The big story: Marcus Stoinis’ all-round effort goes in vain

Australia’s Marcus Stoinis put up one of the best all-round displays in recent times, finishing up with figures of 3/49 and then spearheaded his side’s chase from 67/6 chasing New Zealand’s target of 287 in the first ODI on Monday.

Stoinis was stranded on 146 during the chase. He smashed a whopping 11 sixes and nine fours during his stay at the crease. The effort wasn’t enough as New Zealand, who made 286/9 after being put into bat first, won by six runs.

The Kiwis were propelled by fifties from Martin Guptill and Neil Broom. Spinner Mitchell Santner and Trent Boult pegged back Australia during their chase. But Stoinis, who came in at No.7, made full use of the short boundaries in Auckland to take his team close to the finish line.

The match ended with Josh Hazlewood getting run out at end of the 47th over.

Other top stories

Cricket

  • South African batting talisman AB de Villiers heaped praise on his teammate Imran Tahir’s recent form, “Immi [Tahir] is probably in the best kind of form that I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t bowl bad balls anymore. He always used to take wickets but now you don’t see bad balls, which makes him really difficult to play,” said the 32-year-old after South Africa cruised to a eight-wicket win in the first One-day International against Sri Lanka.
  • Matthew Wade, who was scheduled to captain Australia during the first ODI at Auckland against New Zealand, is a doubtful starter for the second game in Napier.
  • The Supreme Court on Monday appointed former Comptroller Auditor General of India Vinod Rai, historian Ramachandra Guha, former India women’s cricketer Diana Edulji and banker Vikram Limaye as administrators of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
  • Veteran Sachin Tendulkar picked out India as the favourites for the upcoming Border-Gavaskar series but warned the hosts to be vary of Steve Smith’s side, “The last thing one would like to do is underestimate your opposition and Australia is a strong side,“ said Tendulkar.  
  • England skipper Eoin Morgan was left “extremely frustrated” by some of the umpiring decisions that went against his side in the second Twenty20 International against India at Nagpur, which the visitors lost by five runs. Morgan said that his side would submit a report to match referee Andy Pycroft before the third T20I at Bangalore.
  • In the Inter-State T20 tournament, Mayank Agarwal top-scored with 67 and Krishnappa Gowtham’s fifties help Karnataka defeat Kerala by 19 runs at the Guru Nanak College Ground in Chennai.
  • England U-19 drew first blood in the five-match series in India, beating the hosts by a narrow margin of 23 runs at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Batting first, England scored 256/7 led by Delray Rawlins’ century. For India, opener Himanshu Rana led the chase with a fighting ton but ran out of support.

Football

  • Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho hit out at the fixture congestion in English football, calling it “nonsense”. The Portuguese pointed out at League Cup finalists Southampton not playing a single game before the summit event while United play three. 
  • Celtic maintained their unbeaten start to the season to 27 games with a 4-0 win over Hearts, going one more than Jock Stein’s side managed to do in 1966-’67.
  • Egypt beat Morocco 1-0 to enter the semi-finals of the African Cup of Nations. Both the Ayew brothers – Jordan and Andre – got on the scoresheet as Ghana booked their place in the last four, beating Congo 2-1.
  • Rising Student’s Club came back from a goal down to beat Eastern Sporting Union 2-1 in the Indian Women’s League in New Delhi on Monday.

Hockey

  • Hockey India announced in a statement that they had decided not to play any bilateral series against Pakistan until they received a written apology from the Pakistan Hockey Federation.  

Chess

  • Indian Grandmaster Pentala Harikrishna finished in the ninth position after going down to Grandmaster Loek Van Wely of Netherlands in a last round game of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament.  

Table Tennis

  • India’s leading table tennis player Sharath Kamal, who did not make the list for the Padma Shri award, the country’s fourth-highest civilian honour, stated on Monday that the existing awards application system made the athletes beg for the honour, PTI reported.

Olympics

  • Former Olympic gold-medallist shooter Abhinav Bindra and shuttler Pullela Gopichand were named by the Sports Ministry as a part of an eight-member task force for the next three Olympics [2020, 2024 and 2028] on Monday, reported PTI.