njay tough love.He learnt his cricket the regimental way but felt suffoca

CLEVELAND -- Carlos Carrasco was on top of his game Friday night.Clevelands right-hander struck out 11 while pitching scoreless ball into the eighth inning, and the Indians defeated the Miami Marlins 6-2.Thats what Im looking for, Carrasco said. From pitch one to the last pitch, I was aggressive. With every pitch -- fastball, slider, curveball, changeup -- everything. The whole game.Carrasco (10-7) posted the 10th double-digit strikeout game of his career, three this season. He allowed six hits and walked one in 7 1/3 innings, leading first-place Cleveland to its fourth straight win.Cleveland scored three times in the first and once in the second off Andrew Cashner (4-11). Abraham Almontes two-run double pushed the lead to 6-0 in the fifth.J.T. Realmuto hit a two-run homer off Jeff Manship in the eighth for Miami, which has lost six of seven.Carrasco has won three of his last four decisions but was hit hard in the loss, allowing seven runs and lasting only four innings against Texas last Saturday.I was disappointed in myself, he said. I went for five days working hard and tried to get my mind back the way I started the year.Indians manager Terry Francona said: He had a good week of work and then he pitched really well tonight.Miami manager Don Mattingly was impressed with Carrascos performance.Their guy was really good and handcuffed us the whole night long. He made great pitches, Mattingly said.Cashner, who is 0-4 in six starts since being acquired from San Diego on July 29, allowed six runs, six hits and six walks in five innings. He was scratched from his previous turn because of a blister on his finger.Cleveland took advantage of Cashners inability to find the strike zone in the first. The right-hander walked three in the inning, including Mike Napoli with the bases loaded.Carlos Santana drew a leadoff walk. Jason Kipnis was ruled to have checked his swing on a 3-2 pitch, a call Mattingly disagreed with from the dugout. Francisco Lindor singled to load the bases -- the only hit of the inning.Napoli walked to force in a run. Jose Ramirezs fielders choice and Lonnie Chisenhalls groundout added two runs. Cashner threw 35 pitches in the inning.Santana had a sacrifice fly in the second. Almontes double added two more for Cleveland, which began the night leading second-place Detroit by 4 1/2 games in the AL Central.Miami remained three games out of the second wild-card spot in the NL. Realmuto was 3 for 4 and outfielder Destin Hood, making his major league debut, doubled in the fifth and singled in the seventh.Miami first base coach Perry Hill was ejected in the top of the ninth by umpire Mark Ripperger.SOUNDS LIKE A PLANVeteran outfielder Coco Crisp, acquired from Oakland, joined the Indians before the game but wasnt in the lineup. Asked what he can do to help his new team, Crisp joked: Stay out of the way.Crisp has played on five postseason teams, a major reason why the Indians picked him up.Its a different monster playing in the playoffs, but its the most exciting times of where you want to be, he said.TRAINERS ROOMMarlins: CF Marcell Ozuna (sprained left wrist) sat out his second straight game after getting hurt Wednesday while making a diving catch against the Mets.Indians: C Yan Gomes (separated right shoulder) began a rehab assignment at Double-A Akron. Hes been on the disabled list since July 18.UP NEXTMarlins: RHP Jose Fernandez (13-7) has the second-most strikeouts in the majors with 219. He ranks fifth with a 2.79 ERA.Indians: RHP Trevor Bauer (9-6), who has not pitched against Miami, is 6-2 with a 2.50 ERA in 13 career interleague starts. Stitched Football Jerseys . After dropping their final six games of December, the Wild opened the new calendar year with four consecutive wins. Following a loss to Colorado on Saturday, Minnesota rebounded the following night to blank Nashville 4-0, but then had the tables turned on them Tuesday. Cheap Dallas Cowboys Jerseys China .C. at the helm of the top team in the Eastern Conference. His tenure as the GM in Vancouver was all too brief. Though he led the Canucks to what was then a franchise record-shattering campaign in just his second season, Nonis was gone and replaced one year later. http://www.cheapfootballchina.com/cheap-jacksonville-jaguars-jerseys-china_655w.html . P.A. Parenteau scored early in the third period to help the Avs edge Toronto 2-1 on Tuesday night. Cory Sarich also scored for Colorado (3-0-0), which is off to its best ever start. Cheap Football Gear . Now that hes hitting streaking teammates with pin-point passes for easy layups, Love is asserting himself as one of the true superstars in the league. Cheap Denver Broncos Jerseys China . The Dane followed up his first European Tour title last weekend with eight birdies and just a single dropped shot on Thursday for a one-stroke advantage over South Africas Allan Versfeld and Portugals Ricardo Santos. It is said in Pakistan that Pathans are not an ethnicity but a state of mind. To us, growing up in the nineties, watching Pakistan win unwinnable matches against India in Sharjah, the Pakistani cricketer was an enviable state of mind, a state beyond our comprehension. The highest praise we could afford an Indian cricketer for his gumption, his cricketing smarts, and occasionally his flawed character, was to say: he is almost a Pakistani.Manoj Prabhakar A Prabhakar autobiography would start thus: As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Pakistani cricketer. He didnt have the pace, but he swung the ball big. He reversed it. He leapt away from the stumps in his delivery stride. Like Imran Khan. He