Singh, who virtually sealed the Asian order of merit title with the win, started the day five shots behind leader Chapchai Nirat of Thailand but three birdies on the front nine helped him to the top of the leaderboard at seven-under par.

Three-time major winner Harrington looked certain to force a play-off after a stunning fairway wood gave him the chance of birdie at the last, but the Irishman’s five-foot putt leaked across the face of the hole.

“I couldn’t have asked for better,” the 36-year-old Singh said in a television interview. “I’m a very fortunate man to win. The golfing gods were on my side.”

More : http://www.desihotmasala.com/2008/11/13-different-types-of-chess-board.html

Perhaps it is for the riches, perhaps it is out of pure love for the game that millions of small boys up and down the country strive to make the big time. At the Football Association (FA), officials are concerned that the vaulting ambitions of these youngsters – and their parents and coaches – are undermining the process of development.

Peter Buckley, 39, has lost more fights than any other boxer and says that his next, number 300, will be his last.

‘I’ve had my eye on the 300 mark for a while, and it’s a little milestone I want to achieve, but I don’t want to fight on,’ he said.

Quitting: Peter Buckley, who has lost more fights than any boxer in the world, says his next will be his last

The Indian, playing with white pieces against Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik , took an unbeatable 6.5-4.5 lead to retain his crown.

Playing his final white game against the Russian, Anand forced Kramnik for a draw after the 24th move to win the championship 6.5-4.5.

Anand was in the driver seat even before the start of the penultimate game of the championship as he required only a draw against his challenger Kramnik to clinch the title. And after the 10th game fiasco, Anand kept things under control against the Russian through-out the match on Wednesday.

Lockyer, who was a 23-year-old full-back with just seven Test appearances when the Kangaroos defeated New Zealand at Old Trafford in the 2000 World Cup final, is one of just 27 players with previous World Cup experience and the only survivor of that Australian squad.

The result ensures that Anand maintains his three-point lead over the Russian Grandmaster.

Anand presently has 5.5 points to Kramnik’s 2.5. With four games remaining, Anand needs just one more point to ensure he wins the title.

If Anand does win the title, he will become the first person in chess history to win the World Championship in all formats of the game.

More : http://www.desihotmasala.com/2008/10/sourav-ganguly-exclusive-real-life.html

‘It’s a very strange decision,’ said the Argentine number one Friday, whose hometown of Cordoba was rejected by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) for the Nov 21-23 tie.

‘Players and captain and the federation want to play in Cordoba,’ he added of the 1.3 million metropolis, second-largest city in Argentina.

‘I don’t know why they chose the other. Cordoba is better and has more infrastructure. Everything looked like we were supposed to play there. It’s poor conditions (in Mar del Plata).

Top male lifter Sateesha Rai, first caught and stripped of two gold medals and a bronze at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and woman lifter Boradi Prameelavalli have been banned.

“I can confirm we have issued them letters banning them for life,” Indian Weightlifting Federation Secretary Baldev Gulati said.

Rai was suspended for six months after testing positive for a stimulant at the Manchester Games and was caught last year using the banned steroid stanozolol at the National Games.

Two matches in a city, an official called “almost home”, ensured that. Even during their recent downward spiral, few teams have beaten Mohun Bagan and East Bengal away in successive rounds. But by taming a team with five India players on Tuesday, the debutants showed that beating Bhaichung Bhutia’s Mohun Bagan was no fluke.

True, they needed a slice of luck this evening but then, doesn’t fortune favour the brave and the disciplined?

In a match studded with goal-bound movements, it was ironic that only Felix Aboage’s strike separated the teams.

At this year’s Subroto Cup a team from Kalimpong is representing West Bengal. The team trained hard to play against and beat the best school teams in their zone, their district and emerge as champions of West Bengal- a feat that made them heroes in their small town.

“Everyone in Kalimpong came forward to encourage us and contributed to make our trip to Delhi possible. They gave us everything we needed for this trip. We are very thankful to them,” says team member Sonam Lepcha.

Pravasini father’s died six years ago and since then she has been desperately looking for a job for her family’s survival. And therefore she queued up for the job of a police constable in a recruitment drive.

More : http://www.rediff.com/sports/2008/sep/10advani.htm

BCCI vice-president and Indian Premier League [Images] Commissioner Lalit Modi conveyed India’s decision to England and Wales Cricket Board Chief Executive David Collier, who had sent the invite.

India’s refusal to take part in ECB’s Twenty20 initiative came a day after the BCCI made it clear that it would go ahead with its own version of the Champions League in India and is prepared to leave out teams from England if it did not agree to the terms and conditions.

