Champions Trophy Schedule is here !

Here is the schedule for the Champions Trophy to be played in South Africa (Centurion and New Wanderers, mainly). The matches start on Sept 22, 2009 with the Finals being played on the 5th Oct 2009

Compaq Cup finals: India vs Sri Lanka Video highlights

Here is the complete highlight of the Compaq Cup finals match between India and Sri Lanka.

For highlights of all international cricket matches, please go HERE

Sourav Ganguly's career in google maps

We did this a while ago, just as Sourav Ganguly was to play his last Test match. Definitely worth a second look.
Hope you will like it :-)

Sourav Ganguly's career in Maps
http://cricketernews.com/livescore_project/maps/ganguly/index.html

Feedback please

Cricketernews.com is evolving and we'll need your help to make things better. Our aim, as always, has been to provide you with high-quality cricket content - adverisement free. Please help us improve our service by providing feedback.

cricketernews.com's livescore widget most popular

We are glad to announce that cricketernews.com's cricket widget (see here) is the most installed and most popular cricket widget out there. With more than 2400 installs and millions of widget views, this one remains by far the best cricket widget.

We thank Widgetbox team for allowing us to showcase this widget ad-free.

We've also created a new widget, the cricket calendar widget last month. This one shows the cricket schedule as google calendar entries and can be imported into your calendar application. Follow these instructions to do it.

Thanks -
Cricketernews.com team

Compaq Cup Video Highlights

It's been a while since we posted anything much. It's time to change all that :-) Cricketernews.com will cover the Compaq Cup extensively along with the Champions trophy (SA) and Champions League (India).

To watch the highlights of Compaq cup match between Sri Lanka and New Zealand, click HERE.
The schedule for this short series can be found HERE.

Clean-up task undertaken

Over the last couple of years, our database got filled up with links to a lot of blogs that were not getting updated regularly. In order to give our readers the best of cricket blogosphere, I took it upon myself to delete such blogs.

One thing that I realized by taking up the clean-up task is that there are a very very few good cricket blogs on the www. And if they are any good, they are probably already linked to by cricketernews.com.

I deleted the following blogs that cricketernews.com was linking to:
1. Six and Out
2. The Burnt Bail
3. CricInfo select
4. Alex barnett
5. BlogCritics
6. JumpCut
7. Now Public
8. India eNews
9. Jhakas
10. Newsman
11. BritBlog
12. Monsters and Critics Cricket
13. Fox Cricket Blog
14. The Third Umpire
15. Alochana.org
16. CricketView Point
17. Beer CHips
18. Caught Behind
19. Cricket Etcetera
20. cricket view point
21. Cricket News - My cricket blog
22. Ashes 2006 Blog
23. The Cricket Astrologer Bl...

If you are the owner of these blogs and you have become an active blogger once again, do let us know. We'll be happy to link to you.

New blogs, video sharing sites?

At cricketernews.com, we are in the process of overhauling some of the blog, video sites that we link to. Over the last 6 months, we found that some of the blogs post too few entries to be considered serious, and a few other video sharing sites just don't have high-quality cricket content.

If there is a blog/video sharing site that you follow, please share with us. Here are some broad criteria -

• Blogs must post at least 2 items per week.
• Blogs must be clean, well-written and void of any profane language.
  
• We don't want sites that exist only to make money out of ads.

Thanks -
CricketerNews admin team

Editorial: We owe England big

If England indeed decide to tour India, the first Test match will be underway in a week. This would be the first big event of such kind to be hosted in India post the shock of 11/26 and 60-hour long ordeal that followed. Even if England show up with half of their star players missing, it would still be an event to cherish and celebrate.

All the symbolism apart, if England show up, it would be because they trust India. They trust the fact that under the aegis of Indian security forces, their lives are safe. It would be because, by playing the two Test matches, they would earn every bit of respect and fame every athlete craves for and deserves. It would be because they realize that the risks - however big or small - *are* worth taking.

And for that, we Indians owe them. I am not the one who believes in the symbolism this Test series will hold. At the end of the day, it is just a sport. Trivial compared to the scenes seen on TV around the world last week. Trivial compared to the enormous loss that the families have suffered. Trivial compared to the fact that the attacks tried to threaten the very manner in which we Indians live our lives.

But the fact that 15 or so cricketers who represent their country honorably, and who all are stars in their own right decide to embark on a journey to our homeland when we could use every ounce of support - that is not trivial. And for that we Indians owe them. Ever since the dust settled outside the Nariman House, the vibes sent out by the ECB have been nothing short of reassuring. And for that we owe them - even if this series does not take place.

If it does, and we get 10 days of high quality cricket, the onus will be on every cricket fan in Chennai and Mohali to return the favor.Return the favor by showing up at the venues and supporting the team that you have always supported. No banners, no hoardings needed. Just show up and show how we care. The world will be watching.

CricketerNews.com's widget

The live score widget that we published at Widgetbox.com seems to be a hit among bloggers and site administrators.

In the last year or so, the widget has been viewed 896,783 times. The widget has been installed 1114 times onto different web sites.

Champions League - Schedules, Teams

The complete coverage of the Champions League can be found HERE

Sourav Ganguly's career in Map

The fourth Test would be Sourav Ganguly's last Test match. CricketerNews.com has chronicled his career using Google Maps.

http://www.cricketernews.com/livescore_project/maps/ganguly/index.html

This mashup is similar to the one created by Virender Ajmani from MiBazaar. Thanks to him and my buddy Santhosh R for helping me put this together.

India on a roll

India secured a comfortable victory against ,winning by 7 wickets in the Asia cup …India’s spirited and clinical performance saw them over haul the Bangladesh total of 283 with more than 6 overs to go.
Bangladesh earlier won the toss and elected to bat. Tamim Iqbal and alok kapali were the main scorers for Bangladesh..A well made 55 by tamim Iqbal and the maiden century by Alok kapali gave Bangladesh a competitive score of 283 for the loss of 6 wickets. The 6th wicket partnership between Kapali and mahmadullah converted the sluggish start by Bangladesh to a good score Alok Kapali made 115 after being dropped by goni on 25…Indians displayed average fielding skills dropping sitters and misfielding on various occasions…India’s poor fielding and bowling was evident by the fact that Bangladesh scored 90 runs in their last 10 overs.The coach definitely needs to look into bowling as all bowlers went for runs without a good economy rate to talk home about
Bangladesh looked well on target when they got in to defend their score with shahadat hossain removing both Uthappa and rohit sharma…but the partnership between suresh raina and gautam gambhir halted any further plans of the Bangladesh bowlers of creating any further havoc…Gambhir was in his usual best scoring runs at ease…he was all set a for a another 100 before he got out to reza off a miscued drive…he scored 90…but the main stay of the Indian batting was Raina…after a maiden century against hong kong and a blitzkrieg 84 against Pakistan,raina continued his rich vein of form slamming a century off 93 balls. he top scored with 116 off 107 balls.. Bangladesh also had their share of shoddy fielding adding to their woes as they dropped Gambhir on 56 and raina on 16..India now have bright chances of qualifying for the finals on July 6 as they have 4 pts carrying over 2 pts from the first round…A convincing win with all batsmen getting to the play…we hope the winning streak continues

