Weekly sports round-up, July 24 to 30: From Team India winning in Galle to Novak Djokovic being ruled out for remaining season

New Delhi: The sports caravan in the week gone by (July 24-30) was not far from eventful as there was action from cricket, basketball, football, kabaddi, tennis and formula one. The biggest news from the Indian point of view was the kick off of the kabaddi league. It is in the fifth season and is looking as promising as it has in the first three years.

Here is how the action unfolded in different sports:

Cricket: There were two big pieces of news from the world of cricket. Firstly there was the men’s cricket team playing the first Test match in the three-match series in Sri Lanka. India were on the ball in the Test match as they wrapped up a win in four days, beating Lanka by 304 runs.

Several Indian batsmen were in top form as they scored centuries. Shikhar Dhawan (190), Cheteshwar Pujara (153) and Virat Kohli (103 not out) played a starring role. It was a match where Kohli got his Test match average back to over 50, eventually once again becoming the only batsman in world cricket to have the average on the right side of 50 in all formats of the game.

It was also a week when the national women’s cricket team remained in the spotlight after a fine show in the World Cup. After finishing as losing finalists, Mithali Raj’s team returned back home where it was felicitated by the sports minister Vijay Goel in New Delhi.

The players for once had a brush with the limelight and endeared everyone with their simplicity and humility despite being path breakers of sorts as they showed after reaching the World Cup final after 12 long years.

Basketball: It was been a sport lost in the hearts and minds of Indian fans but the national women’s team came to the fore and wrote its own story. The team beat Kazakhstan 75-73 in a Division B match to make its place in Division A of the FIBA Asia Cup.

Football: The Neymar saga rumbles on as news of Paris Saint-Germain seeking the Barcelona star is only getting stronger by the day. There is possibly an unbelievable amount of money involved as the figure in the media that has come out is of over 200-million Euros as a transfer fee. There is also a matter of UEFA’s financial fair play conditions that may not be met if such an astronomical amount of money is being involved.

There was continuing action from the 2017 International Champions Cup as the biggest clubs are getting ready for greater challenges ahead. Our pick of the match is an easy one. El Clasico is arguably the greatest rivalry in world sport and so what if it was a pre-season game, Americans turned up in huge numbers, over 66,000 of them in all, as Barcelona beat Real Madrid 3-2 in what was described as a soupy South Florida night.

Formula One: It was once again Sebastian Vettel who stood numero uno by clinching the race win at the Hungarian Grand Prix. He now leads Lewis Hamilton by 14 points in the drivers’ standings.

Pro Kabaddi League: There is no sport like kabaddi as far as growth in the sporting context in India is concerned. With over 130 matches rolled into the same season, the fifth season of the Pro Kabaddi League kicked off in Hyderabad on Friday. It is a league which is being closely watched. It had two seasons in 2016, and now in 2017, it is expected to be bigger and better than ever before.

Tennis: Novak Djokovic has been the dominant player in tennis for some years and it was a shock when the news of the Serb missing the rest of the season trickled in. He with 12 Majors is still seven behind Roger Federer’s 19 and with the all-important US Open out of Djokovic’s reach, one wonders if he will ever be able to catch up with not just the Swiss but also Rafael Nadal who has 15 Majors.

Of course Djokovic fans have lots of hope for his strong return and will think that he can do a Federer. In other words, win a Major after a break like Federer did at Wimbledon.

Twitter post of the week:

Great Win.  Well played boys @SDhawan25 @cheteshwar1  pic.twitter.com/XrCesYJqnI — Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) July 29, 2017

The three centurions from Galle in one frame. It is a classic for this week!

Picture of the week:

Kevin Durant at the Taj Mahal. We really do not want to say much. The American basketball superstar at the iconic monument speaks more than a hundred words!

Match of the week:

This is an easy one considering that for four days the exploits of Kohli and company dominated headlines. It was another day (or rather days) in office and India played like the India we know, not letting the match even go to Day 5.