PARIS: Ace India shuttler Saina Nehwal on Friday progressed to the semi-finals of the ongoing Orleans Masters after defeating USA’s Iris Wang in the quarter-final clash.

Nehwal registered a hard-fought win over Wang 21-19, 17-21, 21-19 in a one-hour long encounter. Wang put up a great fight against Olympic bronze medalist shuttler but she could not get the better of Nehwal.

Nehwal started on a high note as she outclassed the American in the first game. Wang came back strong in the second game and claimed the game by 21-17.

The match went into the third game where Nehwal held her nerve to advance to the last four of the competition.

In another women’s singles quarter-final, Indian shuttler Ira Sharma faced a humiliating defeat against Denmark’s Line Christophersen. Danish shuttler defeated Ira in straight games 21-11, 21-8 in just 23 minutes.

Earlier in the day, the women’s doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy advanced to the semi-finals.

Ponnappa and Reddy outclassed England’s pair of Chloe Birch and Lauren Smith 21-14, 21-18 in the quarter-finals clash that lasted for 41 minutes.

Indian men’s doubles pair of Krishna Prashad Garaga and Vishnu Vardhan Goud Panjala stormed into the semi-finals after defeating the local pair of Christo Popov and Toma Junior Popov in a three-game intense clash.

The Indian duo came out triumphant despite the French pair staging a comeback in the second game. They won the match by 21-17, 10-21, 22-20 in an encounter that was completed in one hour and three minutes.

India’s batting arsenal in the second ODI played like a unit. Virat Kohli, once again, exhibited his batting class and superb form. Virat Kohli believes, as he has told me numerous times lately, that when the team is winning, criticism does not make any point. “Victory,” he said, “for team India is more important than my century.” Evidently, the skipper is beyond satisfied with his form, and his team’s performance.

It is generally seen that Virat Kohli plays big shots in the last overs against spinners. Most of his shots can be seen, while advancing through the innings, along with singles and doubles. In the second ODI, he extended his innings in a similar fashion, as he knows it well that there are many stroke players on the team.

Virat defends one end and gives the batsmen a chance to score runs at the other end, but I have a suggestion for him: he should play against spinners in the same way he has been playing spinners from the beginning. If he scores freely against spinners, he’d be able to put pressure on the spinners.

England team’s rotation policy is beyond my comprehension. Manier times, they also exclude in-form players in the name of rotation. If you rotate fast bowlers to avoid fitness problems, it makes sense. But they should see which series is important. In rotation, only one fast bowler can be rested at a time. Resting batsmen is a wrong move. At least Team India’s policy is on the right track and its good results are in front of us.

If a cricketer is incessantly, for long, a part of the team and he asks for rest, he should be given a break Jonny Bairstow performed well in Sri Lanka but he was rested later. However, such moves break the player’s rhythm. Secondly, Joe Root’s absence from the English squad in the series has also gone against the visitors. Players like Root and Bairstow should be included in all the formats.

Writer is a Dronacharya Awardee and coach of Virat Kohli. Views expressed are writer’s personal.

Ben Stokes’ swashbuckling 99 and in-form England opener Jonny Bairstow’s 112-ball 124 saw England register a six-wicket win over India in the second ODI here at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium on Friday.

Chasing a mammoth target of 337, the visitors crusied home with 39 balls to spare as they levelled the three-match series 1-1. If the Indian batsmen stole the show in the afternoon, it was the turn of the English batters under lights to showcase some quality strokeplay. The decider will be played on Sunday. The foundation of every successful chase is a strong foundation and England had the best possible start as openers Jason Roy and Bairstow scripted a hundred-plus partnership for the first wicket.

The duo started the innings cautiously, but took charge after the initial spell from the Indian bowlers. The visitors looked to be in cruise mode before a piece of brilliance on the field from Rohit Sharma in the 17th over saw Roy get run out after hitting a top-quality 55.

Stokes joined Bairstow in the middle and made his intentions clear from the word go as he went hammer and tongs from the word go. The duo added 175 for the second wicket and that set the momentum for the visitors.

Stokes missed out on a much-deserved ton as he got out on 99 off 52 balls — studded with 10 sixes. Wicket-keeper Rishabh Pant caught Stokes off Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the 36th over but it was too late for India as England were only 52 runs away from the target with eight wickets remaining.

