Dashing Livingstone, rookie Arora star in Punjab Kings' 54-run win against CSK
Mumbai, Apr 3: Twenty20 nomad Liam Livingstone justified his Rs 11.50 crore price-tag with a smashing all-round show while rookie seamer Vaibhav Arora announced his arrival on the big stage during Punjab Kings' comfortable 54-run decimation of Chennai Super Kings in an IPL match here on Sunday.
Livingstone with a 32-ball-60 laid the platform but Chennai Super Kings bowlers made a brilliant comeback at the death, restricting Mayank Agarwal led side to 180 for 8 after 20 overs.
Later, little known Himachal Pradesh seam bowler Arora (4-0-21-2) performed as if he owned the stage, dismissing Robin Uthappa and Moeen Ali with CSK managing only 126 in 18 overs at the end of the chase.
After his batting, Livingstone (3-0-25-2) then became man with a "golden wrist" as his leg breaks got him a couple of wickets and he also took the final catch to cap off a dream night.
This is CSK's third defeat in as many games and unless Deepak Chahar makes a speedy comeback, things aren't looking great for the 'Yellow Brigade' and its de-facto skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
A couple of more defeats could really put them under huge pressure and within a sniffing distance of point of no return.
Arora got good support from his former SD College Chandigarh teammate Arshdeep Singh (2/13 in 2 overs) during the initial period in which his skipper Agarwal bowled him out. Rahul Chahar (3/25 in 4 overs) was steady during back-10 and his three wickets included the wicket of Dhoni.
Arora didn't do anything fancy apart from pitching it fuller with the hint of away seam movement occasionally.
Uthappa tried a flick while Moeen without any distinct footwork dragged a delivery well outside the off onto his stumps. Skipper Ravindra Jadeja also met the same fate due to lack of feet movement.
In a jiffy, CSK were 36 for five before Dhoni (23 off 28 balls) joined Shivam Dube (57 off 30 balls), who did entertain the Brabourne crowd with lusty blows but it was always a game of catch-up for them.
Dhoni's oft-documented struggles didn't do any good for CSK either as Dube had too much to do in too little time.
Fittingly, it was Livingstone, who capped off a fine day, removing Dube with an away going delivery and then dived full stretched off his own bowling to remove Dwayne Bravo.
Before his exploits with the ball, Livingstone, one of the most destructive T20 batters across global leagues, finally came good with five fours and an equal number of sixes, sending the CSK bowlers on a leather-hunt during the initial overs.
Deepak Chahar's absence has severely handicapped Dhoni's (the 'real skipper') options as rookie left-arm seamer Mukesh Choudhary (4-0-52-1) paid dearly for his inexperience coupled with jangling nerves.
There were 100 metre plus sixes off length balls and Livingstone would often shimmy down the track to disturb the length as he did with the wily Bravo. Even the thick edges went for six with CSK bowlers looking clueless till he was there at the crease.
In fact, Bravo, under pressure, forced Dhoni to stand up to the stumps in order to prevent Livingstone from charging down the track but that hardly deterred him from playing his strokes.
What would disappoint Dhoni more is the fact that CSK gave away only 71 runs in the back-10 with a lot of credit going to their troika of overseas pacers -- Dwaine Pretorius (4-0-30-2), Dwayne Bravo (3-0-32-1) and Chris Jordan (4-0-23-2), who used variations to good effect.
In fact, bulk of the 55 dot balls came in the second half of the Punjab innings.
Livingstone and Shikhar Dhawan (33 off 24 balls) added 95 for the third wicket in just 8.4 overs and it seemed that another 200 plus total was on the cards.
By the time Dhawan was fooled by a Bravo slower, Punjab had laid the platform, scoring 109 in the first 10 overs, which sadly the later batters couldn't capitalise on.
But once Livingstone was out, the 'Reds' couldn't maintain the momentum although Vidarbha's Jitesh Sharma (26 off 17 balls) with his audacious strokeplay showed why he is so highly rated.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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