Australia and Pakistan squeezed into the World Twenty20 semi-finals on Tuesday, as India and South Africa packed their bags after a topsy-turvy last round of Super Eight matches.
On an evening when run-rate calculations were paramount, Australia lost to Pakistan but still went through, while former champions India headed home, despite eking out a narrow, one-run win over South Africa.
Pakistan, the 2009 winners, will take on Sri Lanka in today’s first semi-final at Colombo’s Premadasa Stadium, while Australia clash with the West Indies tomorrow at the same venue. The final is scheduled to be played on Sunday.
Photo: AFP
In Tuesday’s first match, Australia, the dominant team in Group 2 with two successive wins, crashed to a surprise 32-run defeat to Pakistan after a five-man spin attack restricted them to 117-7 on a slow wicket.
India’s victory over winless South Africa later left them level with Australia and Pakistan on four points each, but a poor net run-rate ended the 2007 champions’ campaign.
India, who scored 152-6, needed to keep South Africa below 122 to go ahead of Pakistan’s run-rate, but the Proteas rode on a 38-ball 65 from Faf du Plessis to make 151 all out.
George Bailey’s Australia took the top spot in the group with a net run-rate of 0.46 against Pakistan’s 0.27, while India were third at minus-0.29.
India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said the nine-wicket defeat in the rain-affected game against Australia cost his team dearly.
“If you take that Australia game out, we performed brilliantly,” Dhoni said. “Overall, I am quite happy with how the team performed, but there were instances when we should have had 10-15 runs more on the board.”
South Africa captain A.B. de Villiers was devastated by the loss of all three games in the Super Eights.
“Disappointed is not the word to describe it, we’ve had a poor tournament,” De Villiers said. “We’ve let the country down and that’s what hurts the most. We did all the preparations possible, we thought we were ready, but the guys didn’t click.”
Pakistan’s prolific spinner Saeed Ajmal claimed 3-17, but it was 20-year-old Raza Hasan who was declared man of the match against Australia for conceding just 14 runs and taking two wickets in four overs of steady left-arm spin.
“I am grateful to see the effort put up by the boys today,” Pakistan captain Mohammad Hafeez said. “It was a big game for us and we needed to be at our best against a side like Australia. Once we got a good total, we knew we will do well because there was going to be help for the bowlers. Raza Hasan was brilliant, a great find for us.”
Australia, who have never won the World Twenty20 despite taking four World Cup titles in the 50-over game, had breezed through four consecutive matches in the tournament, before being halted by Pakistan.
“Pakistan outplayed us,” Bailey said. “The ball turned a lot more than before and they used spin against us very well. The challenge for us now will be to get the winning form back in the semis.”
Veteran Mike Hussey was Australia’s mainstay with an unbeaten 54 off 47 balls, as none of the other batsmen managed to get more than 15 against the rampaging spinners.
Australia, who needed to make 112 or more to qualify, achieved the target when Hussey cut seamer Umar Gul to the fence off the first ball of the final over.
Gul’s two overs at the end were the only ones by a seamer, as the spinners shared 18 overs between them.
Pakistan’s innings revolved around left-hander Nasir Jamshed’s 55 off 46 balls, which contained four boundaries and two sixes.
“I don’t remember the moment, but ever since I was a kid, that’s the first thing I loved,” two-time NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas said of his lifelong romance with basketball. However, that journey unfolded against the limitations of his size in a game where height often dictates opportunity — a reality he confronted throughout his career. At 175cm, Thomas is less than 2cm taller than the average Taiwanese adult male, while NBA players during his career stood at about 200cm on average. Compared with the NBA’s average career length of less than five years, Thomas’ 13-season career stands out as
Hans Niemann declares he would become a “stone cold killer” in a Netflix documentary released on Tuesday about his feud with five-time classical world champion Magnus Carlsen, a pledge that injects new edge into the lingering fallout from the cheating scandal that shook elite chess. “I’m gonna be a stone cold killer the rest of my life,” the US’ Niemann says in the film. “I’m going to become the best player in the world, and no one is going to believe that now, but this clip will play over and over again in 10 years — just wait.” “I just
Dakar and Rabat have longstanding ties, but relations have been strained since the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final, which Senegal won in mid-January before being stripped of the title, which was transferred to Morocco. Now, the AFCON trophy is something of a thorn in the two countries’ sides. On Rue Mohamed V, the street where Moroccan vendors are based in the Senegalese capital, a police van is parked. “The police have been on high alert since the Confederation of African Football [CAF] decided to award the title to Morocco, but there have been no incidents,” a local resident said.
OBJECTIVE REACHED: ’Now for us, it’s about getting healthy, making sure everybody is ready to go, and we can ramp up,’ the Atlanta Hawks’ C.J. McCollum said after the game The Atlanta Hawks on Friday secured an NBA playoff berth with a 124-102 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers as the Boston Celtics locked up the Eastern Conference second seed with a lopsided win of their own. C.J. McCollum scored a game-high 29 points for the Hawks, who came into the contest at sixth in the East and still in danger of falling into the play-in tournament that would see the seventh-through 10th-placed teams battle for the last two playoff berths in each conference. Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jalen Johnson scored 18 points apiece, and Dyson Daniels added a triple-double of 13
RSS