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Wednesday, July 3, 2019

cute grandma Charulatha ~ India tames Bangladesh


Charulatha Patel, 87, attracted all the cameras as she enthusiastically blew her trumpet.. .. , cheering for Team India  from the stands. Wearing a tricolour scarf and with a bright yellow vuvuzela and the national flag in hand, Charulatha was spotted celebrating every moment of India's win.  This 87-year-old lady's love for life and of course cricket almost overshadowed the crunch game at  Edgbaston, Birmingham on Tuesday.  The old lady, was  identified as Charulatha Patel by former India captain Sourav Ganguly, who was doing the commentary for the official broadcasters of the tournament, won hearts for ardent cheering for India.

Bangladesh's high court has granted the country's rivers the rights and status of "living entities" in a bid to save them from encroachment, a lawyer said Tuesday. The court on Monday published a landmark verdict on a 2016 petition filed by a Dhaka-based rights group, saying all of the country's hundreds of rivers would now be treated as legal persons.  "We filed the petition to save our rivers from powerful encroachers. The court has declared that all the rivers should now have the same rights as legal persons or living entities," a litigant told news channels.  The verdict came just months after the country, much of it criss-crossed by thousands of streams, tributaries and rivers, became the fourth nation after Colombia, India and New Zealand to honour its waterways with such status. The court appointed the country's River Conservation Commission as the legal guardian of all waterways and directed other state agencies to fully assist them. Experts said the verdict would save rivers from illegal encroachment in the densely populated country of 165 million people and where land is precious as gold. They said many of the country's rivers are struggling to survive thanks to illegal sand dredging and large-scale industrial pollution.

On a different note, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on the floor of the assembly on Tuesday made it clear that the state hasn't changed its view regarding sharing of Teesta river water with neighbour Bangladesh. For a long time, Bangladesh has been demanding share of Teesta river water from India but the Central government hasn't agreed to their demands owing to strong opposition from West Bengal. West Bengal's stance has been that there is not enough water to share, something which Dhaka isn't convinced about.  Speaking in Assembly, Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday expressed regret over the fact that Bangladeshi Hilsha no longer comes to India. Bangladeshi Hilsha earlier used to be savoured by Bengalis in India too particularly during the Monsoon period. However, now very few Bangladeshi fish is avalable in the market. Referring to that, Mamata Banerjee said that Bangladesh has stopped exporting Hilsha to India as they are unhappy over not been given Teesta water.

Miles away,  Bangladesh team bus departed the Hyatt Regency and headed towards Edgbaston at around 12:10pm yesterday, where the team would have its first full practice session since their last World Cup game against Afghanistan. The departure was delayed by 10 minutes because bowling coach Courtney Walsh was talking to the media. Five minutes after the bus left, however, all-rounder Mohammad Saifuddin was seen standing in front of the main entrance, looking forlornly at his departed ride. He disappeared inside, evidently to call a taxi, which he boarded presently and was off for practice. Apart from paying the taxi fare, Saifuddin’s tardiness will also cost him because he will have to pay a fine in accordance with team disciplinary rules. The media manager was not sure how much the fine would be, but it is expected to be around the 100-pound mark. A costly few extra minutes of sleep indeed ~ but he was prominent in the match !

The match was played on the same pitch that hosted the England-India match on Sunday, and it remained the same kind of pitch: flat but progressively slower. It also meant the square boundaries were the same - short on one side, long on the other. Both teams picked their teams with the boundaries rather than the surface in mind: spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Mehidy Hasan went out, and seamers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Rubel Hossain came in. Cannot be called an imaginative selection as India had 3 keepers – Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik, Rishab Pant and if you add IPL keeper Rahul, it was 4 .. for a brief while, Dhoni was away – Pant kept wickets – India went for a review and promptly lost that .. ..  Karthik did no favour in the batting – and was he not a specialist WK replacement for Dhoni !! – the score card reads : India 314 for 9 (Rohit 104, Rahul 77, Pant 48, Mustafizur 5-59) beat Bangladesh 286 (Shakib 66, Saifuddin 51, Bumrah 4-55, Pandya 3-60) by 28 runs.  All those pundits who said India lacked intent in their 35 run defeat to England would now say that 28 was too close and Indian win was not comfortable !!!

After keeping hopes alive for much of their World Cup campaign and for 98 overs of yesterday’s match against India in Birmingham, two searing yorkers from Jasprit Bumrah sealed Bangladesh’s elimination from the semifinal race of the 2019 World Cup.  He is on a hat-trick now as Shami leaked runs.  The 28-run defeat was Bangladesh’s fourth in seven completed matches and, with three wins and a washed-out game against Sri Lanka, left them stranded on seven points when they needed to win yesterday and on July 5 against Pakistan to keep their hopes alive. It was a valiant effort by Bangladesh as they had to contend with the hard luck in the washed-out game, missing out on the injured Mahmudullah Riyad yesterday as well as losing a crucial toss on a pitch that grew slower as the day wore on. However, they also left themselves too much to do both yesterday and in a demanding tournament after wasting a chance to beat New Zealand early on in their campaign. Bangladesh are out of the 2019 World Cup. They've beaten the teams they were expected to beat, and also a couple they may not have been, but they haven't managed to win any of their meetings with the tournament favourites, despite looking impressive and coming close on a couple of occasions. They came close against India at Edgbaston, but not close enough, falling 29 runs short in a chase of 315.

With this result, India become the second team after Australia to seal a spot in the semi-finals. They won an important toss, and got to a hugely advantageous position via a 180-run opening stand between Rohit Sharma, who scored his fourth hundred of this World Cup, and KL Rahul.  Tamim Iqbal and Mosaddek Hossain played on, done in by the slowness of the pitch but also their angled bats, while Soumya Sarkar and Mushfiqur Rahim hit aggressive shots straight to fielders on the 30-yard circle. Shakib, using the pace of the bowlers smartly and going at close to a run a ball despite only hitting six fours in 74 balls, kept Bangladesh in the chase despite all these setbacks, but when he was sixth out with 136 still to get, foxed by a clever slower ball from Hardik Pandya, the game looked over. Pandya, the fifth bowler with no sixth bowler in the XI, did a stellar job, varying his pace, hitting the pitch hard, and finishing with three wickets. Despite Shakib's dismissal, Bangladesh's required rate hadn't yet gone out of hand, and Sabbir Rahman and Saifuddin kept the game alive with an entertaining stand of 66 in 56 balls.

Rohit Sharma has been in the form of his life in World Cup 2019. The 104 he hitagainst Bangladesh was his fourth hundred of the tournament, emulating Kumar Sangakkara, who is the only other batsman to make four centuries in a single World Cup. Rohit also became only the second Indian, after Sachin Tendulkar in 1996 and 2003, to score more than 500 runs in a single World Cup.  Shakib Al Hasan is  the first Bangladesh batsman to reach the landmark of 1000 runs in World Cups during Bangladesh’s innings against Afghanistan. More was in store for Shakib as he picked up wickets with the ball after scoring 51 during Bangladesh’s innings.

Saifuddin who missed team bus,  needed one of the tailenders to stay with him if Bangladesh were to get 70 off 41, but they didn't, not for long enough anyway. The equation came down to 29 off 14 when Saifuddin took a single to bring the No. 10 Rubel Hossain on strike for the last two balls of Bumrah's quota of overs. Those two balls was all Bumrah needed, two inch-perfect yorkers proving too good for Rubel and Mustafizur.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
3rd July 2019.

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