THE WORLD PORTAL

ICC T20 WORLD CUP 2009 WINNERS - PAKISTAN

Pakistan made a history in cricket, because they defeated Sri Lanka by eight wickets in the final of ICC T20 World Cup cricket tournament played at Lord’s in London on Sunday. It was their first major title in 17 years, because they last won a major tournament in 1992 World cup under the leadership of Imran Khan. They were the runners up of the inaugural World Twenty20 in South Africa two years ago. All the people were surprised about their victory in this T20 World Cup, becuase they had come into this tournament loaded by troubles at their nation and was also suffeing lack of match practice. Certainly this victory is a tonic for this cricket mad nation that will help to cheer this nation. In the final of this T20 World cup, Srilanka won the toss and elected to bat first and they scored 138/6 with the help of Kumar Sangakkara’s 64 not out and Angelo Mathews 35 not out runs. In replay to the target score of 139 runs, Pakistan batted very well and they easily achieved this score in 18.4 overs with the help of Shahid Afridi’s 54 runs and Kamran Akmal’s 37 runs. Shahid Afridi was selected as ‘Man of the Match’ and Srilanka’s player Tillakaratne Dilshan was awarded ‘Man of the Series’.

HISTORY

Pakistan Cricket team is one of the best and most challenging cricket team in the world. This team is controlled by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and it is a full member of the International Cricket Council(ICC) with Test and One Day International status. It hold the position of 6th in Tests and 5th in ODI’s in ICC rank listing This country has produced some great players including Fazal Mahmood, Hanif Mohammad, Sarfaraz Nawaz, Mushtaq Mohammad, Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Abdul Qadir, Wasim Akram, Inzamam-ul-Haq,Saeed Anwar, Waqar Younis, Mohammad Yousuf and Shoaib Akhtar etc. The team has played in all Cricket World Cups since 1975 and gained many achievements in cricket.  This team won 1992 World Cup and also runners up of 1999 World . This team was also reached in the semi finals in 1983 and 1987 World Cups. 1992 Cricket World Cup victory is most remembered for the comeback of Pakistan after the few loss of  matches.  The 2007 Cricket World Cup was one of the biggest upsets of Pakistan, because Pakistan was defeated by the young team Ireland and was out of that World cup in first round. Also they faced a tragedy, because their coach Bob Woolmer was died during that World cup.They were also runners up in the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 in 2007. They were defeated by their always rival India in the final of that World cup. In this second 20-20 world Cup, Pakistan is in group B along with England and Netherlands. Younis Khan is a Captain of the 15 Pakistan squad and coached by Intikhab Alam. Younis Khan (Capt), Salman Butt, Nasir Jamshed, Khalid Latif, Shahzab Hasan, Umar Amin, Ahmed Shahzad, Misbah-ul-Haq, Faisal Iqbal, Fawad Alam, Shoaib Malik, Shahid Afridi, Sohail Tanvir, Yasir Arafat, Kamran Younis, Shoaib Akhtar, Umar Gul, Rao Iftikhar, Aitzaz Cheema, Mohammad Aamir, Wahab Riaz, Imran Ali, Danish Kaneria, Yasir Shah, Kamran Akmal, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Abdul Razzaq, Rana Naved, Imran Nazir, Abdul Rehman are the players of this team. In the group round of this World cup, they were defeated by England, but they gained victory over Netherlands and entered in super eight round. In the super eight round, they were defeated by Srilanka, but gained victory over New Zealand and Ireland. So they were entered into the semi final of this world cup. In the semi final, they gained victory over South Africa and entered in the final. In the final, they defeated Srilanka by eight wickets and won the ICC T20 World cup.

SOURAV GANGULY

Now, we can see India’s famous cricketer Soruav Ganguly is in a new role. This former Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly has been signed an agreement with ESPN Star Sports as a commentator for the ICC World Twenty 20, which started on 5th June, 2009 in England. So he will be part of an ESPN STAR Sports commentary panel including Wasim Akram, Sanjay Manjrekar, Alan Wilkins, Harsha Bhogle, Nasser Hussain, David Lloyd, Ian Chappell, Simon Doull, Kepler Wessels, Ian Bishop, Ranil Abeynaike and Athar Ali Khan. He will start his new innings as a commentator with Ian Chappell from the semi final of Twenty 20 World cup and it is the first time that Sourav Ganguly will be seen in the role of a TV analyst.

