What a nail-biting encounter it turned out to be Kolkata Knight Riders managed to hold their nerve against a resolute Sunrisers Hyderabad team and secured a thrilling 5-run victory in the end. Arun Chakaravarthy won Player of the Match for his outstanding performance of 1 wicket for just 20 runs in 4 overs. The bowlers for KKR put up a solid defence therefore their score of 171 proved to be sufficient. KKR put in a fantastic team effort and demonstrated remarkable tenacity to earn an important victory. Although both teams put on fantastic performances KKR ultimately prevailed.
I don't know whether it was due to incompetence from the Sunrisers Hyderabad, or exceptionally good performance from the Kolkata Knight Riders that the latter won yesterday's match. How difficult it is to score 9 runs from 6 balls? And that too being bowled by a spinner (Varun Chakravarthy). The incompetent Abdul Samad really struggled against Chakravarthy's spin, and in the end Bhuvneshwar Kumar could only watch as a silent spectator from the other side. It was one of those matches where SRH snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. |
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The current squad of New Zealand is without there 8 main players, and still, they were able to draw the T20 series. Pakistan has done relatively better in the ODI series, but still, 2 ODIs left and New Zealand have the capability to win the remaining 2 ODIs. If New Zealand able to win next 2 ODIs then it will place big question mark on performance of Pakistan. 4th ODI is scheduled today and new Zealand will try there best today to win the game.
The absence of the main players has considerably weakened New Zealand. In batting, they are without Kane Williamson, Glenn Philips and Finn Allen. And in bowling they are missing Tim Southee, Lockie Ferguson, Trent Boult and Mitchell Santner. Given all this, I need to say that they have performed credibly till now. At this point, Matt Henry and Adam Milne are spearheading their bowling attack, supported by youngsters such as Henry Shipley. Daryl Mitchell has also performed well so far in this series. Pakistan has already won the series 3-0. New Zealand will be looking for decent performances in the remaining two matches. |
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I started working long back in 2006, and ever since then I always had a supplementary source of income. If this supplementary source was not there, then it would not be possible for me to invest in Bitcoins or in other assets, because income from my my full-time job barely covers my expenses. I invested in Bitcoin back in 2014, and since then I have received a ROI of close to 5,000%. But it is not very easy to have a supplementary source. Monetarily, it is beneficial, but it takes a lot of effort and in the end you hardly get any free time.
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Harry Brooks the English player who is playing for SRH was bought for ₹13.25 crore. A few weeks ago he had hit a brilliant 100(55). On that same day, he trolled Indian fans with his statement. ~~~ Since then he has been able to score just 34 runs in 5 innings with 2 ducks  . That is why you need to be always polite, humble & not arrogant at your peak. He was not arrogant. He was just frustrated at the treatment that was meted out to him. Harry Brook and David Warner are the two players who have undergone extremely harsh criticism in this season of the Indian Premier League. In case of Brook, the criticism that was directed at him was reasonable. Despite the price-tag, he has only one good innings to show. And I won't be surprised in case he gets dropped from the playing XI from the next match onwards. In the previous matches, he was preferred ahead of Glenn Phillips, who is a really really good batsman. |
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Middle order batsman and spin bowling for Pakistan is still underway. No perfect fit for the position. Atleast the team should've taken the step earlier and trained a player than experimenting the person for the position. Haris Sohail and Salman Agha were the pick for the moment. Pakistan seems to concentrate much on Fast bowling, inbetween it had good all rounders like Shoaib Malik. Now strong players that perform on bowling, if they didn't contribute good with batting isn't available in the Pakistan team.
Pakistan doesn't have any good allrounders now. And all of their available options are comprised of spin-bowling allrounders. Two decades back, they had some very good pace bowling allrounders, such as Abdul Razzaq and Azhar Mahmood. But nowadays they don't have any. Naseem Shah and Shaheen Shah can bat a bit, but they can't be considered as allrounders. The Pakistani domestic cricket system is not producing such players, as the tracks are very supportive for the batsmen and doesn't support seam and swing bowling. |
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Bangladesh Women's team have played the second ODI against Sri Lanka women's team. The match overs were reduced to 30 overs. Sri Lanka won the toss and chosen to bat first. In the 30 overs, Sri Lanka have scored 186/5 runs. Sri Lanka women's team had strong opening. Atapattu and Madavi played good and Bangladesh Women isn't strong enough to chase the target and ended the innings losing every wicket for 128 runs. Ranasinghe had five wicket haul and the team leads the ODI series 2-1.
