Gwalior, India (GenevaLunch) – Sachin Tendulkar became the first batsman to score a double century in a one-day international (ODI) when he hit 200 not out against South Africa. He took 147 balls to reach his total, hitting 25 fours and three sixes in a faultless display of finesse and power. India posted a massive 401 for 3 in their fifty overs, with captain MS Dhoni hitting 68 not out in just 35 balls and Dinesh Karthik getting 79. Tendulkar, commonly known as “the litttle master,” also holds the records for the most runs and centuries scored in both Test and one-day internationals.
South Africa replied with 248 all out, with AB de Villiers unbeaten on 114.
Links to other sites: cricket.yahoo, Times of India
Staff at the Nelson Mandela Foundation recall the day he walked out of prison 20 years ago. The former President of South Africa, Mandela makes a rare public appearance Thursday evening at the country’s parliament as part of celebrations to commemorate his walk out of Verster prison 11 February 1990. He was freed after 27 years of detention, and went on to become president of post-apartheid South Africa.
Links to other sites: Guardian, UK, Nelson Mandela official site
China and India are committed to communicating their emissions reduction targets to the UN by the deadline imposed by the Copenhagen Conference in December, following talks in New Delhi 24 January. The four countries seen as key to any climate deal, Brazil, South Africa, China and India, have indicated that they will submit mitigation goals. But India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, confirmed in a letter to the president of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that the four continued to be bound only by the Kyoto Protocoll and not the Copenhagen meeting’s accord, which was not formally adopted by participants.
Links to other sites: Business Week, The Hindu, Times of India
Johannesburg, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - The South African fast bowlers, led by Morne Morkel, ripped through the English batting to allow the South Africans to win the the fourth and final Test by an inning and 75 runs Sunday 17 January. Morkel took three wickets in six balls in a devastating spell that destroyed England’s middle order. He finished the innings with four for 59 and also took a catch to dismiss Paul Collingwood, the only batsman to offer any resistance, for 71. England were all out for 169. Earlier in the game they complained about the operation of the system of referring umpiring decisions to television replay, as they thought South African captain Graeme Smith should have been given out. The series ended even with one Test each and two draws.
Links to other sites: yahoo cricket, The Guardian.
The question of whether South African runner Caster Semenya will be allowed to race until the question of her gender is settled remains unclear, with conflicting views from officials. The Vancouver Sun reports that according to Athletics South Africa, the answer is no, but S Africa’s Times Live quotes an ASA official as saying she can race. Semenya took a gender verification test after winning the women’s 800 metre race in Berlin in August. The results have not been released yet by the IAAF (International Athletics Association Federation) and the South Africa body says she must be cleared to race by the IAAF. SEmenya appeared on a list of runners for upcoming races who are subject to testing, published by the IAAF Thursday 14 January.
Links to other sites: TimesLive, Vancouver Sun
Newlands, Capetown, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - The English bowlers made a dramatic start to the second day of the third Test against South Africa when the last four South African wickets fell in16 balls. Graham Onions took the most important wicket when he dismissed Jacques Kallis for 108 with his first ball. James Anderson took the next three to end with five for 63. South Africa ended on 291.
The South African bowlers quickly struck back, dismissing Andrew Strauss, Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen in the opening session.
Pakistan ended the second day of the Melbourne Test well on top. After dismissing Australia for 127 they ended on 331 for nine.
Links to other sites: Yahoo cricket, BBC, Times
Durban, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - The England captain showed a previously unseen side to his game when he scored 50 runs in only 49 balls in reply to South Africa’s score of 343 all out in the second test at Durban. The home team made that many largely thanks to the late assault on Graeme Swann’s bowling by Dale Steyn. England ended the second day on 103 for one.
The main interest of the day was focused on the system of referring umpiring decisions to television replay: this led to Mark Boucher being given out lbw to Swann after the umpire’s “not out” was reversed.
Centurion Park, Pretoria, South Africa (GenevaLunch) – England just held on to claim a draw in the first test between England and South Africa. The middle order batting collapsed after Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott, both South African-born but playing for England, seemed to have made the game safe. As it turned out Paul Collingwood and Graham Onions had to survive the last few overs in a nail-biting finish. The final scores were South Africa 418 and 301 for 7, England 356 and 228 for 9.