The power packed lined up includes the Indian who won the bronze in boxing at Beijing, Vijender Kumar. Some even call him the latest Indian pin-up boy, what with his good looks and charm.

The philosopher boxer who inspired the winning spree, Akhil Kumar and the secretary of Indian boxing federation, Colonel P K Muralidharan Raja were also present on the show. The special show also congratulated coach Gurbax Singh Sandhu and the gritty boxer who played with twelve stitches, Jitender Kumar.

“At the most basic level, the new VisitJamaica.com is an improved means to communicate with and educate travellers about the diversity and culture of Jamaica,” the island’s tourism director Basil Smith said Wednesday as he and Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett globally launched, via a live webcast, the refurbished site.

Bindra became India’s first individual Olympic champion after claiming the 10m air rifle before freestyle wrestler Sushil Kumar and middleweight boxer Vijender Kumar added bronze medals to the tally.

Hundreds turned up to welcome the bronze medallists when they returned on Tuesday, with wrestler Kumar and his coach even given a celebratory elephant ride.

At a separate function, Bindra said he planned to use his new status to raise the profile of sport in India.

‘I don’t have any definite answers but it is a great opportunity to promote Olympic sports,’ he told reporters late on Tuesday.

More : http://www.desihotmasala.com/2008/08/michael-phelps-si-magazine-and.html

Scolari, who was named Chelsea manager, faced the press for the first time on Tuesday. The remarkable sense of humour that was on display as the Blues officially unveiled their new coach made sure the conference was quite an event.

Like his predecessor at Stamford Bridge four years ago, ‘Big Phil’ Scolari – as the former Brazil coach has been nicknamed – floored everyone with an almost similar brand of humour. He spoke in halting English that had the British media in splits.

No way. No how.

You see, Rose has a fear of needles. No, make that a debilitating phobia of them.

He was told he needed as many as four stitches to close up a gash above his right eye after a collision during Memphis’ 92-74 win over Michigan State on Friday in the South Regional semifinal.

That news ruined any celebration he had in mind after scoring a game-high 27 points despite missing almost eight minutes in the second half dealing with the injury.

Rose came stalking out of the locker room, yelling, ranting and on the verge of tears. He only calmed down when team officials agreed to glue the cut and forget the stitches.

“I’m terrified of needles,” he said. “If I would have got stitches, they would have had to stick a needle right above my eye. So I was pouting, stormed out of the locker room. I was mad.”

Rose, who is averaging 14 points per game, isn’t sure what brought on this fear, but he vividly remembers an event from his childhood that didn’t help.

When he was 7, he fell off his bicycle and another child ran over his head with a bike, causing a large wound on the back of his head.

“I think she is in the best shape to go all out for a medal,” Bahadur said on the sidelines of the Athletics Federation of India’s Annual General Meeting on Saturday.

“I think she can cross her personal best of 6.83m mark this time. She had done that in Athens Olympics and she can improve upon that mark in Beijing,” the coach said.

Anju won the bronze medal at the 2003 World Championship in Paris and recorded her best effort in Athens to finish sixth.

She has already qualified for the Beijing Olympics along with triple jumper Renjith Maheswary, discus thrower Vikas Gowda and walker Babubhai Panocha.

Galliani added that Milan would not have let Ronaldinho compete at next month’s games if the choice was made now. But Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti said the Olympics offered the former two-time FIFA world player of the year “a chance to get back in shape.” “When he returns he’ll be ready and he’ll only require the time to adapt to our system,” Ancelotti said.

The NBA certainly hopes so as it plans a major push to introduce basketball to India and expand its already formidable global reach into a country with a soaring economy, a growing appetite for Western tastes, and, most importantly, 1.1 billion potential fans.

The NBA has had tremendous success selling basketball overseas, most notably in China, where the league estimates 300 million people play the sport and Houston Rockets center Yao Ming is a national icon.

India, a relatively untapped territory, looms as the NBA’s next great challenge.

But it could be a tough sell. The few public basketball courts attract little attention, and words like “slam-dunk” and “alley-oop” are met with blank stares.

FIBA President Bob Elphinston, announcing this at a glittering function here yesterday, said, “the tournament, with top eight Asian teams, is going to be a wonderful opportunity for the Indian basketball to grow further.”

“With this championship tournament the Commonwealth nations will get a very good opportunity to improve their performance by competing with each other,” Elphinston added.

Besides India, England, Nigeria, Canada and New Zealand, and eight Asian countries, are the probable participants in the tournament to be held just before the Delhi Commonwealth Games scheduled in October that year.

