14 sporTs BUOYANT LYON KEEP FEET ON GROUND AFTER CLIMBING TO TOP
Tuesday, 13 January, 2015
GAYLE SLAMS SELECTORS OvER BRAvO, POLLARD OMISSIONS
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Having snatched the Ligue 1 lead in spectacular fashion, Olympique Lyonnais are now trying to keep their feet on the ground, bearing in mind their shambolic start to the season. Lyon, who gradually dropped out of sight after clinching seven consecutive top-flight titles from 2002, were 17th in August after losing their first three games. But Alexandre Lacazette’s rise as a top-notch striker helped them climb up the ladder as everything fell into place for a team essentially made of homegrown players. Eight starters in Sunday’s 3-0 home win against Toulouse come from Lyon’s youth academy, including France striker Lacazette. Lacazette has scored 19 goals from 20 games, a tally last reached after 20 round of matches in the French top flight by PSG’s Vahid Halilhodzic in the 1984-85 season. Lyon have been producing some free-flowing football to leapfrog their rivals and reach a tally of 42 points from 20 games. The road to an eighth Ligue 1 title is still a long one, however. “I do remember where we come from. If we are less rigorous, we can expect another month of August,” defender Christophe Jallet warned in French sports daily L’Equipe on Monday. Coach Hubert Fournier said: “We can pronounce the word ‘title’ but we have to remain realistic.” Fournier, however, would not say the hardest part of the season was yet to come. “We’ve already been through tough periods this season and the best times are coming.
SPOrTS DeSK
FTER hammering a match-winning 90 that helped West Indies win the Twenty20 series against South Africa, Chris Gayle launched a scathing attack on the West Indies Cricket Board and the Clive Lloyd-led selection panel for dropping the senior pair of Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard from the ODI series and the World Cup. Repeatedly labelling the move as “ridiculous”, Gayle felt it was a case of “victimisation” against the two Trinidadian allrounders. “How can those two guys not be in the team?” Gayle, who is the first current player to raise his voice against the omissions, said during the post-match media conference at Wanderers. “To me it got to be like victimisation when you look at it
towards those two guys. Come on, guys. It is just ridiculous. Come on. Ridiculous. Really hurt. Ridiculous. Honestly, it throw me off. We can only talk. We can express our feelings, which I’m doing at this point in time. The squad already is announced. It is just sad.”It is a big batting line-up when you look at our team. But it’s just disappointing when you look at the 50-over format - we won’t be at our strongest,” Gayle said. “We don’t have our strongest team without Pollard, nor Bravo. So that is actually sad for us. It is a really big blow for us to actually lose two key players, two key allrounders as well, very good in the outfield. I don’t know what’s the history behind it, but it is a ridiculous selection from my point of view.” On Saturday, the WICB announced the 15-man World Cup squad to be led by Jason Holder with Marlon Samuels as vice-captain. There was no
mention about Bravo and Pollard, who had been earlier been ignored for the ODI series against South Africa. Gayle, whose blazing starts were instrumental to West Indies chasing big totals in successive matches, including the highest successful Twenty20 chase on Sunday, said he was glad he could dedicate the series victory to Bravo and Pollard. “I don’t know where our cricket is actually going to … where we are heading with this sort of situation. But it is really sad. Actually we won the [Twenty20] series with our best team and now there will be changes, with two of our biggest players in ODI cricket not involved in the 50-over format and the World Cup. It really hurts but I’m really, really glad that we won the series for Pollard and Bravo.” Gayle’s blunt attack came a day after the WICB released a list of 12 players granted central contracts. That list
Fu hits 147 maximum in Masters opener SPOrTS DeSK Hong Kong’s Marco Fu hit a 147 maximum break on the first night of the Masters at London’s Alexandra Palace on Sunday, the third of his career. The 37-yearold’s stunning display allowed him to open up a 3-1 lead in the best-of-11-frame contest against England’s Stuart Bingham before going on to complete a 6-3 win. Fu will face either defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan or Ricky Walden in the quarterfinals. Fu’s previous 147s came against Ken Doherty at the Scottish Masters in 2000 and in World Open qualifying in January 2012, when Matt Selt was his opponent. Earlier, Shaun Murphy reached the last eight with a 6-5 win over Mark Selby.
