Christchurch :Afghanistan produced a superb all-round effort to stun New Zealand by 202 runs in a Super League quarter-final at the ICC U19 World Cup here on Thursday. Opting to bat first, Afghanistan rode on half-centuries from Rahmanullah, Ibrahim Zadran, Baheer Shah and Azmatullah to post a challenging total of 309/6 in their 50 overs. Mujeeb Zadranand Qais Ahmadthen claimed four wickets each as the Afghans bundled out New Zealand for a meagre 107 runs in 28.1 overs. Zadran returned figures of 4/14 while Ahmad claimed 4/33. Afghanistan will meet former champions Australia in the semi-finals.
The Afghan innings was off to an excellent start as Rahmanullah and Zadran put on an opening partnership of 117 runs in 20.4 overs. This was the biggest opening stand for Afghanistan at the U-19 level. Pacer Sandeep Patel struck the first blow for New Zealand when he bowled Rahmanullah in the 21st over. Rahmanullah scored 69 runs off 67 balls with seven boundaries and three sixes. When left-arm spinner Felix Murray pulled off a stunning caught and bowled effort in the 24th over to send back Ikram Ali Khil, it seemed like the Kiwis had brought the situation under control. But Shah joined Zadran in the middle and the duo proceeded to add 47 runs between them. Zadran posted a patient innings of 68 runs off 98 balls while Shah remained unbeaten on 67 off 72 deliveries. Patel proved to be the partnership breaker once again when he sent Zadran back to the pavilion. The fall of another couple of wickets seemed to have stalled the Afghans' momentum. But a quickfire 66 off just 23 balls by Azmatullah Omarzai and his 79-run stand with Shah helped the Afghans to a big total. Omarzai's innings was studded with three boundaries and seven sixes. In reply, the Kiwis never really managed to get their run chase going as they lost wickets at regular intervals. The Afghans struck early blows to reduce the hosts to 20/4 in the seventh over. The only bright spot of the Kiwi innings was a 66-run stand between Dale Phillips and Katene Clarke, who made the Afghans wait for almost 19 overs for their fifth wicket. Clarke was the highest scorer for New Zealand with 38 runs off 56 balls while Phillips scored 31 runs off 32 deliveries. But once Phillips was trapped leg before by Ahmed in the 20th over, it was virtually all over for the Kiwis. Brief scores: Afghanistan: 309/6 in 50 overs (Rahmanullah 69, Ibrahim Zadran 68, Baheer Shah 67 not out, Azmatullah Omarzai 66; Sandeep Patel 2/13) vs New Zealand: 107 in 28.1 overs (Katene Clarke 38, Dale Phillips 31; Mujeeb Zadran 4/14, Qais Ahmad 4/33).
Moscow: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not humiliating Russia by inviting to the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea only clean athletes, IOC President Thomas Bach has said. Vice President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Stanislav Pozdnyakov announced on Tuesday that the national committee received a list from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of the invited national athletes to the 2018 Winter Games and the list did not contain many athletes, including the team's leaders such as 2014 Olympic Champion in biathlon Anton Shipulin, two-time World Champion in cross-country skiing Sergey Ustyugov and six-time Olympic Champion in short track speed skating Viktor Ahn, reports tass news agency on Wednesday. Addressing a telephonic news conference on Wednesday, Bach said that the IOC decisions from December 5 were aimed at creating a balance and was not intended to humiliate Russia.
Bach said the IOC is "not humiliating Russia and the Russian athletes by giving clean Russian athletes the opportunity to participate, by giving young and new generation of clean Russian athletes the opportunity to head to the Olympic Games and to be ambassadors for new and clean Russian sport." The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) earlier provided the IOC with the list of Russian athletes, who intended to go to the Winter Games. After that the IOC Invitation Review Panel, chaired by ex-sports minister of France and the Chairperson of the ITA (International Testing Agency), Valerie Fourneyron, picked up from the list the names of athletes, whom the IOC would invite to the 2018 Olympic Games. On December 5, the IOC Executive Board announced its decision to suspend the whole Russian national team from taking part in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea's PyeongChang over multiple doping abuse allegations. The IOC, however, stated that doping-free athletes from Russia might go to the 2018 Olympic Games under the classification of neutral athletes, or the OAR status, which stands for 'Olympic Athlete from Russia.' The IOC reserved the right to the final word in regard to Russian athletes, who will go to PyeongChang under the neutral status.
