Tag: Sports

Tokyo/Toronto (TIP)- Hulk Hogan, the American sports and entertainment star who made professional wrestling a global phenomenon and loudly supported Donald Trump for President, has died at the age of 71, World Wrestling Entertainment said on Thursday, July 24. “WWE is saddened to learn WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan has passed away. One of pop culture’s most recognizable figures, Hogan helped WWE achieve global recognition in the 1980s,” WWE said on X. It gave no cause of death.
The bleach-blond, mahogany-tanned behemoth became the face of professional wrestling in the 1980s, helping transform the mock combat from a seedy spectacle into family-friendly entertainment worth billions of dollars.
A key moment in that evolution came at the WrestleMania III extravaganza in 1987, when Hogan hoisted fellow wrestler André the Giant before a sold-out Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan for a thunderous body slam of the Frenchman.
Hogan parlayed his wrestling fame into a less successful career in Hollywood, starring in films like “Rocky III” and “Santa With Muscles,” but kept returning to the ring as long as his body would allow.
In 2024, he appeared at the Republican National Convention to endorse the presidential bid of Trump, who in the 1980s had played host to Hulk-headlined WrestleManias. Hogan said he made the decision to support the Republican candidate after seeing his combative, fist-pumping reaction to an attempted assassination on the campaign trail.
“Let Trumpamania run wild, brother!” Hogan bellowed to a cheering crowd, ripping off his shirt to reveal a Trump tank top. “Let Trumpamania rule again!”
Born Terry Gene Bollea in Augusta, Georgia, on Aug. 11, 1953, the future Hulk and his family soon moved to the Tampa, Florida area. After high school, he played bass guitar for area rock bands, but felt a pull to the red-hot wrestling scene in Florida in the 1970s.
Many of the details of his career were showbusiness exaggerations, representative of the blurred lines between fact and fiction in wrestling.

Manchester (TIP)- A mammoth 166-run partnership between openers Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley helped England to score 225 runs for the loss of two wickets at the end of the play on the second day against India in the ongoing fourth Test of the five-match series at Old Trafford in Manchester on Thursday, July 24.
The Three Lions were 225/2 with Ollie Pope and Joe Root unbeaten on the crease. Enhans still trails India’s total of 358 by 133 runs.
The Ben Stokes-led side began the third and final session of the second day from 77/0 with Duckett (43*) and Crawley (33*) unbeaten on the crease.
On the first ball of the 19th over, bowled by right-arm seamer Shardul Thakur, Duckett brought his fifty as he hit a boundary. This boundary also brought up the hundred of the side.
In the 21st over, Crawley completed his half-century as he slammed a boundary on the bowling of Shardul.
In the 29th over, the England cricket team touched the 150-run mark as Duckett hit a boundary on the bowling of Mohammed Siraj.
England lost their first wicket in the 32nd over at the score of 166 as left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja dismissed Zak Crawley (84 runs off 113 balls).
After Crawley’s dismissal, right-hand batter Zak Crawley came out to bat in the middle.
At the score of 197, England lost their second wicket. Debutant Anshul Kamboj grabbed his maiden Test wicket as he sent Duckett (94 runs from 100 balls) back to the pavilion,
The team completed the 200-run mark in the 39th over as PPope slammed a boundary on the bowling of Kamboj.
At the end of Day 2, England finished at 225/2 in their 46 overs. Before the end of play, both Pope and Root built an unbeaten 28(47) partnership.
For the Shubman Gill-led side, one wicket each was grabbed by Kamboj (1/48 in 10 overs) and Jadeja (1/37 in 8 overs) in their respective spells.
Earlier in the second session, the Shubman Gill-led side from 321/6 with Rishabh Pant (39*) and Washington Sundar (20*) unbeaten on the crease.
In the 110th over, Team India lost two wickets as Sundar (27) and debutant Anshul Kamboj (0) were sent back to the pavilion by England skipper Ben Stokes when the side’s score was 337.
Pant completed his half-century on the first ball of the 112th over as he slammed a boundary on the bowling of Stokes.
At the score of 349, India lost the wicket of Pant (54 runs off 75 balls) as he was cleaned up by right-arm seamer Jofra Archer. In the same over, the Shubman Gill-led side touched the 350-run mark.
After Pant’s dismissal, right-hand batter Mohammed Siraj (5*) came out to bat in the middle.
On the first ball of the 115th over, India were bowled out at the score of 358 as right-hand batter Jasprit Bumrah (4) was dismissed by Archer.
For the hosts, the pick of the bowlers was Stokes, who bagged a fifer in his spell of 24 overs, where he conceded 72 runs in his spell. Three wickets were snapped by Archer (3/73 in 26.1 overs), and one wicket each was grabbed by right-arm seamer Chris Woakes (1/66 in 23 overs) & left-arm spinner Liam Dawson (1/45 in 15 overs) in their respective spells.

