World Sports

The 'thick' friendship between cricketer Harbhajan Singh and actress Shilpi Sharma (of Jo Bole So Nihaal fame) is the talk of the town. News is that this budding friendship has already reached the next level, which for obvious reasons, the duo won't accept. The news making the rounds is that Harbhajan has been continuously sending SMSs to Shilpi to come to South Africa and see him in action on the field. Shilpi maintains that he's 'just a friend' and not someone special. "Yes, I don't deny the fact that we've been friends for almost a year and he wants me to come to South Africa to cheer for him and his team. Is there anything wrong with that?" she says. Remind her that just a year ago, Bhajji was linked with another actress, Geeta Basra and she retorts, "What? I've never heard of such rumours." Ask her when she is planning to go to cheer for Bhajji, she replies, "I was to go but due to some prior commitments, I couldn't...

Lalit Modi Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, has said there is a possibility that the tactical time-out in the middle of each team's innings could be changed from one interval of seven and a half minutes to two breaks of two and a half minutes each for the semi-finals and final of the second season of the IPL. "It's not frozen yet but we are looking at two aspects. There will be two two- and-a-half-minutes break per innings, so the break in all during an innings will be of five minutes," Modi told NDTV. "The first two-and-a-half-minute break will be just after the Powerplay [6 overs] and the second to be taken by the fielding side at any time. "It happens in every sport, there is a strategy break and everything. But 7.5 minutes may look like a bit longer, so we are seeing how we can reduce it down to five minutes" However, he said that the idea was yet to be ratified by the tournament's technical committee. The tactical time-out has played a part in...

Lalit Modi The Indian Premier League (IPL) on Tuesday launched a controversial SMS game asking fans to predict the scores of a live match. The winners will get cash awards. According to the rules of the game, the entrant will have to send the runs that will be scored off every ball of the next over (for example 3 2 4 2 6 6, like in a lottery ticket) and the people guessing six, five or four numbers in the sequence correctly will get a percentage of the kitty generated by the total number of people playing at that time. The minimum prize money for every over is Rs 10,000 and will increase after that, depending on the entries received, at Rs 5 per SMS. While the early reaction from experts is that this is a form of online cricket betting, which is illegal in India, IPL commissioner Lalit Modi denied it. "It's only about texting. Anyway, there is a lot of texting going back and forth, discussing the game. This is very similar to that, discussing the game amongst friends," he...

Indian cricketer and former captain Rahul Dravid has broken the world record for the number of catches in Test matches by an outfielder. When Dravid helped to dismiss the New Zealand batsman, Tim McIntosh, in Wellington, it was his 182nd catch in a Test career going back to 1996. Dravid's landmark was reached on the fourth day of India's third Test match against New Zealand at Wellington. The previous record holder was Mark Waugh of Australia. Dravid, 36, is now clearly ahead of Ricky Ponting (148 catches in 131 Tests), Jacques Kallis (147 catches in 131) and Mahela Jayawardene (142 catches in 102) among current players. "Dravid has spent a lifetime in Sachin Tendulkar's shadow and the big batting records - centuries, number of runs scored - were never going to be his, but he is quite on his own in the slips," according to Sambit Bal, editor of a cricket website. Last year, Dravid became only the sixth batsman in history to score 10,000 Test runs. He has compiled ...

Virender Sehwag was named the Wisden cricketer of the year and along with his skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar and two other Indians, the opener was included in this year's Wisden Test XI. Pace spearhead Zaheer Khan and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh are the two members of the Indian team who were included in the Test XI which will be captained by wicket-keeper batsman Dhoni. The 146th edition of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, which was launched today, reflects on 12 months in which Twenty20 has continued to reshape the game and cricket, in general, has been forced to confront a range of major challenges. Meanwhile, Claire Taylor, England's leading run-scorer in her team's successful World Cup campaign this year, has become the first woman to be named as one of the five cricketers of the year by the annual Wisden almanac. The other four honoured are England pacer James Anderson, South African Dale Benkenstein, Mark Boucher and Neil McKenzie....

Sunil Gavaskar South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis became the eighth batsman in the history of Test cricket to score 10,000 career runs on the second day of the first Test match against Australia in Johannesburg on February 27, 2009. Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar was the first batsman ever to achieve this feat. Gavaskar got to the landmark in the penultimate Test match of his career against Pakistan in March 1987 at Ahmedabad. Sunny is now the fifth fastest batsman in terms of innings -- 212 -- to get to 10,000 Test runs. He finished his Test career with 10,122 runs in 214 Test innings (125 matches) at an average of 51.12 with a highest score of 236*. Gavaskar scored 34 centuries and 45 half-centuries in his Test career. Allan Border Former Australian captain Allan Border was important to his team as much for his batting as he was for his leadership skills. Border took over when the Australian cricket team was going through a transition phase, and set the wheels in motion fo...

