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Sport-On This Day: Born April 17 1972: Muttiah Muralitharan Sri...

2020-07-07T16:57:47Z

Abraham4801:

By Amlan Chakraborty April 16 (Reuters) - Batting great Sachin Tendulkar famously said "if people throw stones at you, turn them into milestones" -- a motto almost perfectly encapsulated by the cricket career of Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan. Few modern-day athletes have endured more scrutiny than Muralitharan, whose bowling action was subjected to frequent and intrusive analysis, and even fewer emerged stronger from controversy. The legality of the off-spinner´s bowling split opinion and as controversy raged, the International Cricket Council (ICC) conducted extensive tests. The sight of a shirtless Muralitharan, [https://www.kennethknee.com/mediawiki/index.php/User:Dominik23W www.kennethknee.com] sensors on his bare torso and a dozen cameras capturing his every move, bowling before biomechanical experts at the University of Western Australia, remains a powerful image of an athlete's bid to salvage his reputation. On another occasion, he bowled before TV cameras with his bowling arm in a steel brace to prove his bent arm was congenital and not conspiratorial. That he still finished his career with 800 test wickets and 534 scalps in one-day internationals -- benchmarks in both formats -- proves his biggest asset was his iron will. The test tally is the bowler's equivalent of Don Bradman's fabled average of 99.94 -- a feat unlikely to be eclipsed. As a bowler, the off-spinner from Kandy was a freak of nature. In cricket, it is usually the pace bowlers who strike fear into their opponents. Yet Muralitharan, with his bulging eyes, was a rare spinner who terrorised batsmen. Former Sri Lanka captain Duleep Mendis once remarked that 'Murali' could turn the ball even on concrete and it was no exaggeration. Blessed with a rubbery wrist and strong shoulders, Muralitharan simply took the surface out of the equation and was unrelenting and often unplayable. Whispers, however, grew about his bowling action. Australian umpire Darrell Hair no-balled him seven times in the 1995 Melbourne test. Ten days later Muralitharan was no-balled repeatedly by Ross Emerson in a one-dayer. In January, 1999, Emerson called him again in Adelaide. Every time he readied for a fresh spell, the merciless Australian crowds shouted "no-ball". 'OUR MURALI' Yet those no-ball calls in 1995 perhaps proved a watershed moment in Sri Lankan cricket, as the team and Muralitharan went on to win the World Cup the following year. "I think the no-balling of Murali was what drilled us together into a World Cup-winning unit..." team mate Kumar Sangakkara wrote in Wisden magazine. "Buying into this Sri Lankan team as 'our team' and Murali as 'our Murali' gave us a goal... "We know what can beat the elite, we just need to believe that. And Murali gave that belief." Extensive tests arranged by the governing ICC concluded that his action created an "optical illusion" and eventually a 15-degree flexion rule was agreed for bowlers. The Wisden cricket almanac in 2002 ranked him as the leading bowler in history, ahead of Australian spin rival Shane Warne. While he polarised opinion, the ever-smiling spinner, often the lone Tamil in the team, was a powerful symbol of unity in a strife-torn nation. (Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; editing by Toby Davis)

Sachin Tendulkar: Cricket apos;s Peter Pan Must Finally Leave The Stage

2020-07-07T08:48:22Z

Abraham4801:

