Superstar Indian cricketer Virat Kohli yesterday flopped in his first domestic cricket match in more than a decade to the dismay of thousands who turned out to see him play.
International stars were ordered by India’s cricket board to return to domestic matches in a bid to lift their form following a soul-searching 3-1 series defeat in Australia.
Kohli, 36, and other team titans have made regular appearances in the lucrative Indian Premier League, but this week marked his return to the Ranji Trophy — the nation’s premier red-ball tournament — after a 12-year absence.
Photo: AFP
He strode in to bat for hosts Delhi on the second day of their match against Railways to roars and chants of his name from the stands.
After a circumspect start and a few play-and-misses on the off-side, Kohli drove fast bowler Himanshu Sangwan for a rasping straight drive to bring the crowd to its feet.
However, the joy was short-lived as the next ball went straight through his defense and the off-stump went cartwheeling with him on 6.
Dejected fans began making their way to the exit even as Kohli was walking back to the pavilion, and the stadium numbers soon dwindled from thousands to less than a few hundred.
India skipper Rohit Sharma had also faltered on his return to Ranji cricket last week when he scored just 3 off 19 balls for Mumbai.
Rohit and fellow opener Yashasvi Jaiswal opted out of this week’s match.
Both Kohli and Rohit have faced severe scrutiny over their batting struggles in Australia, with questions raised about their future in Test cricket.
Kohli scored an unbeaten century in the first Test match, but his other eight innings in the series produced just 90 runs in total.
Rohit, 37, who missed the only India win of the series in the first Test because of the birth of his second child, managed 31 runs in three matches.
India’s next Test assignment will be a tour to England for five matches starting in June.
When Paddy Dwyer arrived in China in 1976, crowds jostled to catch a glimpse of him and his companions — the first Western soccer team to play in the country. China was emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and on the brink of market reforms that would take the country from economic stagnation to explosive growth. “All we could see was lines of people running beside our bus, trying to look in the windows, to see their first visual of a white person,” he said. “It was all bicycles,” he said. “There were very few cars to be seen.” Dwyer,
A new NZ$683 million (US$404 million) stadium that was a symbol of Christchurch’s struggle to rebuild after a deadly earthquake struck the New Zealand city is to host its first match tomorrow in front of a sellout crowd. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed 185 people in February 2011 and toppled or damaged buildings, including the city’s old Lancaster Park. The stadium, which hosted international rugby and cricket, and was home to the Canterbury Crusaders, was badly damaged and never reopened. It was bulldozed in 2019 and turned into sports fields, leaving the Crusaders without a permanent home. Government funding for a new stadium was
Some of Clearlake Capital Group’s largest investors are growing increasingly concerned about how much time the company’s co-founders are spending on sports investments as they have struggled to complete the fundraising for the private equity firm’s latest flagship fund. One of Clearlake’s co-founders, Behdad Eghbali, has been spending what some investors described as a disproportionate amount of time on the firm’s investment in Chelsea Football Club in recent months. Now, co-founder Jose E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, are nearing a record US$3.9 billion deal to acquire the San Diego Padres. That personal investment by Feliciano has set off the latest
The Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburg Penguins on Wednesday put a squeeze on the penalty box in Game 3 of their NHL playoff series — with 11 players cramped inside their designated punishment areas. Each could have snapped a team photo after a melee broke out in the second period of the Flyers’ 5-2 win over the Penguins in their Eastern Conference first-round series. “It was a party in there,” penalized Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler said. The celebration extended into the joyous locker room after the Flyers took a 3-0 series lead. Penguins forward Bryan Rust slammed Travis Konecny to the ice behind the
RSS