World Cup Notes

Unheralded Mohanty

EDGBASTON: Brought into the Indian team almost as an afterthought, medium-pacer Debashish Mohanty has emerged a major trump card for India as they clinched a Super Six berth.

The 24-year-old was included for the championship from outside the list of probables by the national selectors to widespread criticism. But after his twin strikes against the hosts, the team can ill-afford not to drop the bowler.

Mohanty struck a purple patch straightaway on being included against Kenya, snapping up 4-56 and returned 1-31 in India8217;s win over Sri Lanka and his 2-54 against England gave India the early advantage and has solved the problem of an effective third seam bowler.

Mohanty was a belated inclusion in the playing XI after young medium-pacer Ajit Agarkar proved too erratic and expensive in the first two ties. And he has grabbed the chance with both hands to claim seven wickets from three matches.

Three Musketeers

LONDON: The three musketeers8217; of Indian batting line up, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly, earned fulsome praise from the British press even as knives were out for England captain Alec Stewart after Sunday8217;s defeat to India.

8220;Those three musketeers 8212; with their d8217;Artagnan, Mohammad Azharuddin 8212; represent the most sumptuous batting line-up in the competition. The World Cup, they keep telling us, is a carnival of cricket and bowlers do not a carnival make,8221; wrote The Times newspaper.

All the centuries in the competition so far have been shared by the illustrious Indian threesome, two by Dravid, one each by Ganguly and Tendulkar, the newspaper pointed out.

War and peace

LONDON: The alarm bells are already ringing in Scotland Yard and at the home office. Old Trafford on June 88242;, a security nightmare. And Britain gets ready to play not its old role as colonial master but to preserve peace in its own racial and cultural melting point.

Indian and Pakistan fans will be mingling with each other on the terraces. Cricket seating is egalitarian. Anyone can sit anywhere provided he has a ticket. There is none of football8217;s segregation of supporters here, no empty spaces in the stands to keep partisan fans apart.

In normal times, this meeting of Asian cricket talent in a country in which India and Pakistan can expect to have equal support there are a million people of Indian origin resident in Britain and over half a million of Pakistani origin would have been viewed as a great contest of the World Cup. But now it is viewed as a matter of war and peace.

6-year-old killed

HYDERABAD: In a freak incident, a six-year-old boy lost his life when he was hit under the throat by a splinter from bursting of crackers at Malkajgiri in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh on Saturday night.

The bizarre incident happened when some boys got carried over the fall of Greame Hick8217;s wicket after Debabsish Mohanty bowled him in the crucial India-England World Cup cricket encounter at Edgbaston.

Vishal from Bidar in Karnataka, who came to his grand parents house to spend his summer vacations, was watching the match on television when the incident took place. He died on the way to the hospital, police said.