had a mullet. Like Imran Khan.Colleagues swore by his courage. If an opener was injured, Prabhakar would face the new ball. If an opener chickened out, Prabhakar would step up.In South Africa in 1991-92, when India were brutalised by Donald, Schultz, McMillan and Matthews, up stepped Prabhakar with 62 in over five hours to facilitate a draw. During it he kept asking McMillan if he was half-blind until the bemused bowler asked what the hell he was talking about. Pitch it in my half too. Cant you see that half of the pitch? As an opener, he averaged 35.48 in Tests and 34.02 in ODIs. Not bad for someone who was primarily a bowler.The flaws of Pakistani cricketers are their charms. In keeping, Prabhakar once gave up an ODI chase of 63 in nine overs with five wickets in hand, instead blocking his way to a hundred. He was banned for one match. Somewhat appealingly, somewhat mysteriously, he crusaded against match-fixing, carrying out a sting against team-mates. Politics and embezzlement followed post-retirement.Ravi Shastri Shastri was drinking one evening in Karachi, in 1983. (A friend of his had come from London with duty-free alcohol.) They were in Shastris hotel room. He heard a knock. It was Sunil Gavaskar, the captain. Will you open with me in this Test? It was the sixth Test of the series. Arun Lal had scored a total of 100 in three Tests, Kris Srikkanth 28 in two. Shastri was 20 years old. He lost the booze immediately, replacing it with the high of an opportunity of a lifetime. Days later he scored a hundred against Imran, Sarfraz Nawaz and Abdul Qadir.A left-arm spinner who began his career at No. 10, Shastri loves to say he scored Test hundreds against two fearsome pace quartets. One is the West Indian, what is the other? Imran, Sarfraz, Javed Akhtar and Khizer Hayat.Shastri was English in his technique, his professionalism and his fierce ambition, but he was Pakistani in his homegrown methods, boastfulness, his way of getting things done, his sledging, his punching above his weight. He was positively dour when he batted, like Mudassar Nazar, but he also hit six sixes in a first-class over. Had Shastri been any more Pakistani, he would have come out of retirement at least once. As it was, his retirement - coming as it did at the age of 30 - surprised everyone.Ajay Jadeja You will be hard-pressed to find an Indian cricketer with a higher smugness-to-skill ratio than Jadeja. You could imagine how annoying playing him would be. A limited batsman, especially against pace and swing, Jadeja plaayed with his collar up, lips parted in an infuriating smirk; and he was a match-winner when he had no business being one.dddddddddddd A bit like Javed Miandad, he might not always have been the man you wanted on your side, but he was the one you didnt want in the opposition.Behind the exterior was a shrewd brain. He loved fielding, even as a substitute. He didnt mind stepping out of his comfort zone. He always wanted to open but made his name hitting in the middle order. After the most Pakistani thing he did in his career - the 1996 World Cup quarter-final carnage against the arch-rivals - he said: Look what they have turned me into. A pinch-hitter. A slogger.When banned for match-fixing, he didnt lose the smugness, appearing in movies, dance shows, providing incisive cricket analysis. Surely a captain India lost.MS Dhoni Burewala. Gujar Khan. Sheikhupura. Many Pakistani small towns are known only for producing world-class cricketers who learnt their early cricket there, through some inexplicable junoon, and then enchanted the world. India was always more sterile, with players coming through coaching academies in big cities, where flair is smothered like the turn on a flighted offbreak. Only a handful beat that system.Ranchi was known in India only for its mental asylum until Dhoni made it famous the world over. He is the biggest Pakistani cricketer India has ever produced. Almost entirely uncoached, flipping the bird to convention at every step, he has become an ODI batsman as accomplished, chillingly calculating and psychologically damaging as Javed Miandad was. He loves taking a match into the last over, then turning it into a one on one. Then he hits a six early, one that rings around the stadium, a huge one. Then the world watches the poor bowler wilt.And Dhoni captains and keeps wicket. As with Pakistani cricketers, you cannot tell what he is thinking, what his next move is. You cant put anything beyond him. There hasnt been a more authentic Made in Pakistan hologram. Vijay Manjrekar Towards the end of his career he had put on weight, but he kept playing at Shivaji Park. Those were the days when crowds turned up for local cricket. A barracker called him Ganpati (for Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god with the generous waistline). He made his way to the boundary, identified the heckler and asked, Do you want to see the trunk now?Once, an established opener went to him for advice. What is wrong with my batting? He said: Nothing. There is something wrong with the selectors who keep picking you.One day, after he had retired from the game, he was watching cricket and saw Nana Patekar, the Bollywood actor, heckling a spectator. He grabbed Patekar by the collar, and the two almost came to blows.Manjrekar was the original badass, a free spirit who couldnt stand fools; never short of a witty retort; giving his son Sanjay tough love.He learnt his cricket the regimental way but felt suffocated and shackled. He and Subhash Gupte were the mawalis - the ruffians and hooligans.Oh, by the way he was one of Indias best batsmen against pace despite not being the fittest. Inzi anyone? ' ' '