• India 186-5, South Africa 172-5
• India win by 14 runs

If you can imagine a bear trying to work a teapot then you will have an idea of just what a hash South Africa made of this match. On a St Lucia pitch made for spin, they picked five fast bowlers. Set a target of 187, they dawdled along at five an over for the first 10 overs, hitting three fours in the first half of their innings.

So India are into the next round. They were on a different level and in the end it was a surprise that South Africa got as close as they did.

In the 2009 tournament in England South Africa built their bowling attack around a tourniquet applied by their two canny spinners, Johan Botha and Roelof van der Merwe. Here Botha was left on the bench and Van der Merwe was given a single over. Otherwise all Graeme Smith could offer was a barrage of fast-medium right-arm over. Suresh Raina tucked in with relish and clobbered the tournament's first century, only the third, in fact, in international Twenty20.

It took him only 60 balls. Raina does not bat so much as swing. Nobody in the history of cricket has played more one‑day internationals without being picked for a Test and it is easy to see why. His was an absurdly risky innings, almost every stroke played with the intention of sending the ball over the boundary. He was not beaten on his outside edge nearly so often as he was through his yawning gate.

Smith gave all his five fast men a bowl in the first six overs. Raina soon clocked which ones to target. Rory Kleinveldt, nicknamed "Bigshow" because of his bulk, got through two overs for eight while Raina and Yuvraj Singh sized him up. His next two overs cost 40. Poor old Albie Morkel was not even afforded that much respect. It was like the reading an old Batman comic: each over was studded with whacks, bangs and "kerpows".

With Gautam Gambhir suffering from diarrhoea India were using makeshift openers. They were parted but only after the damage had been done. Yuvraj batted with delightful insouciance, cracking boundaries with the casual ease of a man doing a few light stretches after getting out of bed.

He fell on 37, but Raina just went on and on. He was caught off a no-ball when he was on five. How Morne Morkel must have wished he could have landed his foot two inches further back. Raina raised his century in the final over with his fifth six. He was out next ball but India still took 19 from the over.

South Africa hobbled to 25 runs from their first five overs and 53 from 10. India had actually dropped Zaheer Khan to bring in another spinner and they opened the bowling with Harbhajan Singh, which  tells you just how wrong South Africa got their selection. Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis ambled along like two old men going for a Sunday stroll as the required run rate shot up to 12 an over.

Kallis was one of only two players to score more runs that Raina in this year's Indian Premier League, but how differently the two men go about their work. Kallis crept to his 50 from 45 balls, hitting only three fours. Once he passed fifty he hit three sixes in five balls before holing out at long-on for 73. When Smith was run out in the 15th over his side needed 69 from 27. That they got 54 of them was down to AB de Villiers.

MELBOURNE - Right-arm off-spinner Nathan Hauritz has been handed a chance to earn a spot in Australia’s World Twenty20 team after being named in a 15-man national squad for the tour to New Zealand. Hauritz joins 14 other players already selected for the Twenty20 matches against West Indies on Sunday (Hobart) and on Tuesday (Sydney). Chairman of .... Read the original article  : Hauritz set to earn place in Oz Twenty20 World Cup squad.

It is outrageously snowy here, and the snow shows no sign of stopping any time soon - I dug out my real winter boots which I have only worn a handful of times since the year I lived in Cambridge, Mass. (2005-2006?), I was glad of them.

I worked pretty hard on Monday and Tuesday (my talk at Princeton yesterday went well!), and decided to take today roundly and wholly OFF - it was a day of play, with novel-reading and exercise EXCLUSIVELY. Headed down to Chelsea Piers on the subway, got there a bit later than I'd planned and only had time for 20 mins. strength before spin class started.

It was a very enjoyable class - my neighbor informed me that I had the easy bike, and it was true! Edifying - I can actually get a better workout on the easy bike, with faster cadence and steadier pedaling in hard gears, which really tells me I shouldn't hesitate to use easier gears when needed if I am not on the easy bike...

Had thought of finishing out some more strength stuff afterwards, but I was hot and damp and hungry - shower and lunch called. I read for an hour or two and digested, and then had a truly lovely swim. It was great! I guess I've been swimming regularly enough recently that I'm back in the groove. Oh, and I did open turns rather than flip turns for my hundreds at the end - I would guess that with open turns I can swim 1:50-51 (i.e. 1:55 interval is fine, 2:00 is pretty easy), but that with flip turns I am scrambling for 1:54-56 - I come off the wall much further and faster with an open turn than a flip. Gotta keep working on those, but in the meantime I might start using open turns again for freestyle bits in TNYA practice, or when I'm doing a hard set on my own.

20min. lower body
1hr. spin

Warmup:

600 free with every fourth length stroke (2 x back, 2 x breast, 2 x fly drill)

Freestyle drill:

2 x 100 right-arm, left-arm, catch-up, full stroke

2 x 100 as 50 6-3-6 (kick on sides), 50 free

2 x (2 x 50 drill-swim: first 2 front scull, second 2 fists)

8 x 75 kick-drill-swim by 25 (2 of each stroke in IM order)

6 x 100 with evens IM on 2:20, odds free on 2:00

2400 yards total