Anil Kumble remains confident that the Royal Challengers Bangalore can reach the semi-finals of the Champions League Twenty20 despite suffering a second successive loss in the group stage.
The Mumbai Indians beat Bangalore by two runs in a dramatic match at Kingsmead on Sunday night, leaving the Challengers needing to beat the Highveld Lions in the last match in Group B in Johannesburg tomorrow.
The Lions and Mumbai both have four points from two wins. A Bangalore win will put them level on points but they have a superior run rate to both their rivals.
However, Bangalore will have to overcome an enthusiastic Lions side who will be playing on their home ground at the Wanderers Stadium.
The Lions scored an easy nine-wicket win over tournament whipping boys Guyana in front of an enthusiastic crowd at the Wanderers earlier on Sunday, prompting Lions captain Alviro Petersen to say: “The guys play for each other ... with this crowd behind us we can go all the way.”
Bangalore appeared to have taken control of their match against Mumbai with what seemed a superb tactical plan. Fast bowler Dale Steyn was held back until the eleventh over in order to counter the threat of big-hitting West Indian Kieron Pollard.
The plan worked to perfection when Steyn had Pollard caught for a duck to reduce Mumbai to 84 for five after 13 overs. Steyn had figures of two for six after five balls of his third over.
However, the match turned around dramatically as Dwayne Bravo and Sourabh Tiwary put on 64 off only 34 balls, with Steyn conceding 20 runs off his last seven balls.
Bravo fell to Steyn in the 19th over after hitting 29 off 17 balls. Steyn finished with three for 26, Tiwary made 38 not out as Mumbai reached 165 for seven.
Bravo followed up by taking two for 23 in an unbroken four-over spell which pegged back the Bangalore scoring rate.
Bangalore needed 70 off the last seven overs and 28 off the last two. It proved just too much despite an unbeaten 71 off 58 balls by Rahul Dravid and an explosive 47 off 24 balls by Virat Kohli, who was caught off the last ball, bowled by Zaheer Khan, as he tried to hit the winning runs.
For Mumbai, their winning form almost certainly came too late. They lost their first two matches but won their next two.
Mumbai captain Sachin Tendulkar admitted that run rate would probably scupper his team’s chances.
“It’s beyond our control,” he said.
Earlier the Lions cruised to victory as Guyana produced another disappointing performance. Opening bowler Ethan O’Reilly took four for 27 as Guyana struggled to 148 for nine.
Petersen (57 not out) and hard-hitting Richard Cameron (78 not out) took the Lions to victory with 4.5 overs to spare.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier