Cricket

Kolkata Knight Riders won by nine wickets and with nine deliveries to spare. It shouldn't have been that easy but Gautam Gambhir and Jacques Kallis starred in a supremely well-paced chase as Kolkata successfully hunted down a potentially tough 160-run target on a sluggish track in Jaipur. The first game-seizing moment of the chase came in the sixth over, bowled by Amit Singh. Kolkata were 44 for 1 from five overs and it was obvious that they had to fully utilise the new ball and the Powerplay on this slow track. It was an over that could have tilted the game either way: Amit tried to keep it tight, Gambhir took risks, two shots eluded palms of fielders in the off side but not by much, and Gambhir looted 18 runs. He flat-batted the first ball past the diving Ross Taylor at extra cover, slashed the third past the diving Abhishek Raut at point, glanced the fourth to fine-leg, and crashed the final delivery over mid-off. The second turning point was Gambhir's cont...

Two weeks ago, the crowd at the Wankhede was delirious though a fervently anticipated Sachin Tendulkar century didn't materialise. On Friday, the same crowd went home dejected despite Tendulkar crafting his first Twenty20 century, as Kochi Tuskers Kerala busted their party with one of the most memorable chases in IPL history. Two of the world's finest Twenty20 batsmen, Brendon McCullum and Mahela Jayawardene, constructed chalk-and-cheese half-centuries to power Kochi's pursuit of 183. Both perished to Lasith Malinga's deadly deliveries but Kochi, who had stumbled in the final stretch of their first two games, didn't slip up this time as Ravindra Jadeja and Brad Hodge muscled boundaries to finish the game with an over to spare. Tendulkar's effort checked off another item on his ever-shrinking to-do list, and Mumbai ran up a tall total without needing contributions from Rohit Sharma, Andrew Symonds and Kieron Pollard. It was then assumed that the bowl...

The IPL's northernmost franchise found a hero with roots in the south, as Paul Valthaty stunned Chennai Super Kings to clinch a maiden win for Kings XI Punjab this season after a disappointing performance in their opening game. Valthaty was a surprise promotion to the opening slot, instead of the regular Shaun Marsh, and he answered the call with a blistering start, keeping his team on par with the required-rate in the middle overs and surging again at the death to complete victory after achieving a spectacular century. At 27, with just one List A game and 13 Twenty20 matches, Valthaty had been on the sidelines of the Mumbai team on India's domestic circuit. His previous highest in the IPL was 6, but whatever he must have done at the practice sessions ahead of this game sparked a potentially career-changing turn of events. Punjab had been deflated at the end of the Chennai innings, after they had squandered the perfect start of two wickets off the first two ball...

Sachin Tendulkar added one more to his already bulging cap of feathers when he was named Wisden's leading cricketer in the world for 2010. Tendulkar enjoyed what was even by his standards an outstanding year in 2010, hitting over 1500 Test runs with 7 hundreds. He also went past the previously unthinkable mark of 50 Test match hundreds in 2010. In ODIs, he became the first batsman to hit the 200-run mark, doing it against the might of the South African attack. The master batsman, who began this month with what he described as his proudest moment when he helped India win the World Cup on his home ground in Mumbai, is the seventh recipient of the Wisden award. Unlike the winners of Wisden's coveted five cricketers of the year, it is possible to be named the world's best in the almanack more than once - and Tendulkar made it an Indian hat-trick, after Test opener Virender Sehwag took the honour in each of the last two years. Tendulkar's citation concludes:...

Rajasthan Royals executed a well-calibrated chase against an off-colour Delhi Daredevils attack to register their second win in two games and move atop the IPL leaderboard. The senior players soaked up the pressure - Rahul Dravid set up the chase and Johan Botha anchored it - while the youngsters, Ashok Menaria and Ajinkya Rahane, batted with freedom to keep the required-rate under control. Ross Taylor added the finishing touches with his trademark leg-side lashes. While Rajasthan's batting flowed seamlessly, their bowling was a tale of two halves. Their fortunes were typified by Shaun Tait's four one-over spells. He got rid of Virender Sehwag and Aaron Finch - two parts of Delhi's powerful top-order trinity - in first two overs. David Warner, the third part, survived Tait and saw off a sublime spell from Shane Warne before counter-punching along with Venugopal Rao. Tait was either too short or too full in his final spell, and allowed Delhi to haul themselves f...

  Shane Watson hits 15 sixes in an ODI Shane Watson knocked Bangladesh's bowlers senseless with a world record tally of sixes as the Australians galloped to a nine-wicket victory in the second limited overs match in Mirpur to seal the series. The target of 230 had appeared a possible banana skin on a slow pitch offering some turn, but Watson made such light work of it, that his unbeaten185 from 96 balls now stands as the highest ODI score by an Australian, overtaking Matthew Hayden's 181 against New Zealand in 2007. Xavier Marshall's 2008 mark for most sixes fell when Watson swung his 13th over the rope, the second six in as many balls off the bowling of Abdur Razzak. Watson added two more for good measure, laying claim to one of ODI cricket's more enduring records, for the highest individual percentage of runs in a completed innings. His 79.74% bested Viv Richards' 69.48% in his momentous 189 not out, out of 272 for 9, against England in 1984.