Aussies Latest Casuality on Indian Tour

An already weakened Australia were dealt another injury blow in the One-Day series in India after Moises Henriques was ruled out of Thursday’s fifth match with a damaged hamstring.

Henriques, himself a replacement for the injured James Hopes, hurt his right hamstring during Monday’s fourth game in Mohali. Injuries have already forced the tourists, who are level 2-2 with the hosts in the
seven-match series, to send back fast bowlers Peter Siddle and Brett Lee, wicket-keeper Tim Paine and Hopes.

The world champions were depleted from the start after One-Day regulars Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin, Callum Ferguson and Nathan Bracken pulled out of the series with various niggles. Australian captain Ricky Ponting was understandably frustrated at the growing injury list that left just 13 fit players to pick from for Thursday’s key match at the Rajiv Gandhi stadium. “It’s disappointing to see these guys go down because you know how much they want to play and be a part of the series, and do the best they can to win games,” Ponting said on Wednesday.

“I am sure everyone who has returned back home would much rather be here with the series as it is at the moment, but we’ve got what we’ve got.” Ponting said if Australia win the series with the depleted squad it would rank as one of his team’s most “amazing” limited-overs performances in recent years.

“If you consider everything that has happened to us over the last couple of weeks, it would be an amazing effort if this group of players were good enough to get over the line,” the captain said. “But with five or six guys - probably more than that - out of our starting line-ups, we’re going along nicely.

“Certainly for me, every game I play with these guys I want to be able to win, but sometimes that means pushing guys a little bit too hard and some of these injuries come along.” India will dethrone Australia as the top-ranked One-Day team if they win the finely balanced series.

The last two matches will be played in Guwahati on Sunday and Mumbai next Wednesday.

Barrichello and Hulkenberg sign up for Williams

The Williams Formula One team announced on Monday that their drivers for next year will be veteran Brazilian Rubens Barrichello and German rookie Nico Hulkenberg.

The Oxford-based team struggled throughout the just-concluded season when Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima were the drivers and the former world champion outfit finished a lowly seventh in the constructors’championship.

“Team leader Frank Williams said: “Rubens needs no introduction. He is not only the most experienced driver in Formula One, but a passionate and talented driver who fought hard for the drivers championship this year.”

“Nico Hulkenberg won the GP2 Championship this season as a rookie and has previously won the F3 Euroseries, Formula Masters, A1 GP and Formula BMW Germany.”

“Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima remain our drivers until the end of 2009 and I would like to thank them for their contribution to the team.”

The 37-year-old Barrichello, who finished third in the drivers’championship this season behind Brawn teammate Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull, will go into his 17th F1 season with yet another new team.

The Brazilian started with Jordan in 1993 and since then he has also driven for Stewart, Ferrari, Honda and Brawn.

The Williams team are badly in need of a boost early in the new season having not won a race since the 2004 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Barrichello, however, has claimed his motivation for carrying on racing is that he wants to win.

“I have a lot of passion for speed, for overtaking, for the things that pump me up, the challenge of winning,” said Barrichello.

“I want to go on and have a chance to keep on winning.”

Hulkenberg has been the team’s test and reserve driver this year.

Tags:Racing,F1 GrandPrix

Dhoni is world’s top-earning cricketer

Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the top-earning cricketer in the world, indicating that advertisers not only back India when it comes to cricket but also they are keen to identify younger popular faces that appeal to the youth.

Dhoni, who runs in Reebok’s and Pepsi’s ad campaigns, has mopped up $10 million over the last 12 months while four other Indian players make it to the Forbes’ list of the 10 top-earning cricketers in the world.

Sachin Tendulkar occupies the second spot with earnings of $8 million, followed by Yuvraj Singh ($5.5 million) and Rahul Dravid ($5 million).

“Paycheck figures include club and national team salaries and commercial endorsement income over the last 12 months,” according to Forbes.

