Category Uncategorized

India prioritised recovery – both physical and mental – ahead of their Women’s World Cup final match against South Africa on Sunday

Vishal Dikshit01-Nov-20251:50

Chopra: India winning the World Cup will change women’s cricket landscape

Harmanpreet Kaur sat down for the pre-match press conference at the DY Patil Stadium, her face seemingly devoid of any emotion. There was only a simmering fire.She had cried uncontrollably after India sealed a high-octane victory over Australia in the semi-final. That was only two nights ago. Two nights to digest the high of beating serial World Cup winners. Two nights to come to terms with the fact the job isn’t quite done.”Well, the semi-final was a very high-pressure game and very intense,” Harmanpreet said on the eve of the final against South Africa. “After that, recovery was something which we all paid more attention to because the fresher we are, mentally, for the final, the better it will be.”Because we have been working hard for so many years and we have been batting day and night, whenever our batters camped or there were team camps. So, skill-wise we know we have done a lot and now it’s only about keeping ourselves fresh for tomorrow and recovery is something which we all talk about, and everybody is really taking that thing very seriously and hopefully tomorrow we will feel even fresher for the main game.India will be playing their third ODI World Cup final. South Africa, just their first.”Keeping yourself balanced and focused is something which is the key,” Harmanpreet said. “We are having those sessions where we have been talking about how we can be more focused and more balanced and at the same time keeping ourselves relaxed because this is the biggest stage and biggest opportunity for us, playing in home conditions and that also final match.2:27

WWC final – Can India come down from their high in time?

“But I think the most important thing is that we have to enjoy this because there is nothing bigger than this in our life as a cricketer and as a captain. So our focus is to enjoy this moment and keep taking small targets which we have to achieve as a team rather than thinking bigger targets because you can achieve bigger targets if you achieve the small targets.”Harmanpreet is into her fifth World Cup now, but this is her first as captain. India have arrived at the final after a topsy-turvy league stage that saw them win only three of their seven games. She was clear “there’s no bigger motivation than a World Cup final” to up their game.Related

Indian women's cricket on the cusp of its 1983 moment

It's India's party, but the artistic hunters will come with their dancing shoes on

Rodrigues completes her redemption arc

“We know pretty well how it feels after losing [a World Cup final],” she said. “We’re really looking forward to the feeling of winning a final. Hopefully it’s going to be a special day for us tomorrow. We’ve worked really hard, and now it’s about getting everything together tomorrow.”India’s road to the semis looked wobbly right from the start. They began with collapses against Sri Lanka and Pakistan but turned things around to win both games. They lost all the matches they played against higher-ranked teams – South Africa, Australia and England – and it was only when they arrived in Navi Mumbai, a ground where they have had lots of success, that things picked back up.”We weren’t shaken up even once in the team because of those three big losses,” Harmanpreet said. “Even after that, everyone was together and everyone was talking about how to reach the final. We had a positive mindset which really helped us that we’re here now. When you have such a positive mindset and everyone feels from within to perform for the country…”We were definitely talking about where to improve but at the same time there was a common goal, there was the awareness that it’s a long process and there would be ups and downs, wins and losses. At the end of the day, what matters is we’re here in the final. So we used to think how to move forward after those losses, how to improve, be there for each other.”2:43

WWC final: Harmanpreet and Tryon will be key players

India have looked far more convincing over their last three matches, including a washout against Bangladesh. The XI seems more balanced, with six bowling options, bigger contributions from the bat, and all of it culminating in another historic victory against forever favourites Australia. That night ended with plenty of tears, from Jemimah Rodrigues on the field and Harmanpreet in the dugout as she hugged whoever came her way, crying into their arms.”I think I’m a very emotional person, and I cry a lot,” Harmanpreet said with a smile. “So it’s not like I cry only after losing. I have cried a lot after winning too, maybe yesterday you have seen me on television. But my team-mates have seen me in the dressing room many times – on small occasions also, whenever we have done well. I am the first person to cry.”As a player, these moments are very important. To beat a team like Australia, which is a big team and has always done well on the world stage. It’s not an easy thing to perform and be mentally strong in front of them. But I think overcoming that hurdle was something very special to all of us. I always tell my team that you don’t need to control your emotions. If you feel like crying, cry. At the same time, just keep enjoying. I think there is no bigger achievement or thing for us. Tomorrow is a special day and we will go with the same mindset.”There is a sell-out crowd expected for the final on Sunday.”The entire team is charged up, we’re there for each other and praying for each other,” Harmanpreet said. “That shows how close this team is and how ready we are for this match. Now it’s only giving your best, all the strategies and plans have been taking shape for the last two years. We had been planning for a home World Cup, what kind of conditions we’d get, so know it’s only about giving your 100%.”