RISHABH Pant’s injury is one of the biggest worries for India ahead of the fourth Test here in Manchester. Currently second on the list of top run getters with 425, the 27-year-old southpaw from Delhi has been indispensable for the team in the past few years, especially during their away tours.
Be it his shows Down Under in 2018 and 2021 that helped India clinch the Border-Gavaskar Trophy or dominant performances at home against England across two series. His ton in Cape Town, South Africa in 2022 where the next highest score was 29 or his 146 off just 111 balls in the last of the five-match series in England in 2022.
Not long ago, he became the first Indian wicketkeeper-batter to score twin centuries in a single Test in England when he scored 134 off 178 & 118 off 140 in the first match in Headingley. Most importantly, he is on joint second to former India captain Rahul Dravid as far as Test centuries are concerned on these shores. The former has scored six while Pant along with Sachin Tendulkar, KL Rahul and Dilip Vengsarkar is second with four centuries on English soil.
While his two hundreds in Leeds could not fetch India the win in the first match, his 65 off 58 balls in the second innings of the next Test at Edgbaston helped the team declare on 427/7 setting up a 608-run target for the opponents. In the end, it proved too much.
However, an injury to his left index finger in the Lord’s Test meant Pant had to walk off the field and he couldn’t keep for the remainder of the match with substitute Dhruv Jurel replacing him. Despite immense pain, he scored 74 in the first innings as the visitors managed to level England’s first innings total. He was undone by pacer Jofra Archer’s brilliance in the second innings.
Pant might have been relieved of wicketkeeping responsibility at Lord’s but the injury hampered him to a great extent while batting. He overcame the pain in the first essay but in the next he looked less convincing and pulled his bottom hand off the bat four times in an Archer over where the pacer was bowling at around 144 kmph.

