India played a perfect game built around youth and inexperienced players to clinch a Twebty20 confident victory on Saturday. Earlier, Australia were chained by Harbhajan Singh and Murali Kartik’s spin and variation. Knowing Australia, they will certainly be toying with an idea of specialist Twenty20 team, for their 50-overs specialists have been found wanting once again, in a format that is high-paced and impact-based.

The Aussies looked surprisingly rusty on the field and they bowled wide of target. Their fielders were as nervous and out of the game as their bowlers, and that is a rarity. They were not allowed to match the performance by India, and they never appeared to be happy on the field.

India were happy to sprinkle their Twenty20 eleven with youth and punchy players. The players showed both calmness and aggression, which is a great springboard to win matches. And, that they have inherited from their captain. His [Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s] calm demeanour and street-smart mind has given his team a lot of hope.

Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa and Yuvraj Singh are made for Twenty20. Gautam [Gambhir] needs to work on his 50-overs game to clinch a permanent place in limited-overs cricket. Robin [Uthappa] for his young fans is superhero Robin from the Batman and Robin pair. When in hitting zone, no one can match his bat speed and walk down the ramp against faster bowlers. Yuvraj is making Australia pay every time he plays them in Twenty20 cricket; he is a real star on and off the field. The list of impact players is long. Indians need to find a place for Gautam and Sehwag in 50-overs cricket, if they [India] are keen to match their Twenty20 success. Time is ripe for making brave decisions.

Australian captain Ricky Ponting on Monday confessed that his team did not take Twenty20 cricket seriously and needed to learn the nuances of the game to lift its modest international record in the shortest format.

“I don’t think there was any need for it to be taken ultra-seriously before the World Cup. The games that were played before World Cup were almost played as exhibition-type matches — to promote the other forms of the game,” Ponting said on returning home from India.

“I think that was the way it was used by most boards around the world, but now it’s pretty clear and apparent to us that we’ll be playing a lot more. When there’s a World Cup event in any form of the game, you want to make sure you understand the game well and you play the game well,” he was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press.

“Our international record’s not great, we’ve probably only got a 50-50 win-loss record and that’s something we’re going to improve on over the next couple of years,” he added.

Ponting admitted his team was still being educated in the nuances of the game. “We probably learnt a little bit through the World Cup about the format of the game. Going there we were all pretty new to it, pretty inexperienced in Twenty20 cricket,” he said.

The Australian captain said with the Indians winning the Twenty20 World Cup and talks of star-studded Twenty20 Leagues the game was sure to get further popular in the sub-continent.

“There’s no doubt the popularity of the game in the part of the world we’ve just been is amazing. With India having won the World Cup, the game is going to be massive over there.

“There’s a fair bit of talk about other Twenty20 leagues starting in India, so there’s a fair bit happening with that form of the game,” he said.

Fri 2/11 - Tour Match
09:00 local, 03:30 GMT TBC v Pakistanis
Feroz Shah Kotla, DelhiTue 6/11
09:00 local, 03:30 GMT 1st ODI - India v Pakistan
Nehru Stadium, GuwahatiFri 9/11 Floodlit Match
14:30 local, 09:00 GMT 2nd ODI - India v Pakistan
Punjab C.A. Stadium, Mohali, ChandigarhSun 11/11
09:00 local, 03:30 GMT 3rd ODI - India v Pakistan
Green Park, KanpurThu 15/11 Floodlit Match
14:30 local, 09:00 GMT 4th ODI - India v Pakistan
Captain Roop Singh Stadium, Gwalior

Sun 18/11 Floodlit Match
14:30 local, 09:00 GMT 5th ODI - India v Pakistan
Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur

Thu 22/11 - Mon 26/11
09:30 local, 04:00 GMT 1st Test - India v Pakistan
Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi Fri 30/11 - Tue 4/12
09:30 local, 04:00 GMT 2nd Test - India v Pakistan
Eden Gardens, KolkataSat 8/12 - Wed 12/12
09:30 local, 04:00 GMT 3rd Test - India v Pakistan
M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore

Sunday October 21, 2007
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) - Kimi Raikkonen won the 2007 Formula One drivers world championship here Sunday for Ferrari when he produced a flawless run to victory in the Brazilian Grand Prix.

The ‘ice-man’ from Finland drove superbly to grab the 15th win of his careeer and his sixth this year ahead of his Ferrari team-mate and local hero Felipe Massa.

Defending double drivers world champion Fernando Alonso of Spain finished third in his McLaren and ended up sharing second place in the drivers’ title race with his team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

The luckless 22-year-old British rookie, who began the day four points ahead of Alonso and seven in front of Raikkonen, lost ground at the start, falling back from second to fourth on the opening lap and then plummeting to 18th on lap seven when he suffered gearbox problems.

