Muttiah Muralitharan shattered the world Test bowling mark and Sanath Jayasuriya excelled with the bat as Sri Lanka took charge of the first Test against England in Kandy yesterday.
Sri Lanka, trailing by 93 runs on the first innings, easily cleared the deficit and ended the third day's play on 167-2 in their second knock, a lead of 74 runs with eight wickets in hand.
Muralitharan, 35, took 6-55 to surpass retired Australian Shane Warne's world record of 708 wickets as England, resuming at their overnight score of 186-6, were bowled out for 281 just before lunch.
Jayasuriya, 38, then made a spectacular 78 -- including six boundaries in one over from James Anderson -- in what local media is speculating could be the left-hander's last Test match.
It was Jayasuriya's highest Test score in 16 Tests since the last of his 14 centuries in Karachi in 2005 and he is reportedly under pressure to call it a day or be axed.
Michael Vandort, who watched Jayasuriya blaze away at the other end, contributed 31 in an opening stand of 113 for the first wicket -- ?Sri Lanka's best.
Jayasuriya was trapped leg-before-wicket by Matthew Hoggard and Vandort (49) was caught in the slips off Anderson, but Kumar Sangakkara (30 not out) and captain Mahela Jayawardene (zero not out) played out the day.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS