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| Image Credit: Angelo.romano, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons |
Hello Friends,
I was planning to start a new segment on sports for a while now. Finally I could finalize this segment which will be titled as Sports Talk Of The Month starting this month onwards. As the name suggests this segment will be featuring some of the best achievement/s from the sporting world for the month. So here we go with the first dose of the exciting sporting events which concludes the year in an emphatic manner.
Messi Shining Bright
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| Image Credit: Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons |
A world cup is always a special event whatever sport it may be. A world cup triumph sometimes inspires a nation to achieve greater heights. December 2022 witnessed one of the greatest triumphs in the history of world cup football & a proud soccer nation. Argentina's first world cup victory since 1986 is one to remember for the ages. Though it's a team game, still this triumph should be remembered for Argentine captain Lionel Messi's remarkable performance throughout the tournament. It's never easy to always perform as per the expectation of millions of fans worldwide but greats like Messi deliver when it matters the most. His stature as a star player & the leader of the team both were at stake after their shocking defeat to Saudi Arabia in their opening encounter. But he handled the pressure in the best possible way by scoring in all the knock out games for his team ultimately resulting in world cup triumph. Whether he turns up for his nation in future or not that time only will tell, but this triumph will definitely reestablish Messi's stature as one of the all time greats.
Bazball The Game Changer
Moving our attention from football to cricket, the most talked about sport. There had been quite a few interesting series this month. Bangladesh getting the better of the Indian team in the one day series whereas the men in blue turning it on during the test series with a thumping 2-0 victory, Aussie boys continuing their dominance in red ball cricket with yet another series victory against bowling heavy South Africa were some of the highlights of this month's cricketing actions. But I would like to draw attention towards another victory which reestablishes the fact that a change in mindset can do wonders. I am talking about Babar Azam's Pakistan team getting whitewashed in the hands of mighty English men led by Ben Stokes in the test series. The series victory was not just another win by England, rather a statement that they were trying to establish since Ben stokes-Brendon McCullum duo has taken the charge of the red ball team earlier this year. It has been a contrasting fortune for English red ball & white ball teams over the last couple of years. They were getting stronger with each passing match or series resulting in their triumph in the T20 world cup this year, whereas the test team was unable to bring the similar results in the longest format of the game.
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| Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bensutherland/48630951486/ |
But a change at the top seems to be working fine for them. Lot of credit to Ben stokes, the captain who himself went through a difficult phase at personal level a while back which saw him taking a break from cricket. His aggressive style of leadership coupled with unique coaching style of McCullum is doing wonders. Don't think anybody would be surprised if Ben Stokes does what Eoin Morgan did to the white ball team of England. Opponents did not have any answers to their aggressive batting throughout the series which saw them rewriting the record books by hitting 500+ runs in a single day's play in test cricket. This fearless brand of cricket termed as Bazball is definitely going to trouble rest of the teams in near future. On that note next year's Ashes is definitely going to be one of the most exciting ones between the arch rivals.
That's it for this month rather this year. Stay tuned for exciting updates on more sporting actions in the coming months.
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