Lisbon: Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo is scheduled to open his first Perstana CR7 hotel in Marrakech, Morroco, in Africa in 2019, Chief Development Officer of Pestana Hotel Group Jose Roquette announced here. The Pestana CR7 Lifestyle Hotels is a joint venture set up by Ronaldo and Portugal's largest hotel chain where CR7 represents Cristiano Ronaldo's shirt number, reports Xinhua news agency. "We are delighted to be a part of this project. Two CR7 hotels, one in Ronaldo's home town of Madeira Islands and another in Lisbon, capital of Portugal, have been in operation and two more will also be opened in Madrid and New York in the near future.
Marrakech is a successful and increasingly sophisticated destination, the perfect environment for the implementation of Lifestyle and Boutique hotel brands," Roquette said. "We are very excited about M Avenue's alliance with Cristiano Ronaldo and the Pestana Hotel Group. M Avenue is all about creating unique experiences and discovering new talents, so we are very happy to welcome the amazing talent Cristiano Ronaldo and the Pestana CR7 Lifestyle Hotels to the new destination M Avenue in Marrakech," said Nabil Slitine, CEO of Downtown Hotel Corporation/M Avenue. The CR7 hotel on M Avenue in the centre of Marrakech will have 168 rooms with two restaurants, a business centre, a fitness centre, a spa and a swimming pool.
Pyeongchang: Australia has revealed its team for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games that will compete in South Korea. More than 40 Australians will compete in a total of 16 events at the games, which will begin on February 9. These events include bobsleigh, alpine skiing, speed skating and luge, reports Xinhua news agency. Ian Chesterman, Chef de Mission of the Australian team, said it was the most accomplished Winter Olympics team in Australia's history with the athletes having won 54 World Cup medals between them.
The team also boasts two current world champions; Britt Cox in mogul skiing and Scotty James in the half pipe snowboard. "Pyeongchang is ready, our athletes are excited and the focus is on the final days of preparation before the Team starts to arrive in South Korea next week," Chesterman said in an Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) media release on Thursday. Chesterman says that the team is "a great cross-section of sports on the winter program", something the AOC values quite highly. "Having taken a really young team to Sochi there are a number of returning Olympians that will benefit from that experience, while there are also a number of Olympic debutants that are the future of their sports, which is also great to see," Chesterman said. Chesterman also said that the team shows that winter sport in Australia "is in really good shape". For Lydia Lassila, a two-time Olympic medalist in aerial freestyle skiing, the games in Pyeongchang will be her fifth Winter Olympics. "I never dreamed of going to five Olympics or having a career this long," the 36-year-old mother-of-two said.
Pyeongchang: The first group of North Korean athletes arrived in South Korea on Thursday to participate as a joint team with the South in the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games, an official said. The 12 ice hockey players would join South Korean players in a team that would represent the two Koreas for the first time since 1991, Efe news reported. The delegation entered South Korea passing through the Korean Demilitarised Zone at 9.21 a.m., the South Korean Unification Ministry said in a statement. The group, consisting of three technicians and eight officials, besides the players, entered the South after spending 10 minutes passing through the customs, immigration and quarantine procedures in Paju Town, the gateway town. The decision, however, has generated discontent in the South.
The South Koreans consider it unfair for their national team to give minutes of the game to the athletes from the North, whose team has not qualified for PyeongChang. After years of disagreement and tension over Pyongyang's nuclear programmes, the decision to field the joint team was agreed upon earlier in January between the two Koreas, following "historic" talks between the two sides on January 9 after a gap of more than two years. The leaders are of the opinion that this approach could contribute to facilitating a future dialogue on Pyongyang's denuclearisation. Both the Koreas would also parade together under a unified flag at the opening ceremony. Seoul had asked the South Korean public to show support for the initiative and avoid demonstrations like the one on Monday here, when North Korean flags and photos of Kim Jong-un were burned. Along with the group of athletes and technicians, a delegation of eight senior officials of the North Korean Sports Ministry also travelled to South Korea on Thursday.
Source: News Agency
Pyeongchang: With the PyeongChang Winter Olympics just around the corner, organisers said Thursday the two athletes' villages are ready to greet participants, with visitors expected to start moving in this week. While official welcoming ceremonies will start on February 1, advance teams from different countries will move to the villages starting Friday, the PyeongChang Organising Committee for the 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games said, reports Yonhap news agency. South Korea prepared two villages for the 2018 Winter Games, with the PyeongChang Village serving athletes performing at snow events in the host town of PyeongChang, located 180 kms east of Seoul, and nearby Jeongseon.
Athletes performing in ice events such as hockey and skating will be accommodated in the Gangneung Olympic Village, east of PyeongChang. The PyeongChang Village has eight 15-story buildings, which amounts to 600 units. The Gangneung counterpart has nine 25-story buildings, or 922 units. The villages will have various facilities for athletes, including banks, post offices, convenience stores, laundry rooms, gyms and religious centers. The committee is also planning to host various cultural events, including dance performances, to entertain athletes during their stay. The organising committee added that athletes are allowed to take the blankets in their rooms back home as gifts. The special blankets are inscribed with pictograms of different winter sports.
