West Indies beat India by 8 wickets in 2nd T20I; levels series 1-1
Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 8: Indian team's frailties while batting first were thoroughly exposed by a disciplined West Indies, which kept the three-match T20 series alive with a comfortable eight-wicket victory in the second game here on Sunday.
A below-par score of 170 for 7 with only 38 runs in the final five overs was never going to be enough keeping the dew factor in mind and senior opener Lendl Simmons (67 no off 45 balls) along with Evin Lewis (40 off 35 balls) added 73 for the first wicket to seal the issue. West Indies reached the target with as many as nine balls to spare.
With another poor day on the field barring an exceptional sideways running catch from skipper Virat Kohli, the Indian bowlers were way of target, especially spinners Ravindra Jadeja (1/22 in 2 overs) and Yuzvendra Chahal (0/36 in 3 overs) were off the mark.
West Indies' dominance was evident by the half-dozen sixes that they hit apart from 11 boundaries compared to five maximums by the hosts, four of which were hit by rookie all-rounder Shivam Dube.
Simmons hot four sixes while Lewis hit three and it helped that the spinners didn't vary the length of their deliveries.
Unlike first innings, when hitting through the line was difficult, it became easier in the second innings with ball coming onto the bat easily. Nicholas Pooran (38 off 18 balls) coming back after a brief ban on charges of ball tampering, also added insult to injury with a couple of sixes and four boundaries.
After the Bangladesh T20 in Delhi, this is the second time in last five games that India have lost trying to post a competitive score.
Dube justified his promotion in batting order with a smashing half-century but it was struggle for the other Indian batsmen after being put into bat.
Despite Dube's 54 off 30 balls, which had four huge sixes apart from three fours, India didn't get the required momentum during the death overs on a track where Caribbean seamers used a lot of back of length slower deliveries along with well disguised short balls.
The last five overs India couldn't get the required momentum as Rishav Pant (33 not out off 2 balls) tried his best couldn't connect the big shots.
The variation enabled West Indies to compensate for the 13 wides and two no-balls that they bowled during the evening.
Kesrick Williams after being subjected to humiliation from Virat Kohli, came back well with figures of 2 for 30 in four overs including the prized scalp of the Indian captain (19 of 17 balls). There was no 'Notebook Celebrations' but just a quiet 'finger on lips' this time around.
The other bowler, who impressed was leg-spinner Hayden Walsh (2/28 in 4 overs), who pitched the ball good areas and was also able to get some sharp turn on his leg breaks.
Left-arm spinner Khary Pierry who gave away only 11 runs from his 2 overs in the Powerplay, was surprisingly not called on to bowl again.
The highlight of the Indian innings was giant Mumbai all-rounder Dube's big-hitting prowess which he finally displayed at the international level.
The southpaw took a liking to the bowling of West Indies captain Kieron Pollard, smashing three huge sixes in the ninth over. He reached his maiden international fifty in 27 balls (4 sixes, two fours).
Skipper Kohli, who decimated the Windies attack in the game on Friday, saw Dube go big, but couldn't get going, falling to Williams as he mistimed a cut.
West Indies' ploy of bowling back of the length did work as the deliveries were not easily coming onto the bat making it difficult for hitting through the line. Only briefly, it was Dube, who got a hang of Pollard's slower ones and picked them up over deep mid-wicket region.
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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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