Cricket News

'Little Master' Sachin Tendulkar champions the India-Australia rivalry as the best and most fiercely competitive in world cricket (undoubtedly prompting Pakistani fans to think about an effigy or two) and back in 1964, it was another gentle 'giant' going by the name of Graham McKenzie, who returned match figures of 10-91, that led the baggy green army to their third consecutive victory in Madras.

McKenzie's first innings haul of 6-58 off 32 overs kept the Aussies in with a sniff of overturning the 65-run deficit but four wickets late on the fourth day scuppered India's hopes, and even a valiant 94 from Hanumant Singh couldn't prevent Bill Simpson's boys winning by 139 runs.

In 2001, baseball’s steroid (er, home run) king Barry Bonds smashed his 73rd home run of the season, probably with a syringe in his back pocket, setting a mark that still stands as America’s most hallowed single-season sporting record: With a great big, dope-inflated asterisk.

There was big-time drama as well on this day in 1985 when Palestinian nutjobs hijacked the cruiser liner Achille Lauro and her 400 passengers in the Med. Likewise, in 1959, 300 people couldn’t get off the pleasure pier at Southend because it was on fire, and were rescued from the end in a mini Dunkirk evacuation.

So it’s Grattis pŒ fšdelsedagen, as they say in Stockholm, to Pakistani leftie Salman Butt (24); Nobel winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu (77); Aussie essayist and former telly critic Clive James (69); Franco-Chinese cellist Yo-Yo Ma (53); gold-medal ice dancing goddess Jayne Torvill (51); annoyingly talentless and omnipresent TV superstar Simon Cowell (49); and Radiohead warbler Thom Yorke (40).