New Zealand gain
first test win in West Indies

BRIDGETOWN (Barbados), June 25: New Zealand claimed their first-ever test victory in West Indies when they won the first test by 204 runs with a day to spare. ..more

Ponting on crutches
after foot surgery

SYDNEY, June 25: Australia’s one-day captain Ricky Ponting, who had foot surgery yesterday, said he would resume full training in a month and be available to tour Pakistan in September. ...more

Wright slams batsmen
for defeat in Canterbury

CANTERBURY, June 25: Coach John Wright slammed the top order batsmen for Indian teams’s embarrassing 21-run defeat against Kent in the second warm-up match, saying the batsmen failed to take advantage of ....more

Wimbledon Championship
Teenage Briton no
match for Venus

LONDON, June 25: Defending champion and top seed Venus Williams shrugged aside the challenge of outclassed ...more

Open District Chess Championship
Interesting matches on cards for today’s final round
* With 4 pts each, seven contenders to wee for first three places

Excelsior Sports Correspondent

JAMMU, June 25: The Open District Chess Championship has reached its final stage with seven players looking eagerly for their tomorrow’s sixth and final round to find themselves among the first three position holders.....more

Football Club Rajouri wins Distt Football Championship

Excelsior Sports Correspondent

JAMMU, June 25: A three-day District Football Championship, organised by the District Football Association, Rajouri, .....more

5th CRPF Inter-Bn Basketball Tourney
Group Centre, 120 Bn, 39 Bn leading pools with two wins

Excelsior Sports Correspondent

JAMMU, June 25: The Group Centre, Bantalab, 120 Bn and 39 Bn were the three teams leading with two wins .......more

Ist Faquir Singh Charak Cricket Tourney
Friends Club wins by 5 wkts....

Summer Zone Trophy Cricket Tourney BCC enters quarter-finals....

New Zealand gain first test win in West Indies

BRIDGETOWN (Barbados), June 25: New Zealand claimed their first-ever test victory in West Indies when they won the first test by 204 runs with a day to spare.

West Indies, chasing a victory target of 474, were bowled out for 269 yesterday in their second innings with 10 overs of the fourth day remaining.

New Zealand pace bowler Shane Bond took five for 78, including the wickets of top scorers Chris Gayle and Brian Lara, who both made 73.

New Zealand, who had failed to win in their 11 previous test encounters in West Indies, were amply rewarded for two patiently-constructed innings on a difficult and variable wicket.

New Zealand, who made 337 and 243 in their two innings, had taken charge by dismissing West Indies for 107 on Saturday when no less than eight wickets fell to catches from rash attacking shots.

The home batsmen tried to make amends on Monday and showed some of the patience which had been lacking on Saturday.

But the challenge proved beyond them on a wicket that was deteriorating with cracks and holes.

Left-arm spinner Daniel Vettori exploited the pitch and took three wickets for 53 runs from 19 overs.

West Indies openers Gayle and Wavell Hinds made a brave effort to regain the initiative at the start of the fourth day and shared a partnership of 68.

Hinds was the first to settle and crashed Daryl Tuffey for two successive fours in the 18th over. Gayle’s tendency to stand up straight and smash through the line made him look more vulnerable.

But New Zealand brought on Vettori for an early spell and hinds soon flicked up a catch for Mark Richardson at short leg and was out for 37.

Gayle was trapped lbw by a delivery off the seam by bond, having hit 12 fours in an innings of 131 balls.

It was Bond’s second wicket in quick succession after the lunch interval, following his dismissal of Ramnaresh Sarwan for 18.

Sarwan, out for nought in the first innings, mistimed a pull off bond and gifted a catch to Vettori.

Tuffey got an edge off Carl Hooper for Stephen Fleming to take the catch at slip when the West Indies captain had made 16.

Vettori dispatched Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ridley Jacobs, leaving Lara with the impossible task of holding together the tail end of the innings with West Indies still 258 runs short of victory.

Lara made a brave effort and produced shots of such quality that the Barbados crowd began to show good cheer despite the inevitability of defeat.

But bond finally sent Lara’s stumps flying with a venomous delivery, leaving West Indies 269 for nine, and then dismissed last man Mervyn Dillon without further addition to the total.

