East Bengal trounce Punjab FC to secure final in Super Cup
East Bengal trounced Punjab FC 3-1 in the semifinal of the Super Cup to record their third final at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Margao, Goa, on Thursday evening. Mohammed Rashid drew first blood for the winners in the 12th minute. Then, in the 33rd minute, Bipin was adjudged to have handled the ball after Ricky Shabong tried to head the ball inside the box. The referee did not hesitate to give a spot-kick in Punjab’s favour. Spaniard Daniel Ramirez levelled the scoreline from the spot-kick in the 34th minute. Punjab tried to have possession in the midfield, but they often looked disjointed and struggled to create goalmouth, thanks to East Bengal’s compact defensive organisation. Just seconds before the referee blew the half-time whistle, Kevin Sibille’s header pulls East Bengal into the lead at the break! However, just as East Bengal took the lead off Sibille’s header, chief coach Bruzon was alleged of celebrating in the face of the officials, which saw him receive marching orders for dissent. But despite Oscar’s send-off, according to Soul Crespo the dressing-room atmosphere became elated with the 3-1 victory. East Bengal captain revealed while speaking to tournament broadcaster after the match, “We are all excited with the result. The dressing room is also elated.” East Bengal on the day had much superiority over their opposition courtesy their five foreigners. Crespo revealed, “In the new season, I feel we are stronger psychologically compared to our state of mind in the last season. We are being able to deliver with free minds.”
Injured Neymar strikes a hat-trick; desperate to get a national call-up
Despite sustaining a knee injury, Neymar Jr. struck a hat-trick, helping his childhood club Santos FC to go out of relegation from the Brazilian Premier league. The 33-year-old Brazilian World Cupper scored three goals within only 17 minutes, sending Santos FC to record a 3-0 victory and two points clear of the bottom four with one match left. Neymar is not being called up in the national preparatory camp by national coach Carlo Ancelotti since 2023 and looks desperate to get a national call-up. Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti said in October that Neymar remains in his plans for next year’s World Cup, but the striker must regain full fitness. The striker has scored five goals so far and provided one assist in his club team’s last three matches, guiding the club to garner seven points to be placed at 14th in the League table. Santos hosts Cruzeiro on Sunday in the last match of the campaign.
Starc surpasses Wasim Akram; scalps most Test wickets as the left-arm pacer
Mitchell Starc cracked Pakistan legend Wasim Akram’s record, becoming the left-arm pacer with the most wickets in Test history. Starc achieved the feat during the second session of the opening day of the Pink-ball Test of the ongoing Ashes series. He dismissed Harry Brook after getting the wickets of Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope earlier in the day. Starc has broken Akram’s record in 102 matches after starting off the Ashes series on fire. In the first Test in Perth, Starc picked up seven wickets in the first innings and followed it up with three in the second innings. Now, Starc has achieved 415 wickets in 102 matches, while Wasim Akram finished his career in Test, scalping 414 wickets in 104 matches. He now sits on the 16th all-time wicket-taker’s list and has Shaun Pollock, who has 421 wickets in his kitty, and Harbhajan Singh, with 417 wickets after him. Another legendary fast bowler, Richard Hadlee, is ahead of them with 431 wickets. The Australian speedster continues to dominate in pink-ball Tests, claiming over 80 wickets at an average of just over 17. From a first-over dismissal of Ben Duckett to breaking Akram’s record, Starc has cemented his legacy as one of the greatest left-arm fast bowlers in cricket history.
After 15 years Bengal girls on the verge of winning title! Reach the finals of the junior national football championship
After a gap of 15 years, Bengal’s girl football team are on the brink of clinching the title of junior national football championship. Bengal girls defeated Delhi by 4-2 via a tie-breaker in the semi-final at Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, on Thursday. The match ended goalless in the 90 minutes’ regulation time. In the tie-breaker Kusum Orao, Piu Roy, Adrija Jana and Lovely Mondol scored for Bengal. Bengal’s coach Rinku Ghosh revealed, while speaking to Parallel Sports from Anantapur after the match, “The players fought till the end. In the tie-breaker also, the players did not get nervous while scoring. Along with them, I must mention our goalkeeper, Rubina Khatun’s name who made a crucial save in the tie-breaker, helping us to reach the final.” Bengal’s junior girls last clinched the title in 2010 under the guidance of Shukla Nag. Rinku who has been the coach of Bengal’s junior girls for the third consecutive time, sounded optimistic says that this time Bengal will have the last laugh in the final also. Coach lamented that two their shots rebounded off the post. Otherwise, Bengal would have won the match within the 90 minutes’ regulation time. The girls got hardly a week to train together before leaving for Anantapur. Secondly, with only one alternative day’s gap between the matches in the championship, the young girls often were getting tired. Rinku, who worked with Adamas University and also guided West Bengal Police to win the State Games, believes Manipur is a tough side. “But I am optimistic about our girls’ mental strength. If they carry out the momentum they maintained today, then we have a fair chance of clinching the title,” added Rinku.
World’s youngest rated chess prodigy from Madhya Pradesh practices even at midnight!
At a time when kids of his age practice A for apple and B for ball, three-year-old Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha practices murmuring C for checkmate! When Sarwagya plays chess, he thumps his pieces on the squares and slaps the clock with a particular menace, which shows that he tries to put his opponent in utmost uneasiness. However, the reality is that this three-year-old prodigy from Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, needs to stand on a chair or sit on three chairs stacked one on top of the other just to reach the other end of the chessboard. At the age of three years, seven months and 20 days, Sarwagya is now the world’s youngest rated player in chess history. Kushwaha is still in nursery school but holds a rapid rating of 1,572. Recently, he dethroned Kolkata’s Anish Sarkar, who, in November last year, had become the youngest rated player in history at the age of three years, eight months and 19 days. Having picked up the sport last year when he was two-and-a-half years old, Sarwagya’s everyday routine includes four to five hours of chess, one hour of which is spent at a chess training centre in Sagar, while the rest is spent on playing online games and learning tactics via videos. “We pushed him into chess last year because we noticed his mind was like a scrubber, which learns things quickly. In a week of being taught chess, he could name all the pieces accurately,” says his father Siddharth. He added, “Kushwaha loves the sport a lot. If you wake him up in the middle of the night and ask him to play, he will for hours without a break. But what separates him from other kids his age is his patience to sit on the board and not get restless.” “When his parents first approached me to train him last year, he looked like a very normal kid. But soon, his capability to play the game well started to shine,” says his coach Nitin Chaurasiya. “You ask him anything, and there’s no hesitation in answering. He can also hold his own on the board against older kids. You can see his guts when he plays,” says Chaurasiya.
