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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