaders Lahore: Pakistan's religious leaders are now claiming that India's 3-2 defeat of Pakistan in last week's one- day international series was "engineered" to help Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's election campaign. "It was a political move and a conspiracy against the ideology of Pakistan," the Dawn newspaper quoted one of the resolutions adopted at a recent religious conference, as saying. The MMA's constituent JUP organized the conference here. The resolution claimed that the modus operandi of the cricket series had been decided during the 12th SAARC summit that was held in Islamabad during the first week of January.

Win the toss and bat first myth debunked (Go To Top)

          Sydney: Win the toss, bat first and put the score on the board. So far perceived as common knowledge, this ism has now been debunked by a new statistical analysis by Australian researchers. Sports statistician Professor Stephen Clarke, in collaboration with research student Paul Allsopp at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, have observed that conventional wisdom of batting first helps cough up a huge total, is a general myth. "In Test cricket there's a general feeling that if you win the toss you should bat. But when you look at the past record, it shows that both home and away teams do better when they bat second than when they bat first," Clarke said in an interview to ABC Science Online.

          The duo analysed the results of 151 test matches held between 1997 and 2001 and discovered that the team batting second won 49 per cent of matches and lost only 26 per cent. The figures do not add up to 100 because there are a lot of draws in test cricket. "The second-batting advantage could be because it just so happened that the better teams always batted second," he said. However, Clarke and Allsopp did some further number crunching to take this into account. "We did quite a big regression analysis where we allowed for team ability and home advantage and we still got an advantage for the team batting second," he said. Attributing historical reasons, Clarke believes the reasons for the bat-first dogma in test cricket is purely a matter of convention.

PCB to play host to Borde, Pataudi, Viswanath (Go To Top)

          Multan: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has invited former Indian greats to see the last two Test matches in Lahore and Rawalpindi. Confirming this news, PCB CEO Ramiz Raja told the News that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had sent a list of five former players, all captains of India, who would be coming to Pakistan for the last two Tests. Four of the five are Chandu Borde, Gundappa Vishawanath, Ajit Wadekar and Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi.

          "Basically, the Indian Board has nominated their names and would be paying for their airfare. But we are responsible for providing them complete hospitality and it would be an honour for us to host them," Raja was quoted as saying. He also clarified that PCB regretted the fact that former players of Pakistan had been treated badly as far the issuance of tickets was concerned. "Due to a misunderstanding the lower denomination tickets (Rs.500) were sent to them, but we offer them our regrets for this incident and hope the matter is resolved as we have the utmost respect and regard for them. But believe me it was not intentional," Raja added.

Pak will match Sehwag's heroics, warns Miandad (Go To Top)

         Multan: Pakistan will give a telling reply to India in the ongoing first Test here, Virender Sehwag's magnum opus notwithstanding, warned the team's coach, Javed Miandad. "This is a sort of a pitch on which the bowler can rarely get you out. The batsmen will have to make mistakes to get dismissed here. If our batsmen bat solidly we can remain in the game," Miandad was quoted by the News, as saying. He further went on to say that he believed that Pakistani batsmen could also score a lot of runs on the pitch, but cautioned that they would need to bat with discipline and application.

          Paying rich tribute to Sehwag for scoring an unbeaten double century on Sunday, Miandad said: "Sehwag batted exceptionally well. He is known to be a stroke maker and very aggressive in nature. But I think he applied himself beautifully even on this flat track. He gave India the advantage on the first day." He also expressed confidence in his bowlers, saying he still believed they could come up with one or two match-winning spells to turn the match upside down.

          "I have seen them perform in recent Tests and I know they can do it even in these tough conditions. It is just that they are playing a Test after a while and the fast bowlers were bowling long spells so they will take some time to settle down and find their rhythm in Test cricket." He also defended the team's decision to play just one spinner (Saqlain Mushtaq) on the flat track, stating that the team didn't want to take a risk of playing just Shoaib and Sami. "Razzaq has been played purely as a batsman. We didn't want a situation where if either Shoaib or Sami had any problem we would be short of a pacer in these conditions," Miandad said.

Cricket has created 'good atmosphere', says Bal Thackeray (Go To Top)

          New Delhi: Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray has admitted the ongoing cricket series had created a "good atmosphere" in Indo-Pak relations. He added he would welcome the Pakistani team in Mumbai if "everything goes well". Referring to his opposition to the tour initially, he said, "At that time, the situation was totally different. Our jawans were getting killed without fighting the war". Asserting he did not "trust Musharraf," he evaded a direct comment to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's desire to talk to the Pakistani leader, saying it was "higher politics" in which a political ally had nothing to do.