The 2009 Indian Premier League will now take place in South Africa. Security concerns in India forced organisers to seek an alternative host, with England a possible destination. But IPL boss Lalit Modi opted for South Africa following talks with Cricket South Africa (CSA), ultimately because of the favourable weather conditions. The tournament, which will feature 59 matches across six venues, will start a week later than planned, running from 18 April to 24 May. The opening match will be played in Cape Town, while Johannesburg will stage the final, with Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London also venues for matches. "We are very happy to confirm that South Africa will host the 2009 Indian Premier League tournament," said Modi. "The South African public loves Twenty20 cricket and CSA successfully hosted the inaugural ICC World Twenty20. Both these factors weighed heavily in South Africa's favour." CSA chief executive Gerald Majola expressed his delight...

IPL 2009 will kick off at the Newlands Stadium in Cape Town on April 18 while the final will be held at the Wanderers in Johannesburg on May 24 according to the new schedule. The semi-finals meanwhile are to be held on May 22 and 23 in Pretoria and Johannesburg respectively. In a double header on the first day, last year's winners Rajasthan Royals will take on the Bangalore Royal Challengers, Bangalore, while the Mumbai Indians would clash with the first edition's runners-up Chennai Super Kings at Cape Town. In all, the 59 matches will be held in eight cities: Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Pretoria, East London, Kimberly, Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth. Kingsmead in Durban, which has a large number of South Asians, has been allotted the lion's share of 16 matches while the Centurion Park in Pretoria will host 12 ties. The Wanderers in Johannesburg and Newlands in Cape Town will hold eight matches each, with the latter playing host to four of these on the first two days ...

Tiger Woods came from five strokes behind to overhaul fellow American Sean O'Hair and win his 66th PGA Tour title by a shot at the Arnold Palmer invitational Orlando on Sunday. Playing only his third tournament since returning from reconstructive knee surgery, Woods completed a record sixth victory at Bay Hill Club by dramatically sinking a 16-foot birdie putt on the final hole in fading light. The American world number one, who had been sidelined for eight months following his previous Tour win at the US Open in June, matched his biggest final-round comeback on the circuit. In 2000, he overhauled a five-shot deficit after 54 holes to win the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Woods finally caught the pacesetting O'Hair with a birdie at the par-four 15th and claimed the outright lead for the first time when his playing partner bogeyed 16 after hitting his approach into water. Although Woods stumbled on 17, where his tee shot ended up under the lip of a greenside bunker, he calmly ro...

The drama surrounding the future of the second Indian Premier League is over. The India government has left BCCI with no option but to shift IPL out of India. England or South Africa will host IPL 2. While it’s disappointing for fans but franchisees aren’t complaining. After all, there is lots at stake for them. We give you reactions from the owners of Rajasthan Royals and Kings’ XI Punjab. Shetty had recently acquired a stake in the Royals while Preity, along with her millionaire beau Ness Wadia owns the Punjab team. Says Preity, “Elections are the number one priority in this country. We want to have this tournament to happen too so this is a good decision as every fan will still get to see it at 4.00 and 8.00 pm. We will follow whatever the BCCI and IPL will ask us to do.” Meanwhile, Shetty had this to say. “I am in London at the moment and the news that we received at the owners conference is disappointing not just for the franchisees but also all the Indian cricket fans, given the ...

Dhoni has a new girl in his life, and it seems that it's love at last. Sakshi Singh Rawat, a 20-year-old third year student of Hotel Management at IHM, Aurangabad, who recently finished her training at the front office at Taj Bengal, met MS Dhoni at the post-party of Race at Bipasha Basu's house. She came as a guest of John Abraham's, a mutual friend. According to a source from Mumbai, "She attends all his hair-cutting sessions. Dhoni got his hair cut short because she likes short hair." Sources at the Aurangabad institute reveal further about their relationship. "She's a very sweet girl, she talks about nothing but Dhoni ;even her cellphone wallpaper is Dhoni. Her status on Facebook is 'in a relationship. ' The two even took an auto ride together when Dhoni had come to meet her here in Aurangabad. All that she talks about in college is Dhoni. " The blogs are abuzz with quotes from people who have spotted the couple together. One entry says, ...

History of Ping Pong - The game has its origins in England as an after-dinner amusement for upper-class Victorians in the 1880s. Mimicking the game of tennis in an indoor environment, everyday objects were originally enlisted to act as the equipment. A line of books would be the net, a rounded top of a Champagne cork or knot of string as the ball, and a cigar box lid as the bat. The popularity of the game led game manufacturers to sell the equipment commercially. Early bats were often pieces of parchment stretched upon a frame, and the sound generated in play gave the game its first nicknames of "whiff-whaff" and "Ping-pong." A number of sources indicate that the game was first brought to the attention of Hamley's of Regent Street under the name "Gossima". The name "ping-pong" was in wide use before English manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd trademarked it in 1901. The name "Ping-Pong" then came to be used for the game played by ...