But he stormed back to finish in seventh place and score two points when he needed at least two more to make history by being the first rookie to lift the title.

German-born Nico Rosberg, the son of the original flying Finn Keke Rosberg, came fourth for Williams ahead of Poland’s Robert Kubica and German Nick Heidfelt in the two BMW Saubers.

The drivers title race ended with Raikkonen on 110 points and Alonso and Hamilton both on 109 at the end of the first three-way title battle for 21 years.

There was drama from the start when Brazilian Felipe Massa pulled clear from his ninth pole position into the lead followed by Ferrari team-mate Raikkonen, in the process squeezing Hamilton out of the way.

The move of the two Ferraris meant that Hamilton was held up behind them and this allowed Alonso through to take third place as they battled down through the Senna S bend.

The crowd went wild at seeing Massa lead but it all went sadly wrong for Hamilton as he was forced off the circuit on the opening lap and after running across a green painted run-off area he rejoined down in eighth place.

It looked almost impossible for him to fight back as he ran behind the leading group, but he worked his way back up to seventh before being hit by a gear selection problem.

His car slowed alarmingly for British fans and he slipped down to 18th place and a long way from not only the points, but possibly the world title.

At the front Massa sped clear followed by Raikkonen whilst there was carnage elsewhere with Italian Giancarlo Fisichella in his Renault rejoining from an off track excursion only to he driven into from behind by Sakon Yamamoto of Japan in a spyker.

Hamilton somehow solved his problems and regained his speed as he pushed his way through the field, rising from 18th to 11th with some supreme passing moves and fast driving.

The leaders began to dive into the pits to stop for fresh tyres and fuel after lap 20, Massa leading the way ahead of Raikkonen who led the race for a lap until he also pitted one lap later.

This left the defending champion Alonso out in front for a lap but he also pitted and after the first round of stops the field reassembled with Massa leading Raikkonen and then Alonso at the front.

Hamilton pitted after 22 laps and rejoined in 14th place from where he fought tigerishly to make up places, passing Brazilian Rubens Barrichello with a sweeping and aggressive dive through the Senna S bends on lap 28.

This hoisted Hamilton into 12th place but he was 50 seconds behind the leader Massa who was running two seconds ahead of Raikkonen with Alonso down in third 19 seconds adrift.

On lap 30, there was more drama when Kazuki Nakajima in his BMW came into the pits and crashed into his own team of mechanics, two of whom were sent flying and appeared to be slightly injured.

Hamilton, with great verve and concentration, was up to ninth by lap 33, just one place outside the points positions and chasing hard to haul in time on fellow-Briton David Coulthard who was running in eighth place.

By then, Poland’s Robert Kubica had passed Alonso at the end of the straight and soon after this Hamilton pitted again for hard tyres from ninth after 36 laps.

In 36 degrees heat by lap 40, Hamilton had been lapped by the two leading Ferraris who were in stunning form and more than a minute ahead of Alonso who recovered third after the pit stops.

The Ferraris were in a world of their own, running just seven-tenths of a second apart as the mathematics and probabilities occupied all the spectators wondering about the outcome of the world title race.

After 47 laps, Hamitlon was up to eighth but he needed to finish fifth if the positions remained unchanged ahead of him - a massively-demanding target.

When Ferrari pitted again, Massa came in first after 50 laps and Raikkonen stayed out three laps before pitting to push himself into a position where, when he rejoined, he was 1.9 seconds ahead of his team-mate.

This put him in line to win and collect the title unless Alonso, who also pitted, could claw his way into one of the top two positions, which proved beyond the Spaniard.

Raikkonen, with the scent of glory in his nostrils, then pulled clear by three seconds from Massa, the Finn going on to claim a famous victory.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has said that it will take measures to prevent bad crowd behaviour during the Twenty20 international between India and Australia at the Brabourne Stadium on Saturday.

“The BCCI has appointed chief administrative officer Professor Ratnakar Shetty to deal with the crowd-control issue and it will be done in consultation with the Mumbai police,” BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi was quoted as saying in PTI. “We can only persuade the crowd to control themselves but cannot make any arrests. All we can do is to eject people from the ground.”

Another BCCI vice-president Rajeev Shukla said that police personnel would be posted in various enclosures to prevent poor behaviour.

These measures follow the issue of Andrew Symonds being subjected to alleged racial abuse once again during the seventh ODI at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. An Australian photographer captured on camera certain spectators in the North Stand enacting monkey chants, a complaint that had been first made during the fifth one-dayer at Vadodara last week.

A livid Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has said continuous “racial abuse” directed towards all-rounder Andrew Symonds by the crowds during the one-day cricket series against India must have left even the host fans embarrassed.

