PERTH, Australia (AP) — Yashasvi Jaiswal confirmed his status as India’s new batting star with an unbeaten century and shared a record 201-run opening stand with KL Rahul as India batted to a likely unbeatable position in the opening Border-Gavaskar test at the Perth Stadium on Sunday.
India was 275-1 at lunch on the third day with Jaiswal on a 141 not out and Devdutt Padikkal on an unbeaten 25.
Click to Gallery
Australia's captain Pat Cummins dives to field the ball on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's KL Rahul bats on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's Yashasvi Jaiswal, left, celebrates his century as teammate India's KL Rahul applauds on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
Australia's Mitchell Starc, center, watches as India's Devdutt Padikkal, right, and Yashasvi Jaiswal run between the wickets on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's Yashasvi Jaiswal bats on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's Yashasvi Jaiswal celebrates his century on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's Yashasvi Jaiswal celebrates his century on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
The tourists who last won a test in Perth at the WACA grounds in 2018 have an overall lead of 321 runs and still plenty of time left to bat Australia out of this test.
Jaiswal brought up his fourth test century in sensational style as he parried a Josh Hazlewood bouncer over the third man boundary for his third six. He celebrated the ton by raising his bat followed by raising both arms.
Playing in only his 15th test in a career that has spanned just as many months, Jaiswal was in brilliant touch as he batted with ease and conviction.
In his controlled but at times flashy 6 ½ hour innings Jaiswal took his calendar year run tally to 1,260 at an average of 60 including two double hundreds against England at home to add to this ton.
Jaiswal, 22, has so far struck 12 fours and three sixes off 264 balls. His third six to bring up his hundred took his sixes tally to a record 35 for a calendar year since and surpassed New Zealander Brendon McCullum’s 33.
Jaiswal dismissed for 0 in the first innings joined the legendary Sunil Gavaskar to score a duck and a hundred in the same test in Australia. Gavaskar made 0 and 118 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in December 1977.
KL Rahul scored 77 and played second fiddle to Jaiswal in the 383-ball stand batted for 302 minutes and hit five fours off 176 balls.
Leftarm swing bowler Mitchell Starc finally separated the threatening partnership when KL Rahul edged a delivery that was slanted across the right hander and wicketkeeper Alex Carey took a low catch.
The opening stand was the highest for India in Australia since the 191 between Gavaskar and Krishnamachari Srikkanth at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 1986.
The conditions have been batter-friendly after the opening day claimed 17 wickets including India being bowled out for 150 after winning the toss. Australia replied with 104 and was dismissed in the second morning after Jasprit Bumrah took 5-30 in a sensational new ball spell.
Australia and India are one-two in the World Test Championship standings.
AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket
Australia's captain Pat Cummins dives to field the ball on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's KL Rahul bats on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's Yashasvi Jaiswal, left, celebrates his century as teammate India's KL Rahul applauds on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
Australia's Mitchell Starc, center, watches as India's Devdutt Padikkal, right, and Yashasvi Jaiswal run between the wickets on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's Yashasvi Jaiswal bats on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's Yashasvi Jaiswal celebrates his century on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
India's Yashasvi Jaiswal celebrates his century on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
SADO, Japan (AP) — Japan held a memorial ceremony on Sunday near the Sado Island Gold Mines despite a last-minute boycott of the event by South Korea that highlighted tensions between the neighbors over the issue of Korean forced laborers at the site before and during World War II.
South Korea’s absence at Sunday’s memorial, to which Seoul government officials and Korean victims’ families were invited, is a major setback in the rapidly improving ties between the two countries, which since last year have set aside their historical disputes to prioritize U.S.-led security cooperation.
The Sado mines were listed in July as a UNESCO World Heritage site after Japan moved past years of disputes with South Korea and reluctantly acknowledged the mines’ dark history, promising to hold an annual memorial service for all victims, including hundreds of Koreans who were mobilized to work in the mines.
