6 CHENNAISportsTHURSDAY5 OCTOBER 2017

� Takes on US in U-17 WC kick-off

� Prepared hard mentally & physically, say players

All eyes on Amarjit16-year-old Amarjit Singh, the fi rst member of the India U-17

football team to take the fi eld tomorrow against USA, will be the boy wearing number 8. Well known as a driving force in his team, Amarjit will be part

of the machine room of the team. Born in a small town called Thoubal in Manipur, Amarjit’s initiation to the beautiful game

was with his older brother Umakanta Singh Kiyam, his cousin Jeackson Singh and his uncle Diven Singh.

Says the skipper that he is ready to lead the team and that they will give it all they have when they begin their campaign tomorrow.

‘We have all worked very hard over the past couple of years. Staying away from home has been hard but no matter what we will try to win.’

INDIA keen to script

HISTORY

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New Delhi, Oct 5:Fleet-footed midfi elder Kom-

al Thatal is looking to emulate his wonder goal against Brazil in the BRICS Championship last year in the FIFA U-17 World Cup when India take on US in the opening game and said that the team will fi ght until its last breath.

Thatal believes it will be a historic moment for Indian foot-ball when the Indian U-17 team

steps onto the pitch on Friday against USA.It will be a big and historic moment

for not only Indian Football, but for each and every Indian. This will be India’s fi rst ever participation

in a FIFA World Cup and we expect the nation to get behind us and cheer for us,’ said Thatal.

When asked about preparation of the team for the prestigious tournament, he said, ‘We are prepared, mentally and physically. We are raring to go and at the moment there is a lot of excitement in the camp.’

‘We respect every team in our group, but we are ready to face them and give them a hard fi ght. We will give it our best on the pitch and will fi ght until the last breath,’ he insisted. India, who are hosting FIFA World Cup U-17 for the fi rst time, is in Group A with USA, Colombia and Ghana.

The Indian Colts will face USA tomorrow, before locking horns with Colombia and Ghana on 9 and 12 October respectively at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

‘We will defend well’Team India’s assistant coach Hugo

Martins talks about spinning webs. And the need of having a strong ‘defensive structure’. They have had countless drills to have functional de-fensive lines. But the assistant coach insists the team won’t be defensive.

‘Instead, it is fair to say the team will defend well,’ he says.

‘We need a pragmatic ap-proach,’ Martins says and adds, ‘We have put a lot of hours work-ing on this process. There is focus

on the offensive part and tran-sition, too, but fi rst phase

was the defensive or-ganization.’ Mour-inho’s infl uence on the team swings

between tacti-cal to philo-s o p h i c a l and psy-chological.

The groups-GROUP A Delhi, Karnataka, Assam, Hyderabad, Maharashtra, Uttar

Pradesh, Railways

GROUP B Gujarat (defending champions), Jharkhand, Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir, Saurashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan

GROUP C Mumbai, Tamilnadu, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Baroda, Odisha, Tripura

GROUP D Bengal, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Vidarbha, Services, Goa, Chhattisgarh

‘Will not take India lightly’The United States of America’s U-17

team will face their fi rst test tomorrow and their head coach Jack Hackworth is full of respect for opening day opponents India instead of taking the tournament newcomers lightly. Hackworth paid tribute to the Indian U-17 team who will be the fi rst-ever representatives from the nation at a FIFA event, calling the Blue Colts the ‘most hardworking team’ he has faced in the last two years,

India squad:Goalkeepers: Dheeraj Singh, Prabhsukhan Gill,

Sunny Dhaliwal

Defenders: Boris Singh, Jitendra Singh, An-war Ali, Sanjeev Stalin, Hendry Antonay, Namit Deshpande

Midfielders: Suresh Singh, Ninthoinganba Meetei, Amarjit Singh Kiyam, Abhijit Sarkar, Komal Thatal, Lalengmawia, Jeakson Singh, Nongdamba Naorem, Rahul Kannoly Praveen, Md. Shahjahan

Forwards: Rahim Ali, Aniket Jadhav

DAY 1 :MATCHES

Colombia vs Ghana (New Delhi)

India vs USA(New Delhi)

PRAVEEN KUMAR SChennai, Oct 5:

India’s most coveted tournament, the Ranji Trophy starts tomorrow and will see 28 teams play 91 games. The teams are split into four groups and the ‘home and away’ format is back after the teams tried the ‘neutral venue’ option last year without much success.

Star-studded affairRound one that is set to happen

between 6-9 Oct will see 12 matches played and home team Tamilnadu will take on neighbours Andhra in their opener. With Murali Vijay and R Ashwin in the team to lead the side, the team will be looking to capitalise on the talents of M S Washington Sundar and Sai Kishore. The absence of pacers T Natarajan and Ashwin Crist might prove to be troublesome, but coach Hrishikesh Kanitkar is hopeful that the young pacers can do well and make the loss seem futile.

After losing out in the semi-fi nals last time around, the coach, who is with the team for the second season in succession will be hopeful to end the 30 year drought of that looms over the shoulders of the players eve-rytime they go into the fi eld. However, players will be looking to experience how the 1988 victory felt when they do it in the current season.

Defending champions Gujarat will be looking to replicate their vitory run once more while the team with the most number of wins in Ranji from the State of Mahar-ashtra will likely fi ght it out with others and add one more cup to their cabinet. They would look to set aside a rare defeat in the hands of Gujarat in the fi nals last season.

Notable performanceIn October 2016 during the Group

B fi xture between Maharashtra and Delhi, Swapnil Gugale and Ankit Bawne playing for Maharashtra, set a record partnership total in the Ranji Trophy, with 594 runs. Further, it turned out to be the second-highest partnership in the history of fi rst-class cricket.

