Last Spring, the Cricket relationship between Australia andIndia devolved into name calling and accusations of racism. The line between locker-roomtalk, normal sports trash talking, andattack was quickly found and crossed. This season, the national teams representingboth countries want to turn over a new leaf, let us say, and start anew, withsome cross-national friendships from the past severely bruised, if notdestroyed.
Australia captain Steve Smith is anxious to halt the acrimonythat marked Test matches against India last Spring when the two powerhousesstart a one-day international series today. Smith had a much-publicised war of words with India counterpart ViratKohli, who has been called the Donald Trump of Sport in India, when Australia lost the Test series 2-1 inMarch. The combative Australian saidahead of the first one-day clash in Chennai that he hoped the five-match serieswould be played in "good spirit". Kohli slammed the Aussies forwhat he considered a cheating maneuver during a game, at the last series news conference inDharamsala, saying that he and the Australian players were "no longerfriends." The Australians will topple South Africa from top spot in theOne Day International table if they can beat India 4-1, and the Indiansthemselves could take the top spot with a 4-1 record in the series. The Australians have just come from aBangladesh 2 Test tour, which they split with the hosts 1-1. Several Aussies have played the Indians inthe Indian Premier League, so they have some experience with their hosts. The India team has recently blanked Sri Lanka9-0 in Tests, one day games and T20. TheIndian players feel that the conditions under which the games will be playedmay be a determining factor, Australia lost their ODI series in India 3-2 in2013, but humbled India 4-1 at home in 2016. In England, in the Premier League Soccer, a quandarypresented itself after the terrible terrorist attack last week, happening as itdid next to Chelsea's west London Stadium. The match between Chelsea and Arsenal, which has been sold out for sometime, was in doubt, given the nearness of that attack. Manager Antonio Conte says Chelsea's PremierLeague clash with Arsenal should go ahead on Sunday despite that bomb, ratherthan give into the terrorists. At least22 were injured in that attack during Friday morning's rush hour. The Parsons Green tube stop suffered thebrunt of the attack; that is only a short distance from Chelsea's StamfordBridge home. "I'd like to say allour thoughts are for the people affected in the incident on the tube,"Conte said at Chelsea's Cobham training ground on Friday. Fans with tickets have been warned to arriveearlier than normal to pass through the variety of safety checks. We applaud this initiative and should prayfor their efforts. In Cycling, every year the cycling season comes to aconclusion with the week of Cycling Worlds. Normally it should be a crescendo, in cycling it is always ananticlimax. Still has-been cyclists tooafraid to ride in the Vuelta, and the national champions from dozens ofcountries, show up for an unnecessarily prolonged maudlin week of various typesof cycling competitions. Like in any type of nations play, cyclists who areused to cycling with their pro team, instead ride with and for their"national team" just for this week. Various competitions, junior men's and women's, under 23 men's andwomen's, elite men's and women's all have their individual and teamcompetitions. Despite this mediocre introduction, cycling fans will want totune into their favorite media outlets for several of the competitions thisweek. Don't miss today's Men’s team time trial, or Wednesday's Men’selite individual time trial, more about the Men's road race next Sunday. Yesterday was National Gymnastics Day! in the United States and a few othercountries. In Australia, the celebrationthis year leads into the National Aerobic Gymnastics Championships, which willbe held Wednesday through Saturday. Enjoy gymnastics with these videos! -- Posted By Rex to SR at 9/17/2017 03:39:00 AM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