World number six Disi clocked 60:43 (one hour and 43 seconds) while Alemu, ranked 10th in the world, took 1 hour 10 minutes and 30 seconds to claim the title.

Kenya’s Isaac Macharia (60:47) and world number three Wilson Kiprotich (62:03) finished second and third respectively in the men’s race.

Alemu, meanwhile, was succeeded by compatriot Atsede Habtambu, who clocked 1:10:36. Kenya’s Kenya’s Alice Timbill came third with a timing of 1:10:40.

The Indians in the fray also improved on their last year’s performance with last year’s top finisher Ram Singh Yadav once again being the local champion ending 16th this time.

Up to 1.85 million tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games will go on sale to people in China on Tuesday, organisers have announced.
The tickets will be available on a “first come, first served basis” from 0900 (0100GMT) until all are sold.

When the first tickets were released to Chinese people in April it was done on a lottery system.

All opening and closing ceremony seats and 1.59m tickets for sports events were snapped up at that time.

Seven million tickets will be sold for the 2008 games, with more than five million allocated to the host country.

As with the first batch of domestic tickets released six months ago, buyers of these latest tickets must have an address in China.

People living in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau are not eligible.

Tickets will be available through the official Beijing Olympics ticketing website, branches of Bank of China or a telephone hotline.

And a limit of 50 tickets per person will be in place.

In an effort to combat ticket touting, buyers are required to register ID details, but there are reports that a black market for tickets has already emerged.

Anand outplayed Grischuk in a game that for most part seemed headed for a draw.

Anju managed a best effort of 6.60m in the qualifying round and made it to the medal round in 11th place out of the 12 jumpers who got through.

The qualifying mark was set at 6.75m but with only seven athletes managing to achieve that, the next five best performers made it to the finals.

In women’s discus throw, Krishna Poonia failed to make it to the final after managing a best of 57.17m in qualifying, way below her personal best of 61.53m or her season’s best of 58.80m.

Anju’s efforts were far below her personal best of 6.83m, that she did at the 2004 Athens Olympics [Images] and her season’s best of 6.65m, but she would be aiming to improve her performance in the final on Tuesday.

Anju’s best effort came in her first attempt while she managed 6.59m in her second jump. Her hopes of improving on them did not materialise as her third attempt was a foul jump.

Portugal’s Naide Gomes and Russian Lyudmila Kolchanova were the best jumpers on show with marks of 6.96m each, just ahead of Brazilian Maurren Higa Maggi’s season’s best effort of 6.95m.

For Krishna, it was all the more disappointing for her since four of the finalists had qualifying jumps measuring below Krishna’s personal best

Many of you might have missed the best goal of the season, netted by Matthew Taylor for Portsmouth against Everton! Be sure to check it out.

The others include:

10. Xavi Alonso for Liverpool against Newcastle United
09. Wayne Rooney for Manchester United against Bolton
08. Peter Crouch for Liverpool against Bolton
07. Didier Drogba for Chelsea against Liverpool
06. Paul Scholes for Manchester United against Aston Villa
05. Robin Van Persie for Arsenal against Charlton Athletic
04. Thierry Henry for Arsenal against Blackburn Rovers
03. Didier Drogba for Chelsea against Everton
02. Michael Essien for Chelsea against Arsenal
01. Matthew Taylor for Portsmouth against Everton

“After watching Dravid in India last year, I came away thinking he was one of the two best players, along with [Ricky] Ponting, I had come up against. Yes, even better than Sachin. The style Dravid plays in is one that appeals to me,” the England batsman wrote in his blog for The Guardian on Thursday.

However, the 25-year-old says he has learnt a lot watching Tendulkar play over the years.

• Dravid – Tendulkar Still Deadly

At least eight of the playing squad were feeling under the weather with Sreesanth, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ramesh Powar, RP Singh and Ajit Agarkar the worst hit. Those five couldn’t attend India’s final training session at the Civil Service Ground. Rahul Dravid said he was also feeling the effects of the illness, which hit Dhoni first and ruled him out of Saturday’s match against Ireland.

Rakesh Patel, a pace bowler playing in the Liverpool Leagues, was drafted in as emergency cover. Patel was the third highest wicket-taker in last season’s Ranjji Trophy, finishing with 37 scalps at an impressive average of 21. Ishant Sharma and Ranadeb Bose, who were due to fly in with the Test squad, were called up early and will arrive in time for Friday’s match. The situation was so bad that India considered trying to get the game pushed back to Wednesday, but the logistics of such a move made it impossible.