The ODI series is completed now, and the T20I series will start from next Tuesday. Out of the three ODIs, two were washed out and Sri Lanka managed to win the final match, thereby winning the series 1-0 (even the last match was shortened by rain, to 30 overs per innings). I don't understand the logic in scheduling these matches, when the monsoon season has started in Sri Lanka. It is raining quite heavily all over South Asia, and therefore I am not very hopeful about the T20I series as well. Just hoping that there will be minimal rain interruption. |
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Those names you named could be around the same level, I am not arguing about that, and top 10 is a stretch but I can put him at 10th place. But remember that this is a dude that played in Croatia national team and Dinamo Zagreb, no big team so far and he is already 28. If he was one of the best, he would have been bought by a big club already.
Ederson, Alison, De gea, Courtouis, Lloris, Der Stegen, Neuer, there are many goalkeepers I could still name that are better than him, these players played at the top teams and won top awards with their teams and they deserve to be considered much better than Livakovic without a doubt, they are definitely not even close in talent, I would consider livakovic one level below those type of big club goalkeepers and still good, just not as good as them.
Again, I need to disagree. In my opinion, Livaković is at the same league as Marc-André ter Stegen or David de Gea. The fact that he is playing for Dinamo Zagreb should not be used as a tool to attack him. He is playing for them since 2015 and the reason maybe that he just want to stay in Croatia. Anyway, I would stick to my arguments. Without Livaković it was not possible for Croatia to get past Brazil during the quarter-finals of Qatar 2022. During regular time, he made some spectacular saves, and the way he saved the penalty kick from Rodrygo was just amazing. |
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The performance based system is not a problem. The problem is those teams are performing well which have foreign players stacked in the team. I would actually like to see a 50% cut in pay for the teams which have foreign players in the squad. And that 50% should be equally divided into the teams which do not have foreign players in the team.
Actually, another thing which can be done is don't have any performance based payment for the teams which have foreign players in the squad. The performance based pay should actually only exist for those which do not have foreign players in the squad. In this way, the teams will be much more interested in performing well and also not have foreign players in the team.
Cricket should be like any other sport, where only citizens are allowed in national teams. FIFA, FIH or FIBA doesn't allow a single foreigner in national teams. FIBA even have strict rules regarding players who are naturalized and holding citizenship. But cricket is a joke, and you can have a national team of Slovakia or Armenia with 11 tourists from Pakistan. And on top of that, these teams now get a majority of the funding from the ICC, with huge reductions being made in fund allocation to teams with native players (Kenya, Nepal, Namibia, Scotland.etc). |
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Well, you are right, alcohol and sports do go hand in hand, though not for the players  . I also do not think alcohol will be banned completely in the sports arena, but I do expect it to happen on some special occasions, like what we saw in Qatar last year, but I believe there won't be such ban in 2026 world cup, being that USA, Canada, Mexico, are countries that are known for high standards, and I believe the citizens are more civilized than citizens of most other countries, coupled with their tight security system, making sure all go Well shouldn't be a hassle, even with alcohol present in the stadium. Even for the 2026 World Cup, I don't think that alcoholic beverages other than beer will be available at the stadiums. And ever since I have started watching football, I have never witnessed any issue related to alcohol during the matches. In western nations, people know how to behave themselves after taking alcohol. And in the third world nations, there is a blanket ban on such beverages. Anyway, I am of the opinion that the authorities should not tell to ordinary people what they should eat or drink. Whether or not to consume alcohol should be a decision to be made by the fans themselves. |
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Today we have the match between Rajasthan Royals and Gujarat Titans. Rajasthan is not in very good form at the moment, after starting the season with a bang. Samson is not in good form, and Rajasthan has lost 3 out of the last 4 matches. I don't understand the decision by RR management to stick with Jason Holder. He is not scoring any runs, and he is expensive with his bowling. Adam Zampa was a much better choice, but the RR selectors refuse to consider him. BTW, the news is that Trent Boult maybe included in the playing XI for today. He is back from the injury break.