SYDNEY: Batsman Glenn Maxwell has been recalled to the Australian squad as cover for Aaron Finch, who was ruled out of Friday's fourth one-day international against England in Adelaide with a hamstring injury. Maxwell, who has played 80 ODIs for his country and can be one of the most destructive batsmen in world cricket on his day, was surprisingly left out when the squad was announced earlier this month.
Captain Steve Smith and chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns had said at the time he needed to be more consistent at the international level to get back into the team. The 29-year-old last played for the one-day side on the tour of India last September. Finch will be assessed ahead of the fifth ODI in Perth on Sunday. England have an unassailable 3-0 lead in the series.
Kolkata: ATK interim coach Ashley Westwood is confident that his team can still defend their title in the Hero Indian Super League. ATK are the most successful team in the Hero ISL winning the trophy twice in three years. This year, the defending champions have stuttered and are placed eighth with 12 points from 10 matches. The lacklustre showing led to the mutual parting of ways between ATK and chief coach Teddy Sheringham but Westwood believes their season is far from over.
The challenge for ATK would be to improve on their victories this season; they have won just three of their 10 matches and Westwood will have his task cut out against Chennaiyin FC at Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan, Kolkata, on Thursday.
“We don’t have lot of time to instil massive difference. Hope we can inject a little bit of freshness, new faces can change things a bit,” said Westwood.
Westwood needs no introduction and remains a popular figure in Indian football due to his successful three-year stint with Bengaluru FC. Taking charge of an ISL team, although temporarily, is a new experience for him but he is ready for the challenge.
“Temporarily, I am in charge. I’ve been a head coach before, coached for four years; three years full time in India, so I don’t see any difficulty. I am confident in what I do and confident in the team. This is part and parcel of football. It's not difficult at all,” said Westwood, who confirmed that star striker Robbie Keane is unavailable for this match due to injury.
It will be baptism by fire for Westwood in the ISL as ATK face Chennaiyin FC, who are placed second with 20 points from 11 matches and have already won more than double the matches what ATK did.
Chennaiyin FC coach John Gregory returns to take charge of the team after serving a three-match ban. The visitors lost their last match against NorthEast United FC and Gregory is hoping that there is no revival at ATK with Ashley taking charge.
“Sometimes these kind of things happen. New guy comes in and suddenly everything changes. We saw what happened at NorthEast couple of weeks ago. My good friend Avram Grant came in and they got an amazing victory against FC Goa. Sometimes it works and sometimes doesn’t. I just have to make sure it doesn’t work (for ATK),” said Gregory.
Gregory was full of praise for ATK’s achievements since the start of the season and was looking forward to the huge clash.
“To me and all my players, we look at ATK like the Manchester United of India. It’s a huge club. Obviously, they have been champions twice. We have been champions once (but) we still look up to ATK. 25 players want to play tomorrow night because it’s ATK. They are fired up. At the start of season when the fixtures come out, the first thing I did was ‘when do we play ATK’. That’s what they do in England; ‘when do we play Manchester United’,” said the Chennaiyin FC coach.
When the teams met in the first leg at home, Chennaiyin FC won 3-2 in a match that has been described by the former England midfielder and Premier League manager as “one of the most exciting game of my complete career.”
The Indian batsmen may have been dismissed for a paltry total in the first innings of the third cricket Test against South Africa here on Wednesday, but Cheteshwar Pujara is confident that the visitors are still in with a chance. The visitors continued their poor show with the bat in the first two Tests and were bundled out for 187 runs on the opening day at the Wanderers Stadium here. Pujara, dismissed on 50, was one of only three Indian batsmen along with skipper Virat Kohli (54) and Bhuvneshwar Kumar (30) to reach double figures.
However, with the Proteas losing opener Aiden Markram early in their first innings, Pujara asserted that a fighting performance by the Indian pacers may prove to be crucial. "It was one of the toughest pitches I've batted on. I really had to work hard to score runs. Overall, we batted well. The runs on the board are sufficient and we can bowl them out. I think it's a good batting effort at the end of the day," Pujara told the media at the end of the day's play. Kohli and Pujara struck contrasting half centuries as they added 84 runs between them in an attempt to bail out their team. Pointing out that the pitch is not easy to bat on, Pujara opined that the South African batsmen will struggle to score as well. "A lot of deviation and it was initially very slow, but there was enough bounce in the pitch. There was a lot of lateral movement and a lot of deviation off the cracks. This was tougher than the Cape Town surface. We were just surviving out there," he said.