England’s Andrew Flintoff is fifth in the ranking with $4 million. Sourav Ganguly and Australian cricketer Ricky Ponting shared the sixth place with $3.5 million.

Brett Lee and Kevin Pietersen are tied in eighth place with $3 million while Michael Clarke is ranked 10th ($2.5 million).

The cash-rich Indian Premier League has particularly shored up the earnings of the cricketers. “With its deep-pocketed owners and global appeal, the IPL has shaken up professional cricket, luring top players from five continents with paychecks as big as $1,11,000 for each three-hour match. That’s a stunning sum in a sport where domestic leagues have traditionally been an afterthought to the international version of the game. For the top stars, endorsements are the most lucrative source of revenue,”..


Tags:M.SDhoni,Indian Cricket,Captain

Australia cling on to first place in Tests

Australia have survived at the top of the ICC Test Championship table following its 103-run victory over South Africa in the third and final match of the series in Sydney on Wednesday.

But the pressure is still on Ricky Ponting's team as the gap at the top has been close to just five rating points following their historic 2-1 series defeat.

It is the first time South Africa have won a Test series in Australia and it sets up a fascinating return series, the first match of which begins on February 26 in Johannesburg.

Any sort of victory in that three-match series will see South Africa go top of the rankings.

As it was, victory for Graeme Smith's team in Sydney would have been enough to put them top but Aussies dug deep in the final match of the series to keep the chasing pack at bay.

With India very much in the ascendancy, there are now just eight points separating first place from third with all three teams very much in contention for the right to be called the number-one Test side in the world.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka strengthened their hold on the fourth place following their 2-0 series win in Bangladesh.

After it had been pushed very hard in the first Test in Dhaka, Mahela Jayawardena's team proved far too strong the second time around and finally ran out winners by 465 runs in Chittagong.

That win gave Sri Lanka another ratings point to put them within 10 of India and six ahead of England, which recently lost an away series 1-0 to India.

Pakistan are another three points back in sixth place while the West Indies is still just ahead of New Zealand by a fraction of a point following the recent drawn series in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

I was my own enemy last year: Brett Lee

Injured Australian pace spearhead Brett Lee has blamed himself for the current breakdown, saying he ended up being his own enemy by bowling long spells despite having no strength to carry on.

Lee, the fast bowler, bowled a massive 4500 deliveries, over 580 overs, in the year gone by. The workload not just took a toll on his form but also left him down with an ankle injury, which required a surgery -- fourth of his career.

"I'd be OK in the first spell because the adrenaline's going and you've got the brand new ball in your hand, but then I would find that I just had nothing to give later in the day," Lee recalled.

"I guess I've been behind the eight-ball since India. I didn't have the greatest of preparations there and I've probably been chasing my tail ever since. It's been a difficult year, but maybe it's a good thing to listen to your body when it's telling you to slow down," he added.

"I was blown away with the amount of overs I bowled in 2008," the 32-year-old was quoted saying in The Age on Wednesday.

Lee said he never realised that he had strained himself so much until he picked up the ankle injury during the ongoing Test series against South Africa.

"You don't really look at it as a whole when you're bowling, but when you step back and look at the stats it's obviously a lot," Lee said. "I think 2008 has been a unique year. I have certainly bowled a lot of overs. I think if you were constantly bowling 580 overs in a season and you're being asked to bowl 150 kmh, it's going to put a lot of stress on the body. It's a difficult job, but I have been asking for the overs," he added.

Lee said he has been feeling better post the surgery and hopes to be in form on return.

"This is an opportunity for me to get my health back to 100 per cent. It's only been in the last three or four days that I have started to feel normal again. I have just had no strength at all this summer," The pacer, who has taken 310 wickets in 76 Tests, said.

"The surgeon seemed pretty happy with how it all went, so that's a good start. I'm only 32 and I want to play at least another three years. There are plenty of things I would still like to accomplish in the game. I'd like to cross off 400 Test wickets," he added.