Pat Cummins diverts COVID donation to UNICEF Aus’ India COVID-19 appeal instead of PM Cares Fund
This report was first published in www.crictracker.com and has been posted here without any alterations or editing. To read the original report, CLICK HERE
It was only a few days back that Australian star Pat Cummins was amid all the praises for his noble deed. Cummins is currently in India while plying his trade for KKR in IPL 2021 and seeing India’s terrible state owing to the second wave of COVID-19, he donated $50,000 to the PM Cares Fund. He bagged much appreciation for his generous idea and lending a helping to India in the dire situation.
However, in the latest turn of events, there is a bit of change in his actions as he has allocated his funds to UNICEF Australia’s India COVID-19 Crisis Appeal. Seeing the poor state of India, various big names and organizations are coming to donate funds to India in providing essential medical facilities. In the same manner, Cricket Australia has also taken up an initiative to help the fellow nation.
CA announced that they will throw their support behind India in this need hour while being in association with the Australian Cricketer’s Association and UNICEF Australia. The generated funds will be provided to India for their medical equipment and generating oxygen for the critical patients.
While Pat Cummins was amid all the appreciation for donating the generous amount to India, he was criticized by many for donating to PM Cares Fund. Many believe that the funds in the PM Cares are not being channelized properly and not coming in use of the needy ones. This can be one of the reasons behind Cummins diverting his channel of donation.
Here is Pat Cummins’ latest announcement
Terrific work @CricketAus
— Pat Cummins (@patcummins30) May 3, 2021
FYI I ended up allocating my donation to UNICEF Australia's India COVID-19 Crisis Appeal.
If you're able to, please join many others in supporting this here https://t.co/SUvGjlGRm8 https://t.co/1c0NE9PFdO
In the most recent turn of events, KKR was all set to play against RCB in IPL 2021 before distress broke in Kolkata’s camp. Sandeep Warrier and Varun Chakravarthy have tested positive for COVID-19 while many other players have been isolated. Cummins is also one amongst them and in the same light, the match between the two teams got postponed.
Talking about KKR’s performance this season, they are yet to find form and are currently struggling at the 7th position in the points table with only 2 wins in their total seven games.
Courtesy: www.crictracker.com
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FIDE Women's World Cup final: Humpy draws with Divya in first game
Batumi (Georgia), Jul 26 (PTI): Young Indian International Master Divya Deshmukh held her nerves to hold stalwart Koneru Humpy to a draw in game 1 of the FIDE Women's World Cup final, with both players having their share of opportunities to take the lead here on Saturday.
The draw with black means Humpy, the two-time World Rapid champion, holds a slight edge going in the second and final game under the classical chess rules in the two-game mini-match, and should the deadlock continue, games of shorter duration will be played to determine the winner.
Humpy employed the Queen's gambit accepted as black and it turned out to be a pretty fascinating game right out of the opening as Divya, 19, came up with a piece sacrifice early to deny the black king the right to castle.
Humpy was the first to err and, according to computers, Divya had things under control on the 14th move. However in her bid to recover the extra material, the Nagpur girl, who has secured a place in the Candidates tournament with her sterling performance here, missed a promising continuation.
What followed the exchange of all minor pieces and the ensuing queen and rook endgame gave enough counter play to both players. The game was eventually drawn after Humpy sacrificed her rook to force perpetual checks.
"The game saw an extremely sharp battle with the game ending in a draw in 41 moves. On move 7, Divya made her aggressive intentions clear by offering another pawn,
which looked like home preparation. Humpy made a practical decision of refraining from taking the pawn and a balanced position was reached by move 10 by white," said Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay, an Arjuna awardee and the first Indian to get a chess Grandmaster norm.
"However, instead of developing the undeveloped Knight, Humpy retreated the centralised Knight on move 10, giving huge positional advantage to Divya. Divya could have gained huge positional advantage on the 12th move by moving a rook. However, she chose to play for King side attack by sacrificing a piece instead.
"Humpy, too, erred at this stage and instead of moving the King to Queen side, moved it to the King side. Divya, on move 14, could have obtained a crushing attack by threatening a mate by developing her Queen. Instead she chose to exchange a pair of Bishops first, which enabled Humpy to defend her King by returning the piece," said Thipsay.
"Players thus reached a balanced Queen and two Rooks ending. Divya continued to play ambitiously and tried to attack Humpy’s King but the latter defended accurately and the game was drawn in 41 moves by perpetual check," he added.
In the play-off for the third place, Chinese players Zhongyi Tan, the former women's world champion and top seed Lei Tingjie also decided to split points out of a Queen’s gambit declined game.
The opening raised visions of a close contest between the two but having been knocked out of title race in the previous round, none of them wanted to take any huge risk. It was still a middle game when the players shook hands.
With the top two positions sealed for the Indians, the berth to the next Candidates is also assigned, while the player finishing third will also get an entry to the premier event scheduled for 2026.
Results: Divya Deshmukh (Ind) drew with Koneru Humpy (Ind); Zhongyi Tan (Chn) drew with Tingjie Lei (Chn).