In the very next over, Prasidh Krishna picked two wickets as he first got rid of centurion Bairstow and then picked stand-in skipper Jos Buttler for a three-ball duck. But it didn’t make much difference to the chase. Dawid Malan and debutant Liam Livingstone stitched an unbeaten 50-run partnership to take the side home. Livingstone scored 27* while Malan returned unbeaten on 16.

India had a poor start as in-form Shikhar Dhawan got out cheaply in the fourth over. Pacer Reece Topley scalped Dhawan (9) and provided an early breakthrough to his side. Skipper Virat Kohli joined Rohit Sharma in the middle.

Brief Scores: India 336/6 (KL Rahul 108, Rishabh Pant 77; Reece Topley 2-50); England 337/4 (Jonny Bairstow 124, Ben Stokes 99; Prasidh Krishna 2-58);

LIVERPOOL: Liverpool assistant manager Pepijn Lijnders said injuries has caused them a lot of problems and it even led to them losing their consistency.

Liverpool is currently placed in the seventh position on the Premier League table with 46 points from 29 games. The table is topped by Manchester City, who has amassed 71 points from 30 games. “We didn’t lose only our last line [due to injuries], by losing our last line we lost our midfield as well. And that’s where we lost our engine, and that’s a big problem. It’s something that created doubt in many different tactical aspects,” the club’s official website quoted Lijnders as saying.

“Many times small problems come from one big issue. If you try to solve the small problems you get nowhere, you have to solve the big issue. We always tried to find the solution, but the solution needs consistency, and that was the problem because there were always different and new problems coming and took the consistency away,” he added.

Lijnders further stated: “We don’t measure ourselves with the past, but we have to understand what made us the team who nobody wants to play against. This is the main reason why we won.”

The assistant manager then praised Fabinho. Having been integral to Liverpool’s successes in a central midfield berth during his first two seasons with the club, Fabinho has spent much of the current campaign in defence due to the injuries that have afflicted the squad.

“Coming back to Fabinho as the lighthouse, a proper ‘six’ just sees more, top teams and top players like Fabinho have in common that they have a huge spirit of initiative. That’s why when we speak about team development we are speaking indirectly about individual development — our idea forces this individual development,” he said.

“About Fabinho, I only want to say he has the capacity to make the players around him better. It’s really difficult to find players who have the talent to make the other ones flourish. There are just a few players in world football who have this natural capacity to stop counters, for example; most of them just tactically foul. He just always puts the team above himself,” he added.

England will extend its tours of the West Indies in 2022, adding an extra Test and two more T20Is to their schedule.

The January 2022 Tour will now feature five T20Is to be followed by England returning to the Caribbean for three Test matches in March – increased from the original two Test matches. “Cricket West Indies (CWI) and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) today announced the scheduled match dates for England’s next tour of the Caribbean in 2022. It represents an expanded schedule to the original International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Future Tours Programme (FTP),” read a joint statement released by both the boards.

The Test series will be the first in which the two teams compete for the newly commissioned “Richards-Botham Trophy,” named in honour of West Indies’ batting icon Sir Vivian Richards and England’s great all-rounder Lord Botham. The new trophy pays tribute to the two legends whose rivalry and friendship embodies the close relationship and mutual respect between the two sides.

The T20I series will be the biggest Series to date between the two teams in the shortest form of the game and will be part of the preparations building up to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia in October 2022.

Present and past members of the Pakistan national cricket teams on Thursday joined to celebrate one of the most iconic and memorable moments in the country’s cricket history — a 22-run victory over England in the final of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup on March 25, 1992, in front of more than 89,000 spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

While Misbah-ul-Haq, Mohammad Hafeez, Nida Dar, Sarfaraz Ahmed and Younis Khan reflected on the impact of Melbourne win on their careers, members of the 1992 side Aamer Sohail, Aqib Javed and Mushtaq Ahmed shared their experiences and the champions’ mindset with current members of the national teams. The World Cup victory was the catalyst for future triumphs, including back-to-back ICC U19 Cricket World Cup titles in 2004 and 2006, ICC T20 World Cup 2009 trophy, lifting of the ICC Test Championship mace in 2016 and the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 victory at The Oval.

When Pakistan won the ICC Champions Trophy 2017, it became only the second country after India to win all four ICC Majors — the World Cup, the T20 World Cup, Champions Trophy and the ICC Test Championship mace.

Younis Khan was 14 in 1992 and subsequently became the second Pakistan captain to win a major ICC event in 2009 before finishing as the most successful Test batsman.

“The final of the 1992 World Cup changed the scenario of Pakistan cricket forever.” Khan said.