EDITOR'S WRAP: Cricket's Peter Pan must finally leave the stage. Let's just be glad we had him By [/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Sandeep+Bamzai Sandeep Bamzai] Published: 23:57 BST, 10 October 2013 | Updated: 23:57 BST, 10 October 2013 [ ] [ ] [ ] </a> [/indiahome/indianews/article-2452858/Sachin-Tendulkar-Crickets-Peter-Pan-finally-leave-stage-Lets-just-glad-him.html#comments View comments] Parting is such sweet sorrow: The game of cricket will miss Sachin as much as he will miss it When Shane Watson breached his defence in the recent Champions League T20 tourney, sending his off stump for an ungainly walk, the corridors of Sachin Tendulkar's mind must have reverberated with the words - it is time to go. It is hard to imagine watching cricket without Sachin Tendulkar, just as it will be hard for Sachin to imagine life without cricket. This is part of the circle of life; when Sunil Gavaskar announced his retirement at the very peak of his prowess, I was personally heartbroken. For me, he was inarguably the greatest Indian batsman, and a first among equals worldwide. Named after music director Sachin Dev Burman by his sister, Tendulkar's brand of mellifluous music transported savants like me to a new zone of delight. Bombay has always been the home of Indian batsmanship. From the time of the Quadrangular and Pentangular and the gradual evolution of maidan rivalries in Mumbai cricket with tourneys like Times Shield and Kanga League, an assembly line of batters broke through as they tried making their tryst with izzat and shaurat from the great game. In what came to be known as the Bombay relay race, many actors took their turn to play the Hero - Vijay Merchant, Russi Mody, Vinoo Mankad, Polly Umrigar, Vijay Manjrekar, Nari Contractor, Ajit Wadekar, Dilip Sardesai, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Sandeep Patil, Sanjay Manjrekar et al. There are others who didn't make the cut - Manohar Hardikar, Vijay Bhonsle, Sudakhar Adhikari, Ramnath Kenny and Amol Mazumdar. Phenomenon Taking the baton from Gavaskar was Sanjay Manjrekar as part of a larger guru-shishya parampara. Middle-class Maharashtrian boys used cricket as a means to get ahead in the hurly burly of life. In fact, history has recorded that Gavaskar's last Test at Bangalore when he played an innings of outstanding quality on a Bunsen against Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed and in the very next Test India played against the West Indies at home, a callow youth called Sanjay Manjrekar made his debut. Soon Manjrekar, known to be classically correct, was joined by Vinod Kambli, Sachin Tendulkar and Pravin Amre, all by-products of the maidan and a regimen of honing their skills on its hallowed turf. That Sachin Tendulkar outlasted all three, as also his early contemporaries like Graeme Hick, Inzamam ul Haq and even Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting, is a tribute to his durability. Whether he is the greatest batsman of his generation remains a matter of conjecture. A joy to millions: Sachin Tendulkar is probably the most destructive one-day batsman the world has ever seen As a player who relied heavily on hand-eye coordination, slowing reflexes have impacted his career adversely in the last couple of years. With his sell-by date having expired after the 2011 World Cup victory, he was a passenger in the Indian side. Long years ago, when the phenomenon first broke through in Mumbai cricket, I remember covering a Ranji game in Aurangabad where Salil Ankola tried to bounce him out. His jousts with bowlers have now become the stuff of legend. Back then, the little big fella, still not the sharply chiseled Bombay Bomber, caned Ankola, sending him to distant parts of the ground. I remember him telling me that there was something that welled up inside when facing a bowler. He wanted to thrash the bowler and give him a pasting. One saw that all the time, this mindset saw the demolition of Henry Olonga, Shane Warne, Glen McGrath, Abdul Qadir and innumerable others at different pit stops - a living testimony to his art of war. His body of work is humungous. Tendulkar was undoubtedly a titan, a battling gladiator who wore the tricolour on his heart. Equally, he was probably the most destructive one day batsman ever, someone no bowler wanted to do the tango with for long. His contribution to Indian cricket is unquestioned and unparalleled, but was he as good as Gavaskar, did he win you matches, was Lara a better peer? These are questions which one can debate endlessly, but let us understand that comparisons are odious. Humility Many also reckoned that three of the finest batters played under the shadow of the Banyan Tree - Rahul Dravid who has an equally great Test record, VVS Laxman who you could bet your shirt on and Saurav Ganguly, considered one of the best left handed one day cricketers. The genius of Tendulkar was his humility, always self-effacing and modest. Finest hour: Sachin is carried by teammate Yusuf Pathan after they beat Sri Lanka in the 2011 Cricket World Cup final In my mind's eye, I recall my visit to his Sahitya Sahwas residence in Bandra East many moons ago on the eve of his departure to a long tour of Australia, which included the World Cup. The shy teenager was tongue-tied and [https://wikipedia1.org/wiki/Ancestry_Vs._23andMe:_Which_DNA_Testing_Kit_Is_Best_For_Tracing_Your_Family_History https://wikipedia1.org/wiki/Ancestry_Vs._23andMe:_Which_DNA_Testing_Kit_Is_Best_For_Tracing_Your_Family_History] reticent, his brother Ajit doing most of the talking on his behalf. The one thing that seeped through from that meeting was that boy wanted desperately to do well in the land of Oz. There was a steely resolve in his uncluttered mind, a resolve to do well against genuine fast bowling. To his credit, he did. Dignity The same feisty attitude and rock hard temperament allowed him to dominate bowling attacks. And despite all this, my sense is that Tendulkar would believe that he is an under-achiever. That is blasphemy I know, but one cannot ignore the visions of Brian Charles Lara that have plagued Tendulkar for most of his career. He has a better overall record than Lara, but he would have liked to essay some of the Trinidadian's knocks. It will be grossly unfair to say that Tendulkar played for himself; no he played for us - all of India. He played with dignity and precision and like Peter Pan never aged. In the two books that I have authored on the societal impact of cricket, Tendulkar has been the centrifuge. Just as I lived through Gavaskar's cricket, I enjoyed the sight of Tiny Ten making a fist of it. Gavaskar once told me that the best batsmen have always been short, because they have a low centre of gravity which allows them better balance, functionality and strokeplay. Sachin typifies that. Salut! The writer is Editor, Mail Today

