(Current Affairs) Sports | January: 2015

Sports

Manavaditya Rathore wins gold at Asian Championships

  • Manavaditya Rathore, son of Olympic silver medallist Rajyavardhan Rathore, clinched the gold medal in junior men’s trap at the 4th Asian Shotgun Championships. Rathore shot 114 out of 125 to win the junior trap event in a shoot-off.

Lewis Hamilton wins US Grand Prix

  • Race by race and point by point, Lewis Hamilton is tightening his grip on the Formula One world championship and squeezing out Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg.
  • “This whole season has been incredible,” Hamilton said after playfully taking former world champion Mario Andretti’s black Stetson cowboy hat on the winner’s podium. “I pushed as hard as I could.”

  • Mercedes had another 1-2 finish in a dominating season that has pushed Hamilton and Rosberg well clear of the pack in the title chase. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo was third for his eighth podium finish on the season.

Sardar singh to lead hockey squad for Australia tour

  • Sardar Singh will lead a 21-member Indian men’s hockey squad for the four-match Test tour of Australia to be held in Perth from November 4 to 9.

  • Post bagging the gold medal at the 17th Asian Games in Incheon, the tour of Australia is being organised as part of preparation for the upcoming FIH Champions Trophy 2014, to be held in Bhubaneswar December 6-14.

  • Besides the four Tests, India will also play a training game against Australia A on November 1 at the Perth Hockey Stadium.

Misbah-ul Haq record ton leads Pakistan

  • Australia lost two quick wickets chasing a mammoth target of 603 runs to beat Pakistan in the second test after captain Misbah-ul Haq matched the record for the fastest century in Tests and broke that of the fastest fifty.

  • Misbah reached his century in 56 balls, matching the record set by West Indian great Sir Vivian Richards, who achieved the feat against England in 1986.

  • Earlier, the 40-year-old reached his 50 in just 21 deliveries with the last ball before lunch, turning Mitchell Starc toward the mid-wicket boundary for three runs, eclipsing the previous record of fastest 50 from 24 balls by South Africa’s Jacques Kallis against Zimbabwe at Newlands in 2005.

  • It was only the second time that two teammates made centuries in both innings of a test match. The previous occasion was in Wellington in 1974 when Australian brothers Ian (145, 121) and Greg Chappell (247 not out, 133) managed to do it.

  • Misbah got to his fifty in just 23 minutes, and took a further 34 balls and 51 minutes to reach his hundred. In all, Misbah slammed five sixes and 11 fours.

MS Dhoni as captain of ICC’ ‘ODI Team of the Year’

  • Mahendra Singh Dhoni was named captain of ICC’ ‘ODI Team of the Year’ but none of the Indian players found berth in governing body’s ‘Test Team of the Year’ led by Sri Lankan Angelo Mathews.
  • The ICC cricket committee headed by former India captain Anil Kumble announced the two teams consisting of 12 players each.
  • While 12-member ODI team for performance during 2014 had Dhoni as captain along with his Indian team deputy Virat Kohli and pacer Mohammed Shami in the XI, opener Rohit Sharma has been named as the 12th man.

Terry Walsh quits as chief coach of hockey team

  • The Indian men’s hockey team chief coach Terry Walsh resigned from the post, citing difficulty in working under the present system of governance.

  • The resignation, however, is subject to further talks between the parties concerned in the next one month, but the blame game has already begun.

  • Walsh, who took charge of the team exactly a year ago, led India to its only third Asian Games title recently at Incheon, securing a berth at the 2016 Olympics. However, despite visible improvements during his tenure, Walsh had been under constant pressure. It was said he was close to losing his job after India’s disappointing performance at the World Cup earlier this year.

  • “I am finding considerable difficulty adjusting to the decision-making style of the sporting bureaucracy in India which I believe, in the long term, is not in the best interests of Indian hockey or its players,” Walsh wrote in his resignation letter to the Sports Authority of India (SAI) director-general Jiji Thomson.

  • “The entire issue is about the decision-making process in Indian bureaucracy. I find it difficult to work in a professional manner in this system. We are now at a place where we are seeing if we can adjust the way it operates. But there are issues that we have to solve if we have to go forward,” Walsh said. He, however, ruled out any monetary dispute with SAI.

ODI World record by Rohit Sharma (264), Sri Lanka 251

  • A world record 264 by India’s Rohit Sharma and a mammoth 404 for five in 50 overs was enough for India to plunge Sri Lanka to its fourth straight defeat in the fourth ODI of the Micromax Cup series.

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