Fleming, the New Zealand captain, was named man of the match for his resolute 130 in the first innings which rescued his side after they had fallen to 117 for five. West Indies never recovered the initiative. (AGENCIES)

Ponting on crutches after foot surgery

SYDNEY, June 25: Australia’s one-day captain Ricky Ponting, who had foot surgery yesterday, said he would resume full training in a month and be available to tour Pakistan in September.

Ponting flew back to Sydney today after having surgery in a Melbourne hospital.

The 27-year-old is on crutches after having a pin inserted in his left foot to help heal a stress fracture which troubled him in Australia’s 2-1 series loss to Pakistan earlier this month.

"Apparently it all went pretty well and I should be on these things (crutches) for a week and then hopefully back in full training in a month," Ponting told reporters at Sydney airport.

Ponting married law student Rianna Cantor in Sydney on Saturday.

"All it means is the honeymoon is put back about a week," he said.

"It had to be done, I’d had pain for about 12 months and had some X-rays in early January that identified a stress fracture."

Australia are scheduled to tour Pakistan in September and October, although the series may be moved because of security fears.

"There’s been a lot of things spoken and a lot of possibilities...Morocco, Sharjah," Ponting said.

"It’d be nice to play in australia but the Pakistanis weren’t all that keen on that because they thought it was too much of an advantage to us playing in Australia.

"All that we know is that we will be playing some sort of cricket at the time of the (scheduled) Pakistan tour, we just don’t know where it’s going to be."

Australia will also contest the ICC Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka in September. (AGENCIES)

Wright slams batsmen for defeat in Canterbury

CANTERBURY, June 25: Coach John Wright slammed the top order batsmen for Indian teams’s embarrassing 21-run defeat against Kent in the second warm-up match, saying the batsmen failed to take advantage of very good conditions.

"From the batting perspective it is the chasing which has let us down before. It (the defeat) is not a bad reminder", a disappointed Wright said after the match at the St Lawrence ground yesterday.

Chasing a target of 285 for a victory, the Indians despite their entire batting line-up playing in the match, could manage 263 all out in 49 overs in good batting conditions to suffer their first defeat on the tour.

In a blunt criticism of his team’s top order batsmen, Wright said "when you are chasing 285, the top three has got to take advantage of very good batting conditions".

Though captain Sourav Ganguly (64), Virender Sehwag (45) and Dinesh Mongia (37) all got into their stride, they did not push on to make significant contributions.

"Someone like Sehwag has to go on. He is getting out for too many 30s and 40s. I thought 284 was probably too few for this ground. The result was obviously disappointing", Wright said.

Wright said the three youngsters in the team - Dinesh Mongia, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif - need to cope up with a fair bit of pressure. "We need big innings from them now".

Unlike his batsmen, Wright was not too harsh on his bowlers. Anil Kumble, returning to the team after an injury lay-off, was a big plus, he said.

Kumble bowled his 10 overs for only 28 runs and picked up two wickets as well on a very benign batting pitch. He is returning to the side after recuperation from a surgery on his broken jaw, suffered during the recent West Indies tour.

Wright also was soft on young fast bowler Tinu Yohannan who was hit for 25 runs by Mark Ealham (74 not out) in the penultimate over of the Kent innings.

"Tinu is young and raw. He has got to learn from these experiences," he explained.

Wright did not think the lacklustre performance of his bowlers put his side in any disadvantage ahead the Triangular series, beginning with a day/night game between England and Sri Lanka at Trent Bridge on Thursday.

"Ashish Nehra and Ajit Agarkar are our frontline bowlers. And both are available", he said.

The Indian coach said he did not see any reason to reshuffle his batting slots after Monday’s defeat.

"We are pretty much settled. What we need is another fine day at Leicester to get some more practice".

The Indians move to leicester today for their last practice game against the county before the Triangular natwest series gets underway. India will open their campaign against England at Lord’s on June 29. (PTI)

Wimbledon Championship
Teenage Briton no match for Venus

LONDON, June 25: Defending champion and top seed Venus Williams shrugged aside the challenge of outclassed Briton Jane O’donoghue to reach the second round of the 2002 Wimbledon Championships here today.

It took the world number one just 45 minutes to see off the 344th ranked O’donoghue winning 6-1 6-1 in an awesome display of power hitting which would have won the admiration of world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis who was watching from the centre court players’ box.

The 22-year-old Williams, who has been champion here for the last two years, was simply too strong, too classy and too imaginative for her 19-year-old opponent who is just one of an army of British players here who rely on wild-cards to make it into the main draw.