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~~~
Trump created his own version of populism, a bit different from the classical demagogue from developing countries.
He re-invented the formula of the north-american populism and that is why he can be considered to be dangerous by some many people in the establishment. A lot of people hate Trump, because he is quite outspoken. But at the same time, he was courageous enough to take a few steps, which the establishment politicians would never consider in their entire career. Health of American economy was very good until Trump and the inflation rate was in low single digits. New jobs were being created at a good rate. But everything changed in 2020, when the COVID pandemic struck the United States. If the pandemic was not there, Donald Trump would have easily won the POTUS elections in 2020. |
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Who knows who will win? Let's wait for the test match to start first. Rohit Sharma has already lost his form which is more concerning. I guess if he gets injured, the selectors have to completely restructure the team. I am waiting for the BCCI to come up with a replacement. About Jaydev Unadkat they are saying that he might be fit by that time. If he is not then I think looking at his present performance in the IPL Ishant Sharma can replace him. For KL Rahul I expect out of these four players one might get this golden opportunity. Ishan Kishan, Rituraj Gaikwad, Sarfaraz Khan & Vihari. I have major doubts about Sarfaraz Khan looking at his present performance but Bengal Cricket Board has been lobbying hard for this guy and Dada too. The biggest blow for India is going to be the absence of Jasprit Bumrah. None of the bowlers listed here can match him in pace. Shami and Siraj are much slower and the latter is far more inconsistent when compared with Bumrah. I am happy about the spin options. The good thing about the spin trio (Ashwin, Jadeja and Axar Patel) is that all of them can bat in middle order. One of my concerns is regarding the wicket-keeper. KS Bharat is quite inexperienced and he may struggle in overseas conditions with his batting. |
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The wicket of Samad destroyed all hopes for SRH. The last three balls of the last over were very critical. I never expected SRH to win against KKR. Some brilliant piece of fielding and incredible catches by both the teams were seen yesterday.
Rinku Singh again proved himself. I was surprised to see how long he had to wait on the non striker end. At one point I felt the other batters have forgotten to rotate the strike. All of them wanted to clear the ropes rather give the strike to the inform batter. Why this guy is in the team exactly? He has hardly made any contributions with the bat, and he hasn't bowled a single over so far in this season of the Indian Premier League. Yesterday, the required run rate was quite steep and he (Abdul Samad) was batting in relaxed mode. Made 21 from 18 balls and then got out to Varun Chakravarthy. He had Bhuvneshwar Kumar at the other end, and just 9 runs were needed from the 20th over that was bowled by Chakaravarthy. Samad is rapidly turning out to be another Riyan Parag. Quite useless player. I don't know how he gets retained with every season. |
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With the ODI world cup just a few months away, Pakistani player Imam-ul-Haq has warned the PCB against further experiments with the players. He wants the PCB to finalize the middle order, which has been a big worry for Pakistan since the last few years. According to him, Agha Salman, Shadab Khan and Mohammad Nawaz are best suited for the role, while the PCB wants to give opportunities to Iftikhar Ahmed and Mohammad Haris. Anyway, if Pakistan wants to lift trophy this time, then they not only need to work hard on middle order batting, but also on spin bowling department.
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Wind power is still useful in some places, but unfortunately it isn't really possible to make a lot of money off of this because there are a lot of renewable sources out there that does fair better compared to it. Solar energy, for example, while needing to spend a huge amount on the initial costs, returns a lot of energy in the long run which makes the investment and the maintenance worthwhile. Wind turbines are still useful on small villages that aren't reachable by the power grid, but you don't expect someone to just donate one and run one on a far-off place without getting anything from it.
A decade ago, back in 2013 I had a chance to interact with a few people who were involved in wind turbine installation. Back then, they were quite bullish about the prospects of wind energy. The cost of production was comparable with that of solar energy, and it was considered as an option that is suitable for a wide range of regions (not just regions with high solar radiation). One decade has passed, and the situation has changed completely. Solar production cost has come down considerable, while wind power has become more expensive. No one talks about new projects nowadays. |
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I think a lot more people left Russia.
