Meister der Farbe » Indian cricketer, in spite of the spats with the board

CONCORD, N.C. -- Stuck in the longest losing streak of his career, Jimmie Johnson had a chance for a critical win that could salvage this ho-hum season for Hendrick Motorsports.Hardly a championship contender for most of this season, Johnson grabbed a victory at sun-soaked Charlotte Motor Speedway when nearly half the title contenders had horrible days.The win Sunday was his third of the season, but snapped a 24-race losing streak dating to March. Johnson is the only Hendrick driver to visit victory lane this season, and this win earned him an automatic berth into the third round of the playoffs.Its the first time Johnson has made it out of the second round since the elimination format was introduced in 2014. He was knocked out at Talladega in the second round of the inaugural season, and was bounced in the first round last year.Suddenly, the six-time NASCAR champion is a realistic contender for that elusive record-tying seventh title.We cant sit back and celebrate too much on this, Johnson said. Weve got to buckle down and get to work tomorrow and keep advancing our race cars. But this does buy us a couple weeks of freedom.The race was originally scheduled for Saturday night, but Hurricane Matthew washed out nearly the entire weekend and set up an 800-mile doubleheader of the Sprint Cup and Xfinity Series on Sunday. When the racing finally began on a beautiful North Carolina afternoon, it immediately shaped up as a Hendrick kind of day.Johnson and Chase Elliott dominated the race, running 1-2 for a long stretch, and a Hendrick victory all but guaranteed based on the speed the Chevrolets showed. Elliott, though, was one of five Chase drivers to finish 30th or worse, and it was Johnson who had to carry the flag.Fitting, though.The win came on the 15th anniversary of Johnsons debut in Cup for Hendrick, which was at Charlotte, and was his eighth career win at the track.Nobody ever gave up, and you know, we know what a champion Jimmie is, team owner Rick Hendrick said.Johnson has quietly turned up his performance in the Chase and became an official title contender as the first driver qualified for the next round. He led a race-high 155 laps Sunday, and in four Chase races this season, hes led 363 laps and hasnt finished lower than 12th.Be curious to look back, I guess, and see if these are all new cars that theyre bringing, said reigning champion Kyle Busch. Obviously, if it is, then theyve found something that theyve been waiting out and holding out on us. Thats to be expected, though, man. Thats what this sport is all about.Johnson certainly figured it out on a day when six Chase drivers had trouble.Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick both had engine issues. Austin Dillon and Elliott were in accidents. Joey Logano had tire problems, and Martin Truex Jr. had an electrical issue as he left pit road after the final pit stop.Five Chase drivers finished lower than 30th, and Harvick, the 2014 champion, is last in the standings.Hamlin was running second when his engine blew with 25 laps remaining. As the cars left pit road, Truex seemed poised to restart in second, but he appeared to stall and instead restarted 16th.Although Truex salvaged his day and finished 13th -- lowest of the Chase drivers still running at the end of the race -- Hamlin wound up 30th.Dillon was 32nd, Elliott 33rd, Logano 36th and Harvick 38th.The hectic day left only Johnson breathing easy at the end. Not even Matt Kenseth, who finished second to Johnson, is relaxed heading into races at Kansas and Talladega.Would love to have the win, would make you feel a lot better about the next two weeks, Kenseth said.HENDRICK RETURNS : This had been a miserable season for Hendrick Motorsports, by its own standards. Only two of its four drivers made the Chase this year and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is sidelined with a concussion.Johnson has the only wins for the organization, but Elliott had been sniffing victory lane all season.On Sunday, the two combined to lead 258 of the 334 laps, and Johnson and Elliott ran 1-2 for a huge chunk of the race.Elliott was involved in an accident with 75 laps remaining and could not hide his disappointment.We had such a good car, he said. Im devastated that we didnt get the result that my guys deserve.Despite Elliotts finish, it was a good organizational day for Hendrick: Kasey Kahne finished third and Alex Bowman showed early speed before a tire issue caused him to wreck.HAMLIN WOES: During a lengthy red-flag, NBC Sports interviewed Hamlin while he idled in his car and said he was just cruising along for a strong finish.Then his engine blew up and a strong points day was ruined.It was Hamlins first engine failure since Talladega in 2013, and he noted afterward that hes always hit with bad luck during NASCARs postseason.Its just my time and its usually Chase time when I have these things happen, he said. Ive been doing this 11 years and I cant name anyone else who has had as bad of luck as I have in the Chase.DILLON GAMBLES: As the long shot in the field, Dillon likely needed tremendous luck or a stroke of strategic planning to advance out of the second round. His team gambled on a late pit stop in taking only two tires, a move that earned him nine spots and into second for a restart.He seemed to get off cleanly at the drop of the flag, but as he shifted, he was hit from behind by Truex and spent spinning into an interior wall.Truex accepted blame for hitting Elliott in a frustrated communication over his team radio.I tried to give him a shot and just turned him around like a damn idiot, Truex radioed.Dillon, a rookie in the Chase who is winless so far at the Cup level, figured he needs to get a victory in one of the next two races.We will have to work hard the next two weeks to get the points back, he said. We just have to do a lot, we have to win one of the next two races. Air Max 90 Clearance .Y. -- Buffalo Bills coach Doug Marrone has drawn on his Syracuse connections once again by hiring Rob Moore to take over as receivers coach. Air Max 90 Sale Outlet . 