Chris Gayle became the first batsman to hit two centuries in the Indian Premier League when he smashed a 49-ball 107 in Royal Challengers Bangalore’s 85-run win against Kings XI Punjab on Friday.
The West Indies opener, who scored an unbeaten hundred against Kolkata Knight Riders last month, cracked nine sixes and 10 fours in a superb display of power-hitting to help Bangalore post a challenging 205-6.
Bangalore, with Gayle taking 3-21 with his off-spinners, then restricted Punjab to 120-9 for their fifth win in nine matches of the Twenty20 tournament. Seamer Sreenath Aravind took 4-14.
Photo: AFP
Punjab could never recover after losing four wickets, including those of hard-hitting Australians Adam Gilchrist and Shaun Marsh, for 34 runs in the opening six overs.
South Africa’s Ryan McLaren (28), Paul Valthaty (21) and Dinesh Karthik (20) were the main scorers in Punjab’s dismal batting performance.
Mumbai currently lead the 10-team league table with 14 points, followed by Kolkata (12), Chennai (12), Bangalore (11), Rajasthan (11), Kochi (10), Delhi (eight), Deccan (six), Punjab (six) and Pune (four).
Gayle went for big shots early in his innings, hitting Australian paceman Ryan Harris for two sixes in an over. His best came in the eighth over when he smashed two sixes and as many fours off seamer Praveen Kumar.
The opener, who raced to his half-century off just 28 balls, dominated a 111-run stand for the second wicket with Virat Kohli (27), before falling in the 15th over, caught at deep mid-wicket off leg-spinner Piyush Chawla.
South Africa’s A.B. de Villiers then hit an unbeaten 27 off 14 balls to help Bangalore cross the 200 mark.
Harris was the most successful bowler with 3-38, including two wickets off successive balls, while Chawla finished with 2-37.
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