18
SunDAY, june 7, 2015
NBA Finals…
Warriors even series with Cavs at 2-2 D
raymond Green was thrilled with how the Golden State Warriors dominated the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday. Draymond Green hailed Steve Kerr’s line-up switch in game four of the NBA Finals, claiming it allowed the Golden State Warriors to “push the tempo” against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Green was named at centre by Kerr on Thursday - for the first time since playing in high school - as the Warriors went with a short line-up and won 103-82 to level the series 2-2. “It really allowed us to push the tempo,” Green told NBA TV. “One thing [Cavaliers
centre Timofey] Mozgov’s been doing - and he did a little bit of it today but not as much - is he’s just sitting at the rim, and he’s just going vertical and clogging everything up, and we said we wanted to push the tempo of the game and get it at our pace. You know, the first three games of this series, even the one that we won, it wasn’t at our pace. “We felt like putting Andre [Iguodala] into the starting line-up and pretty much five perimeter guys I’m not a perimeter guy but I sometimes float around there - it was for us to push a tempo.” After Green and Harrison Barnes shot a combined twofor-18 in game three - as the
Andre Iguodala
Warriors lost 96-91 - the duo shot 17 and 14 points respectively in game four for a combined 10-for-20 success rate. Green shot one-for-three from the three-point line on Thursday and celebrated by yelling ‘I’m back’. “You tend to trick yourself and you forget it is just basketball, and I knew I had to get back to that and I was letting that drag my energy down, and once you drag my energy down, I’m not me,” he added. “So after my game three performance where I was awful, which made us awful, there’s really nowhere to go but up. But I knew I had to come out with more intensity and more confidence.” (Digicel
Sportsmax)
Gayle still wants to be a West Indies force C
hris Gayle may have taken the county circuit by storm in his hard-hitting introduction to the NatWest T20 Blast, but home remains where the heart is for a man who yearns for another chance to represent West Indies on the international stage. With scores of 92, 151 not out and 85 not out in his three appearances to date for Somerset, Gayle has amassed 328 runs for once out, from 170 balls and with a remarkable 29 sixes - almost three times the tally of any other player in the competition. Yet, with a Test series currently underway
between West Indies and Australia in the Caribbean, Gayle cannot help but have half an eye on the fortunes of his team, for whom he scored an ODI career-best 215 against Zimbabwe in the recent World Cup. “I’d love to play a few more international games to be honest with you,” Gayle told ESPNcricinfo. “But we’ll have to wait and see. It’s tough, the travelling is very hectic, sometimes you have to know when you’ve reached the limit in life, sometimes you have to draw the line. “But I will still push to play international cricket, when I go back home I will
have a discussion with the coach and maybe with the board, so that we can work out Chris Gayle’s future, to see if they are still interested. I am still interested so I’ll look forward to that and see how best it can work out.” Throughout his stint with Somerset, Gayle has played with the number 333 on his back, a tribute to his highest Test score against Sri Lanka in 2010. “People all say Chris is the king of T20, Chris is the this and that of T20, I am the king of Test cricket too,” he says. “I scored two triple centuries. And 21 ODI centuries. So I’m the king of something. The king of all
Chris Gayle
formats. “A Test match is fantastic,” he adds. “It’s a test of character but the entertainment part of cricket is phenomenal. T20 has actually brought new cricket fans into the game, so we have to continue with this as well so that people who didn’t watch can eventually get to watch Test cricket. “West Indies are in the middle of a Test series against Australia, so fingers crossed some youngsters get some opportunities and I hope they make the best use of it, we definitely have to look to the future sometimes.” Gayle’s own future seems firmly mapped out as a Twenty20 gun for hire and the reception he has received
in England after his longawaited debut in England’s competition has confirmed his status as one of the iconic players of his age. He has now scored 15 centuries in all Twenty20 competitions - the next most prolific is New Zealand’s captain, Brendon McCullum, with six - and has featured in domestic tournaments in seven different countries. “It’s good to travel the world and share different dressing rooms with different players over the world,” he says. “you learn more about your culture and you make new friends, you gain more fans around the world as well. It’s been brilliant for me, it’s fantastic, and I’ve got a century for, if not all, then most of these teams.
It’s great to achieve such things, but I never know which tournament is coming up next.” Few players are better placed to assess the merits of England’s revamped Twenty20 competition, but Gayle’s initial verdict is that the quality falls a long way short of the standards he has encountered in the IPL, as well as Australia and the Caribbean. “There’s no doubt there’s a big gap between other leagues compared to IPL,” he says. “IPL is definitely No. 1, but the Caribbean Premier League is fantastic too and [Australia’s] Big Bash is up there as well. Those three leagues are the top leagues.” His opinion of England, meanwhile, is coloured by the size of the venues he has so far encountered, with his initial matches taking place on two of the country’s smaller grounds at Chelmsford and Taunton, where one of his sixes landed in the nearby River Tone. “Yeah, those two grounds are a bit small to be honest with you,” he says. “Especially Somerset, with a good track out there as well, so that’s even better. You can clear the boundary easily but anything can happen in cricket, you can get one and nick off early. When you do get a chance to score some runs you try and make the best use of it.” (Cricinfo)