2024 – Page 2834 – Safir News Agency

Sunil Gavaskar Rues "One Bad Day" That Hit Team India Hard In 2023

admin Jan 1, 2024 0

While the Indian men’s and women’s cricket teams might have lost their last matches of 2023, it is fair to say that the Rohit Sharma-led side and the Harmanpreet Kaur-led sides have had some memorable results in the past 12 months. As we said goodbye to 2023 on Monday, former India captain Sunil Gavaskar analysed the performances of both, the men’s and women’s team. The batting great hailed the women’s team for their historic wins over England and Australia earlier. Under the leadership of Harmanpreet, the women’s team defeated England and Australia in one-off Tests, also outplaying the two best teams in the world.

“I think it’s been a fantastic year for both the men’s and the women’s team, particularly the way the women’s team has performed. Those two Test wins towards the year-end, one against England and one against Australia, both teams against whom the Indian women’s team have had tough times earlier on,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports show ‘Follow the Blues’.

The men’s team, on the other hand, won the Asia Cup as well as the Hangzhou Asian Games gold medal. However, Rohit and his men lost to Australia in both the World Test Championship and ODI World Cup finals.

“That’s been the most exciting aspect of cricket apart from, of course, what we saw in the World Cup. The 10 straight wins, and, then, just that one bad day, which sadly happened to be the finals of the World Cup. So really some exciting times in 2023,” he added.

While the women’s team will take on Australia in third and final ODI of a three-match series on Tuesday, the men’s team will kick off new year with the second Test against South Africa, starting December 3 in Cape Town.

India had lost the first Test to South Africa by an innings and 32 runs, drawing criticism from former players, including Gavaskar.

The 74-year-old highlighted the absence of practice matches as one of the biggest reasons behind the result embarrasing result.

“The reasons are straightforward – you didn’t play any matches here. If you straightaway play Test matches, it doesn’t work out. Yes, you sent the India A team. The India A team should actually come before the tour,” he said on Star Sports.

“You need to play practice matches after coming here. Intra-squad is a joke because would your fast bowlers bowl extremely fast to your batters, would they bowl bouncers, as they would be scared about injuring their batters,” he said.

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Iran sends 2nd notice to US, seeking arbitration over Gen. Soleimani assassination

admin Jan 1, 2024 0

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has sent a second official notice to the US administration, seeking arbitration over the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Tavakkol Habibzadeh, the head of center for Iranian President’s Legal and International Affairs, made the announcement on Monday, saying the second notice was written and sent after the United States failed to respond to the first one on holding negotiations.

The notice demanding arbitration was written based on the Protection of Diplomats Convention, a 1973 United Nations anti-terrorism treaty on the prevention and punishment of crimes against internationally protected persons, including diplomatic agents.

According to Article 13 of the convention, Habibzadeh said, the first notice seeking negotiation is sent to the other party and if it does not respond to it, the second memo is sent to request arbitration.

As per the convention, if no response is provided by the Americans within six months from the date of the request for arbitration, the third step will be taken that is referring the dispute to the International Court of Justice, he further explained.

Habibzadeh said that about a month and a half ago, the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent the second notice to the United States to request arbitration between Tehran and Washington, and that the US administration has until the end of April to respond to it.

General Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and their companions were assassinated in a US drone strike authorized by then-US President Donald Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.

Two days after the attack, Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill that required the government to end the presence of all foreign military forces led by the US in the country.

Both commanders were highly revered across the Middle East because of their key role in fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.

On January 8, 2020, the IRGC targeted the US-run Ain al-Asad base in Iraq’s western province of Anbar with a wave of missile attacks in retaliation for the assassination of General Soleimani.

According to the Pentagon, more than 100 American forces suffered “traumatic brain injuries” during the counterstrike on the base, with the Islamic Republic describing the missile attack on Ain al-Assad as a “first slap.”