Things are quickly going from bad to worse for Chelsea at the moment.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that Enzo Maresca’s side demolished Barcelona and drew with Premier League leaders Arsenal.

Yet, their defeat at the hands of Atalanta in the Champions League on Tuesday night was their second loss in three games and the third match in a row they were expected to win.

It really was a night to forget for Chelsea, and one that should see the manager make more than a few changes ahead of the weekend.

Chelsea's poor performers

Unfortunately for Maresca, there were plenty of Chelsea players who looked way off the pace in Bergamo on Tuesday night, with Enzo Fernández being particularly poor.

The Argentine international was tasked with playing in the ten again, and while he has had more than a few games in which he’s looked a threat there this season, this was not one of them.

On the ball, the former Benfica star was consistently making the wrong decisions, and off of it, he looked so lethargic that one analyst asked if “someone put weights in Enzo’s boots?”

Minutes

67′

Expected Goals

0.01

Goals

0

Expected Assists

0.42

Assists

0

Key Passes

1

Crosses (Accurate)

1 (0)

Passes (Accurate)

24/33 (73%)

Lost Possession

15

Dribbles

0

Duels (Won)

10 (3)

By the time he was taken off in the 67th minute, he had completed just 24 of his 33 attempted passes, which is nowhere near good enough for someone in his position.

Moving a little deeper, it was also an uncharacteristically poor performance from the club’s record signing, Moises Caicedo.

Due to his three-match ban only applying to the Premier League, the manager decided to bring the Ecuadorian international back into the team, but he looked way off the pace.

The former Brighton & Hove Albion gem didn’t make a game-costing mistake, but he also felt like more of a passenger, failing to play a single key pass, losing the ball eight times, not taking a shot, committing two fouls and losing four ground duels.

Finally, Wesley Fofana and Robert Sanchez were also disappointing on the night.

The former seemed to completely lose Gianluca Scamacca for the hosts’ equalising goal, and then the former should have done better for Charles De Ketelaere’s winning strike.

Now, all these players were poor, but there is an argument for them keeping their places in the team for the game on the weekend, which cannot be said for the next player.

The Chelsea dud who should be dropped

Jamie Gittens was supposed to be a technically impressive, dynamic attacker who’d come in and make a real impact out wide for Chelsea, but so far, he’s been anything but.

Chalkboard

Football FanCast’s Chalkboard series presents a tactical discussion from around the global game.

Now, there is still time for him to come good in West London, but Tuesday night was another disappointing display from the former Borussia Dortmund star.

Maresca gave the Englishman plenty of game time, but he just couldn’t make an impact on the game, with or without the ball.

In fact, his one notable moment in the match was a shot in the second half that was comfortably saved. Other than that, he was utterly anonymous.

That might sound harsh, but it’s an opinion shared by football.london’s Bobby Vincent, who gave the 21-year-old a 5/10 match rating at full-time and wrote that he ‘drifted out of the game.’

Minutes

94′

Expected Goals

0.03

Goals

0

Expected Assists

0.23

Assists

0

Key Passes

1

Crosses (Accurate)

1 (0)

Passes (Accurate)

16/18 (89%)

Lost Possession

9

Dribbles (Successful)

4 (2)

Duels (Won)

10 (3)

Unsurprisingly, the winger’s statistics more than back up such an appraisal.

For example, in his 94 minutes of action, the Reading-born ace registered a combined expected goal and assists figure of just 0.26, played a single key pass, took 33 touches – 21 fewer than Sanchez -, lost the ball nine times, lost seven of his ten duels and failed in 50% of his dribbles.

If this were a one-off, just a bad day at the office for the Englishman, then there would be an argument to keep him in the team to get back on his feet at the weekend.

However, the summer signing has had more poor performances than good so far this season, and therefore, Maresca should drop him from the lineup ahead of the Everton game.

Watch out Delap: Chelsea set sights on "one of Europe's most in-form CFs"

The free-scoring forward could spell the end of Liam Delap at Chelsea.

