s in the Trinidad Test of April 1962, but was rather more ext

NEW YORK -- The last time the two womens finalists at this U.S. Open, Angelique Kerber of Germany and Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic, played each other, it really was no contest.Pliskova dominated the higher-ranked and more-experienced Kerber, not merely winning in straight sets, but dropping only four games along the way.Like Saturdays matchup, the one three weeks ago was played on a hard court.Like Saturday, there was a title at stake.There are, however, some key differences, including that the earlier one was at a run-of-the-mill event and the upcoming one is at a Grand Slam tournament. And, perhaps most significantly of all when it comes to the outcome this time, when Kerber lost at Cincinnati in August, she knew she had to win to make her debut at No. 1 in the WTA rankings -- whereas now, shes guaranteed of wresting the top spot from Serena Williams on Monday, regardless of what happens in Arthur Ashe Stadium.So while there is still a lot on the line, of course -- millions of dollars, a major trophy -- Kerber does not have to deal with the pressure of trying to ascend to No. 1. Shes already assured of that.That was always a dream for me, the No. 2-seeded Kerber said after beating Caroline Wozniacki 6-4, 6-3 in the semifinals Thursday night, when 10th-seeded Pliskova upset Williams 6-2, 7-6 (5). I was trying to not think too much the whole last few weeks about this, and now I reach it. So its something really special for me.All in all, its been quite a special 2016 for Kerber.This will be her third appearance in a Grand Slam title match: She beat Williams in the Australian Open final in January, then lost to the American in the Wimbledon final in July.Kerber has a tour-leading 53 match wins, two titles and now three runs to major finals this season, which accounts for her move up.She gets a lot of balls back. She also knows how to change the pace. She gets good angles. And, yeah, shes playing really well, said Wozniacki, who spent 67 weeks atop the WTA, finishing 2010 and 2011 at No. 1.You know, its not a lot of people who have been No. 1. Its a huge thing. She definitely has a target on her back now. Everyone wants to beat the No. 1 player in the world. Shes going to enjoy it. First, she has a match here that shes focused on.That comes against Pliskova, who never had been past the third round in 17 previous major appearances but became only the fourth woman to beat both Williams sisters during one Grand Slam tournament.I hope I didnt stop yet, that there is still one more step to go. Ill do anything for getting the title, Pliskova said. Even if I dont get it, its a big result. Im really happy to be there and even have the chance to play in the final here.The match offers an intriguing contrast in styles. As Venus and Serena Williams saw first-hand, the 6-foot-1 Pliskova goes right at opponents with big, flat groundstrokes and tough-to-handle serves. She averaged 109 mph on her first serves Thursday -- faster than the younger Williams, known for the best serve in the womens game -- and leads the tour in aces this year.The 5-foot-8 Kerber, meanwhile, is terrific at retrieving and counter-punching, dropping down to a knee at times along the baseline to get balls back.Her serve is a weakness: She was broken while serving for the match against Wozniacki, for example, and lost three service games in the first set alone of her quarterfinal against 2015 runner-up Roberta Vinci. Kerber acknowledged that aspect of her game will be key on Saturday.She also said she wants to try to control points more than she did the last time she faced Pliskova.I was just pushing too much the balls there, Kerber said, so I think I will change this a little bit. Go for it, being aggressive.---Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrichBasketball Shoes Ireland Online .C. Lions has come to an end. Banks told TSN on Jan 2 that he had no interest in playing out the option year of his contract with the Lions in 2014, and he again made that clear in a conversation with Lions GM Wally Buono last week. Basketball Shoes Ireland .Y. -- Buffalo Bills coach Doug Marrone has drawn on his Syracuse connections once again by hiring Rob Moore to take over as receivers coach. http://www.discountbasketballshoesireland.com/ . A big centre with all the tools to be an elite player, Johansen paced the Blue Jackets with a standout game Saturday night. He had a goal and two assists for a career-high three points as Columbus beat the New York Islanders 5-2 to snap a five-game losing streak. Wholesale Shoes Ireland . Thats not a comment on the suspension that banished the Portland Winterhawks general manager and coach from his Western Hockey League teams bench for most of the 2012-13 season. Clearance Basketball Shoes Ireland . 