Torres: Football was the winner

Man of the match Torres, had some words of wisdom to say! His game was simply fantastic.

clipped from espnstar.com Fernando Torres was in dreamland after a stunning final performance saw Spain claim the European Championships crown. Torres, voted man of the match by UEFA, said: "This is good not just for Spain but for football, because the best team won and that is not always the case." "We are proud to see so many people enjoying it, and now we have the peace of mind that we have achieved what we set out to do." Torres added: "I am happy because my job is to score goals and I have done my job tonight but this was a victory for the unity of the group - it doesn't often happen that a group gets along so well."

What a goal by Torres

Great Goal. Lahm had no idea of Torres's run as he switched from Lahm's left to right and chipping over Lehman.

clipped from www.euro2008.uefa.com

Spain wins Euro 2008

Excellent goal by Fernando Torres and great soccer skills by Spain.
Spanish played their best soccer in last 20 minutes of first half. Super passing. Torres could easily have got 2 more goals. It was brilliant to watch his speed and finishes. Germany were clearly surprised by the style of Germany.

clipped from www.euro2008.uefa.com Final - 29 June 2008 - Wien - Ernst Happel GERMANY 0-1 SPAIN Torres 33 Torres strike ends Spain's long wait

The Achiever - Gautam Gambhir

Cricinfo - The transformer tags: gauram-gambhir

There is nice article in cricinfo magazine today. Talks about Gautam Gambhir and his achievements in the last two years. He has been very instrumental in India's big wins and also Delhi (his home side) to win Ranji after a long long time.

To me he looks like a match winner every time he comes on to bat. He is one of the very few people in Indian cricket team who is a product of strong domestic cricket foundation and hard work at the international level.

The shots he plays against spinners clearly proves that he has played some quality spin at home and he knows how to clobber them. His shot over the extra covers is the one not many people play that consistently in international cricket. Here is a quick snapshot of what he has done recently and may have been easily forgotten.

Gambhir's ascent

· Gambhir has been the second-highest run-getter in ODIs in 2008: his 649 runs have only been bettered by Salman Butt.

· He topped the run-scoring charts for most part of the Indian Premier League, but was pipped by Shaun Marsh into second place. He hit the most fours - 68, but cleared the boundary only eight times.

· Gambhir scored 440 runs in the CB Series in Australia, outdoing the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Matthew Hayden.

· He led from the front in Delhi's successful 2007-08 Ranji Trophy campaign, scoring 730 runs at an average of 91.25.

· All four of Gambhir's hundreds for Delhi came in the second innings of a match, with two of them steering the team to victory in the semi-final and final.

· With 227 runs, Gambhir was India's top run-scorer at the World Twenty20 in South Africa.

indo -pak matches are so boring.

Kitply cup organizers really were hoping a big success with possible 2 encounters between India and Pakistan. As much boring was the whole series as those two encounters. Does not make any sense of such series where each team played 2 matches to enter the over hyped finals. When final did come India played as if they don't wanna win. I am sick of these India pakistan series. There is always some sort of arrangement about who will win and loose. Well nothing makes sense. I am done with matches between the 2 countries.

Brilliant Final - A grand finale for IPL really

It was a final and sunday morning in Dallas. I woke up and checked some free p2p options for the IPL channel, none were working. It was a great stage set for the grand finale but after lack luster semi-finals, I was skeptical about the finals also. I still took the gamble and bought a 10 dollar pass at willow.tv to get the access to the finals - un-interrupted. I remember a lot of instances where my investments of both time and money have gone into the ditch through poor finals/crunch matches. But since it was 20-20 and IPL finals, I was hoping for at least one good innings from either of the teams. Well what we all witnessed was a great great game of cricket where both the teams were inseparable in terms of their performances. 163 was a good score set by Dhoni's team but yet again Yusuf Pathan played one of those camios. Cannot discuss about match and analyze what went right or wrong for the two teams because it was a final ball cliffhanger. Rajasthan Royals were predicted to be the winners by many and they were most deserving of all. I am glad that they won in the end. Thankfully I saw the game undisturbed and enjoyed every moment of it with my family. It was time and money well spent in the end.

Photos from Timesofindia.com