Links to other sites: Guardian, Yahoo cricket.
Capetown, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland was the last ball taken out at the draw for the finals of the World Cup to be held in South Africa in 2010. They will meet Spain, Honduras and Chile in the first stage, with two teams going through to the next round. France are in the group headed by South Africa, along with Mexico and Uruguay. The host nation will be hard-pressed to make it to the second round. England will meet the USA, Algeria and Slovenia. The toughest group is G, which has Brazil, Portugal, Côte d’Ivoire and North Korea.
In the Premier League Manchester United powered their way past West Ham, winning 0-4.
Port Elizabeth, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - James Anderson took five wickets for only 23 runs as South Africa crumbled to 119 all out in the third One Day International in Port Elizabeth. Jonathan Trott lead the English batting with 52 not out to allow the visitors a comfortable seven wicket victory. Engkand now lead 2-1 with one more game to play.
Links to other sites: BBC, Cricket365
Victim of earlier xenophobic violence in S. Africa © 2008 UNHCR / J. Oatway
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has condemned the recent spate of attacks on refugees and asylum-seekers, many of them from Zimbabwe, in the Western Cape town of De Doorns, South Africa. Local officials and the South African Red Cross moved quickly to supply some 3,000 displaced people with tents, portable toilets and hot meals. It was sending two officials from its Pretoria office to assist local officials to restore order, UNHCR said 20 November.
Lagos, Nigeria (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss under 17 team reached the final of the World Cup in Nigeria, and will play the hosts on Sunday afternoon 15 November in front of 60,000 supporters in Lagos. The young Swiss stars beat Colombia 4-0 in the semi-finals after beating Brazil, Germany and Italy in earlier rounds. A controversy has been developing in Nigeria over the age of some of their players, with rumours the captain is about 25 years old.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva will reopen a debate Thursday 15 October on the conduct of both sides in last winter’s brief war in Gaza, Palestine, between Israel and Hamas, the Gaza strip’s political authority. A report by former South African judge Richard Goldstone suggests both armed groups may have committed war crimes. It recommends that they conduct their own impartial investigations within six months or have the case referred to the International Criminal Court. A call by Libya for the UN in New York to take up the report by strongly rebuffed by Israel which said late Wednesday 14 October that as long as the report is “on the table” there can be no peace negotiations with Palestine.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), the nominal representative of the Palestinians, initially asked for the debate on the report to be deferred, but it came under sharp criticism from Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza strip since elections in 2007 forced out Fatah and the PA.
Basel, Switzerland(GenevaLunch) – Switzerland qualified for the finals of the 2010 World Cup by finishing top of their group after achieving a 0-0 draw against Israel. Their task was made easier when Yadin was sent off for two yellow cards, leaving the Swiss with an extra man for the final half hour. Overall the game was mediocre but the result was sufficient for automatic qualification. The other European teams to qualify are Denmark, Slovakia, Germany, Spain, England, Serbia, Italy and the Netherlands. And Turkey beat Armenia 2-0 in a match that followed the signing of agreements designed to normalize diplomatic and business relations between the two countries.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Nineteen countries have now secured their places in the Fifa World Cup finals to be held in South Africa in 2010 after the penultimate games in the qualification series. In the African group Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are through and six places are up for grabs. Australia, Japan and the two Koreas take the Asian places with one more team entering a playoff with New Zealand. Seven of the 13 European places are decided:
South Africa (GenevaLunch) – The English batsmen put on a rare display as they beat South Africa in the ICC Champions Trophy. Andrew Strauss won the toss and decided to bat but lost the opening batsmen quickly. Owais Shah (98) and Paul Collingwood (82) then gradually took control and Eoin Morgan added 67 in just 34 balls. England reached an impressive 323 for 8: the second highest score in the tournament’s history.
Genoa, Italy (GenevaLunch) – Roger Federer overcame jetlag, slow clay courts and rain, not to mention Potito Storace, to give Switzerland a winning position in their World Group play-off against Italy. He won 6-3 6-0 6-4 to add to the two Swiss singles victories on Friday, which were followed by a loss in the doubles as Federer was rested.