The players’ career statistics pointed to how the match would progress - Venus with 25 titles to her name and just over ten million dollars; O’donoghue, just two satellite titles and the modest earnings of 15,000 dollars.

The British player, appearing in the Wimbledon for the first time, took just one point off the Williams serve in the first set as the American broke three times to take it 6-1 in just 20 minutes.

O’donoghue at least had the satisfaction of breaking the Venus serve in the second game of the second set, but it proved to be just a brief respite as Venus hit back to lead 2-1 and then broke again on two further occasions to take the second set 6-1 and the match to book a second round clash with Spain’s Virginia Ruano Pascual.

The first woman to win through today was 21-year-old Indonesian Wynne Prakusya who defeated Canada’s Jana Nejedly 6-0 6-2.

It was Prakusya’s first ever win in the senior event here although she was a quarter-finalist at junior Wimbledon in 1998 and she now faces American 16th seed Lisa Raymond in the next round.

Belgium’s Kim Clijsters, seeded five, beat Samantha reeves of the United States 6-2 7-6 (7/5) to book a second round match-up against Russia’s Elena Likhovtseva.

Clijsters has been dogged by a right shoulder injury all season and is working with a new coach but she found herself today denying press stories that boyfriend and world number one Lleyton Hewitt had proposed to her on the top of the Eiffel tower during the French Open.

"It’s not true. I have never been to the eiffel tower. I don’t know where they get the stories from - according to some stories we’ve been engaged, married, divorced. You get used to it," said Clijsters whose best performance here came last year when she reached the quarter-finals.

"It was a little bit strange because all of these people kept coming up to me and congratulating me. I thought it was because it was my birthday (she was 19 during the French Open)."

In the men’s event, Spain’s Tommy Robredo seeded 20, was the first major casualty of the day.

He lost to Raemon Sluiter of the Netherlands 6-1 6-4 6-4 but there were no such problems for dutch 18th seed Sjeng Schalken who beat Denmark’s Kristian Pless 6-3 6-3 7-5. (AFP)

Open District Chess Championship
Interesting matches on cards for today’s final round
* With 4 pts each, seven contenders to wee for first three places

Excelsior Sports Correspondent

JAMMU, June 25: The Open District Chess Championship has reached its final stage with seven players looking eagerly for their tomorrow’s sixth and final round to find themselves among the first three position holders.

However, if all of them managed to add one more point to their tally in tomorrow’s matches, the team of judges will decide the winners on the basis of their performance in the earlier rounds.

Those who have figured among the first seven players with four points each in their respective accounts are Vicky Bachu, H S Salathia, Mohit Bharati, Arvindu, Ajit Kumar, Kulwinder Singh and Varinder Katoch. All of them have lost one match each in the previous rounds.

However, in today’s matches, Vicky Bachu had tough contest with Mohit Bharati but could not over come the earlier mistake done by him and lost the match. In fact, in an attempt to open the king side, Vicky sacrificed Bishop to get himself better placed, but Mohit took advantage of his Vicky’s action and went ahead of him.

The mistake at the very first move haunted Vicky, who ultimately surrendered before Mohit losing the match in 41 moves.

In another interesting match, H S Salathia had a convincing victory over young Pranav beating latter in 35 moves. Pranav has three points to his tally with one match yet to be played.

Among other three pointers was handicapped Amarjeet Singh, who defeated his another handicapped counterpart Nishant Singh. Another blind participant Sushil Kumar Chopra too lost his match to Varinder Katoch. Sushil has two points to his tally, while Varinder has gathered three.

Being organised by the Jammu District Chess Association, the championship will be declared closed with the holding of prize distribution function tomorrow as and when the final round will be over. The three-hour duration matches are scheduled to start at 3 pm at the examination hall of the SRML Higher Secondary School, here.

Today’s matches were officiated by Master Chela Ram, Dr S S Dua and Daya Krishan Padha.

In other matches of the day, Arvindu defeated Sidharth Dev Chand; Kulwinder Singh beat Ashwani Gupta; Ajit Kumar beat Rajeev Balyan; Varinder Katoch beat Sushil Kumar Chopra; Susheel Kumar beat Joginder Singh; Victor Gupta beat Suresh Raina; Rahul Dev Singh beat Ayush Jasrotia; Dev Jamwal beat Suneet Kumar Raina; Vikramjeet Singh beat Cherish Sham and Manik Dogra beat Rohit Chowdhary.