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Australia beat the West Indies by 8 wickets and ensuring a better net run-rate ousted South Africa even as the latter beat England, ending their unbeaten streak. In the crucial last match in Group-1 for Australia in Abu Dhabi today, the defending Champions West Indies, for whom the match was of no consequence after being eliminated owing to their loss against the already-ousted Sri Lanka, came out with the right intentions of playing for respect put into bat; but after a few lusty shots by Gayle the same old story unfolded as three wickets fell in quick succession. Chris Gayle, the oldest playing international cricketer at 42 years of age, made only 15 in probably his last appearance in international cricket. A partnership promised to grow between Evin Lewis and Hetmyer, but Lewis getting out for 29 at the team score of 70 ended that. A partnership again seemed to bloom between Pollard and Bravo, but it happened to be only a brief one. Captain Pollard (44), this time, stuck on and help

Pakistan have almost sealed their berth in the semi-finals as probably the top team in Group-2 winning three out of three matches and notching up 6 points so far. What is more significant is the fact that Pakistan have crossed the main hurdles by defeating the toughest opponents in the group, namely India, New Zealand and Afghanistan. Now they have only two teams to overcome, considered to be weaker rivals. Of course, Namibia, creating another historic chapter by winning their first ever Super-stage match against Scotland, and Scotland are not pushovers. However, considering the roaring form Pakistan are in now winning against those two teams is not likely to be very tough, and in that scenario they will have 10 points—the maximum any team can manage in the group. The Pakistan team has arguably the best bowling attack of the tournament—combining pace and spin—and a very balanced team with someone up or down the line to finish the game. Captain Babar and wicket-keeper batsman Rizwan hav

In the last Super Four match of the Unimoni Asia Cup-2018 played in Abu Dhabi tonight Bangladesh played like tigers overcoming a spirited-in-splits Pakistan by  37  runs. It was a virtual semi-final with the winner set to meet India in the Final to be played in Dubai on Friday, 28 th September, 2018. Seemingly Pakistan could never recover psychologically from the dumps inflicted by arch-rivals India, not once but two times. Their batting was lackadaisical and painfully slow this time too. More importantly for millions of fans all over the globe, a possible third encounter between India and Pakistan in the tournament was snuffed out.      Bangladesh won the toss and elected to bat first. After a shaky start they finally managed to put up a competitive 240-run target for Pakistan thanks to a glorious but unlucky innings of 99 by Musfiqur Rahim and a dashing 60 by Mohammad Mithun. Pakistan bowled them out in 48.5 overs. In reply Pakistan also tottered at the start losing three w

Yuvraj Singh Takes Crucial Wickets! India struggled to beat Afghanistan in their first match of the ICC World Cup Twenty20 in Sri Lanka yesterday in Colombo. When finally they won by 23 runs it was not at all worthy of the current one-day Champions.  India huffed and puffed to 159 for the loss of five wickets in allotted 20 overs with the openers Gambhir and Sehwag failing again. The pitch could be a valid reason, because the Australia-Ireland match was played in the same track a little earlier. Just to exploit the wear and tear of the pitch Afghanistan must have decided to send India in after winning the toss. But equally important was the sheer pace of Afghan pacer Shapoor Jadran who accounted for the both the openers and the energy of a spirited Afghan team. The openers departed for just 22 runs on the board in the 5 th over. Yuvraj Singh in his second major comeback match made 18 off 20 balls with one six. They could have reduced India to 79 for 5 if the catches were