New Zealand snatched a nailbiting last ball victory over Sri Lanka yesterday after tail-end batsman James Franklin guided the hosts back from the brink of disaster in their one-day cricket international in Queenstown, New Zealand, on Saturday.
The Queenstown crowd erupted in celebration as No. 11 batsman Michael Mason found the boundary with a lofted drive off the last ball of the match.
Mason had been unable to score from any of the preceding five balls of the final over from spinner Sanath Jayasuriya.
But it was coolheaded Franklin who had put New Zealand in the position for victory with 45 crucial runs in the final overs and he had some valuable advice for his teammate before he faced the last ball.
"I just said to him whack the crap out of that last one, and he did," Franklin said later.
Sri Lankan skipper Mahela Jayawardene described Franklin's innings as the difference between the two teams yesterday and said his team had needed to score 15 to 20 runs more to set a decent target for New Zealand.
The victory leveled the series 1-1 with three matches to play after New Zealand scored 228-9 in their 50 overs in reply to Sri Lanka's 224-7.
The home side was always on the pace in terms of the required run rate but wickets fell regularly, leaving the tailenders with the task of finishing the job. Sri Lanka appeared to be in the box seat by the 38th over when New Zealand had been reduced to 175-7.
But Franklin kept his head along with the other tailenders, especially No. 10 Mark Gillespie (11), who successfully fended off a series of high speed yorkers from Sri Lankan paceman Lasith Malinga.
New Zealand appeared to be cruising to victory earlier but the introduction of super spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, who took 3-31 off his 10 overs, ensured the result continued to hang in the balance.
Opener James Marshall, who came into the match with a one-day international average of only five, gradually found his confidence to topscore for New Zealand with 50.
But his repeated risk-taking cost his own wicket when he ran himself out just after reaching his half century.
A mix-up between Marshall and Ross Taylor (15) had earlier seen Taylor run out just as the innings was starting to take off.
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