Ahead of Australia tour, India searching for momentum in test series against New Zealand

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Ahead of Australia tour, India searching for momentum in test series against New Zealand

2024-10-15 19:06 Last Updated At：19:10

BENGALURU, India (AP) — India will have a keen eye on its upcoming tour of Australia as it takes on New Zealand in a three-test series starting in Bengaluru on Wednesday.

Before the five-test clash in Australia from next month, India plays the Kiwis on home soil in a series that could confirm India’s spot in the 2025 World Test Championship (WTC) final.

The three tests will be played in Bengaluru, Pune and Mumbai. India is currently atop the WTC rankings, and a 3-0 win in this series against New Zealand would assure its spot for the final at Lord’s next June.

After beating Bangladesh 2-0 in the preceding test series, a full-strength Indian squad is once again available for selection. In-form top-order batters or world class spinners — India is spoilt for choice.

India would arguably like to see a few more runs from the likes of Virat Kohli and Lokesh Rahul. The 35-year-old Kohli missed the home series against England earlier in the year for the birth of his second child. Against Bangladesh, he only had limited batting time and scored 99 runs in four innings.

Kohli would certainly hope for more runs against New Zealand, looking ahead to the Australian tour where the cricket great averages 54.08 in 13 tests. Meanwhile, Rahul too had missed most of the English series due to injury and batted only three times against Bangladesh.

Rahul doesn’t keep wickets anymore – Rishabh Pant returned to that role with aplomb against Bangladesh – and thus needs to guard his spot against the waiting Sarfaraz Khan, who scored 200 runs in five innings against England.

Pace bowling is one area of concern for India, with the workloads of its fast bowlers – Jasprit Bumrah, Akash Deep and Mohammed Siraj – under scrutiny. The trio is also expected to travel to Australia.

Bumrah has been named vice-captain for the New Zealand series. It is a departure from protocol for India – it doesn’t name vice-captains for home series. Rohit Sharma, however, could miss the first test against Australia owing to personal reasons and thus this move.

Pacer Mohammed Shami has suffered a setback in his recovery from an Achilles injury after the 2023 one-day World Cup and his return to action has been further delayed because of a knee issue.

“Right now, it is very difficult for us to take a call on Shami,” Sharma said ahead of the first test. “He has had a setback to his knee while close to getting fit and it puts him back in recovery. We don’t want to bring an undercooked Shami to Australia. He was supposed to play this series, but we will see at what stage he will be fit for us.”

India is carrying a set of traveling reserves for this series, including young pacers Harshit Rana and Mayank Yadav, as well as pace all-rounder Nitish Reddy. One, or all, could be in contention to participate in this series, as well as be included for the Australia trip.

Additionally, India’s combination – two or three pacers – for the Bengaluru test at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium will depend on weather. Since Monday, the city has seen heavy rainfall and the forecast for the coming days isn’t good either.

For New Zealand, meanwhile, this series is about hitting the reset button.

The Black Caps have already been on a long sub-continental tour. It began with the one-off washed out test against Afghanistan in Greater Noida, India, followed by a 2-0 loss in Sri Lanka.

The transition phase for New Zealand cricket continues with this tough tour of India. Tim Southee stepped down from the captaincy with Tom Latham taking over full-time. Latham has led New Zealand in nine tests previously – all as a stand-in for Williamson.

He leads a young Kiwi side, which does boast a few players who have wide experience of playing in India – Devon Conway, Daryl Mitchell, Glenn Phillips, Mitchell Santner and Southee.

Left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel took a record 10-119 in the 2021 Mumbai test. Yet the Black Caps will be wary as they aim to push India in its backyard – arguably the toughest test assignment in world cricket.

While senior batter and former skipper Kane Williamson has been ruled out of the first test owing to a groin strain suffered in Sri Lanka, New Zealand will rely on young gun Rachin Ravindra to propel its challenge.

“In India, we have seen teams do well who have been aggressive towards them, especially with the bat," Latham said. "They have looked to put them under pressure, which is really important, rather than sitting and waiting for something to happen.”

AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket

Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5 and more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 23:06 Last Updated At：23:10

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and wounding at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The state governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose to five from a previous figure of two and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

“There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Scholz said. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

Neurosurgeon Mahmoud Elenbaby said some 80 patients were brought to Magdeburg’s university hospital on Friday night.

“We managed to stabilize most of them, but many are still in intensive care, and some are also in critical condition,” Elenbaby told The Associated Press as he dashed into the hospital cafeteria to buy himself a cola.

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what motivated the man to drive his black BMW into a crowd in the eastern German city.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Moulson reported from Berlin and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.