Monday, April 13, 2009

Rajasthan Royals made a losing start

Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals made a losing start to their South African campaign when they lost by 27 runs against the Cape Cobras in an Indian Premier League warm-up match at Newlands Saturday.
Both teams were well below strength, with the Royals fielding only four of the players who won the IPL last year and the Cobras missing most of the men who won the South African Twenty20 final earlier in the season.
‘It’s disappointing to lose but it was a great opportunity for some of the guys to show what they can do,’ said Warne.
‘Everything we wanted to get out of this game we got although the batting was a bit disappointing.’
Opening bowler Amit Singh bowled impressively to take three for 15 as the Cape Cobras made 142 for eight.
The home side were struggling at 34 for four and 65 for five but prospered through some hard hitting by lower order batsmen Richard Levi (36), Vernon Philander (26) and Rory Kleinveldt (23).
Kleinveldt took four for 34 when the Royals batted to clinch the man of the match award.
Royals’ Australian opening batsman Bob Quiney made a hard-hit 34 off 22 balls but the rest of the batting crumbled. Warne’s 21 was the second-highest score.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Twenty20 cricket goes to Everest

Twenty20 cricket is all set to touch a new high with some British amateurs gearing up to play a fund-raising match at Gorak Shep—just 135 meters below the Everest base camp—on April 21.
The unique cricket match will be played at an altitude of 5,165 meters and the teams will be named after Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the mountaineer duo who scaled the 8,848 metre peak for the first time in 1953.
The match, aiming to raise 2,50,000 pounds for UK-based The Himalayan Trust, will be first to be played at such a high altitude, according to Ang Tsering Sherpa, President of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
The amateur players, aged between 22 and 36, along with other support staff, will spend nine days at the venue before the match to get acclimatized with the weather and environment there.
They will also carry a plastic-made pitch while the match will be played with a pink ball.