London: Arsenal fought back from a goal down against old foes Chelsea to reach the League Cup final as Granit Xhaka poked home to complete a 2-1 second-leg win on Wednesday that set up a Wembley showdown with Manchester City. Nothing separated the sides after the semi-final’s first leg at Stamford Bridge ended goalless two weeks ago, but the stalemate was swiftly broken as Chelsea took the lead through Eden Hazard after seven minutes at the Emirates Stadium. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has faced perennial questions about his side’s steel in the face of adversity, but these were swept away as they levelled five minutes later through a fortuitous Antonio Rudiger own goal before they turned the match on its head.
Midfielder Xhaka turned predator 15 minutes after halftime to finish from close range and Arsenal stayed rock-solid at the back for the rest of the game to set up an enticing final against Premier League leaders City on Feb. 25. Arsenal had been under the cosh for much of the first half but they came out after the break a changed side, taking the game to their visitors. “In the first half we gave Chelsea too much respect and distance. We were a bit scared to go for it,” said Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who has never won the League Cup. “We were not playing in the right position but we amended that in the second half and took control of the game.” The sides were meeting for the fifth time this season and it was clear that familiarity had bred a certain degree of contempt as the tackles flew in during a fiercely contested opening.Arsenal had lost only one of their previous seven games against Chelsea, but were quickly under pressure as Hazard put the visitors ahead, calmly stroking the ball past David Ospina after Chelsea carved open the hosts’ backline. The Emirates was subdued as Chelsea controlled the ball but a fortuitous leveller after 12 minutes brought the home crowd back to life and sparked Arsenal’s revival. A deep corner was met by Nacho Monreal whose header cannoned off the head of Marcos Alonso before ricocheting of Rudiger to leave Chelsea keeper Willy Caballero stranded. Chelsea were hit with an injury blow when Willian was forced off with what looked like a hamstring problem after 29 minutes and his departure handed a debut off the bench to Ross Barkley. That seemed to shift momentum in Arsenal’s favour as the hosts finished the first half on the front foot, with Mesut Ozil seeing an effort deflected just wide, before they grabbed the lead shortly after the break. Lacazette’s pull back was deflected off Rudiger into the path of Xhaka, who stuck out a leg and poked the ball past Caballero from close range. From that moment on Chelsea barely created a chance as Arsenal stayed resolute at the back and sharp on the counter, with the best opening falling to Alex Iwobi whose effort from 15 metres was saved by the legs of Caballero. It was Chelsea’s first defeat since Dec. 9, yet they have now failed to win six out of their last seven games, if you discount their penalty shootout win over Norwich in the FA Cup.
JAKARTA: Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu made a positive start to the new season, reaching the second round of the USD 350,000 Indonesia Masters with contrasting wins in women's singles here on Wednesday. London Olympics bronze medallist Saina, who is coming back from an ankle injury, had to dig deep into her reservoir to eke out a 22-24, 21-15, 21-14 win over China's world no.7 Chen Yufei in a match that lasted an hour and nine minutes. Olympic silver medallist Sindhu, on the other hand, didn't sweat much as she dumped local hope Hanna Raramdini 21 -13, 21-10.
Saina will face China's Chen Xiaoxin, while Sindhu takes on Malaysia's Goh Jin Wei in the next round on Thursday. Saina fought back from 4-9 down to claw back at 16-16 before leading 20-17. But Chen erased the deficit to grab the opening game. The Indian led 7-4 before holding a slender 11-10 at the break. She stepped up and soon bounced back to win the second game. In the decider, Saina and Chen fought hard before the Indian broke off at 12-12 to walk away with the match. Young men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty also crossed the opening hurdle after dispatching eighth seeded Japanese pair of Takuto Inque and Yuki Kaneko 21-15, 21-17 to set up a clash with Chinese Taipei's Liao Min Chun and Su Ching Heng in the second round.
LANSING: The disgraced long-time USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced on Wednesday to up to 175 years in prison for molesting young female gymnasts, following days of wrenching testimony in a Michigan courtroom from about 160 of his victims, including Olympic gold medalists. "I just signed your death warrant," Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina told Nassar in imposing the penalty, after delivering a searing rebuke of his years of abuse. "It is my honor and privilege to sentence you because you do not deserve to walk outside of a prison ever again."
Some victims dabbed their eyes after Aquilina spoke, although the audience obeyed the judge's instruction to remain quiet following her pronouncement. Nassar, 54, pleaded guilty in November to seven counts of first-degree sex assault in Ingham County, as well as three additional charges in Eaton County, where he will be sentenced next week. He is already serving a 60-year sentence in federal prison for child pornography convictions. Before the sentence was announced, Nassar apologized to his victims, telling them, "I will carry your words with me for the rest of my days."
Source: News Agency
