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...