ByJack Salveson Holmes 3 days ago

The ability to bowl with both arms, along with his developing top-order batting, makes the Tasmania allrounder a fascinating cricketer to follow

Deivarayan Muthu14-Sep-2025When Chennai-born Nivethan Radhakrishnan returned to his roots in August as part of a select group of Australian emerging players who trained at the MRF academy, he sensed that the city had changed.Radhakrishnan had enjoyed stints in Chennai’s robust league structure before moving to Australia along with his family in 2013. The recent trip to Chennai was his first since the Covid-19 pandemic hit. During this period, Radhakrishnan, now 22, has changed as a person and professional cricketer as well.Just weeks after steering Australia to a third-place finish in the 2022 Under-19 World Cup in the Caribbean, Radhakrishnan made the step-up to the Sheffield Shield for Tasmania, batting at No. 7 and bowling spin. Not just your average spin – he can bowl both right-arm offspin and left-arm fingerspin. The only known male ambidextrous spinner in Australia’s system has been trying to push the envelope even further in recent times by trying his (right) hand at wristspin.Related

• Australia's next opener? Weatherald enjoying cricket 'like I did as a kid'

• Nivethan Radhakrishnan, from Tamil Nadu to Tasmania, creating opportunities with both hands

• Akshay Karnewar: Vidarbha's ambidextrous trump card

Radhakrishnan has also moved up the order since and having learnt from Australia’s next-in-line opener Jake Weatherald, he’s keen to establish himself as a Tasmania regular in the upcoming domestic season. Since making his debut in 2022, Radhakrishnan has played just seven Shield games, scoring 317 runs at an average of 22.64 and taking three wickets.While Radhakrishnan is an unorthodox bowler, he prides himself on being an orthodox opening batter. Some of the traits were on display during his 68, spanning 298 minutes and 243 balls against eventual Shield champions South Australia at the Adelaide Oval in February 2025. Radhakrishnan reckons that his old-school approach complements Weatherald’s more aggressive ways.”I’ve had the privilege of opening the batting with Jake Weatherald pretty much like every game I played last year and he was so ultra-aggressive with his feet,” Radhakrishnan recalls. “It’s not necessarily about just scoring [runs], but his movements are so sharp and precise. It’s a learning for me – I might not be able to score as fast as he can but that’s no excuse for me to not look to score like trying to be real aggressive with my footwork and still identify balls [to hit].”So that’s been a big focus for me in the pre-season. Just really nailing down traditional simple things like where’s my off stump like, when to play a few balls on top of the bounce, when to score off the pads. As long as my feet and head are in a nice position, I think I should be sweet.”With the more experienced Matthew Kuhnemann, who has played ten internationals for Australia, likely to be Tasmania’s frontline spinner in the Shield supported by former Under-19 World Cup-winning offspinner Raf MacMillan, Radhakrishnan is happy to play a support role with the ball.”I’m trying to really sort of hone in with my bowling with the way Shield cricket is played,” Radhakrishnan says. “Kuhnemann and Raf are more likely to be the first spinners, so my role might be a bit more defensive. Maybe a holding role to get us to the second new ball or just change it up to get a breakthrough.”While Radhakrishnan has played just one List A game so far, he believes that he has a lot more to offer with his ambidextrous bowling skills in white-ball cricket. On his List A debut against South Australia in Adelaide in February earlier this year, he knocked over right-handed batters Daniel Drew and Ben Manenti with left-arm fingerspin and bowled right-arm offspin to left-handed opener Mackenzie Harvey.Nivethan Radhakrishnan in his offspin delivery stride•Getty Images”From a white-ball perspective probably my biggest strength is being able to execute those two different skill sets,” Radhakrishnan says. “It is an asset to a captain considering if I do execute with a certain level of consistency that’s different match-ups that I can actually have a say in. I might be able to turn it the other way or bowl a particular ball to a particular batter and survive in that match-up.”Radhakrishnan has been keeping a close on eye on how other ambidextrous spinners such as Sri Lanka’s Kamindu Mendis, who had also bowled with both hands in IPL 2025, are adapting to top-flight cricket.”I think I was five or six years old when I started doing it [bowling with both hands],” Radhakrishnan says. “I see Kamindu doing it and a domestic spinner in India [Akshay Karnewar]. I’ve not seen Ben Kellaway do it but I see footage of Kamindu and Karnewar.”What I saw was their actions literally look like mirror images whereas for me I feel like I’m a little bit more like Ravi Ashwin in the way I do change my action up a lot like depending on like what I’m vibing at the time and speaking tactically and technically, I might let my action evolve a little bit.”Radhakrishnan, who was recently in action for the Hobart Hurricanes Academy in the Top End T20 tournament, which also involved Pakistan Shaheens and Bangladesh A, is aiming to expand his variations and win his maiden BBL contract in the near future.”I do bowl the odd leggie, especially with the right arm,” Radhakrishnan says. “It’s easy to bowl as a variation, but once you want to execute in a particular situation, it’s a lot of pressure and you need to work on it more. But I do try to execute a leggie or a wrong’un or trying to a copy a Sunil Narine [or] Sikandar Raza like hiding the ball behind my back and stuff like that.”Having ticked off a number of boxes like fine-tuning his bowling, scoring a half-century against former Ranji Trophy champions Saurashtra and reconnecting with old friends in Chennai, Radhakrishnan returned to Australia with a bagful of happy memories and takeaways.

