Star Studded IPL Opening Night Tonight
After a pulling off a controversy-free tournament last year, the organisers of the IPL will again be hoping for a smooth run when the 47-day tournament kickstarts with defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders taking on Mumbai Indians at Eden Gardens on Wednesday.
Before that, the event will open tonight in a glittering ceremony where Bollywood superstars Hrithik Roshan, Shahid Kapoor and Anushka Sharma form a power-packed line-up of performers.
The opening ceremony will be held at the home of the Defending Champions Kolkata Knight Riders, the Salk Lake Stadium. Show starts 7:30pm.
Stricter Laws Needed to Deal With Spot-Fixing: Dravid
Having gone through a testing time as captain of Rajasthan Royals when the spot-fixing scandal broke two seasons ago, team mentor Rahul Dravid called for stricter laws, even criminal, to be put in place by the country’s lawmakers to deal with this issue in IPL.
“Irrespective of whoever is in charge of IPL, one of the most important things is that we need to have stricter laws that deal with issues like match fixing, spot fixing. And there should be consequences when people make mistakes and are proven guilty,” said the former India captain at a media conference where the team unveiled their new jerseys.
“We need to have those laws in place that in the long term act as a deterrent. For anything like robbery, theft and cheating there are laws and strict consequences (for breaking them). Those consequences need to happen from lawmakers. You need to go into areas of (these things) almost to be treated as a criminal offence. That’s my belief,” said the former India captain.
Virat Kohli: Watch Out For Gayle, AB and Me
RCB Captain Virat Kohli has said his team’s star-studded batting line-up will be able to express itself better in IPL-8 with the arrival of players such as Darren Sammy and S Badrinath in the team.
“This season is pretty different for us because for the last three years Chris, AB and I have played under a lot of pressure because the batting revolved around the three of us. But this time we have Dinesh Karthik, Darren Sammy, Badrinath and youngsters like Mandeep Singh coming into the batting line-up. This season the three of us can play the way we always wanted to play in T20 cricket,”said the Indian Test skipper.
Kohli also added that the team now has a strong enough line-up to clinch the IPL trophy after featuring in two semi-finals and final earlier. He said, “It is time that we cross that hurdle and we have a team which can cross the hurdle. I am sure that the players we have retained and bought in the auction, we can create a good combination which gives us a good chance in the tournament. If 11 players believe that we can win then we will surely do well in the tournament.”
Rajiv Shukla Returns as IPL Governing Council Chairman
Rajiv Shukla was on Monday re-appointed chairman of the IPL Governing Council, ahead of Sourav Ganguly, Ajay Shirke and Ranjib Biswal.
The former Indian skipper has however been recruited into the Governing Council, for a first time.
ESPNCricinfo reports suggest that Shukla, a former Union minister and Congress leader was chosen after much debate between the N Srinivasan and the Sharad Pawar factions in the meet.
Srinivasan’s camp is believed to have wanted Ranjib Biswal to continue as the man at the helm while Anurag Thakur, the only elected member from Pawar’s camp, put forward the name of Maharashtra Cricket Association chief, Ajay Shirke.
City’s Title Hopes Take Big Hit After Defeat at Palace
Crystal Palace left Manchester City’s hopes of retaining their Premier League crown in tatters after a 2-1 win at Selhurst Park to leave Manuel Pellegrini’s side trailing a distant fourth in the title race.
The defeat kept City nine points behind leaders Chelsea and seemingly now in a battle to finish above Arsenal and Manchester United.
Glenn Murray came up with the home team’s opener after 34 minutes of play, sending in the rebound after Scott Dann’s shot bounced off City keeper Joe Hart.
Their second strike came when Fernandinho brought down Murray 20 metres from goal and Jason Puncheon swept his curling free kick over the wall and past Hart into the corner of the goal.
Yaya Toure gave City some hope with a late goal in the 78th minute, the night ended at 2-1 to Palace.
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