Skip to main content

India’s winning streak(thehindu)

India’s emphatic innings-and-36-run victory over England at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium has effectively broken a jinx. Among all its Test cricket rivals, discounting the hype around games against Australia or the history that permeates jousts involving Pakistan, England had been a bugbear. Twice, India lost Test series in England in 2011 and 2014; it also suffered the ignominy of losing at home in 2012. Redemption finally came in Mumbai as Virat Kohli’s men secured an unassailable 3-0 lead with just the fifth and final Test remaining to be played in Chennai, starting Friday. The cobwebs of the past have been shed and a new order is in place. In its last 17 Tests, India remained undefeated, the highlight being 13 wins. This equals the purple patch from 1985 to 1987 that featured four victories, 12 draws and a tie across 17 games. India can do one better if it wins or at least draws at Chennai. The current winning streak includes five consecutive Test series triumphs: Sri Lanka, South Africa, West Indies, New Zealand and England have been vanquished. From shedding the pangs of transition to charting its own path, the present squad has shown that it respects the aura of Tests and is fiercely motivated to win. It is a trait Kohli shares with coach Anil Kumble.
The squad’s twin arms, Kohli and R. Ashwin, have worked in pulsating tandem. As a batsman with a concurrent average of 50-plus across all three formats, Kohli is poised to join the league of legends. He has led from the front. England wilted under the weight of his bat that yielded 640 runs at an average of 128. He even played peacemaker when Ashwin and James Anderson had a spat in Mumbai. Ashwin, meanwhile, has powered India’s remarkable growth, with both ball and bat. He has bagged 27 wickets in this series, and the final contest at his home ground in Chennai may only enthuse him more. The team’s glory is not just restricted to Kohli and Ashwin, the rest have all put their hands up at various times. Be it Jayant Yadav, an able understudy to Ashwin the off-spinner and an effective batsman; Parthiv Patel, called in as a replacement wicketkeeper; seamer Mohammed Shami; or the reliable Murali Vijay, opening with assurance. The squad’s inherent strength hasn’t waned even when personnel are lost briefly due to injuries (Ajinkya Rahane or Rohit Sharma) or when form deserts (Shikhar Dhawan). India still has a long road to traverse and overseas wins in Australia and England need to be secured. But for now Kohli and his men are enjoying a stupendous home run.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having ...
Post a Comment
Click Here To Read more »

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...
2 comments
Click Here To Read more »