Knights ' blown ' away

The kolkata knight riders lost a crucial match to the chennai super kings at the eden gardens thus adding more road blocks to their route to the semis....the knight riders had only themselves to blame for the loss ,courtesy a dropped catch as the D/L method handed a three run victory to chennai super kings.
Earlier Makhaya Ntini came up with a hattrick to reduce Kolkata to a modest total.He first removed saurav ganguly in the last ball of the 3rd over before he was removed by stand in skipper fleming,as dhoni had retired to the dressing room nursing his injured finger...Ntini came back only in the 17 over striking a double blow removing debabrata das and hussey in the first two balls....the hat trick almost went unnoticed for a while even with the score board,courtesy the gap between the overs bowled ny ntini..he now becomes the 3rd after L balaji nad amit mishra to have taken a hat trick in T20 format.he returned with figures of 4 for 21.
for the knight riders, salman butt (73 runs)anchored the innings after the loss of early 2 wickets putting up a partnership with das before das fell victim to ntitni...the knight riders put a modest total of 149 for 5 with a asking rate of just over 7 runs to chase...
chennai super kings got off to a good start putting 55 runs on board at the end of 8 overs ,before a sudden burst of wind had everybody running for cover.a foodlight disruption also happening the match was later called off as chennai super kings were well ahead of the asking rate as per the D/L method.they had to score
53 runs without a loss,which they very well matched thus making them the winners of the game.
Ashok Dinda who dropped parthiv patel of a sitter will continue to tell a tale of a dropped catch ruining hteir chances of a possible semi final birth.....its really getting tougher right now for the semi final spot as three teams are getting too too close to predict....tadays match of the daredevils will probabaly provide an answer to the question...so lets wait and watch

Portlets and Google Gadgets

CricketerNews.com is happy to announce the launch of its Google Gadget. See the sample on the right hand side of this page. Click here to add the Google gadget to your Google Home page (iGoogle). This way, you can follow the latest scores from the cricketing world any time you go to google.com. The gadget auto-refreshes (you don't have to hit refresh time and again) so that you'll always know the latest scores.

If you have a website or a blog site and would like to add this cool gadget to your homepage, please click here or here. This is a FREE widget is published by cricketernews.com to allow you to provide a new feature to your user base. This gadget displays all the latest live cricket scores for 20/20, ODI and Test matches. It is one of its kind and auto-refreshes itself to allow up to the minute scores on your site. To read more about the cricketernews.com portlet/gadgets, click here.

Here are the links once more:

• To add a cricketernews.com google widget to your google home page, click here

• If you are a blogger and or a site owner, to get cricketernews.com portlets, click here. This option allows you to add more than one portlet to your site, in case there is more than one match being played currently. This is hosted by cricketernews.com itself.
  
• If you are a blogger and or a site owner, you have another option. You can add the above mentioned widget published on the iGoogle directory. The functionality is same as the above option, but is hosted by iGoogle. Simply click here.

Thanks,
Cricketernews.com team

Sehwag and Robin miss the opportunity, India fail to win the series convincingly

India won the toss and elected to field on the final match of the series. India went with some new players to evaluate and experiment the budding talent - P Kumar and Rohit Sharma. Indians thought of using the morning conditions to their advantage, however Pakistan's opening pair waived off the initial swing and bounce to give themselves a good start. Sreesanth got the control of his bowling after some wides and runs. He picked up the top 3 batsman and put India back in the game - 77 for 3 after 17 overs. This brought the arrival of in form batsms Yousif and Pak's captain Sohaib Malik. They played a brillant knocks to take the game away for Indians and help Pak cross 300 mark for the second time on this series. Middle order bowlers could not break the huge partnership of Yousif and Malik. Quick fire of runs by Pak tailenders also helped to reach a hugh target. Sreesanth was the only bowler to finish of the innings with good figures.


India had a shaky start by losing Gambhir quickly and also losing Sachin when he was looking dangerous. Sachin made a quick thirty but that was not enough to take India to a good start. Robin and Shewag did lose a wonderful opportunity to cement their position in team, they played ordinarily and did not help the cause of India innings. Yuvraj and Rohit Sharma the new kid in the block played sensibily, but there innings only took India closer to the target. However, the Irfan Pathan showed some character, which few of the top order batsman can learn, to score 44 useful runs. India's tendency is give more responsibilities to tail enders to see match through, since you might have observed that many close matches have been won by tailenders. But this time around they could take us through to the finish line. Man of the match went to Shoiab Malik and Man of the series went to the well deserved India player Yuvray Singh. India won the series but failed to sweep it.

