South Africa captain Dean Elgar on Thursday looked to play down praise for his match-winning performance, but said beating India to win the second Test was a significant step forward for his young team.
Elgar scored an unbeaten 96, weathering a storm of hostile India bowling, to guide his side to a seven-wicket win at the Wanderers in Johannesburg and square the series.
“It hasn’t really sunk in yet, but we’ve fought long and hard for this,” the Proteas skipper told an online news conference after the victory. “The last four days have pushed us to different levels within our team and the guys have responded brilliantly. It’s great to know that we’ve accomplished another Test win.”
Photo: AFP
Elgar, 34, took over last year as captain of a side in transition after the retirement of many top players such as Hashim Amla, A.B. de Villiers, Faf du Plessis and Dale Steyn, leaving a young replacement side in its wake.
“I’m always team over performance. I don’t play for accolades, I don’t play for the personal gain out of this game,” Elgar said. “I play for my teammates and winning. Luck was on my side, as I was the person that’s got us over the line.”
“It’s a nice feeling knowing that you’ve contributed in a big way. I think it means a hell of a lot for me when it comes to influencing our environment and leading from the front,” he said. “I think it makes it a lot easier for guys to follow you and actually trust what you’re saying in the changing room.”
The deciding match is in Cape Town starting on Tuesday.
AUSTRALIA V ENGLAND
Reuters, SYDNEY
Johnny Bairstow yesterday scored England’s first century of the series as the tourists staged a fightback after a torrid start to the third day of the fourth Ashes Test, but Australia remained in command with a lead of 158 at the close of play.
Bairstow’s gutsy 103 not out helped his side to 258-7 in reply to Australia’s 416-8 declared, a position that looked highly unlikely when England limped battered and bruised to lunch on 36-4.
The 32-year-old steadied the innings in a 128-run partnership with Ben Stokes for the fifth wicket and continued to defy the Australia bowlers when the all-rounder departed for 66.
He suffered a painful blow to the thumb from a Pat Cummins delivery, but soldiered on to bring up his seventh Test century a few minutes before stumps when he slapped a delivery from the Australia captain to the boundary for a four.
Stokes enjoyed a major stroke of luck on 16 when a Cameron Green delivery thumped into his stump, but failed to shift the bail. He survived after a Decision Review System (DRS) review to bring up his 25th half-century just before tea.
He hit nine fours and a six before walking when he was trapped leg before wicket by Nathan Lyon.
Cummins then got his first wicket of the match to dismiss Jos Buttler for a duck and his second after a DRS review detected a touch of Mark Wood’s bat before it was caught by Lyon.
Bairstow is to resume today with Jack Leach, who was 4 not out.
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