London (TIP)- When you are the captain of the Indian Test side, stringent scrutiny comes as an unavoidable byproduct of the recognition and responsibility. Not that Shubman Gill was very far away from the spotlight anyway but his elevation as India’s Test captain amplified its intensity to levels he might have never imagined, let alone experienced it. As far as batting is concerned, the leadership responsibility has done wonders. The captaincy, one would have to say, is still a work in progress. But then again, he is just 25. There is another thing that is not yet clear: What brand will Gill’s leadership be associated with? Is he a calm and cool character like MS Dhoni? Or does he believe in Virat Kohli’s motto of fighting fire with fire and coming out on top? Then there is the laid-back yet intense style of Rohit Sharma.
So far, it has been a mixed bag. By nature, Gill appears to be closer to the Dhoni bracket but the Day 3 events at Lord’s say that he has a lot of fire within him, too. But it’s one thing to pick up a fight with the opposition and completely another to handle it when you get it back.
While Gill excelled at showing his ultra-aggressive style to Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, he was not natural at tackling the same when it was England’s turn to hound him on Day 4. That is where the difference between him and Virat Kohli lies, feels former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar.
“The thing with Virat Kohli was that he would get even more fired up and become a better batter [if things got nasty]. What disappointed me with Shubman Gill and that is why I was wondering, where is Shubman Gill heading? Because that seemed like it didn’t have the right effect on Shubman Gill, the batter,” Manjrekar said on ESPNcricinfo Match Day.
Manjrekar, a part of the broadcasting team, cited the stump microphone chatter to claim that India captain Shubman Gill was subjected to ‘personal attacks’ when he came out to bat in India’s second innings at Lord’s. He also added that Gill did not handle it well, as he was tentative in his short stay in the middle.
“He came out looking very tentative and, you know, these days we are privy to the stump mic and we could hear the things being said and there were some personal attacks made. This could be a new experience for Shubman Gill because these days, as you can see, you know, with Indian players, there’s mostly a friendly reception from a lot of foreign teams. So this was new territory. And he looked tentative and wasn’t up for it,” he added.
Gill arrived at Lord’s with close to 600 runs to his name that included two centuries and a record-breaking 269. The conditions were much difficult than the ones he faced in Leeds and Birmingham. In the second innings, the ball was hard and new, compared to the old and soft ones that he had encountered.
Gill missed a full toss outside the off stump right at the start of the innings. And although he survived a caught behind dismissal by using DRS, he was out lbw after he missed an in-dipper from Brydon Carse during India’s 193-run chase. The visitors misfired despite a stubborn act from Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj. India succumbed to a 22-run defeat and trails England 1-2 in the five-match series.
“We saw it pan out in the way he batted. Because these were deliveries, good deliveries, but he’s negotiated beautifully through his marathon run as a batter through the series. And suddenly he was missing those balls. There was a review situation as well. Next ball, there was a leg before. Going through Shubman Gill’s defence has been hard work. He has hardly missed a ball. The control percentage has been brilliant. And suddenly, in about nine deliveries [in the second innings], he’s missed four. I have no doubt that there is a connection there,” Manjrekar said.

Novak Djokovic won a testing battle against Flavio Cobolli on Wednesday to reach a record 14th men’s Wimbledon semi-final, which will be a blockbuster clash against world number one Jannik Sinner. The Serb, chasing a historic 25th Grand Slam singles crown, was given the royal seal of approval by Britain’s Queen Camilla before his 6-7 (6/8), 6-2, 7-5, 6-4 win on Centre Court.
Djokovic was pushed hard by the Italian 22nd seed but ultimately had too much for the 23-year-old, who had never previously been beyond the third round of a major.
The sixth seed prepared for the contest by meeting Britain’s Queen Camilla, the wife of King Charles III, who said she was keeping her “fingers crossed” for his match.
Camilla watched 38-year-old Djokovic from the Royal Box, along with British actor Hugh Grant.
Cobolli showed early intent, mixing up his play with drop shots and heavy groundstrokes from his flashing orange racquet and unsettling his illustrious opponent.
Djokovic, who has reached every Wimbledon final since 2018, served for the first set at 5-3 but the Italian broke back and won the ensuing tie-break.
Cobolli, who has claimed titles in Bucharest and Hamburg this year, next had to answer the question of whether he could sustain his level against the 24-time Grand Slam champion.
But it was a different story in the second set as Djokovic broke twice to level the match in the evening sunshine.
The pair swapped service breaks early in the third set but Djokovic pounced again in the 11th game and thundered an ace as he took control of the match.
The fourth set was tight but Cobolli failed to put away a simple winner at the net in the ninth game.

