Sporting Bonanza

The weekend which has just passed was bonanza for Tennis and Cricket fans with Wimbledon  and Cricket World Cup finals. And on Sunday (14^th July) Men’s final at Wimbledon  and Cricket World Cup final at Lords ( both venue in London), both went to full distance and till last minute no one could predict who will be the winner.

Wimbleden  Over the weekend both women’s and men’s finals were played. There was one common factor in both these finals and that was, the favourite players to win in both the finals were past 37 years of age and in few months both would complete 38 years of age. In the ladies finals Serena Williams of USA was hot favourite to win the title, and so far she has won 23 Grand Slam titles and if she would have won Wimbledon title then she would have equalled the record of Margaret Court of Australia, who had won 24 Grand Slam titles in her playing career. But on Saturday in the finals against Simona Halep, Serena Williams never knew what hit her ,She was totally demolished by Simona in one sided final and the match did not last even an hour, it was over in 56 minutes with score line reading 6-2 6-2 in Simona’s favour. Simona did not gave any chance to Serena to stage her famous come back. It was remarkable display of tennis by Simona Halep and all over the world tennis fans were left wondering how a frail looking 27 year old girl who is not even 5’6’’ tall could play such a powerful game to leave Serena Williams thinking what  is happening to her. In the complete duration of match not even once it looked like that Serena will come back or give a tough fight to Simona. It has been said this was one of the shortest women’s final in the modern history of Wimbledon.

In contrast men’s final was the longest final ever played in Wimbledon, it lasted 4 hours and 57 minutes. Here Roger Federar was favourite to win the title, here also emotionally spectators all over the world wanted him to win his 21^st Grand Slam title,  actually with 20 Grand Slam title also he holds the record for the max Grand Slam titles by a male player. He wanted to prove that at this age also he is capable of winning Grand Slam titles, but yesterday luck did not favour him and in a great match he lost the match to Novak Djkovic in five sets. The first four sets were even, with 1^st and 3^rd set won by Djkovic and 2^nd and 4^th set won by Federar. With new rule for the 5^th set in Wimbledon, tie breaker would come into force after the score are levelled at 12-12 in the final set. The match went to full distance and after the score was tied at 12-12 in the final set, the tie breaker started and Djkovic won the tie breaker by the score of 7-3. Before tie breaker came into play Federar had 2 Championship points  when he was serving at 8-7 when he reached 40-15 on his serve and he had to win just one point from next 2 points and title would have been his. But Djkovic won the next 4 points to level the score at 8-8 and then rest is history. It has happened first time in Wimbledon finals that a player after having 2 championship points loses the game. I do not know whether Federar will get one more chance to add to his kitty of 20 Grand Slam titles. One more thing with Rafael Nadal with 18 Grand Slam titles and Novak Djokovic with 16 Grand Slam titles, it looks like in near future either Nadal or Djkovic might be able to equal/break record of 20 Grand Slam titles.

Cricket- World Cup Finals  With top 2 teams  from the league table India and Australia losing in the Semi finals, it was England and New Zealand clashed in the finals at Lords on Sunday (14^th July). New Zealand won the toss and opted to bat first .Due to pitch and weather conditions they played very cautiously and could reach only 241 for 8 in their allotted 50 overs, with major contributions of Nocholls (55) and Latham (47), from England bowlers Chrish Woakes took 3 for 37 and Liam Plunkett 3 for 42. England also started not very convincingly and they were 4 down for 86, then Ben Stokes and Joe Butler batted sensibly and added 110 runs. By the end of 49^th over they were 227 for 8. In the last over 15 were needed but England were all out for 241 on the last ball of the innings, when batsman going for winning run was run out. In the last over they had luck in their favour when Stokes hit the ball in the boundary region where it was fielded by Guptill, in the meantime Stoke was coming back for 2^nd run, he dived at crease to prevent himself from getting out from Guptill’s throw, but when he dived the ball, which was thrown by Guptill, hit his bat and ball crossed the boundary line and so thus instead of getting 2 runs, he got 6 runs. If this would not have happened NZ would have won the match, but it was not so. From England side Stokes (84 not out) and Butler (59) were main scorers, from NZ bowlers Fergussan took 3 for 50 and Neesham 3 for 43 were wicket taking bowlers.As per rules the match went to Super over, where England batting first scored 15 runs and in reply NZ could also make 15 runs, as on the last ball while attempting for 2^nd run which would have given NZ victory, the batsman was run out. So again there was tie, and as per rule as England had hit more boundaries in the match, so they were the winner. In my opinion the rule is very unfair to the losing side, in fact rule should be such that in these type of cases the teams should either play one more super over to decide the winner or both the teams should be declared as joint winners.

Waiting for your comments/views/feed backs.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

15^th Jul 2019.

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