Leander Paes, Cara Black win US Open Mixed Doubles

NEW YORK: India’s Leander Paes won his second US Open and fourth Grand Slam mixed doubles title here at the Flushing Meadows when he and his Zimbabwean partner Cara Black beat Scot Jamie Murray and American Liezel Huber in the final 7-6 (8-6), 6-4 late Thursday night.

Leander, who won two Grand Slam mixed doubles titles with Martina Navratilova and another with Lisa Raymond, partnered Cara for the first time, but the two gelled so well it looked as if they were regular partners.

Both Paes and Cara showed excellent hands as they complemented each other with their deft touch play. The fifth seeds did not face a break point in the entire match, but they were in real danger of losing the first set when they were down 2-5 and then a set point in the tie-breaker.

Cara produced two great volleys to pull them out of a tight corner. They went on to clinch the set, taking the next two points, Paes putting away a customary volley.

Easily the quickest doubles player at the net on the circuit, Paes was in a spot of bother when he double-faulted twice in the fifth game but he wriggled out with two good serves.

Till the tie-breaker, the only breakpoints came when Leizel was down 15-40 in the eighth game.

Once they were through with the first set, Paes and Cara gained control over the match, breaking Murray’s serve in the fifth game as the Briton had a double fault. Then an inspired Cara produced a beauty to leave Murray and Huber struggling to stay in the match.

When Cara held her serve in the eighth game of the second set, it was all over for Murray and Huber as Paes only had to serve out the match which he did in style.

The absorbing tussle ended after an hour and 37 minutes and Paes and Cara shared the winners’ $150,000 prize money.

Paes, who said this US Open was going to be special for him, is also figuring in the men’s doubles final with his Czech partner Lukas Dloughy. They play Bryan twins Bob and Mike.

India’s Pankaj Advani wins World Billiards Championship

Bangalore, Sept 05: India’s Pankaj Advani won the 42nd IBSF World Billiards Championship, defeating veteran Geet Sethi in an enthralling final.

The 23-year-old Bangalorean delighted the home crowd at Karnataka State Billiards Association Hall with a superlative display, winning 150-90, 151-0, 150-24, 150-0, 86-150, 150-72, 150-12.

After a below-par semifinal outing yesterday, Advani played with far more focus and swept the first four games in the morning session to gain a position of strength.

Though the veteran Sethi, with eight world billiards titles under his belt, won the first game in the next session, he could not get the momentum going, with his younger opponent dominating proceedings.

Advani said the “bad” semifinal had spurred him to come out with improved performance and it paid off.

“In sport, every day is a new day”, he said after the match which promised to be an “epic” encounter before the start but turned out to be one-sided in the end.

He said every day throws up new challenges and it’s different from the previous day.

Sethi said inclusion of billiards in the Asian Games inspired him to continue playing the game and expressed hope that it would figure in the Olympics as well. “I am still going strong, I still enjoy the game”, he added.

Meanwhile, the time format of the ONGC IBSF World Billiards Championship gets underway here from tomorrow, with the final slated on September 10.

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Thich Quang Duc : The Monk who burnt himself ! !

