Sehwag's knee problems keep India on tenterhooks

Opener Virender Sehwag's knee injury will keep India on tenterhooks as the co-hosts aim to end Australia's World Cup domination with a quarter-final victory on Thursday.

Sehwag missed India's last Group B match against West Indies on Sunday following an allergic reaction to an injection on his right knee but more than one billion home fans will want him to show up against Australia as he has the ability to blunt their formidable pace attack.

However, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni could not announce him fit for what is a repeat of the 2003 final.

"On Viru (Sehwag) we are taking a call late in the evening or tomorrow morning before the start of the game," Dhoni told reporters on Wednesday.

Australia's aura of World Cup invincibility was punctured by Pakistan when they beat the four-times champions on Saturday, ending a 34-match unbeaten run.

However, while that defeat did not have much riding on it since it was a round-robin match, a loss on Thursday will mean Australia will not feature in a World Cup final for the first time since 1992.

Determined to avoid suffering that fate, Ricky Ponting will let loose his battery of pacemen, who will literally aim high at the Indian batsmen's body.

In Australia's last match at the same venue, the pacemen -- Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson -- crushed Zimbabwe by 91 runs with the trio claiming seven of the 10 wickets.

At the same time, Ponting's men can expect the co-hosts to spin a web around their batsmen with a combination of their frontline and part-timer tweakers.

"No doubt we rely on our fast bowlers to take the wickets and India are probably the exact opposite of that," Ponting, seeking a hat-trick of World Cup titles as captain, told reporters.

"We could be facing 30 overs of spin bowling and they will probably... face 30 overs of fast bowling."

Thursday's quarter-final, in all likelihood will be the last World Cup appearance for either Ponting or Sachin Tendulkar -- the two most prolific run-scorers in international cricket.

While the 36-year old Ponting is battling a slump in form, the Indian batting maestro, 37, has been in a rich vein of form with already two centuries in the tournament.

The partisan crowd at the 48,000-strong Sardar Patel Stadium will throng the stands with two wishes -- Tendulkar gets to his 100th ton in international cricket and India set up a semi-final clash with Pakistan in Mohali.

"It is a big advantage. You have 30,000-40,000 people coming on to the ground to cheer for you. If they are cheering for you then it definitely makes a difference," Dhoni said.

Source http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/sports/sehwag%60s-knee-problems-keep-india-tenterhooks_531574.html

AFL does best to match NRL in bad publicity

The NRL season kicks off in a blaze of self-destructive publicity - nothing new in that.

But this time AFL has done its best, or worst, to match it.

Who could guess the rival codes were spending tens of millions of dollars to outdo each other in the quest for long-term domination of Australia's football market?

While the AFL has been embarrassed for months by a 17-year-old girl, and the latest sacking of serial headline Brendan Fevola, the NRL season kicks off under the pall of a betting scandal and drink-driving and assault charges against two of its leading players, Todd Carney and Benji Marshall respectively.

Convicted drug dealer Danny Wicks, meanwhile, awaits sentence over the sale of ecstasy pills while he was a player with the Newcastle Knights.

The truly staggering aspect of rugby league's self-inflicted misery is how its colours are continually lowered by the players it chooses to be its poster boys.

The supposed honour seems to have become a poisoned chalice.

In 2009 it was Brett Stewart, the Manly flier suspended by the NRL for allegedly being drunk at his club's boozy season launch, and charged by police with sexually assaulting a teenage girl later the same day.

The NRL dropped him like a hot potato from its pre-season publicity campaign.

Stewart was eventually cleared the following year of the sexual assault charge.

By season's end, Stewart's replacement as poster boy was in trouble, too.

Greg Inglis, the Melbourne Storm and Queensland Origin star, was charged by police over an incident that reportedly left his girlfriend with a black eye.

Inglis avoided a conviction after admitting to an assault, agreeing to attend a behavioural amendment group and paying $A3000 ($NZ4080) to a women's health group.

Now it's Benji Marshall's turn.

He, too, was selected to be the "face" of rugby league.

It seemed like a safe choice, if there is such a thing in rugby league; he was a model on and off the field.

But days after helping to launch the 2011 season, the Wests Tigers captain was charged with assault after allegedly throwing a punch outside a McDonald's restaurant in central Sydney.

The 3.20am hamburger, it seems, is always going to be more problematic than the 3.20pm hamburger.

Marshall's manager says the player was the target of racial abuse.

Other reports claimed Marshall was taunted by comments that Darren Lockyer was a better player.

Either way, someone still ended up with a split lip.

Marshall had spent the previous evening helping to raise $A250,000 for a cancer charity, a generosity of spirit which speaks wonderfully well of him even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of assault.
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Marshall's problems coincidentally served to take the heat off Todd Carney, the reigning Dally M player of the year, who had marked the onset of the 2011 season by being charged with drink-driving.

His club fined him $A10,000, which some suggested amounted to a tickle with a feather duster for a $A400,000-a-year player.

Carney, who has admitted he has an alcohol problem, was sacked by Canberra in 2008 and deregistered by the NRL in 2009.

League boss David Gallop said Carney had "dodged a bullet" and that one more indiscretion would spell the end of his career.

Others were not so understanding, notably Manly coach Des Hasler, who recalled the suspension the league slapped on Stewart two years ago.

All of this would be bad enough in isolation, but this week's NRL kick-off comes after police laid more charges over an alleged exotic bet scam gone wrong in last year's Canterbury-North Queensland match in Townsville.

With Bulldogs player Ryan Tandy already facing up to five years in jail if convicted of giving false evidence to a police inquiry, further charges have now been laid against prominent player agent Sam Ayoub and former player John Elias.

David Gallop described this as a "seriously alarming development".

"These issues are at the most serious end of the integrity of the game," he said in what amounted to a considerable understatement.

The match-fixing allegations, on top of Melbourne Storm's salary-cap cheating, could represent a graver threat to the game's credibility than any disgusting off-field player behaviour.

League's great rival AFL, meanwhile, has been twisting itself in knots all summer over a teenage girl.

Kim Duthie firstly published naked photos of St Kilda AFL players Nick Riewoldt and Nick Dal Santo on the internet.

Then she claimed she had been pregnant with twins to St Kilda player Sam Gilbert, saying one twin miscarried and the other was stillborn.

But in an interview that reportedly earned the teenager a five-figure sum, she told Channel Nine's 60 Minutes programme last Sunday she had lied about the pregnancy and owed Gilbert an apology.

The teenager has also claimed she had a sexual relationship with player manager Ricky Nixon at a hotel room paid for by the St Kilda Football Club, and that the pair used cocaine and alcohol there.

Nixon has strongly denied all claims, though he stepped down voluntarily as a player agent this week, saying he would be undergoing rehabilitation for substance problems.

The girl's admission of pregnancy lies raises questions about her credibility, but she has nevertheless been the central figure in a period of havoc for three players, an agent, a club and a code.

Serial bad boy Brendan Fevola, meanwhile, is back in Melbourne to try his luck in the VFL after a nine-week stint in a Brisbane rehabilitation clinic.

The first bounce and kick of 2011 can't come soon enough for administrators in both the AFL and NRL, not to mention fans suffering football's latest debilitating ailment, atrocity fatigue.

Source http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/4749076/AFL-matches-NRL-in-bad-publicity