10 Texas A&Ms offence dominated as usual against SMU.Welcome to week one of the 2016 Confectionery Stall Stat-vent Calendar. There will be a stat for each of the first 24 days of December. Ask a non-cricket-aware friend or family member to print them out, fold them up and hide them behind a little cardboard door with the appropriate date written on, for you to reveal each breakfast time before going to work/school/space/court/pub/jail/wherever else you spend your mornings. Build up the Christmas spirit by sharing the stats with everyone you meet or speak to, as loudly as possible.December 1In Mohali, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Jayant Yadav each made a half-century and took four wickets in the match - the first occasion in Test history in which three team-mates have scored a fifty and taken four or more wickets in the game.There had only been four previous instances of three players on the same side scoring a half-century and taking three wickets in the match, most recently when Malcolm Marshall (76), Roger Harper (60) and Michael Holding (73) all reached 50 in West Indies first innings against England in Antigua in 1986, before going on to take five, four and three wickets respectively as England crumbled to their fifth defeat of the series. Viv Richards scored his famous 58-ball 110 in West Indies second innings, so the match is sadly no longer remembered for being the first time that Nos. 7, 8 and 9 had all made half-centuries in the same Test innings against England (and the third time in all). The lack of stadium-demolishing batsmanship in Mohali means that the Indian spin trios triple half-centuries have more chance of being fondly recalled by history as the second time that Nos. 7, 8 and 9 all made half-centuries in the same Test innings against England (and the seventh time in all).December 2 The balance of Englands team, with its unusual depth of batting and bowling, has thrown up some statistical quirks. Having six front-line bowlers has seldom been considered necessary in the history of Test cricket, and Gareth Batty duly had a deeply unremarkable match, through little fault of his own. The joy of stats, however, is that even the deeply unremarkable can be remarkable.Batty was only the fourth player since 1976 to be the sixth bowler (or later) used in both innings, and to bat at least one innings at 10 or 11.Had it not been for nightwatchman duty, and he had batted at 10 in the second innings, he would have become only the fifth player ever to bowl outside the first five and bat outside the top nine in both innings of a Test (after Ian Johnson, Lindsay Kline, Bapu Nadkarni, and Lance Gibbs). December 3 Nadkarni is one of the few cricketers, alive or dead, who might justifiably look at Ravi Jadejas throwback remorseless water-drip left-arm spin and think: Thats a bit flamboyant. He might even look at the following stat and think: This planet has become unbearably flippant.Ravi Jadejas Test economy rate of 2.24 is the lowest of the 191 bowlers who have taken 50 wickets in the last 30 years.The Saurashtran scoring-suffocator is narrowly ahead of his Indian slow-left-arm gradual-interrogation predecessor Venkatapathy Raju (2.25); New Zealand fill-in dobster Nathan Astle (2.26), whose batting was rather more interesting than his bowling; and 1990s South African seam metronome Craig Matthews (2.26), the parsimonious paceman who would reportedly cry uncontrollably for at least a week if he ever bowled a slightly overpitched delivery. (When I use the word reportedly, I mean that I have reported this claim to myself.)Nadkarni conceded 1.67 per over in his 41-Test career, which ran from 1955 to 1968. The overall Test economy rate in that time was 2.33, so in terms of economy relative to contemporaries, Jadeja and Nadkarni are almost identical - the latters economy was 71.7% of the overall figure, the formers is currently 71.8%. Even allowing for the propitious conditions in which Jadeja has played many of his Tests, his unhittability is impressive.December 4 In Indias first innings in Mohali, Englands opening pair and first-change bowlers, James Anderson, Chris Woakes and Moeen Ali, between them took 0 for 167 in 58 overs.This was only the fifth time that the first three bowlers England have used in the first innings of a Test have all gone wicketless, and only the second of those five in which all three have bowled at least eight overs each.The only previous wicketless-first-three-England-bowlers first innings involving a significant number of overs was in the deeply harrowing Lords Test of 1993, when Andy Caddick and Peter Such, in their second Tests, and the bafflingly recalled and about-to-retire-from-all-cricket Neil Foster, in his penultimate first-class match, combined for 0 for 304 in 104 overs against a grindingly dominant Australia.Lords 1993 was the only time that Englands openers and first-change bowlers have bowled more fruitless overs in any Test innings than those sent down by Anderson, Woakes and Moeen in Mohali; and one of only two occasions in which they have conceded more wicket-free runs than Mohalis 167, the other being