London (TIP)- Joe Root’s patient unbeaten 99 led England to 251-4 on an attritional and compelling first day of the third test against India at Lord’s on Thursday, July 10. With the series level at 1-1 after two high-scoring matches, England won the toss in good batting conditions but they lost Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley cheaply and with pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah back in their attack India sensed a big chance.
Root and Ollie Pope, however, adopted a risk-free approach, a far cry from the aggressive Bazball style of cricket England have adopted in recent years, to rebuild the innings, and Ben Stokes made 39 not out to leave the match finely poised.
“We want to be a team that is positive and entertaining, but we want to play to the situation,” Pope said.
“Our order is pretty fast scoring on our good days, we all know we can score hundreds off 120 balls, but we need to dig in off this sort of surface.”
Earlier, Stokes won the toss under clear skies and would have expected his top order to take full advantage.
India won the second test by 336 runs to level the series without Bumrah and he bowled a probing opening spell as the touring side rode the momentum of their excellent performance at Edgbaston.
Crawley drove Akash Deep sweetly to the cover boundary before greeting Mohammed Siraj to the attack with another crisp hit through the off side but neither he nor Duckett looked comfortable on a slow pitch.
Immediately after the drinks interval, Nitish Kumar Reddy struck in his first over when Duckett fell for 23, playing a loose stroke to a ball down the leg side and feathering a catch to wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant.

Edgbaston (TIP)- It was just over six months ago that Shubman Gill paid the price for not making the most of his starts in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. He was dropped from the 11 for the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the head-down trudge off the ground even before the warm-ups ended on Day 1 had spoken of a fire that burned deep within.

There was disappointment. It hurt. This wasn’t something he wanted to understand. But when asked about it, all he had done was smile. Now, playing at a venue where India have never won, Gill did more than just grab his chance. His 269 (387 balls, 30×4, 3×6) was the cornerstone around which India’s massive total of 587 runs was built. It is the highest score by an Indian in England, surpassing Sunil Gavaskar’s majestic 221 at the Oval in 1979. It is also the highest score by an Indian captain in Tests, surpassing Virat Kohli’s 254* against South Africa in 2019.

In reply, England reached 77/3 at close of play. The hosts still trail by 510 runs.

For most of the innings, Gill just smiled. When he was beaten, when he was forced to scramble, when he was joined by Ravindra Jadeja (89) with India on 211/5 but it was only when he got to the milestones did the fire burst out onto the surface. Usually, he just bows to the crowd. But here he let all the pent-up emotion out when he reached his century and then the double. He wanted this more than anything else and sometimes that’s where it all begins.

Gill seemed unflappable. A calm presence in the middle that is perhaps only distinguished by the sound of the ball hitting his bat. It is that sound that he was looking for in Australia but it is only now, in England, that he has found it again. The IPL helped. He scored 650 runs at an average of 50.00 and came into England in a good frame of mind. But the thing that has stood out the most in his batting in England has not been the shots but the defence. He looked to play everything right under his eye… as late as possible and the start to the innings had a very measured tone to it. While Yashasvi Jaiswal went for his shots, Gill took his time and the tight defence allowed him to do that. It also made the England look rather helpless. On a wicket like this, the bowling side have to keep plugging away and hope the batters make a mistake. But while many of India’s batters did that, Gill simply didn’t bite.

The knock will ensure that Gill’s away Test record won’t be questioned for a long time and that, in turn, should make him an even more confident skipper. There are some who might say that this is a flat track and they aren’t wrong but how many of the other Indian batters truly made the opportunity count?

Gill, however, didn’t do it alone. He found an able ally in Jadeja, who showed why he is the world’s top allrounder once again and then in Washington Sundar. The 203-run stand between Gill and Jadeja, followed by the 144-run stand between Gill and Washington helped India take complete charge of the match. The definition of an allrounder is a player who would get into the team either as a batter or a bowler. But these days we have batters who can bowl and bowlers who can bat. Jadeja fits the original definition to the T. He averages 34.75 with the bat and 24.54 with the ball — just the numbers alone place him among India’s best batters and bowlers. Nothing bits and pieces about that and there are no caveats there either.

The last time he played at Edgbaston, he had scored a century (104 off 194 balls) and this time, he got close again. His consistency is what sets him apart and that is something Washington would love to incorporate. Not yet an allrounder in the Jadeja mould, Washington has shown over the course of his short career that he certainly has the batting chops.

