CMYK

ND-ND

16 THE HINDU FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2015

NOIDA/DELHI

SPORT

BHILWARA: Uttarakhand contin-ued to serve a strong warning toother teams as it maintained itswinning streak with an 88-50victory over Railways in aGroup A men’s league match ofthe 65th National basketballchampionship on Thursday.

Having beaten defendingchampion Tamil Nadu and Ha-ryana earlier, Uttarakhand isset to top the table from thegroup.

Easy for TN

Tamil Nadu wound up itsleague campaign with an au-thoritative 91-66 victory overHaryana. In Group B, Servicesand Punjab retained their un-defeated record and are headedto face each other to decide thegroup topper.

In the women’s section, Rail-ways was ruthless in outplayingthe other four teams in thegroup with big margins andtopped the table with ease.

The results (league): Men: GroupA: Tamil Nadu 91 (Prasanna Venka-tesh 23, Amjyot Singh 19, PrathamSingh 17, G. Sivabalan 13, A. Arvind11) bt Haryana 66 (S. Himanshu 17, R.Deepak 11, K. Vikas 11, S. Hemant10); Uttarakhand 88 (Trideep Rai 27,Amritpal Singh 23, Vishesh Bhrigu-vanshi 18) bt Railways 50 (PrakashMishra 14). Group B: Services 80(Jairam Jat 19, Dalip Kumar 19, Na-render Grewal 13, K. Ramesh 10) btKerala 67 (R. Manoj 22, Subash She-noy 17, Albin Baby 11).

Women: Group A: Kerala 84 (P.S.Jeena 28, P.S. Neenumol 25, StephyNixon 17) bt Maharashtra 69 (ManishaDange 23, Sruthi Menon 14).

Group B: Railways 113 (RenuMaurya 16, Bharti Netam 16, SitamaniTudu 15, Apoorva Muralinath 14) btPunjab 54 (Simriti 18, Kirandeep KaurDhaliwal 15, Nagma Mirza 12).

Delhi 72 (Pratima Singh 31, Prash-anti Singh 17) bt Tamil Nadu 64 (R.Ramya 18, P. Divya 16).

Railways 86 (Ranjeeta 17, RenuMaurya 13) bt Uttar Pradesh 31 (Rad-ha 14). — Special Correspondent

Uttarakhandmaintains itswinning streak

CHENNAI: International MasterRamnath Bhuvanesh held sixthseed Grandmaster CristianCruz of Peru to a quick draw onthe top board in the fourthround of the Chennai Interna-tional Open chess tournamenthere on Thursday.

After 19 moves, the playersrepeated the position andsigned a draw.

Railway players, K. Rathnak-aran of Kozhikode and SwapnilDhopade of Amravati scoredtheir fourth straight wins toshare the lead with four points.

Rathnakaran crushed Kar-thikeyan Murali in 43 moves bytaking control of the kingknight’s file with his queen andtwo rooks hunting the blackking. Swapnil Dhopade trappedAbhishek’s knight in a minorpiece ending to win in 60moves.

Meanwhile, Andhra young-ster C.R.G. Krishna shockedGM Valeriy Neverov in 56moves. Krishna, Nr Vignesh

share the third spot with 3.5points along with nine others,including top-seeded IvanPopov.

Vignesh won pawns in themiddlegame to overcome Asianjunior champion Srinath in amarathon 95-move rook end-ing.

Two of India’s top threerated players in this meet, Kar-thikeyan Murali and Srinathsuffered defeats.

In the Group B section for372 players, second seed O.T.Anilkumar is among the 15leaders on 4.5 points from fiverounds.

The results (round four): Ram-nath Bhuvanesh 3.5 drew with Cris-thian Cruz (Peru) 3.5; K. Rathnakaran4 bt Karthikeyan Murali 3; Nguyen VanHuy (Vie) 3.5 drew with Shardul Ga-gare 3.5; Swapnil Dhopade 4 bt Abh-ishek Kelkar 3; Ivan Popov (Rus) 3.5 btVladimir Lazarev (Fra) 2.5; MikhailMozharov (Rus) 3.5 bt R Siddharth2.5; D.K. Sharma 2.5 lost to MaratDzhumaev (Uzb) 3.5. C.R.G. Krishna3.5 bt Valeriy Neverov (Ukr) 2.5; NrVignesh 3.5 bt N Srinath 2.5.

CHESS

Bhuvanesh springs asurprise on Cruz Arvind Aaron

LONDON: Frank Lampard cele-brated his loan extension byscoring the winning goal as Man-chester City edged Sunderland3-2 on Thursday to move level onpoints with Premier League lead-er Chelsea.

City announced late onWednesday that Lampard’s loanmove from its sister club New

York CityFC hadbeen pro-longed tothe end ofthe seasonand heproved his

worth by coming off the bench toscore the winner.

City, which left goalkeeper JoeHart on the bench, took the leadin the 57th minute at the EtihadStadium when Yaya Toureslammed an exquisite shot intothe top-left corner from outsidethe box.

Stevan Jovetic’s flick made it2-0, but just as it had done inSunday’s 2-2 draw with Burnley,the champion allowed Sunder-land back into the game.

Two City old boys did the dam-age, with Jack Rodwell’s headerreducing the arrears in the 68thminute and Adam Johnson equa-lising from the penalty spot threeminutes later after Pablo Zabale-ta had fouled Santiago Vergini.But just three minutes after re-placing Jovetic, Lampard headedhome a cross from Gael Clichy.

Earlier, Manchester Unitedhad lost further momentum inthe title race after drawing 1-1with Stoke City. Radamel Falcao

equalised for the visitor in the26th minute after former Unitedtrainee Ryan Shawcross hadscored the first goal of 2015 in thesecond minute by hooking homefrom Peter Crouch’s header.

Southampton tightened itsgrip on fourth place and closed towithin a point of United by win-ning 2-0 at home to nearest rivalArsenal.

Sadio Mane curled home froma narrow angle on the right afterArsenal goalkeeper WojciechSzczesny went walkabout in the34th minute, with Dusan Tadic

adding a second in the 56th min-ute after a defensive mix-up.

Liverpool threw away a 2-0lead to draw 2-2 at home to bot-tom club Leicester City, whichleft it seven points below the topfour in eighth place.

A pair of first-half Steven Ger-rard penalties put Liverpool incontrol, but two goals in two min-utes by David Nugent and JeffreySchlupp prevented BrendanRodgers’s side from registering athird successive win.

The results: Aston Villa 0 drew withCrystal Palace 0; Hull 2 (Elmohamady

33, Jelavic 43) bt Everton 0; Liverpool2 (Gerrard 17-pen, 40-pen) drew withLeicester 2 (Nugent 58, Schlupp 60);Manchester City 3 (Toure 57, Jovetic66, Lampard 73) bt Sunderland 2(Rodwell 68, Johnson 71-pen).

Newcastle 3 (Taylor 15, Colback26, Sissoko 78) drew with Burnley 3(Dummett 19-og, Ings 66, Boyd 86);QPR 1 (Fer 20) drew with Swansea 1(Bony 90); Southampton 2 (Mane 34,Tadic 56) bt Arsenal 0; Stoke 1 (Shaw-cross 2) drew with Manchester United1 (Falcao 26); West Ham 1 (Sakho 10)drew with West Brom 1 (Berahino 42).— Agencies

Lampard rescues Manchester CityFOOTBALL / United, Liverpool held; Arsenal loses

A STUNNER! Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross (second from left) found the target in thesecond minute, capitalising on Peter Crouch’s goal-bound header.— PHOTO: REUTERS