“I am sure there will be a lot of embarrassed people around this country as well to know that this stuff has happened again at one of their cricket venues,” Ponting said after Australia won 7-match ODI series 4-2.

Ponting said he was hoping for better crowd behaviour during the Twenty20 match on Saturday.

“It is done now, hopefully in the Twenty20 match on Saturday it does not happen there” he said.

Ponting said he wanted an end to the hostilities and called on the spectators to behave during the tour finale at Brabourne stadium.

“Some of the other stuff that went on today (Wednesday) was totally unnecessary. I just hope that it does not happen again at another cricket venue that I play in because it leaves a bad taste in everybody’s mouth,” the skipper said.

Symonds has alleged that racial taunts have been directed at him in the last three one-dayers at Vadodara, Nagpur and here, a claim backed by match referee Chris Broad, who has mentioned the incidents in his report to the ICC.

Even during last night’s match here, four spectators were detained by the police for “misbehaviour”.

Symonds was booed when he came out to bat and it continued after he was out first ball. The man of the series was once again jeered by the crowd during the presentation ceremony.

A Pakistan Cricket Board official will visit India to study the model of BCCI’s Indian Premier League (IPL), set to be launched next year.

PCB Director, Marketing and Communications, Ehsan Hameed Malik will attend a couple of presentations to be made by the IPL organisers in a bid to help the PCB launch its own league.

“We are planning to launch our own league as soon as possible and believe that a lot could be learnt from the IPL project,” Malik was quoted as saying by ‘The News’ on Thursday.

Malik, however, declined that Pakistan’s Twenty20 league would be a replica of the IPL.

“We will certainly incorporate some features already existing in the IPL, but our league will not be an exact copy of it. We will get a chance to make it a different yet successful event by following IPL,” he said.

The BCCI will host the IPL in April next year. The league will be a franchise-model where corporates and sponsors will be allowed to buy and run teams. Player buy-outs will be an added feature, something that cricket is not accustomed to.

The top four teams will make the semifinals with the winners contesting in the championship match of the event that will have a prize basket of USD three million.

There is much to admire about the quality of cricket Australia bring to the table. Whether the way they play it is worth emulating, is another matter altogether.As they have displayed in ample measure so many times in the past, and as they have reiterated in India over the last three weeks, the Aussies set the benchmark with their aggressive, intrepid approach. Australia forever believe in going forwards, because taking a backward step is, their thinking dictates, a sign of weakness and submission.

Their belief in their abilities is awe-inspiring. Each time they have stumbled momentarily, they have found at least one man for the occasion. To them, there is no obstacle that can’t be surmounted, no crisis that can’t be tided over. Their brand of cricket is at once flamboyant and spectacularly alluring, appealing to the eye as they lift cricket to a fine art by amalgamating style and substance to a nicety.

So far so good. But hey, who appointed them the guardian angels of world cricket?

Proud peacocks
For almost as long as they have strutted around like proud peacocks aware of the admiration they evoke, Australia have genuinely believed that the standards they set are the only ones acceptable. And we are not, let’s be clear, talking skills with bat and ball in this instance.

Australia seem to be under the mistaken impression that the copyright for norms of behaviour, for the spirt of the game, for chat and aggression, for appearance and conduct, lies entirely with them.

They appear convinced that there is a direct correlation between on-field dominance and non-skill related demeanour, which is why they will trigger awe and respect around the world, but never generate any great fondness. The team that prides itself on setting the norms was the one that put on the most boorish behaviour on a public forum, less than 12 months back.

Today, Australia sit on the righteous moral horse and pass judgement on India’s outlandish reaction to their Twenty20 World Cup triumph. The same Aussies showed a massive disrespect for both age and authority at the presentation ceremony of the Champions Trophy in Mumbai last November.

Irreverential message
No sooner had a finger-wagging Ricky Ponting received the cup from BCCI president and union minister Sharad Pawar than the captain himself and Damien Martyn practically shoved Pawar away from the dais. That was perfectly acceptable from their point of view, we are told. That was a moment for the team to celebrate and savour.

‘You have handed over the cup, now get going,’ was the irreverential message they sought to convey to the man who, two years hence, will head the International Cricket Council. Benchmark? Thanks, but we shall pass. So we have Adam Gilchrist opting to ‘walk’ and demanding that he be complimented for it. So we have tons of Aussies questioning the actions of Muttiah Muralitharan and Shoaib Akhtar, among others, while some of their own with only slightly less questionable actions are wrapped in cotton wool and molly coddled.

So we have the moral guardians publicly questioning the wisdom of the ICC and the knowledge of the umpires while rising spiritedly in defence of the man who asked for ‘compensation’ to quit the Elite Panel of umpires in the wake of the ball-tampering and match forfeiture controversy at The Oval last year!So the Australians are peeved because we treated our Twenty20 World Cup-winning side like ‘princes.’ They are upset that every time they switch on the TV, Indian players stare them in the face from commercials. Surely, they have heard of remotes?!