Celtic captain Callum McGregor carried the team on his back against St Mirren in the Scottish Premiership on Saturday, securing the win with a stunning strike from distance.

The former Scotland international delivered a staggering finish from outside of the box in the 95th minute for the Hoops, when the game felt destined to end with a 0-0 draw.

Interim head coach Martin O’Neill needed his captain to step up with that goal because it was an underwhelming performance that will leave several players concerned about their place in the starting line-up.

For example, the Northern Irish manager should ruthlessly drop left-winger Sebastian Tounekti from the team ahead of the clash with Feyenoord on Thursday night in the Europa League.

Why Celtic should drop Sebastian Tounekti

The Tunisia international was a breath of fresh air after his move from Hammarby at the end of the summer transfer window, as he got fans off their seats with his exciting play on his debut against Kilmarnock.

Unfortunately, though, the 23-year-old forward has failed to add end product to his exciting play, with a return of two goals and no assists in 14 appearances in all competitions for the club, per Transfermarkt.

On top of his struggles in the final third throughout the season so far, Tounekti’s all-round performances in the last two Premiership games have left too much to be desired.

Sebastian Tounekti’s last two performances
Stats	vs Kilmarnock	Vs St Mirren
Minutes	78	67
Shots	2	1
Goals	0	0
Key passes	0	1
Big chances created	0	0
Dribbles completed	2/10	2/6
Duels won	3/13	3/11
Stats via Sofascore

As you can see in the table above, the Hoops winger failed to deliver much in the way of quality against Kilmarnock or St Mirren, whilst struggling badly with the physical side of the game.

With this in mind, O’Neill could ruthlessly ditch Tounekti from the starting line-up on Thursday by unleashing Paulo Bernardo in a brand-new role on the left flank.

Why Paulo Bernardo should be played on the left wing

The Portuguese central midfielder has only played six matches in all competitions this season, per Transfermarkt, but unleashing him as a left winger could be a genius move by the interim manager.

Per Transfermarkt, Bernardo has never played as a left midfielder or left winger in his senior career, for Benfica or Celtic, but it is a position that could suit him against Feyenoord.

Against St Mirren, Tounekti and Kieran Tierney often seemed to want to do the same thing, which was to get to the byline to cross the ball, and they got in each other’s way at times.

Playing Bernardo on the left against Feyenoord would provide Tierney, who has delivered four assists in all competitions this season, the freedom of the left flank to deliver crosses, as the ex-Benfica man would drift inside into more central areas in possession, similarly to how Luke McCowan plays when he is deployed on the right wing.

On top of this move potentially unlocking Tierney as an attacking force, it could also provide Bernardo with more opportunities to showcase his talent at the top end of the pitch.

The central midfielder, who was hailed as “tenacious” by Brendan Rodgers, has produced seven goals and seven assists in 83 appearances for the Hoops to date, per Transfermarkt, whilst he has also scored 11 goals in 32 caps for Portugal’s U21s.

This suggests that he does have the potential to provide a threat in the final third if given a chance to play further up the pitch, which is another reason why this brand-new role could be a good move for him.

Therefore, O’Neill should finally ditch Tounekti from the starting XI to try out a pairing of Tierney and Bernardo down the left against Feyenoord on Thursday.

The new Luis Palma: O'Neill must ruthlessly drop "sloppy" Celtic flop

This Celtic flop who was saved by Callum McGregor’s screamer is looking like the new Luis Palma.

By
Dan Emery

Nov 23, 2025

The bat-first advantage, seamers ruling the roost under lights, and Lyon’s roar

Sampath Bandarupalli04-Dec-2024Win toss, bat firstThe key to success in day-night Tests in Australia is in batting first and setting substantial totals. Australia have used this strategy effectively – with luck going their way with the toss – winning on all seven occasions they have batted first. In six of those matches, they posted 400-plus totals.West Indies did similarly earlier this year. After opting to bat, they posted 311 and went on to secure an eight-run win to end Australia’s winning streak in pink-ball Tests.