Wellington, New Zealand (GenevaLunch) – The New Zealand All Blacks crushed the Australian Wallabies 33-6 in the final match of the Tri-Nations season. South Africa’s Springboks had already won the series. The Australian coach Robbie Deans criticized the lack of commitment of his players, especially in the final 10 minutes.
The government and some media in Israel are rejecting out of hand a report publishd 15 September by the United Nations Fact Finding Commission on the Gaza Conflict from end-2008 to mid-January 2009, whose investigations were led by South African judge Richard Goldstone. The commission writes that acts which can be considered war crimes have been carried out by both Israelis and the Palestinians, but “although the UN investigation found that Palestinian militants also committed war crimes, the overwhelming majority of the criticism in a summary of the 574-page report targets Israel”, reports CNN. Israel did not cooperate in preparing the report.
The Israeli government promptly fought back, saying that the report had been prejudiced from the start because it does not take into consideration the missiles rained on Israeli civilians by Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post today 16 September carries an interview with Goldstone’s daughter, who lives in Toronto, Canada and who lived in Israel for six months.”“I am not angry with him, I love him and respect him,” the J-post reports her saying. “He is a Zionist. My dad loves Israel and it wasn’t easy for him to see and hear what happened. I think he heard and saw things he didn’t expect to see and hear, and I am one-hundred-percent sure he did it [conducted the investigation] in the hope that the Israelis would come to cooperate, and he wanted to help find a long-term solution for the state of Israel.”
The J-Post also quotes Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, as saying that the report will hamper Middle East peace efforts. Arutz Sheva reports that Israelis the world over are strongly behind the government in rejecting the report and that “Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (Yisrael Beiteinu) said Wednesday morning that Israel will work with the United States, which, along with other Western countries, has a vested interest in not allowing the UN to impose international law on democracies,” It notes that Ayalon is meeting today in Washington, DC with Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN.
Perth, Australia (GenevaLunch) – South Africa, current world champions, inflicted another defeat on the Australians in the latest Tri-Nations match. The Wallabies have lost their last six matches in the tournament while the Springboks have won the last five. The South African scrum-half Fourie du Preez was the star player on the field in a match that was more one-sided than the 25-32 final score suggests, at one stage South Africa led 13-29 before a late rally by the Aussies.
South African President Jacob Zuma is in Harare, Zimbabwe today 27 August to meet with members of Zimabwe’s unity government and to convey South African displeasure with the lack of progress in implementing an agreement between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU party and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of Morgan Tsvangirai. He is conveying a message from the South African ruling party ANC, African National Congress, that criticizes Mugabe for his “adolescent and deviant” behaviour. Discord between the two sides in Zimbabwe’s government has left ministerial posts unfilled, and some MDC members of parliament are still in jail. There are rumours that Mugabe is ill and being treated in a clinic in Dubai. He has not been seen in public since Tuesday 19 August. AllAfrica, Mail&Guardian,The Times
Berlin, Germany (GenevaLunch) – Caster Semenya, the 18-year-old South African winner of the 800 metres at the World Championships in Berlin, has been asked to take a gender test. The South African Athletics Federation say that it is confident she is female, but there have been doubts based on appearance and the rapid improvement in her times.
Edgebaston, Birmingham (GenevaLunch) – West Indian batsman Dwayne Smith smashed 59 runs off just 26 balls to set up a 63 run victory over Somerset in the final of the Twenty20 Cup.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland played a solid defensive game to hold World Cup winners Italy to a goal-less draw. Goalkeeper Diego Benaglio was impressive as he pulled off a series of saves. Switzerland is second, behind Greece, in its group for the World Cup finals in South Africa in 2010. Only the top team is guaranteed a place in the finals so the next match, against Greece at Basel on September 5th, is vital.
Details: swissinfo
Capetown, South Africa (GenevaLunch) – South African fly-half Morne Steyn scored 24 points as the Springboks won their third successive Tri-Nations match of the season 29-17. The Wallabies were overpowered but contributed to their loss by poor discipline and careless mistakes. At one stage there were only 13 Aussies on the field as Matt Giteau and Richard Brown were given yellow cards.