The row that broke outWhen two group stage fixtures,

the Group A match between Gujarat and Bengal and the Group C match between Hyderabad and Tripura, were abandoned because of smog pollution, the BCCI rescheduled the fi xtures to take place after the conclu-sion of the group stages. As a result of the rescheduled matches, the dates of the matches in the knockout phase of the competition were moved to accommodate the re-arranged fi xtures.

The Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) and the Tamilnadu Cricket As-sociation (TNCA) showed displeas-ure in the rescheduling of fi xtures. The MCA joint-secretary Unmesh Khanvilkar had said ‘(it) gives unfair advantage to the participating teams with respect to their qualifi cation the

knockout phase,’ while secretary of the TNCA, Kasi Viswanathan, said, ‘the matches should not be resched-uled and points should be shared.’

The BCCI reviewed the decision to reschedule the matches and in December, they revoked the changes and awarded each team one point from the abandoned matches.

Changes, a lot of themA lot of changes have happened

behind the scenes with players switching between sides to get a chance to play or steal the limelight and try a shot at getting a seat in the international team.

BCCI has said the players need to get a No Objection Certifi cate (NoC) from their State association in order to move to other states. Quite a few names have switched sides before the start of the season. The likes of B Anirudh Sitaram (Hyderabad to Tamil Nadu), Himalaya Barad (Gu-jarat to Saurashtra), Rahul Chahar (Rajasthan to Services) etc. have

already switched sides this season. In addition, KB Arun Karthik (Assam to Kerala), Karn Sharma (Railways to Vidarbha), Ambati Rayudu (Vidarbha to Hyderabad), Piyush Chawla (Ut-tar Pradesh to Gujarat) and Robin Uthappa (Karnataka to Saurashtra) have also abandoned their posts and climbed aboard a new ship to sail to their ever intended glory.

Andhra:Hanuma Vihari(c), Ashwin Hebbar,

Ricky Bhui, Uppara Girinath, Pras-anth Kumar, Yarra Prithviraj, Dwar-aka Ravi Teja, Bodapati Sumanth, Venugopal Rao, Shoaib Md Khan, Bandaru Ayyappa, Bhargav Bhatt, Srikar Bharat, Pranith Manyala, Karthik Raman, KV Sasikanth, Paidikalva Vijaykumar

Ashwin, Vijay keen to prove a point

� TN meets Andhra Pradesh in Ranji opener tomorrow

Tamilnadu:Abhinav Mukund (captain), B

Indrajith (vice captain), M Vijay, M Kaushik Gandhi, N Jagadeesan (wk), B Aparajith, MS Washington Sundar, Rahil S Shah, K Vignesh, R Ashwin, L Vignesh, R Sai Kishore, V Lakshman, R Rohith (wk), Malolan Rangarajan.

NT BureauChennai, Oct 5:

Tamil Thalaivas trailed 15-20 at half time. Ajay Thakur (15) and Prapanjan (11) were the main scorers for Tha-laivas, which staged a rally towards the end.

Earlier, U Mumba suffered a blow to its hopes of advancing to the playoffs as it went down 30-41 to new entrant Haryana Steelers.

Despite this being its fi rst season, Haryana displayed nerves of steel to

bring an end to U Mumba’s victory march. With this win, Haryana con-solidated its second position on the table with 64 points while U Mumba remained fourth with 54 points.

It was a collective effort that saw Haryana win without breaking any sweat. At half time, Haryana was ahead by 22-16.The team from north was led ably by its captain Surendar Nadda who fi nished with fi ve tackle points and another star defender, Mohit Chhillar, claimed four points.

NT Bureau Chennai, Oct 5:

Mahaveer Raghunathan became the fi rst Indian to win a European racing championship when he sped to victory in the last two races of the prestigious Boss GP Championship (Formula Class) in Imola.

In a strong fi eld of 20 racers from across the world, the 19-year-old Chennai youngster amassed 263 points in seven rounds to annex the title. India’s top racer Narain Karthikeyan had won the British For-mula Ford in 1994 and the Formula Asia Series in 1996. Karun Chandhok too had won a couple of titles in Asia. Mahaveer (PS Racing by Coloni Mo-torsport) had a spectacular season, bagging podium fi nishes in each of the seven rounds. He breezed to vic-tory in the fi rst race here on Sunday to set his date with destiny.

He enjoyed a massive stroke of good luck in the second race as his main rival, Italy’s Salvatore de Plano (MM International Sport) pulled out of

the race in the fourth lap. De Plano fi nished with 243 points to take the third place behind Austria’s Johann Ledermair of (247 points). ‘It was a lot of fun. I am absolutely thrilled that I could make it to P1 and then take the Championship as well,’ a jubilant Raghunath said after the podium ceremony.

‘This is amazing. It does wonders for my confi dence. I want to give a huge thank you to my team at P S Racing by Coloni Motorsport,’ he added. After learning the nuances of motorsport in karting, Mahaveer graduated to Formula cars in 2012 by competing in the JK Racing Asia Series. In 2013, he drove in the MRF Challenge Formula 1600. He also participated in three races of the Chinese Formula Masters. In 2014, Mahaveer moved to Europe and joined F&M in the Italian Formula 4 Championship. In 2015, he participated in the European For-mula 3 championship for Motopark Academy.

Mahaveer, fi rst Indian to claim

European racing title

Thalaivas’ losing streak continues

Ravichandran Ashwin

Murali Vijay

Dinesh Karthik

Players in action at a match in Chennai yesterday.