Kings XI Punjab stun Mumbai Indians by 3 runs

DURBAN: Yusuf Abdulla versus Jean Paul Duminy -- a packed house at the Kingsmead couldn’t have asked for better drama in the last over. Duminy cracked, with eight to get off three balls, local boy Yusuf celebrated, and so did the 17,000 odd in the stadium.

It was super drama, and at the end of it all, Kings XI were over the moon. They had snatched a superb three-run victory which has brought them well in contention for a semis berth.

Blog: Why KKR coach John Boka-known must go

A target of 120 never looked menacing, but Yuvraj’s boys were just not ready to give up. They removed Sanath Jayasuriya and Sachin Tendulkar early, and thereafter, it was a fight to the finish. Duminy fought on with wickets falling at the other end, but the Kings men never lost hope.

With 17 to get off the last two, Abdulla was about to bowl the penultimate over, when the message came from the bench to hold him back. Piyush Chawla bowled the over, got Harbhajan Singh’s wicket, and Kings XI looked favourites yet again.

Still Duminy was there, standing tall at the other end, but Abdulla showed why he is rated so highly in South Africa. The local boy mostly pitched up in the last over, and even Duminy couldn’t find the necessary elevation, and the game was Kings’.

Earlier, Kings XI innings never really took off on the slow pitch with Harbhajan striking early. And when Duminy had the wicket of Yuvraj Singh (10), Mohali were firmly on the back foot.

Wickets kept falling, but Kumar Sangakkara (45 not out off 44 balls) realised pretty early that there was no point going for big shots and giving the wicket away.

He buckled down, played the ball on merit, and looked to take the singles so that Kings XI Punjab at least stay in the hunt.

If the pitch was one of the reasons behind Mumbai Indian’s slow progress, the other surely was Lasith Malinga (2-10). The Kings XI top-order looked to play him out, but once he came back for the second spell, he was virtually unplayable.

The yorkers zoomed in one after the other and the Kings XI batsmen had no idea how to save their toes, let alone scoring runs.

It was only due to Sangakkara’s efforts that Mohali managed to set a target of 120 and at the end of it all, that proved enough.


Source:http://ipl.timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Yusuf blitz ends Daredevils' winning streak

Centurion, April 29 (IANS) Yusuf Pathan struck a blazing unbeaten half-century as defending champions Rajasthan Royals snapped Delhi Daredevils' winning streak with a five-wicket victory in the Indian Premier League (IPL) at SuperSport Park here Tuesday.

Rajasthan Royals' bowlers managed well to restrict the powerful batting line-up of Delhi Daredevils to 147 with A B de Villiers top-scoring with 50.

The shuffling of the batting order worked wonders for Royals as Pathan, coming down the order, smacked 61 of just 30 balls while Graeme Smith scored an unbeaten 44 to see the team through with nine balls to spare.

After three straight wins, Dardevils slumped to their first loss, even as Rajasthan Royals continue to impress with their depleted side, registering their second win in five matches.

Master strategist Shane Warne again came up trumps with his plans as his changes in the batting order and clever shuffling of the bowlers caught the Daredevils unaware.

In-form Pathan, who helped Royals clinch a cliff-hanger against Kolkata Knight Riders through the Super Over, came at seventh down and was at his belligerent best, hitting six sixes and three boundaries to end the match in a jiffy.

Pathan, though, lived dangerously as was dropped by Pradeep Sangwan once while mistiming some of his shots in vacant areas.

Rajastahn Royals lost their first three wickets for 34 runs before Smith and Ravindra Jadeja added 29 runs. Jadeja and Warne fell in the same over of Amit Mishra (3-34) and Royals were staring down the barrel at 64 for five in 11 overs.

The game looked to be slipping away from Royals but Pathan's telling blows dramatically changed the equation. Smith anchored the innings at the other end with Pathan ripping apart the bowlers.

He cut loose against Daniel Vettori, hitting him for two sixes and a four in the 13th over and kept up the pressure on the bowlers from there on.

Earlier, Warne kept shuffling his bolwers, never allowing the Daredevils' batsmen to settle down.

It seemed as if Daredevils were in for a run-feast as Virender Sehwag disdainful flicked Dmitri Mascarenhas (2-28) to the fine-leg boundary for a six in the first over. But Mascarenhas struck twice in the next over, dismissing the dangerous opening duo of Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir.

Warne (2-32) held on to a blinder at slip to get rid of Gambhir while Sehwag mistimed his shot and was safely pouched by Kamran Khan. They were soon reduced to four for 49.

The Rajasthan bowlers gave nothing away and AB De Villiers took his time to score 50 off 40 balls with five fours and one six. Vettori scored 29 while Mithun Manhas hit an unbeaten 23.

Munaf Patel was the pick of the bowlers, giving away only 14 runs for two wickets in four overs



Source:http://cricket.yahoo.com/

Lice can be nice too, for our immune system

Wild mice have given experts some clues into why some parasites like lice are important for the conditioning of our 'natural' immune system.

Jan Bradley, University of Nottingham parasitologist, said: "Our understanding of mammalian immunology is largely based on rodents reared under highly unnatural pathogen and stress-free
conditions."

"Analysing the immune response in wild populations can give crucial insights into how the (human) immune system functions in its natural context," he said.

Many health problems in humans are caused by over-active immune responses. The immune system should be able to tell the difference between invaders and its own body cells.

But sometimes it can mistake own proteins for alien proteins, triggering an attack on its own
body and causing an auto-immune disease like arthritis, asthma, diabetes or multiple sclerosis. Or the body can mistake a harmless substance as a threat causing an allergic response.

The authors say some parasites may exert a moderating effect on the function of a key component of the immune system, which could help reduce overall immune reactivity and the risk of developing immune dysfunctions.