Thích Quảng Ðức was protesting against the way the administration of the President Ngô Đình Diệm was oppressing the Buddhist religion.His monastery was just outside of Huế in central Vietnam. The light blue Austin in which he drove to Saigon to commit his act can still be seen there (along with a picture showing his self-immolation, with his car in the background). After his death, his body was cremated. During the cremation, his shrunken heart still remained intact. It was henceforth considered holy and placed in the care of the Reserve Bank of Vietnam.Madame Nhu, the first lady of Vietnam at the time, commented with regard to this that she would “clap hands at seeing another monk barbecue show”. This supposedly resulted in her receiving the alias of “Dragon Lady”.Before Thay Thích Quảng Ðức self immolated himself, someone told me that he said to his followers that if his body falls forward, they should keep on protesting, and if his body falls backward, then they should stop protesting, his body fell forward after he died , so his followers still protesting, and Phat Giao VN Thong Nhat — Thay Thich Huyen Quang, Thay Thich Quang Do — still protesting for rights today from VN’s government VC today. His facial expressions looked calm and peaceful, not many people have the guts to self-immolate themselves like that and keeping themselves calm, and his heart is special, a Buddhism relic. I want to see his heart someday. I had no respect for President Ngo Dinh Diem or anyone that go with this oppression, eventhough some Vietnam people still commemorated his death, in fact he was assassinated because some people didn’t like his presidential actions, especially this oppression, he was a Catholic, I heard that his brother was a priest or something high in the Catholic church, but he was also assassinated ; his wife had no respect for Buddhism, she should have some respect, does she have the guts to righteous sacrifice to what she believes in, what an ignorant person, if she didn’t like Buddhism so what but have some respect. She was a Catholic, too. At this time because of a Catholic president, other religions — Buddhism PGVNTN, Phat Giao Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, were oppressed, Buddhism PGVNTN was the strongest, I guess that why this president and his followers wanted VN to have only one religion — Catholic, but too bad, Buddhism PGVNTN still remain strong and have a big influence today……see how Buddhism is not poison, as someone that mentioned in War of Words, but have moved to Culture Shock, in fact an Indian king, Asoka, followed Buddhism after he had acknowledged of what he had done, research on him for more information , Buddhists in this oppression protested in a peaceful way…..this is one of VN’s shameful piece of history, I hope there will be no repetition like this again, if one don’t like what others believe, then fine, but don’t do evil like what happened in this opppression, or he/her had sinned………

   It is so amazing that some monks in Buddhism have special relics after they were cremated, they must have reach to the some high level. This is true, more information, click here http://www.maitreyaproject.com/en/relic.html. There are many things in this world that remained unsolved, undiscovered, unpredictable, etc…..

The last words of Thich Quang Duc before his self-immolation were documented in a letter he had left::

“

Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngo Dinh Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organise in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.

”

I just found out that Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu was First Lady of South Vietnam from 1955-1963 eventhough President Ngo Dinh Diem was the president and also her brother in law. She was born as Tran Le Xuan; she converted from Mahayana Buddhism to Roman Catholicism; her parents disowned her because of her role in the persecution of Buddhists (her parents must have thought what have we done to have one disobedient and disrespectful daugther, converting to another religion, but also mocking her born religion, Buddhism). Her husband was assassinated with President Ngo Dinh Diem, during this assassination she was in California with her daugther Ngo Le Thuy…after this assassination, it was a downfall for the Dinh families….she was not allowed to return back to South Vietnam, her daughter died in a car accident in France, she was robbed of more than $132,000 worth of jewelry in Italy, her brother Tran Van Khiem was charged in the strangling deaths of their parents (if this was true, empathy to her parents for having impious children). She clearly doesn’t understand Buddhism, what she had said about the self-immolation of Buddhist monks were from plain ignorance…..again does she has the bravery to self-immolate herself for what she believes or if her belief was oppressed. Self-immolating yourself isn’t a laughable matter, very painful in which one must have the guts, audacity, etc. This self-immolation was the reponse back from Buddhishts in the oppression in a peaceful way not in a violent way to let others know how serious this oppression was, how Buddhism in Vietnam was oppressed, like if one entitled rights were oppressed, one will not be subdued to any authority, one would rather die in honor like how the samurai, they would rather kill themselves before their enemies have the chance to do so……about Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu…..it is probably what she had done that lead to her misfortune (KARMA).

Regards, 

“Tarun.Reflex”

First India v/s England one day match of 28 March,06

Hi friends,

I am back again and this time with the exciting description of my journey to  ‘FEROZ SHAH KOTLA CRICKET STADIUM ‘, Delhi to see England v/s India first one day match on 28 March-2006.I know its more thana year now but still better late than never!

