Sport News

Today, I am writing on some interesting sport news.

Cricket– Last evening  International Cricket Council (ICC) declared their annual cricket Awards and Virat Kohli achieved what no other cricketer in  history till date could do. He was honoured with top 3 most coveted awards for the International Cricketer, and they are  Sir Garfield Trophy for the cricketer of the year, the best Test player of the year and the best ODI player of the year. The performance of Virat Kohli as a batsman during the year 2018 is so great that  it looked like he did not have any competition . He scored 1322 runs in 13 tests at the average of 55.08 with 5 centuries, in the process he became first Asian batsman to score century in South Africa, England and Australian in the same year. In the ODIs he scored 1202 runs at the average of  133.35 with 6 centuries. if you include the runs scored in T20 matches then he has scored 2735 runs during this year at the average of  68.4 The next best batsman at no.2 position is Joe Root of England with 1938 runs at the average of 46.1, at no 3 and and no. 4 are India’s Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma with 1887 runs (av 41) and 1804 runs (av 48.8). During last year he also scored the maximum overseas runs by  Indian Batsman, he scored 1138 runs in 11 tests, earlier record was held by Rahul David  1137 runs in 11 tests in 2002. As a captain his record during this year was 13 tests (won 6, Lost 7), In 14 ODIs (won 9, lost 4, tied 1) in 10 T20 (won 6, lost 3, NR 1). Virat was also named captain of ICC Test and ODI teams.Indian wicket Keeper Rishabh Pant won the Emerging player of the year award. Pant’s achievements during the year were he became the first Indian wicket keeper to score century against England and Australia in their country. He also became the first Indian wicket keeper to pull off 20 dismissal (all caught) in 4 test series in Australia.

Continuing with cricket it is being said in the IPL circle that Bachchans ( Amitabh & Abhishek) are keen to buy  stake in Rajasthan Royale franchise Suresh Chellaram & family, Suresh is Lalit Modi’s Co brother in law, are majority share holders in the franchise and they are in mood to off load their stakes in the franchise. It is the Chellaram’s family’s connection with  RR(after the exit of Lalit Modi) that’s been a bone of contention in BCCI. The RPG-Sanjiv Goenka group , who had earlier invested in Pune  franchise Rising Super Giants for a period of 2 years, have also shown interest in buying majority stakes in RR.  Deespite the keen interest shown by investors, the million dollar question is  if the BCCI- with its current administration- is equipped to handle any IPL related activity of this magnitude, because at present BCCI is being run by SC appointed Controllers of Administrations (COA), who are not expert in handling finance matters. So let us wait & watch for the further development.

Tennis- Serena Williams, who is trying to win her 24 th Grand Slam title , so that she can equal the record set by Margaret Court of Australia in 1970s failed once again in her attempt to do that today at Australian open. This is her 4th Grand slam after she resumed playing tennis after birth of her daughter last year.Today in her match with Karolina Pliskova she was leading with a score line of 4-6, 6-4,  and 5-1 in final set  with she missing 4 match points while serving for the match  twice and both the time she lost her serve, and in the end Pliskova won the final set at 7-5 after Serena saved 2 match points on Pliskova serve, but in the end the day belonged to Karolina Pliskova who staged the greatest come back of her career to end Serena’s dram of winning her 24th grand Slam.  It also mean that this year we will have a woman player who will  win her her first Australian Grand Slam

Waiting for your views/feed backs/comments.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

23rd Jan 2019.