Poker players around the world love to play other games and sports off the felt as well as follow their favourite teams and sports stars. When it comes to India, Cricket is the most played and followed sports and why not? We are the world champions of One-day Internationals (ODI) and the time has come to jump into the biggest battlefield again to retain the supremacy. 2015 Cricket World Cup is going to kick off this Saturday and will run for 6 weeks to crown the world champions. Indians couldn’t have asked for a better start than going against the arch rivals Pakistan in their first league match on Saturday, Feb 15. Meanwhile, few warm-up games have been played before the real action starts and Team India struggled to play to its reputation.
While cricket lovers were gearing up for the world cup last week, India achieved a remarkable feat in Golf. Alongside, Football fans got to see some high-voltage action in Premier League.
Cricket
India played 2 warm-up matches against Australia and Afghanistan and the performance up nowhere near what they to retain the trophy. In the 1st match against Australia, it was a total bowling failure which allowed aussie batsmen to put up a mammoth score of 371 runs on the board. Indian batsman couldn’t event play the full 50 overs and were bowled out for 265 in the 2nd innings. However, in the second match against Afghanistan Rohit Sharma took the game by storm hitting 150 runs which boosted Indian score to 364. In the second innings, Indian Bowling restricted the runs but failed to bowl out the Afghanistan team in 50 over thus finishing at 211 for 8 wickets. Although, India won by 153 runs but the think tank need to ponder over bowling options in league matches.
Football
In the premier league matches, Arsenal made a comeback against Leicester with a 2-1 victory that helped them climb the point table to the 4th place. In another match, two goals by Nikica Jelavic and Dame N’Doye helped Hull City beat Aston Villa 2-0. This victory has brought Hull to the 15th spot on the EPL points table. Earlier on Saturady, the table leader Chelsea beat Aston Villa 2-1 adding more points to strengthen it lead position. Manchester City which sits in the 2nd position played a draw 1-1 against Hull City thus, losing it chances of nearing Chelsea. The Under-17 football world cup is going to be hosted in Kolkata in 2017 for which the Mamata Banerjee led state government has given permission to the All India Football Federation (AIFF)to develop two present football stadiums to international standards.
Golf
India’s Anirban Lahiri clinched his maiden European Tour title on Saturday which is a brilliant start to 2015 for this young Indian golfer. He has become only the 4th Indian to win this title after Arjun Atwal, Jeev Milkha Singh and SSP Chowrasia. With this win, he also booked his seat in the year’s first Major – the US Masters by climbing to 37th place in the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR). He is also likely to play in the Presidents Cup in Korea this October.
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