I also had a company in this adventure (as I call it). His name is Shashank Singh from Mirzapur in U.P. We arranged tickets with the help of our friend named Amit Singh who is also from Mirzapur. In fact we were trying for the student concession ticket worth rupees 200 only but due to our bad luck or because of the DU students’ careful attitude we lost that. And as a result we bought special ticket which cost us Rs.1000 .Initially we were about 20 friends who were going to match but we reduced to just two of us after the tickets of Rs.200 were finished.

In the evening I got the tickets in hand. One special thing about this event is that at the same time a cricket series was going on in my college also. So you can say that there was an aura of cricket in the atmosphere of the college. That also contributed to our decision of going to match. It was my first ever experience of watching live cricket. According to me that was the main reason behind me watching this match. Let me tell you I am not a cricket-crazy fan but a thing that sets the millions of hearts across this large country throbbing has at least something special and I wanted to feel that thing.

I return to my adventure again. On 27 March, I returned to my hostel at 10:30 pm after buying a computer for one of my friend. I went to Shashank’s room to discuss about the schedule for tomorrow. Just then an idea clicked my mind. Lakshya (my best friend) lives in Delhi and it will be convenient for us to go to his home in the night only. As it would have been difficult for us to start for Delhi in the morning at 4:30am, moreover we were not sure about the convense also and also the routes in Delhi were changed to facilitate the traffic for the cricket match. So I and Shashank had a bath and set off for the journey at about 11:00 pm in the night. We went to the 5th km stone and then to Hapur crossing on foot and waited for the bus but got none for next half an hour. Then we tried for a lift. After a struggle of 15 minutes we got a semi truck which gave us the lift up to Mohan Nagar. When we got off the truck we noticed that the truck belonged to OMX Logistics Ltd. This has an office in front of our college campus.

We reached Mohan Nagar at 12 ‘o’ clock. In the way we received calls from Lakshya who was worried about arrival. From MohanNagar we took a Tempo (Vikram) to Anand Vihar. The climate on that night was something special. It was cool but not cold, it was night but not too dark. The breeze was chilling and the excitement in our hearts was in complete rhythm with the outer atmosphere. There was a fear in our heart – What if India lost the match or what if we could not reach in time? Thinking all this, we reached Anand Vihar at 12:30pm. At Anand Vihar I rang up my friends and had some tea at the tea stall. Shashank had some bread butter also as we were going to Lakshya’s home at a very odd hour. We booked an auto to Shahdara for Rs.40. It took about 45 minutes to reach Shahdara. In the mean time we received calls from Lakshya who inquired about our location.

At last at about 1:15 am we reached Shahdara- Golchakkar.

We entered MIG flat colony from the main gate. I had never gone to Lakshya’s home through the main gate. So we were quite puzzled. And kept roaming inside the colony for half an hour we made 3 complete rounds of the colony. And at last when Lakshya told us the way on mobile we finally reached his home. He was very happy to find us. He had already arranged for our sleeping but we were not in the mood to sleep so we chatted for an hour about our journey (which was actually to start) till then. Then we watched the South Africa v/s England Australia match in which 432 runs were made, chased and achieved!! After that we slept setting alarm for the 4:30am of the 28 march, Tuesday.

Alarms are most punctual things in this world— It’s their virtue as well as vice. We got up at 5 am. We had a bath quickly and dressed up for the match. I had the cap (Abhinav’s IBM cap) and had bread and tea. We are extremely grateful to Lakshya’s mom who took the pains to make us breakfast at that time of the morning. This breakfast was going to be a great help during the whole day.

We stepped out of Lakshya’s home to find the most pleasant morning of my life. It was a very beautiful day and the good thing was that it was going to be better. Lakshya told us the way and dropped us at the Shahdara bus stand. Without him this journey would have been quite difficult. We got in the bus and had our seats. After 45 minutes journey we reached Dilli Gate. From there we could see the stadium and feel the heat of the breaths of millions of lungs.

