Starc, Hazlewood set to become Australian new-ball bowling benchmarks in 1st test against India

PERTH, Australia (AP) — Fast bowlers Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood are set to become Australia's finest new-ball partnership when the hosts start play in the first Border-Gavaskar test as favorites against India on Friday.

Unseasonal rain leading into the five-test series may leave the wicket fresh throughout the test, which is unlikely to see familiar characteristic cracks opening, therefore making batting easier as the test progresses over the scheduled five days.

Left-arm swing bowler Starc and seam bowler Hazlewood need just two wickets to become the first Australian new-ball attack to claim 400 wickets together.

With the pitch expected to stay fresh, Australia will opt for a three-pronged pace attack with skipper Pat Cummins joining his fellow fast bowlers Starc and Hazlewood. Veteran Nathan Lyon will provide the off-spin option.

Australia will introduce Nathan McSweeney to fill the big shoes of the now-retired David Warner at the top of the Australian batting lineup, partnering lefthander Usman Khawaja. McSweeney, 25, will open for Australia, with star batsman Steve Smith dropping down the middle-order.

Australia’s middle order has failed recently and No. 3 Marnus Labuschagne and prolific run-getter and No. 4 Smith will be looking to re-establish themselves at the top of the order.

Smith, 35, has not scored a century in his past 10 test matches but has always been notorious for scoring big in showcase series.

Australia and India are one-two in the World Test Championship standings.

India will be without skipper Rohit Sharma, who is on paternity leave, and the injured Shubman Gill, a prolific run scorer in recent times. Gill broke his finger while attempting a catch in a practice match between the Indian squad at the WACA ground last week in Perth.

Australia is perfect at the new Perth Stadium, which replaced the WACA ground. It won the first test at the ground in 2018 against India, beat New Zealand in 2019, West Indies in 2022 and Pakistan last year.

Australia has dominated world cricket under Cummins’ captaincy, but only current players Smith, Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon have played in a series win over India.

“Almost every challenge that have been thrown at us we’ve stepped up,” Cummins said Thursday. “For half the change room we haven’t won the Border-Gavaskar. It’s one of the last thing to tick off for a lot of us. We know India is right up there with the best teams in the world … we’re excited.”

Cummins does not expect the firebrand approach of Warner from his young opener McSweeney.

“Davey is hard to replace in many ways. The most important thin for Nath is to play his own game." Cummins said.

India is coming off a historic 3-0 loss to New Zealand at home, and its task in the series had been made even harder with a reshuffled batting lineup in the absence of the experienced duo of Sharma and Gill. India has won its last two series in Australia.

“We’re not carrying any baggage from India,” said skipper Jasprit Bumrah, who is standing in for Sharma. “We’re disappointed and we did have a tough series last time (at home)… we come with a fresh mindset against a different opposition. We’re very well-prepared,."

India's focus will be on young batting prodigy Yashasvi Jaisval, who is expected to open alongside K.L. Rahul, who will replace Sharma at the top of the order. Although India has yet to announce it playing XI for the series opener, it is most likely batsmen Devdutt Padikkal and Dhruv Jurel will feature in the reshuffled batting lineup.

Jaisval, a 22-year-old left hander, has scored 1,407 test runs (at 56.28) with three centuries and eight half centuries since he made his debut against the West Indies in July 2023.

Virat Kohli, one of the finest batsmen of the modern game, like Smith has had a lean spell and had managed just two centuries in his past 60 innings.

Teams (from):

Australia: Usman Khawaja, Nathan McSweeney, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Travis Head, Alex Carey, Josh Inglis, Mitchell Marsh, Pat Cummins (captain), Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Scott Boland and Nathan Lyon.

India: K.L. Rahul, Yashasvi Jaisval, Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kholi, Dhruv Jurel, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Sarfaraz Khan, Rishabh Pant, Jasprit Bumrah (captain), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Washington Sundar and Mohamed Siraj.

__

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

Pakistan's Haris Rauf, right, and Mohammad Rizwan, center, celebrate after combining to take the wicket of Australia's Pat Cummins, caught behind, during their one day international cricket match in Adelaide, Australia, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/James Elsby)

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was upheld Tuesday in Vietnam's largest fraud case, the scale of which had raised concerns about the country's economy.

She had been convicted in April of embezzlement and bribery over the fraud amounting to $12.5 billion, nearly 3% of Vietnam’s 2022 GDP. As chairperson of the Van Thinh Phat real estate firm, Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that cost the bank $27 billion in losses.

The court in Ho Chi Minh rejected her appeal against the conviction while adding that her death sentence could be commuted to life if she reimburses three-fourth of the losses, working out to around $11 billion, state media reported.

Her lawyers argued that she had repaid the money but the court disagreed since there were legal issues with some of the seized properties and prosecuting agencies couldn't assess their value, VN Express reported.

Lan's lawyers also noted several mitigating circumstances — she had admitted guilt, showed remorse and had paid back part of the amount.

“I feel pained due to the waste of national resources,” she said last week, state media reported.

But the court said her violations had negatively impacted banking, caused public disorder and eroded people’s trust, VN Express said.

Under Vietnamese law, death sentences aren't immediately carried out and there is an extended legal process, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. He added that Lan would seek another review of the case or a presidential pardon to reduce her sentence.

“Moreover, if she repays at least three-quarters of the misappropriated funds, the court may consider commuting her sentence to life imprisonment,” he said.

Her arrest was among the most high-profile in an anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that intensified after 2022. The Blazing Furnace campaign touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. But the scale of her fraud shocked the nation with analysts raising questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred.

This dampened Vietnam’s economic outlook and made foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as a home for businesses pivoting their supply chains away from China.

Lan, 67, and her family had set up the Van Thing Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shed its state-run economy in favor of a more market-oriented approach open to foreigners. The company grew into one of Vietnam’s richest real estate firms, with luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers.

This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry. She orchestrated the 2011 merger of the beleaguered SCB bank with two other lenders in coordination with Vietnam’s central bank. The court said that she used this to tap SCB for cash and, according to government documents, owned more than 90% of the bank while approving thousands of loans to “ghost companies.”

These loans, according to state media, found their way to her and she bribed officials to cover her tracks.

The scale of the crime meant the case was split into two trials, and Lan was sentenced to another life sentence in October. At that trial, she was accused of raising $1.2 billion from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally through four companies, state media reported.

She was also found guilty of siphoning off $18 billion obtained through fraud and for using companies controlled by her to illegally transfer more than $4.5 billion in and out of Vietnam between 2012 and 2022.

Vietnam has handed down more than 2,000 death sentences in the past decade and executed more than 400 prisoners. It is a possible sentence for 14 different crimes but is typically applied for cases of murder and drug trafficking.

Vietnamese real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, second left, attends trial in an appeal she filed against her death sentence in a financial fraud case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Tran Quynh/VNExpress via AP)

Vietnamese real estate tycoon Truong My Lan attends trial in an appeal she filed against her death sentence in a financial fraud case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Tran Quynh/VNExpress via AP)