Clinching the series is something special...

Pakistan entered this match under pressure, since it was a do or die match for them inorder to defend against India in this series. Pak started off their day with some luck in their favour, they won the important toss and elected to bat. The Pak had new opening pair for this season, it was Salmaan Butt and Shoiab Malik. This new pair did not last for more than 2 ball, as Salmaan Butt was trapped in front of the wicket before he could get a feel of the ball. However Pak recovered a bit with a good partnership before the captain was bowled by a beauty of a delivery. This was followed by good show of cricket by Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf. They played quite amazing knock to take Pak to a respectable and defendable score of 255, off course with as usual valuable runs from Misbah-ul-haq.


India start was shaky with loss of Saurav and Gambir to put India at 48 for 2. But the suprise performance was from Sehwag along with Sachin. Sachin failed to get past the nervous 90s for the 6th time this year, which is a record of some sorts in world cricket. Even though Sachin and Sehwag lost their wicket within a short span leaving other Indian batsman to score 100 odd run, the captain and vice captian took this responsibility with incredible style and ease. Dhoni finished off the match with a straight six off Salmaan Butt to clinch the series for the India. This is India's ODI series win against Pak after 24 long years. India team must be celebrating to their heart's content a well deserved win. The last match of series remains a formality, but India should not lose the momentum it has gained, so that it can carry this forward to the test matches and hopefully the rest of the season.

Kanpur's Diwali Gift...

Kanpur was rewarded a treat of Indo-Pak match, it has been 2 years since a cricket match was held here.

Pakistan won the toss and elected to bowl hoping to use the good bowling conditions to restrict India to a moderate total. Pakistan's bowling plans was misaligned by some good looking strokes of
Sachin and Saurav. But this was only after Saurav got a life in the first over when his catch was dropped by the keeper. Saurav looked shaky due to lack of foot work and inability to offer the right defensive stokes to some of Shoaib and Umar's swinging deliveries. Luck favored the opening pair and India took advantage of the misfielding. India lost the Sachin to unorthodox bowling style of Sohail Tanvir and this was quickly followed by Saurav. The Kanpur wicket was not offering the batsmen to play their natural strokes due to dual bounce and pace. This resulted in frustrated moments to batsmen like Gambir, who was not able to get value for his stroke play. India were rotating their strike well during the middle overs and kept their wicket intact. This gave a nice platform for set Yuvraj and Dhoni to take some risks and accelerate the scoring rate. Dhoni and Yuvraj hit big sixers to take India to good defendable score of 294/6 at the end of 50 overs. Highlighting point of Pakistan's bowling was Sohail economical and wicket taking bowling.


Pakistan to counter the asking rate of around 5.88, they send in the hard hitting Afridi and their stylist batsman Salmaan Butt. The gamble with Afridi only paid off for couple of overs and he was sent to the pavilion by a beautiful in swinging delivery of Irfan Pathan. This started the consolidation period for Pakistan, but they kept on loosing wickets, RP Singh deceiving in form Younis Khan a gem of a delivery to remove his off stump. Salmaan Butt played his best innings of this season by scoring century without receiving any support from his team mates at the other end of the crease. India applied pressure using the pace and spin attach. The surprise performer in the spin department was Yuvraj with his off cutters helped India keep Pakistan at bay. At one point Pak need 100 run with 10 overs remaining, this where Pakistan failed to raise the tempo of the game. Dhoni faired decent as a captain, but still has long way to go w.r.t to field placings and learning the tricks of the trade. With this win India lead the series 2-1 against Pak. With 2 games remaining to go this series is open anyone's grab. The man of the match went rightly to Yuvraj for his matching winning knock of 77 and crucial bowling performance.

A Diwali gift to true cricket lovers...

The series is alive with Pakistan winning the 2nd ODI in Punjab. Cricket lovers were treated to a wonderful game on the occasion of Diwali festival, even though the result was a slight dampener for some of the India fans. But most Indians would also agree that this win by Pakistan revives the excitement for the remaining games in this series. Closer the games better the entertainment.