We went to the queue which was already about a kilometer long and stood there. There we came to know that we had missed a very important thing. We had our mobiles with us and it was not allowed to take mobiles inside. So we left the queue and went to search for the place to keep our cell phones.

First we went to a petrol pump but we were refused, then to a temple but no success. However from the temple we came to know about the tea stall where we can keep our mobiles. So we went to the tea stall and gave our mobiles to the shopkeeper trusting him completely.

When we returned from the tea stall, the queue has already commenced and now we were about 2 km away from the main gate no 7.There was a foreigner standing before us and behind was a family. The line crawled slowly. But at once there was some energy and the queue broke, people crossed the iron railing and jumped to the nearby line. The reason was the time. It had already been 9am and we were standing outside so people lost patience. We reached the main gate within 10 minutes and stopped for the security check.  However it was just a formality. We went into the gate. Now we could clearly hear the noise of people. I came to know that there were 70000 people in this stadium of maximum capacity of 48000.

I entered the stadium building and climbed to the second floor quickly so that we could find seats but as obvious we got no seats so we sat on the cement stairs. Those stairs were quite better than the seats because they were closer to the ground and also now we had no tension of loosing our seats. We settled and at last were happy that we reached there on time with quite ease. The match started. The crowd waved off its seats and shaked the whole stadium with the noise of ‘INDIA INDIA INDIA’. Indian team came for batting first. In the very first over there were two boundaries that made the whole stadium jump, with joy. It was Sehwag this time. But very soon Sehwag was out. I will not go into further details of the match as you can find that everywhere else too. In all India made 203 runs from 50 overs with Harbhajan as the highest scorer. There were two sixes too. One of them was from Harbhajan. Very honestly I would say that Indian batting was not to my expectations. I was a bit disappointed. This is the difference that can be felt just in the stadium not on any television set because all these players look to be heroes on T.V. but on the ground they are just any other player who can do mistakes and take wrong decisions. On the ground you become a part of the desire – a common desire of 70000 people and you rise and fall in emotions with all of them. The rhythm generated at one boundary and excitement surpasses anything else. Moreover there was one more feeling in our hearts – we were expecting for some miracle to happen so that this match becomes a memorable one. In the break people were silent. Some were praying and some disappointed.

We had some lunch in the break and returned to our seats. The Indian team came to ground and scattered all over the field. First over was taken by Irfan Pathan .First two balls went virgin. Then on the third he took the first wicket of England and the stadium waved with joy. People started beating chairs and shouting like mad. The crowd stood up to encourage. And on the next ball one more wicket. And now that was enough for the crowd to handle. All the men, women and children were shouting at the loudest of their tones and marking their presence in that aura of joy. After that England maintained its run rate with boundaries .Peterson and Flintoff were taking England to victory. But just then Harbhajan came into action. This spinner took 5 wickets. The entire stadium filled with rhythmic chords of ‘BHAJJI BHAJJI’ and ‘JO BOLE SO NIHAL – SASTRIYA AKAAL’.

Now there was a huge pressure on England, Yuvraj bowled very well and also took one wicket. The equations of the match were reversed the match that before the lunch was in England’s favor turned out to be in India’s favor. This match had everything that we wanted or had expected. At last on the ball of Irfan Pathan, England lost its last wicket and India became victorious. The miracle had happened and we all were happy, embracing each other with winning smile. Harbhajan was declared the man of the match and got a motor cycle which he and Dhoni drove in the stadium.

We came out of the stadium, took our mobiles and had a cup of tea. Then we sat in a DTC bus which took us to Anand Vihar. We were exhausted and hungry so we went to Sector 10 in Ghaziabad had our stomachs full and returned to hostel with the stories of India’s victory and our’s too!!

This was the end of my first ever live cricket match which was certainly excellent and memorable. It had everything which one can expect.

Regards-

Tarun Kumar Jaiswal