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Chris Gayle delivers his opening boast with an italicised patois flourish that leaps from the page like an open-shouldered smack over long-off. It is a challenge to his critics - and Lord knows, hes picked up a few of them in recent times - and a statement of intent. These are his words, his story. He will tell it as he chooses.You cant read me… But you can, if you prefer, read his book, and thoroughly engaging it is too - a turbulent, breathless rampage at times, but at its heart a classic rags-to-riches tale of a character who will be recalled, when all else is forgiven and forgotten, as one of the founders of the modern game.Theres no need simply to take my word for that, either. Gayle is at pains to spell out his exalted status through any manner of devices - repetition and exaggeration key among them. World Baaass, Universe Boss, lover of women and slayer of reputations. With his swagger and his strokeplay, its never been possible to ignore him on a cricket field, so theres no way youre going to get a moments peace from his ego while tucking into his words.Thats not a bad thing, by the way. Far too many sportsmen assume the auto in autobiography stands for autopilot, and duly trot out a bland diet of clichés and scorecard rewrites to justify their advances. Gayle, if anything, is guilty of oversharing, but as the man himself might put it with a wink and a nod, theres plenty of him to go around.But its too easy, particularly in the wake of the controversy at the Big Bash involving Mel McLaughlin, and given the showmanship that is such a fundamental of his appeal, to ignore the subtleties - the sensitivities, even - that have made Gayle the man he is today, and have galvanised his belief that he should never compromise for a minute on who he is.The prologue to his book sets a different tone - with Gayle waking up in a Melbourne hospital following heart surgery during West Indies tour of Australia in 2005-06, hearing the beep beep of the monitors and vowing, there and then, to do everything to the fullest. No waiting, no hedging, no compromises, no apologies.You have to say, hes been true to his word. And in fact, three years later, at the culmination of one of the most surreal fortnights of his career - the Stanford 20/20 for 20 against England, Gayle used a large chunk of his US$1 million winnings to fund a similar operation for his brother, Andrew.His journey, in the most linear sense, has taken Gayle from a five-to-a-room shack in downtown Kingston to a nine-bedroom mansion with a strip joint in the basement. It has taken him, also, to every conceivable corner of crickets globe - people call me a gun for hire. Sixteen franchises in nine different countries across five continents - setting out the rules of freelance engagement for the generations of cricketers that will follow him. I am not to blame for the way the world spins, he says, with no little conviction.The most evocative chapters of Gayles story are those that deal with the deprivations of his childhood in Rollington Town - a life in which birthdays were jus another day you hungry, and Saturdays might mean chicken-foot soup to replace the fried balls of flour and water that served as his daily meals.Against this backdrop, Gayle -- a scrawny kid for whom the muscle definition of adulthood would be a long time coming - was drawn into the embrace of his local club, Lucas CC, thanks in no small part to an improbable and, frankly, enlightening first role model: Miss Hamilton, his primary school cricket teacher.dddddddddddd She soon spots that I dont like to run … I spot that she can bat and bowl as well as any man. When Miss Hamilton comes in with her full pace, you are ducking and swaying like those palms in a November hurricane.Twenty-five years later, Gayle still seeks out his first coach whenever hes back in town, as if underscoring his oft-repeated mantra that hes a Jamaican first and foremost - Ill always keep the flag flying. I travel the world but I always come home.His iconic status within the island rivals that of Usain Bolt, and Gayle draws a fair parallel between the impact of Bolts 9.58 in Berlin in 2009 and his own astonishing 175 not out for Bangalore in the IPL in 2013: the tales of an island grinding to a halt to watch agog as history whizzes by: How much? I thought this was a T20. Oh f***, it is T20! The pair share a bond that reflects Gayles exalted status - Bolt once memorably bowled Gayle out in a charity match and celebrated with his traditional to the sky pose - but on the whole theres a notable absence of camaraderie in his tale. Gayle talks, tellingly, of having to settle for calling all of his team-mates bro as he moves from franchise to franchise, often waiting for them to pull on their shirts before committing to a name.And when it comes to West Indies - for all the justified euphoria of their World T20 win in 2012 (the 2016 version came too late to make the narrative) - theres again an ambivalence about some of his relationships in an often-fractured squad. Brian Lara, not for the first time, comes across as moody and other-worldly - He go left, you just go right. As simple as it is.His truest friendships, you sense, are the ones he has lost - two in particular: Garrick Grant, a Lucas kid crushed under the wheels of a bus as he bailed off at his stop, and Runako Morton, the talented, temperamental Nevisian batsman who died in a car crash in 2012 without ever quite fulfilling his potential. Death stalk you. But dont fear death.And yet, throughout his book, the pride that Gayle takes in his achievements as a West Indian cricketer, in spite of the spats with the board and the attractions of his mercenary lifestyle, pour off the pages - and you get the sense, for all the records hes smashed in T20 cricket, some of which may never be challenged, pride of place in his mind goes to his twin triple-centuries in Tests.In fact, his defence of Test cricket - without Bob Marley there would be no Beenie Man … people still love reggae, but they are buying dancehall - is far more eloquent than the usual platitudes that get trotted out when such awkward questions are posed to sportsmen.Only seven men have more West Indies caps than me. I was born into Test cricket and I have lived through Test cricket. I can bat like a true Test batsman.Tink yuh know me? Yuh dont know me.Six Machine: I Dont Like Cricket... I Love It By Chris Gayle Viking 288 pages ' ' '