Public forum
The John Buchanans, Steve Waughs, Pontings and Brett Lees have flown out to India during their off-season to honour contractual obligations to products they promote.The Australian players get more play in Indian media — print and electronic — than the Indians because the Board of Control for Cricket in India has prevented its players from entering into ‘exclusive’ deals with television channels or newspapers. Therefore, while the visitors have a public forum through which to shout themselves hoarse, the Indians are merely reduced to defending themselves against the plethora of allegations at official pre-match conferences.

Teams from across the globe have been visiting India for more than three-quarters of a century now. In the early days, touring India wasn’t the easiest task because the hotels weren’t top-draw, pollution levels were extreme. At no stage, though, did anyone question the sincerity of the people or the respect of the fans. Andrew Symonds has fired the first salvo by equating monkey chants to racist abuse.

There is no condoning the behaviour of an admittedly small group of spectators; Mark Waugh, however, hit the nail on the head when he questioned the invoking of the racial angle when not a single word was uttered.What Australia have managed is to whip up interest, passion and emotions back home.

Contrary to what Symonds would have the world believe, it is Australia more than India which is a hostile place to tour. The media, the fans and the players themselves are like one unending stream of aggression, collectively elevating mental disintegration to a fine art. For three months from December, India will alternately have wrath, ire and disdain heaped on them Down Under. And neither moan nor grumble. Now that is worth emulating, for sure.

World number two Rafael Nadal recovered from an unsteady start to overpower Marcos Baghdatis 6-4 6-4 in the Madrid Masters on Wednesday and set up a mouth-watering last-16 clash against Andy Murray.Nadal, playing his first competitive match since losing to fellow Spaniard David Ferrer in the U.S. Open fourth round on September 4, struggled to find his rhythm in the opening games, but eventually settled on the ultra-fast hard court.

The Spaniard got the measure of a fading Baghdatis in the second set, making the crucial break in the ninth game to claim victory at the scene of his triumph in 2005.

“I made some mistakes at the start and my serve was average, but I’m not unhappy,” Nadal told a news conference.

“The match against Murray is going to be very tough and I’m sure if he hadn’t injured his wrist in Hamburg earlier this year we would be talking of a player who would be in the top two, three, five or six in the world.”

Third seed Novak Djokovic had to shake off a determined challenge from unseeded Fernando Verdasco to win 6-7 6-3 6-3.

The 20-year-old, who lies behind Nadal and Roger Federer in the rankings, will face Juan Carlos Ferrero in the last 16 after the Spaniard got the better of compatriot Carlos Moya 7-6 6-4 in a duel between former world number ones.

Djokovic did his best to garner support from the partisan crowd at the Madrid Arena by donning a Real Madrid shirt as he walked on court to face Verdasco. 

But the Serb, who won in Vienna at the weekend and is already assured of a place in the season-ending Masters Cup, found himself on the back foot against the young Spaniard and lost the first set on a tiebreak.

He fought back to take the second 6-3 and gained the edge with a break in the eighth game of the third to clinch victory in just over two and a half hours.

SEEDS TUMBLE

Eight seeds including Masters Cup hopefuls Tommy Robredo, James Blake, David Ferrer, Ivan Ljubicic and Richard Gasquet tumbled out of the tournament on Wednesday, denting their chances of making the prestige event in Shanghai.

Robredo fell victim to Argentine Juan Martin del Potro who defeated the eighth seed 6-7 6-4 6-3 in a marathon late match that did not finish until well after 1am local time.

Eariler, wildcard Feliciano Lopez delivered a blow to seventh seed Ferrer’s hopes of qualifying with an unexpected 7-6 7-5 win on centre court, while Mikhail Youzhny was brushed aside by Germany’s Nicolas Kiefer.

Sixth seed Blake lost to Mario Ancic 6-3 6-4 and Czech Thomas Berdych exited at the hands of Argentine David Nalbandian who came from a set down to claim a 4-6 6-4 7-6 win over the ninth seed.

Gasquet lost to Paul-Henri Mathieu in straight sets in an all-French second round contest and Ljubicic, who was beaten by Nadal in the 2005 Madrid final, was edged out by Austria’s Stefan Koubek 6-3 6-7 7-5.

Last year’s losing finalist Fernando Gonzalez, seeded fifth, had to dig deep to record a 7-6 7-5 win over the combative Nicolas Almagro.

Argentine Guillermo Canas also had to battle hard to snatch a 6-3 3-6 7-5 win over compatriot Agustin Calleri and earn a third-round match against Federer.