For example, about 1/3 of the total number of my acquaintances left Russia forever. At the same time, the girls return to Russia, but the guys do not. This is due to the fear of a new wave of military mobilization.
No one wants to get into a situation where their repeated trip abroad will be forcibly restricted.
The worst thing is the complete hopelessness and the absence of at least some hope for a favorable outcome. People leave not only for Kazakhstan and Georgia, but also for Australia, the USA, Mexico, Goa, Bali, Dubai, Turkey, etc.
Goa, Dubai.etc are temporary destinations. It is almost impossible to get the citizenship in these countries. And in case of India, PR is also difficult to obtain. Situation is slightly different in CIS countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as it is easier to obtain passports for Russian speakers. After the dissolution of the USSR, these countries lost almost 80% of the ethnic Russian population, which had a negative impact on their economy. They would welcome highly educated and skilled immigrants from Russia, provided that these people are ready to integrate into the local culture. |
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Various US sanctions on Russia have not changed Russia's economic situation. Russia's economic situation is the same as it was before the war with Ukraine, even after the US sanctions. Some Russians are working in a project in our country and when asked about the condition of their country, they say that their families are not facing any problem, their families are moving as before, there is no unrest in the country, prices of daily necessities and other things are normal. That is, according to the Russian person, they are not yet worried about such a war situation in their country.
The so called sanctions will negatively impact the western nations more than the Russians themselves. Russia is one of the top producers of various mineral resources and during the past decade they have boosted the agricultural output by several times. Western nations, as a result of their stupid sanctions are cutting themselves off a large share of the global supplies. Russia mostly imports electronics, pharmaceuticals and other finished goods. And supplies from western nations are currently being replaced with those from China. Ordinary Russians are not facing any sort of shortages, while back in Germany heavy engineering and metallurgical plants are being closed down due to the high prices of gas and electricity. |
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I heard PCB Chairmen Najam Sethi on local news channel saying that cancellation of Asia Cup will cost Pakistan 3 Million US dollars and its a big amount for PCB under given financial crisis. But PCB is willing to bear this loss as its now matter of self respect. I don't understand that if BCCI has issue playing with Pakistan then why they always willing to welcome Pakistan in there country but not willing to come to Pakistan.
Monetary losses incurred by Pakistan maybe reimbursed by the ACC. But what about the lost chances for Nepal? Back in 2006, they qualified for the Asia Cup for the first time. But India refused to participate in the tournament and therefore it was cancelled. ACC compensated the host nation, but Nepal never got another chance to participate in the Asia Cup. And now after 17 years, they have once again qualified for the Asia Cup. Once again BCCI is forcing the cancellation of the tournament. It may not matter much for Pakistan, but it is another setback for Nepal. |
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Rohit Sharma's performance in IPL this season is not very good. The team's expectations were higher from an experienced opener like Rohit Sharma. But even if Rohit can't bat well, Mumbai's batting line-up is very strong. The team is not facing many problems due to batting. However, Mumbai's bowling line-up is weak. Mumbai has lost 4 out of 9 matches. And I would say in every match the main reason for Mumbai's defeat was their poor bowling.
Well.. their bowling spearhead is injured (Jasprit Bumrah). On top of that Jofra Archer has just returned from an injury break and therefore he hasn't yet found his rhythm. As a result of all this, Mumbai Indians are heavily dependent on younger and inexperienced players such as Arshad Khan, Kumar Kartikeya and Akash Madhwal. And the problem with younger players is that they can be inconsistent. If the bowling was up to the mark, then Mumbai could have been topping the table right now, as their batting is quite strong. |
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Sunrisers Hyderabad will have the home advantage, as the match is scheduled to take place at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Uppal. And both these teams need a win today, to keep their chances of playoff entry alive. Harry Brook scored a big hundred when these teams met before, but that was his only significant contribution so far in this tournament for the SRH. For KKR, the biggest worry is the lack of form from Andre Russell. As a result, most of the burden is now falling on Venkatesh Iyer, along with Rinku Singh and Nitish Rana.
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