Be more flexible with overseas Test XIs: Kumble SPOrTS DeSK Anil Kumble, the former India captain, has said that while the team has quality bowlers, their progress has to be monitored season by season, and there has to be a flexible approach to selecting XIs when on tour. The performance of the Indian bowlers on the recent tour to Australia has come in for severe criticism, and Kumble said “some portion of the criticism is justified”, but added that the ability of bowlers to adjust to the longest format has to be taken into account when selecting squads. Speaking to ESPNcricinfo, Kumble, India’s highest wicket-taker in Test and ODI cricket, said: “We have the quality of bowlers, it’s just trying to see who can adjust to the Test format and then choosing your best four bowlers who you think can pick up 20 wickets, that’s also been an issue.” The question that was always raised on the eve of a Test match was simple, he said - how are you going to get 20 wickets? But now, at times, the answer is made complicated, he said: “We have gone into this theory of three seamers and one spinner the moment we sit on an aircraft which travels more than seven hours - that’s the mindset… If your 20 wickets are going to come with two spinners and two fast bowlers, so be it. If it comes with three spinners and one fast bowler so be it.” He cited the ex-
did not include Gayle, who said he could only express disillusionment over the the omissions at this stage, but smelt Bravo and Pollard paying a price. Although Gayle did not mention it directly, he was referring to the India tour last October when Bravo, as ODI captain, led the boycott against the WICB and the West Indies Players’ Association over a contracts dispute and pulled out of the tour. What astonished Gayle further, he revealed, was when Bravo told him that the selectors’ vision was focused on re-building the team. “Bravo said to me, to be honest with you, the team they selected for the World Cup is actually to re-build for the next World Cup, which I can’t understand. Basically what they are telling us: we are not going to win the World Cup [but] build for the next World Cup which is really ridiculous.”
ample of the Adelaide Test, where on a track known to favour the batsmen and assist spinners from halfway through the Test, India went in with a single spinner - debutant, Karn Sharma. Kumble asked, “So who got wickets for Australia then? If you look at the top two bowlers, it was one spinner and one fast bowler.” Australian off-spinner Nathan Lyon was the series’ top wicket-taker with 23 wickets. He said that in the last series Australia played before the India tour, “although the conditions were different… two unknown spinners won the series for Pakistan. Without Michael Clarke their batting line up was inexperienced.” The surfeit of short-form cricket, both ODIs and Twenty20s, may have
led to the Indian bowlers “not being that disciplined in their approach to bowling when it comes to Test cricket”, Kumble said. In ODIs and T20s, “you get away with that. You are constantly thinking of pre-empting a batsman because you think he will play this shot - that’s what you do in one-day cricket. You are always guessing and trying to out-guess the batsman. In Test cricket you need to bowl line and length - it is that simple - and keep repeating the same thing.” He said, “That will only come with playing more of this format, and that will only come with what kind of an approach [you have] prior to heading off [on tour]. It’s the simple thing that needs to be considered.” “Test cricket is all about building pressure and how you can sustain it, the longer you can sustain the pressure, the more successful you can be,” he said. Modern batsmen, he pointed out, were also playing a large quantity of limited-overs cricket. “Generally today’s batsmen tend to look for runs, [far] more than what it used to be maybe five, ten years ago. That’s the kind of cricket that the batsmen are used to playing - ODIs, T20…” Given the generally batting friendly pitches around the world, Kumble said, “The trend is that disciplined bowlers tend to get you wickets… The more disciplined you are with the line and length you will keep the
runs down and that is the best way to get wickets because generally speaking, it’s [the scoring rate] been more than four runs an over.” Indian bowlers, he said, needed to be their own leaders and “not look over their shoulder”. Most of India’s bowlers have played a s i z e a b l e amount of cricket, “so they need to start looking at themselves as the leader of the pack.” Getting the bowlers to be “self-sufficient” was important, he said. “You can’t be looking over your shoulder and ask which ball should I bowl, what field should I set? At the end of the day you know what balls to bowl and what fields to set, you have to be your own captain, you can’t be saying ‘Okay, set the field and tell me where to bowl and I will bowl’. That’s not how we play cricket. You have to be your own leader.” He said the BCCI and team management need to “monitor its 20 best bowlers. It is just a matter of managing the top 20 bowlers and trying to follow them during the course of their season, whether they are playing Ranji Trophy or IPL or Test cricket.”
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CHRIS GAYLE EQUALS RECORD OF MOST SIXES IN TWENTY-20 CRICKET S Pervez QaiSer Chris Gayle eqallled Brendon McCullum’s world record of most sixes in Twenty-20 cricket by hitting seventh six off Justin Ontong during his 90-run knock in the second Twernty20 match against South Africa at Johannesburg on Sunday. It was his 87th six in 43 innings of 45 Twenty-20 match. New Zraland’s Brendon McCullum also smashed the same number of sixes in 69 innings of 70 Twenty-20 matches. n As many as 68 boundaries scored in this match, the most ever in a Twenty-20 match. There were 44 fours and 24 sixes in this match. The previous record was 66 boundaries, including 43 fours and 23 sixes, scored by Australia and England at Southampton on August 29,2013. n The 467 runs scored in this match was the highest for any Twenty-20 match. The previous record was 457, scored in between England and Australia on August 29,2013. n Faf du Plessis’ 119 was the highest individual score in a Twenty-20 match for loss. The only other hundred scored in a loss came in a Twenty-20 match between the same teams at the same venue (Johannesburg), when Chris Gayle scored 117 runs on September 11, 2007, a match where South Africa easily achieved their target of 206. n Faf du Plessis recorded the second fastest hundred in Twenty-20 cricket by completing 100 off 46 balls. The record of fastest 100 in Twenty-20 cricket is held by Richard Levi who completed his century off 45 balls during his unbeaten 117-run knock against New Zealand at Hamilton on February 19,2012.