Their research links the louse polyplax serrata to a strong dampening of certain immune responses in wild mice.

The researchers speculate that the louse is able to exert some kind of immuno-suppressive effect, possibly by directly secreting some substance into the mice from its saliva, or indirectly by transmitting bacteria or other pathogens, said a Nottingham release.

These findings were published in the open access journal BMC Biology.

Source:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Rain wash away Mumbai-Rajasthan match

Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians split points after their Indian Premier League match was called off due to persistent rain at the Kingsmead ground in Durban on Tuesday.

Not even a single ball could be played due to the steady drizzle.

The Mumbai team, after gaining one point from the washed out tie, have moved to the top of the table with three points in their kitty.

The Sachin Tendulkar-led side had defeated last year's runners-up Chennai Super Kings in their opening match on Saturday.

Defending champions Rajasthan, who began their campaign with a crushing defeat at the hands of the Bangalore Royal Challengers, opened their account and stand at number seven in the table.


Source:http://cricket.rediff.com/

Abhi-Ash celebrate 2nd wedding anniversary

Today, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Bachchan are celebrating their 2nd wedding anniversary and if our sources are to be believed, they won't be in town for the celebrations just like last year.

Last year the couple was in Miami, USA, where Abhishek was shooting for Tarun Mansukhani's Dostana and Aishwarya had joined him. The couple had in fact interacted with the media via video conferencing for the Sarkar Raj press meet.

Sources claim, "The couple is planning a European destination this time. For the past few months the couple has been working very hard in challenging climatic conditions for Mani Ratnam's Raavan and deserve a cooler break so that is why they must have chosen an European destination. The shooting for Raavan has been postponed because of Mani Ratnam's hospitalisation following a heart attack."
Source:http://entertainment.oneindia.in/bollywood

Watch IPL Live on Mobiles Soon

With the start of the season's biggest sports action - DLF Indian Premier League Season 2 2009 - cricket buffs as usual would be glued to websites, SMS updates, widgets or radio for the latest score updates.


The official IPL site - www.iplt20.com also offers live telecast (not actually live) at http://live.iplt20.com, but works only on Internet Explorer with Silverlight 2 installed. But for those who're on the go, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has announced the availability of IPL Live on mobile phones!


Zenga Entertainment has bagged exclusive rights from TMT Investment Pvt Ltd. for monetizing mobile content of IPL till 2013. So now Zenga will now stream the ball-by-ball coverage of DLF IPL 2009 directly to mobile handsets with help of ZengaTV. For the official mobile scoreboard, Zenga offers CricZenga application that is available for free to download and use on mobile phones. Note that GPRS charges would be applicable as per the user's data plan.

Now the first question that may come to mind is will Zenga be able to stream ball-by-ball telecast live on all handsets? Even if it does, the premise of handset compatibility should be considered. The claim that mobile TV viewing on 2G over high majority of handsets while 3G still struggles for nationwide availability sounds too good to be true.

Eventually, only mid-level and high-end mobile handsets will be able to handle the live mobile TV streams from the service providers. It would be interesting to see which mobile TV format technology is used for broadcasting multimedia content to the users handsets. Needless to say that watching video over GPRS connection can be costly.

Many have noted that the live coverage from http://live.iplt20.com suffered from infrequent downtimes since the series started. The live coverage is viewable on Firefox browser by installing Moonlight, an Open Source alternative of Silverlight (Thanks to "http://twitter.com/ghoseb" B. Ghose for tip).

The Silverlight works fine on Internet Explorer and Chrome browser. However, the continuous downtime of the DLF IPL Live stream has been kind of disheartening for users who feel promises were not fulfilled. Hopefully, mobile users aren't charged heftily for watching live updates on their mobile by mobile service operators.


Source:http://www.techtree.com/

Sehwag shines for Delhi

Indian Premier League Cape Town
Kings XI Punjab 104-7 v Delhi Daredevils 58-0
Delhi Daredevils beat Kings XI Punjab by 10 wkts (D/L Method)

Virender Sehwag helped the Delhi Daredevils kick off their Indian Premier League campaign with a 10-wicket win over the Kings XI Punjab.The opener blasted 38 from just 16 balls to steer his side to a target of 54 from just six overs in a game badly hit by rain.

The right-hander hammered four fours and three sixes in his whirlwind innings that helped Delhi get over the finishing line with seven balls to spare.



Punishment
Yusuf Abdulla, a late recruit by the Kings XI, came in for some harsh punishment, the South African seamer leaking 19 from his solitary over.Gautam Gambhir was unbeaten at the other end on 15 not out - the left-hander happy to play second fiddle to his international team-mate.

It had appeared the weather would win the day, persistent drizzle around Newlands forcing the match officials to reduce the contest to 12 overs each.Sehwag won the toss and opted to stick the Kings XI into bat, though further delays meant it took some time for the match to get underway.England all-rounder Ravi Bopara helped put 67 in six overs with opening partner Karan Goel, who eventually became the first wicket to fall having made a rapid 38.

Strategy break
Bopara fell to the very next ball for 22 after the newly-introduced strategy break, trapped leg before by New Zealand skipper Daniel Vettori (3-15).Yuvraj Singh was the only other batsman to reach double figures, his knock of 16 including two big sixes before he was run out in the penultimate over.

Mahela Jayawardene (six) perished soon after to spinner Vettori before Piyush Chawla was run out before getting off the mark, meaning three wickets had fallen in the space of three balls without the addition of a single run.Aavishkar Salvi then bowled a miserly final over, conceding just six runs and also picking up the scalp of Irfan Pathan (six) as Punjab finished on 104-7.


Source:http://www.skysports.com