the Greenidge-inspired Westt Indian run chase at Lords in 1984, when Willis, Botham and Pringle were splatterthrumped for 0 for 209 in 43.dddddddddddd.1 overs.Mohali also provided:a) Only the 18th time in any Test innings that the bowlers 1, 2 and 3 have each bowled 12 or more overs without a wicket between them; b) The tenth time that both England opening bowlers have pounded through at least 20 wicketless overs (Lords 1993 was the most recent previous instance);c) Andersons second wicketless match in his last 75 Tests (after the Lords Ashes Test in 2015).Woakes has now had two wicketless innings in this series in which he has bowled at least 20 overs. Steven Finn also had two such innings in last summers series against Pakistan. Before then, the last England bowler to have two wicketless 20-over innings in a series was Ashley Giles in the 2005 Ashes, and the last England pacer to do so was Chris Lewis, in 1996 against Pakistan. The only England pacers to suffer similar struggles against India were Fred Ridgway (twice) and Allan Martin (three times) in the 1951-52 series. Ridgway never played another Test, Martin had three more the following summer.Woakes long-term prospects are considerably rosier. He has bowled better than his series figures of 2 for 165 suggest. And by bowling two wicketless 20-over innings in a series, he joins an illustrious list of opening bowlers including Steyn, McGrath, Ambrose, Marshall, Hadlee, Kapil, Lillee, Imran, Trueman and many other all-time luminaries of pace.December 5Mohali was the 16th occasion in which a team has won a Test without anyone either scoring a century or taking four wickets in an innings, and the first such victory by India.The two other occasions this decade both involved England, in their win over Pakistan at Edgbaston last summer, and their defeat to West Indies in Barbados in May 2015.December 6 Before Pakistans impressively catastrophic final-session implosion in Hamilton, Azhar Ali and Sami Aslam had patiently constructed Pakistans first century opening stand outside Asia since 2010.It was also Pakistans highest first-wicket partnership outside Asia since Imran Nazir and Mohammad Wasim (two stalwart members of the Pakistan Players Younger Than Misbah-ul-Haq Who Have Not Played Test Cricket Since January 2003 XI) put on 219 against a West Indian attack led by Walsh and Ambrose, in May 2000.December 7 The Sami-Azhar stand was also the highest fourth-innings opening stand by anyone for more than ten years, since Chris Gayle and Daren Ganga added 148 for West Indies against New Zealand in Auckland in March 2006.Perhaps the disappointment of not seeing their team-mates bring up the first 150 first-wicket partnership since 1997 is what prompted the subsequent collapse.More for your Stat-vent Calendar next week. No peeking. Be patient. Wait your turn. To help pass the aching void of time between now and then, more on Bapu Nadkarni.Like Jadeja, Nadkarni was a useful lower-order batsman as well as a run-abhoring stifler with the ball, averaging 25, with a first-class batting average over 40. The match mentioned in the above stats in which Nadkarni did a Batty (allowing for the fact that Battys nightwatchmanship precluded him from doing a Batty himself) illustrates that long-batting orders are not a modern development.Nadkarni was the sixth Indian bowler used in both West Indies innings in the Trinidad Test of April 1962, but was rather more extensively utilised than Batty was in Mohali, frugalising his way through 63 overs in the Test, taking 2 for 103, and scored 1 and 23, adding 93 for the ninth wicket in the second innings with Polly Umrigar.Ten of the India team ended with at least 12 first-class hundreds (and the exception, Rusi Surti, made six, and scored 99 in a Test, as well as eight other Test fifties). The only player who ended his Test career without scoring 99 or more, ironically, was the opener Vijay Mehra. The astonishing depth of batting did not help India - they lost by seven wickets, the fourth of the five heavy defeats they suffered in the series.Indias No. 11 in the Trinidad Test was wicketkeeper Budhi Kunderan, already a first-class double-centurion, who two years previously had made 71 as an opener, in Chennai against Australia, the best team in the world at the time, out of a total of 149 all out, against a high-class attack featuring Alan Davidson, Ian Meckiff, Richie Benaud and Lindsay Kline.Quite how Kunderan found himself, five Tests later, batting at 11, is something of a mystery. He batted 10 in the following Test, and scored 2 and 1, prompting the Indian selectors to think: Wed better promote this guy up to open in our next Test. This they duly did, and Kunderan scored 192 against England in January 1964, again in Chennai, and went on to make more than 500 runs in the series. Then, after one more Test as opener, he was shunted back down to No. 9. Then back up to open again. It must have been fun being a selector in those days. A lot of fun. ' ' '