Black YouTubers Sue Google

2020-07-07T08:32:27Z

Abraham4801:

id="article-body" class="row" section="article-body"> YouTube is the world's biggest online video source, with more than 2 billion visitors a month. Angela Lang/CNET A group of Black [/news/google-youtube-union-worlds-biggest-youtuber-channels-none-support-fairtube/ YouTubers] is suing [ YouTube] and its parent, [ Google], alleging that the companies discriminate against their videos based on race. The suit claims that YouTube uses its automated tools to "restrict, censor and denigrate" Black creators, hurting their subscribers and revenue, while videos with racist hate speech are hosted and allowed to make money on the site even after being flagged for violating YouTube's rules. Their complaint comes in the middle of a national reckoning with racism in the US, triggered by the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck. YouTube is among the tech giants making large donations to social justice initiatives alongside public statements of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. For more like this Subscribe to the CNET Now newsletter for our editors' picks for the most important stories of the day. After announcing a [/news/youtube-pledges-100m-fund-to-support-black-creators-hate-harassment-fundraising-takedowns/ $100 million fund to support Black video creators] earlier this week, YouTube has "some serious explaining to do," the lawsuit says, adding that YouTube and Google should "spend their money to stop the racist practices that pervade the YouTube platform." Plaintiffs in the latest complaint include YouTubers associated with the [ Lisa Cabrera] channel, with more than 20 million views; the channel Lisa's View, with about 11 million views; the channels [ The True Royal Family] and [ True Royal], which combined have 3.4 million views; and three channels related to the creator [ Carmen CaBoom], which have roughly 550,000 views combined. All the creators suing YouTube claim that the company has removed or archived their videos unfairly, hurting their revenue. YouTube said Thursday that it is reviewing the complaint. It added that it allows anyone to post videos that abide by the site's policies and guidelines, which it says it enforces in a neutral and consistent way. YouTube wants the service to include a variety of voices and perspectives, the company said. Asked about the lawsuit later Thursday during a [ virtual event with The Washington Post], YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said the company is going to look at the complaint and "try to understand what concerns are there." She listed off a few successful Black creators, including Jackie Aina, a beauty creator who focuses on issues for people of color, and Marques Brownlee, a gadget YouTuber. Earlier this month, Brownlee posted a video called "[ Reflecting on the color of my skin]," where he shares his own experiences on race. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses YouTube of "overt, intentional, and systematic racial discrimination," saying the companies "rig the game" by restricting and blocking these Black YouTubers based on their racial identity but not subjecting YouTube's own produced videos to the same scrutiny. The YouTubers also complain of YouTube profiting off videos with hate speech, which remain up with advertising on the site. The suit also accuses YouTube of "bugging" the creators' videos with metadata and other signals that let its automated systems filter videos based on race, identity or the viewpoint of the creator, the channel's subscribers and its viewers. Videos by the YouTubers filing the suit have been restricted, removed, limited in how much advertising revenue they earn or demonetized completely. YouTube said Thursday that its automated systems are not designed to identify the race, ethnicity or [http://customer.florencewarehouse.com/UserProfile/tabid/61/userId/1201800/Default.aspx http://customer.florencewarehouse.com/UserProfile/tabid/61/userId/1201800/Default.aspx] sexual orientation of creators or viewers. [/news/youtube-shooters-ire-spotlights-youtube-advertising-dilemma/ Video demonetization], or removing the advertising from a video, has been hotly debated among YouTubers for years. The issue is a central to another suit against YouTube filed last year by a group of LGBTQ YouTubers. They claimed YouTube restricts their videos and crimps their advertising and revenue, too, because of LGBTQ content. Tuesday's suit by the Black YouTubers cites proceedings in the LGBTQ YouTubers' case as support for its argument, adding that the two cases could be coordinated. During Thursday's interview with the Post, Wojcicki reflected on the past few months, including the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic and the protests all over the world. She said she understands people will look back on this time period. "I just want to make sure that as we're making decisions, I'm thinking about things in terms of being on the right side of history," she said. "It might be hard right now, but how will we think about it in the future?" See also: [/news/how-to-become-a-youtuber-online-classes-and-equipment-to-get-started/ How to become a YouTuber: Online classes and equipment to get started] Now playing: Watch this: Black Lives Matter: How you can take action today 4:11 [#comments Comments] [/topics/digital-media/ Digital Media] [/tags/legal/ Legal] [/google/ Google] [/tags/youtube/ YouTube] [/topics/culture/ Notification on Notification off Culture]

User:Abraham4801

2020-07-07T08:32:25Z

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