On Saturday, South Korea announced it would not attend the event, saying it was impossible to settle unspecified disagreements between the two governments in time.
Families of Korean victims of the mine accidents were expected to separately hold their own ceremony near the mine at a later date.
Masashi Mizobuchi, an assistant press secretary in Japan’s Foreign Ministry, said Japan has been in communication with Seoul and called the South Korean decision “disappointing.”
The ceremony was held as planned on Sunday at a facility near the mines, where more than 20 seats for Korean attendees remained vacant.
The 16th-century mines on the island of Sado, off Japan’s north-central coast, operated for nearly 400 years before closing in 1989 and were once the world’s largest gold producer.
Historians say about 1,500 Koreans were mobilized to Sado as part of Japan’s use of hundreds of thousands of Korean laborers, including those forcibly brought from the Korean Peninsula, at Japanese mines and factories to make up for labor shortages because most working-age Japanese men had been sent to battlefronts across Asia and the Pacific.
Japan’s government has maintained that all wartime compensation issues between the two countries were resolved under a 1965 normalization treaty.
South Korea had long opposed the listing of the site as World Heritage on the grounds that the Korean forced laborers, despite their key role in the wartime mine production, were missing from the exhibition. Seoul's backing for Sado came as South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol prioritized improving relations with Japan.
The Japanese government said Sunday’s ceremony was to pay tribute to “all workers” who died at the mines, but would not spell out inclusion of Korean laborers — part of what critics call a persistent policy of whitewashing Japan’s history of sexual and labor exploitation before and during the war.
Preparation for the event by local organizers remained unclear until the last minute, which was seen as a sign of Japan’s reluctance to face its wartime brutality.
Japan’s government said on Friday that Akiko Ikuina — a parliamentary vice minister who reportedly visited Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine in August 2022, weeks after she was elected as a lawmaker — would attend the ceremony. Japan’s neighbors view Yasukuni, which commemorates 2.5 million war dead including war criminals, as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.
Ikuina belonged to a Japanese ruling party faction of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who led the whitewashing of Japan's wartime atrocities in the 2010s during his leadership.
For instance, Japan says the terms “sex slavery” and “forced labor” are inaccurate and insists on the use of highly euphemistic terms such as “comfort women” and “civilian workers” instead.
South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul said Saturday that Ikuina’s Yasukuni visit was an issue of contention between the countries’ diplomats.
“That issue and various other disagreements between diplomatic officials remain unresolved, and with only a few hours remaining until the event, we concluded that there wasn’t sufficient time to resolve these differences,” Cho said in an interview with MBN television.
Some South Koreans had criticized Yoon’s government for supporting the event without securing a clear Japanese commitment to highlight the plight of Korean laborers. There were also complaints over South Korea agreeing to pay for the travel expenses of Korean victims’ family members to Sado.
Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea.
Akiko Ikuina, Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, offer a flower on behalf of the government during a memorial ceremony for the Sado Island Gold Mine in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Guests offer a flower during a memorial ceremony for the Sado Island Gold Mine in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, as several seats reserved for South Korean guests remained empty Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Visitors walk though a tunnel at Sado Kinzan Gold Mine historic site in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A visitor tries to pick up a gold bar at Sado Kinzan Gold Mine historic site in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Guests offer a moment of silence during a memorial ceremony for the Sado Island Gold Mine in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Guests offer a moment of silence during a memorial ceremony for the Sado Island Gold Mine in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
People visit remains of a Sado gold mine are seen on Sado Island, northern Japan, on Aug. 26, 2024. (Yasufumi Fujita/Kyodo News via AP)
Guests offer a moment of silence during a memorial ceremony for the Sado Island Gold Mine in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, as several seats reserved for South Korean guests remained empty Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Mayor of Sado City Ryugo Watanabe delivers a speech during a memorial ceremony for the Sado Island Gold Mine in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Visitors look at display at Sado Kinzan Gold Mine historic site in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