India won the toss and elected to bat as most would expect, with great start by Sachin and Gautham Gambir even after early loss of Saurav at 3rd ball of the day. Quick and long partnership of Sachin & Gautham took to India good position. Sachin missing his hundred by 1 run again (99). Is it got to do something with the 9 number jersey causing him to get out in the 90s? Well certainly India and Sachin wouldn't mind this as long as India wins the match. India also lost Gambir quickly after Sachin. Yuvraj and Sehwag tried to stabilize the boat from some good bowling of Pak especially Umar and Akhtar. India kept on losing wickets regularly and never capitilized fully the start provided by Sachin and Gautham. India were at one point 260-6 at end of 40 overs, if Indians had done some decent batting they could have crossed 350. But India lost the momentum late in the innings and with some good gusty batting from Harbajan result in India crossing 300 and final reach a competent score of 320 on a very good batting pitch with only 4 regular bowlers to defend this total.


Pakistan fielders were sluggish on the field with lots of miss fields and extra balls of around 6 overs. Pakistan starting with lots of confidence and bang with scoring 10 runs in the first over. Pakistan lost early wicket of Akmal, but Pak were able to make 80 odd runs on the board from first 15 overs. India pulled back Pak's scoring rate with some good tight bowling during the 3rd power play. India noticeably looked containing Pak rather than trying to take wickets, in other words India was defensive rather than being offensive with aggression. India might have missed the aggressive body language from the likes of Sreesanth. However for if you were watching the match during 20th over, you might have felt that India were at control. Yes they were in control, however not aggressive even after a big score on the board. Younis Khan played a sensible game of not panicking, while on other hand realizing with his experience that game is not won by random shots but with planning and sensible cricket. Misbha joined the party with good knock of 49, although getting dismissed playing is favorite and familiar shot of trying to play the back paddle. This partnership brought the life back in Pak's innings and the match. Younis Khan's effort paid of with bringing Pak close to a victory and in the end Afridi playing the neat finisher with good strokes and with help of some bad bowling and field placings. It was a very close finish with Pak having the upper hand at the end and won the match with 1 ball to spare. Man of the match went to the well deserved, planned and crafted innings of Younis Khan. As ever Indo Pak series is alive and kicking :)

Good partnerships help India win

The excitment of Indo Pak match was evident in the grounds of Guwahati Cricket Stadium. The ground was filled with cricket lovers and passionate spectators. Everyone knows that this series will be closely fought and it will fought with aggregation and strategy. India went with more batsmen than bowlers, with good mixture of youth and experience. Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat on the slow pitch, hoping to a score unreachable by Indians. The start was good with 40 runs in quick time. However the Pakistan did not have a large partnership all through their inings. But lack of good bowling in the death overs, helped Pakistan reach a decent total of 239. If you analyze Indian bowling over previous ODIs you will quickly realize that Indians have conceded lots of run during the slog overs. This is one of the areas where Indians should be focusing on in the coming games. Over all a very good effort by our bowlers and the keeper for 3 good dismissals. On the Pak side Younis Khan played a anchor role to help Pak reach a defendable score on a slow pitch.



India start was good even after losing 10dulkar early to Shohib Akthar. Gautham Gambir and Saurav played a neat innings to help Indians hold their fort against Pak pace bowling. Indians had better partnership than Paks, this is something which made a big difference and eventually helped Indian's win. Even though we had 4-5 opening pairs in the team, we managed to have a good batting order. Quick thinking by Dhoni on promoting him before Yuvraj was a good move to keep left and right combinations going on, there by making bowling difficult to Pak. Dhoni and Yuvraj played a brilliant knock to see off the danger period. Robin hit the winning shot to enable India win over Pak by 5 wickets. Man of the match went to Dhoni for a captain's innings and good wicket keeping. Pakistan has some areas they should work on like the better bowling and partnership. We will definitely see better resistance from Pak and thereby a good treat to cricket lovers.