His 42 (103 balls) ensured that India’s innings didn’t come to an abrupt end as it did twice in the first Test and that allowed the visitors to put up a total that will allow their bowlers to keep attacking for the rest of the match.                 Source: HT

London (TIP)- After all these years, Novak Djokovic knew this particular Wimbledon tradition well. The post-match winner’s on-court speech. On Thursday, in front of packed stands on the fabled Centre Court of the All England Club, Djokovic stepped up to the microphone for the 99th time in his 20th year of competing at the Grand Slam in London. “It means that I’ve been playing quite a long time,” Djokovic said. “Nineteen times (reaching the third round at Wimbledon), that’s probably almost as much as (Jannik) Sinner and (Carlos) Alcaraz have years in their life.”

The mood in the post-match interview was jovial. But in that hour and 47 minutes just before, the seven-time Wimbledon champion was in no mood for fun. Days after he needed some “magic pills” to help him overcome a stomach bug in the first-round match against Alexandre Muller, Djokovic played a solid game to pick up a 6-3, 6-2, 6-0 win over British player Dan Evans. “I had prepared well for the match,” he said. “Technically, tactically, I knew what I needed to do. I executed it perfectly. Sometimes you have these kinds of days.”

Djokovic hammered home 46 winners to Evans’ 19, and committed 14 unforced errors to his opponent’s 18. The serve, too, remained unbroken throughout the match. This was a statement win against an opponent who had beaten Djokovic the only time the duo had met previously, at the Monte Carlos Masters in 2021.

For a man driven by statistics, there are quite a few on offer at Wimbledon this year for Djokovic. The win on Thursday, July 3,  takes him one step closer to a century of wins at Wimbledon.

London (TIP)- With a heavily strapped right knee, Novak Djokovic competed in and reached the final of Wimbledon last year. This was just a few weeks after he underwent surgery to repair a torn medial meniscus. He played on one fit leg and still managed to get through to the final without much of a challenge. Then came the straight-set loss to Carlos Alcaraz. In many ways, that run to the final at Wimbledon, the most prestigious of all the Grand Slams, gives an indicator of how the tournament could shape up this year in the men’s singles event. In Alcaraz and Djokovic, there are, arguably, only two players wholly comfortable with the nuances of playing on grass.
With the ball staying low and zipping through on the bounce, playing at Wimbledon just weeks after the high-bounce-and-slow-ball clay season ends is considered one of the most difficult transitions in the sport. But it is in this turnaround where Djokovic may find his best – and possibly last – shot at winning a 25th Grand Slam title.
Djokovic is all that remains of the golden era of men’s tennis. But at the French Open earlier this month, he gave a first great indicator that the end is probably near for him too.
As he walked off Court Philippe-Chatrier after a semi-final defeat against Jannik Sinner, Djokovic paused, acknowledged the crowd and touched the red clay surface before walking out. He later mentioned that “it could have been the last match” he ever played at the Parisian major. If that was indeed the last time, he left as the greatest Grand Slam player in the Open Era.

Four years after his last Test, Jofra Archer has been named in England’s squad for the second Test against India that starts from July 2 in Birmingham. The fast bowlers, whose career was stalled by recurrent elbow injuries and stress fractures, made his first-class return for Sussex last week against Durham, where he bowled 18 overs and picked a wicket and told reporters that he “felt all right.”
“I’ve been playing for a year, and bowling for two years, including the build-up, so everything is fine. Now it’s a different challenge, because I know my body can hold up to it. The mental part of the game [will be tough]. Over the next couple of days, I’m going to have to battle a bit with it, but it’s all good. It’s a new challenge, and I’ll keep trucking along,” he would say.
Whether he would be an automatic choice in the eleven that faces India is a different questions after England’s seamer rallied back after a torrid first day in Leeds on a surface that hardly offered them any assistance. Some of pundits like Michael Vaughan opined that he should not be rushed back into the eleven, even though that would bolster England’s firepower. Apart from Josh Tongue, intermittently, none had nudged 140kph and when the surface was flat, they missed the sheer pace of someone like Archer and Mark Wood, who is likely to feature in the fifth Test.
England Men’s Test Squad:
Ben Stokes (Durham) – Captain, Jofra Archer (Sussex), Shoaib Bashir (Somerset), Jacob Bethell (Warwickshire), Harry Brook (Yorkshire), Brydon Carse (Durham), Sam Cook (Essex), Zak Crawley (Kent), Ben Duckett (Nottinghamshire), Jamie Overton (Surrey), Ollie Pope (Surrey), Joe Root (Yorkshire), Jamie Smith (Surrey), Josh Tongue (Nottinghamshire) and Chris Woakes (Warwickshire).