BIOGRAPHY

Ganguly was born in 1972 in Calcutta as the youngest son of richest business man Chandidas and Nirupa Ganguly. His full name is Sourav Chandidas Ganguly and nick name is Maharaja. He is also famous in various names including ‘Prince of Kolkata’, ‘Dada’ and ‘Bengal Tiger’. He has a brother named Snehasish Chandidas Ganguly,who is also a former Indian first class cricketer. He is married to a classical dancer Dona and they have a daughter. As a young boy, Sourav’s first interest was in football and he played football for his school team for four year.But later he was shifted to cricket and joined a cricket coaching club. He was started his international career at 19 years old during the tour to Australia in 1991-92. Ganguly is an aggressive left-handed batsman and is also an effective medium pace bowler. His one day International debut for India against West Indies in 1992, it was not good for him and he scored only three runs in this match. Ganguly was started his test career in 1996. In the final of the Independence Cup in 1998 against Pakistan, he was scored 124 runs and India successfully scored 315 of 48 overs and he won the man of the match award. In 1999 World cup, he had scored his highest score of 183 runs against Sri Lanka. His partnership of 318 with Rahul Dravid is the highest ever in the World Cup and is the second highest in all ODI cricket. Ganguly was selected the captain of the Indian cricket team in February, 2000. Under his leadership India had won many test matches and his excellent performance lead India to world cup final in 2003. In 2004, Ganguly was dismissed from his captaincy and Rahul Dravid was selected as the captain. In 2007, he was named in the squad for the world cup. He was the leading scorer for India in their first round defeat against Bangladesh. In 2000 to 2005, Ganguly became India’s most successful Test captain. In the year 2007, he had scored 1106 Test runs at an average of 61.44 and become the second highest run-scorer in Test matches of that year after Jacques Kallis. He is the fifth highest run scorer in 2007 in ODIs, where he scored 1240 runs at 44.28. In 2008, he was retired from International Cricket, ending a grateful career spreading nearly 17 years. After that, this all rounder appeared as a player in IPL matches. He is also the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders IPL team owned by the famous Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan. Now we can see this Bengal Tiger in the role of a cricket commentator in coming days.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Ganguly was achieved many awards and honors in his cricket Career. He won the ‘Man of the Series’ award for India in England Test series in 1996, Sri Lanka in India Test series in 1997/98 and Pakistan in India Test series in 2007. He was also won the ‘The Man of the Match Series’ award 7 times in ODI Cricket. Ganguly was gained the ‘Man of the Match’ award 6 times in test cricket and also won the same award 31 times in ODI Cricket. His another achievements are he was made 183 runs against Sri Lanka in World Cup 1999, which, at that time, was the highest ODI Score by an Indian, beating Kapil Dev’s Record of 175 . Ganguly was the ‘Man of the Series’ in the ‘Pepsi Cup’ 1999 for scoring 278 runs and taking 6 wickets in total. Saurav Ganguly has the distinction of being one of the few players in the World to Score a century and take 4 wickets in the same match. He was along with Tendulkar forms the 4th best opening pair in the history of one-day cricket and was scored a century on debut at Lords in 1996, and went on to score a century in the very next match as well. He was named “Sport star Person of the Year 1998″ and also won the “Arjuna Award” in the same year. He is one of the 3 players in the world to achieve amazing total of 10,000 runs, 100 wickets and 100 catches in ODI cricket history, the others being Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya.

CAREER STATISTICS

Competition                          Test         ODI         FC           List A

Matches                               113          311           242           426
Runs scored                         7,212      11,363       14,933      15,278
Batting average                     42.17       41.02         43.92      41.51
100s/50s                              16/35       22/72         31/85       31/94
Top score                              239         183           239          183
Balls bowled                          3,117      4,561       10,968       7,949
Wickets                                 32          100            164          168
Bowling average                     52.53     38.49        36.82        38.41
5 wickets in innings                 0           2               4              2
10 wickets in match                0           n/a             0             n/a
Best bowling                        3/28        5/16           6/46          5/16
Catches/stumpings                71/–      100/–         166/–         129/–