Felicitation by President, HM Amit Shah and teammates' guard of honour mark Ishant's 100th Test
Ahmedabad, Feb 24: India's veteran fast bowler Ishant Sharma was on Wednesday accorded a guard of honour by his teammates after being felicitated by President Ram Nath Kovind and Home Minister Amit Shah ahead of his landmark 100th Test match here.
The 32-year-old Ishant is only the second Indian fast bowler after former captain Kapil Dev to play 100 Test matches.
Before the start of the day-night third Test against England, the pacer received a memento from President Kovind while Shah handed him a commemorative 100th Test cap at the Narendra Modi Stadium here.
As he made his way into the ground after England opted to bat, captain Virat Kohli's men lined up to honour his longevity and service to Indian cricket.
"@ImIshant was felicitated by the Honourable President of India Shri Ram Nath Kovind & Honourable Home Minister of India Shri Amit Shah before the start of play here in Ahmedabad," the BCCI tweeted.
Besides the President and home minister, also present during the inauguration of the world's largest cricket stadium were sports minister Kiren Rijiju and BCCI secretary Jay Shah.
In his landmark game, Ishant provided the home team a perfect start as he removed Dominic Sibley in the third over.
Though he has had many memorable moments in his career so far that has nearly spanned a decade and a half, Ishant struggled to name one while speaking to reporters ahead of the game.
"If your career is 14 years long and you are still playing, you cannot name just one highlight. It is difficult to pinpoint just one highlight, every sportsperson has the graph going up and down," Ishant said.
During the first Test against England earlier this month in Chennai, Ishant became the sixth Indian and third pacer from the country to take 300 wickets in Test cricket, joining legendary former captains Kapil and Anil Kumble.
Ishant, who has 11 five-wicket hauls and picked up 10 wickets in a match once, made his Test debut back in 2007 against Bangladesh.
Prior to the start of the match, Ishant was hailed by the likes of Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Ashish Nehra.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