New Delhi (TIP)- Will Jasprit Bumrah play in the second Test at Edgbaston? That is the biggest question facing the Indian team management as it looks to draw parity against England after losing the series opener from a commanding position at Leeds.
In his media interaction post the five-wicket loss on day five, head coach Gautam Gambhir made it clear that there will be no change in the workload of injury-prone pace spearhead Bumrah, who is slated to play three out of five Tests in the English summer.
With the first Test ending on June 24 and the next beginning on July 2, there is enough time for Bumrah to recover but only he knows best about his body.
Bumrah, the only bowler who consistently posed a challenge for the English batters, took a five-wicket haul in the first innings and delivered an overall 44.4 overs in the match.
A pace attack without Bumrah makes the opposition’s task significantly easier and increases the Indian team’s headache, over deciding which of the two remaining Tests its trump card could be a part of.
The management, thus, would have had a much easier decision to make had Shubman Gill and Co gone to Birmingham 1-0 up.
“That is a tough call indeed for the team management. He should ideally play when the series is alive but the management knows best on how to manage his workload,” former India chief selector MSK Prasad told PTI.
A BCCI source added: “Bumrah has close to a week’s gap between first and second Tests. So the decision rests with chief selector Ajit Agarkar, Gautam Gambhir and Shubman Gill. They might assess him a day before the Test, and take a final call.”
There is only a three-day gap between second and third Test, scheduled at Lord’s from July 10-14; therefore, Bumrah is certain not to feature in both the games.
“We won’t change the plans,” said Gambhir on Tuesday when asked whether the team management will push Bumrah to play four Tests.
“For us to manage his workload is more important because there’s a lot of cricket going forward and we know what he brings on the table as well. Before he came on the tour, it was already decided that he’s going to play three Test matches.”
Edgbaston or Lord’s? Gambhir and Co clearly have a tough call to make.

Lords (TIP)- Bazball. Bazball. Bazball. It is always only about Bazball. Irritating frankly. For the amount of hype that it gets, Bazball has not really won England the world title in two separate World Test Championship cycles.
As India get ready to play England in a 5-match Test series, it is once again about Bazball. To be fair, the hype had been a little less this time, but it was Joe Root, who once again triggered the term, stating that Bazball never quite got the credit for the tactical nuance that it carried with it.
“It might not always get reported how it is—I don’t think ‘Bazball’ is the right way to describe it. It has been a big change and is different to how a lot of teams play, but there is a lot more method to it than is probably perceived,” the former England captain said a day before the start of the opening Test match in Headingly.
That then, obviously demands the question, what really is Bazball?
The funniest thing perhaps is that Bazball, the highly aggressive form of cricket, with both bat and ball, which promised to make Test cricket more interesting, is a term hated by its makers. On multiple occasions, England Test cricketers have come out and gone on record that Baz (Brendon McCullum) believes that Bazball is a term given by the media to hype up England’s approach to Test cricket.
“It’s a phrase that was created by the media. Something that we try and stay away from. It just came from what we have managed to do over the last two years and how we’ve played. We don’t necessarily like it, Baz (coach Brendon McCullum) hates it! Whenever that word pops up, we just try to say that’s how England plays Test cricket,” Stokes told the media going into England’s Test tour of India in 2024.
But is that not what England set out to do? Bring back crowd with a high-risk brand of cricket?