Plauderkasten^^ » uds higher. Stokes runs in from the Statham En

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Carl Edwards got the victory he desperately needed to earn a championship-contending spot in the NASCAR Sprint Cup finale, winning at Texas on Sunday night in a race shortened by 41 laps because of rain after the start was delayed nearly six hours.With his fourth career win at Texas, Edwards joined Jimmie Johnson as drivers locked into the championship-contending spots in Homestead.That leaves two spots up for grabs next Sunday at Phoenix.Edwards entered the second-to-last race before the Nov. 20 season finale eighth in points among the drivers still eligible for the championship.This is huge. I dont think its sunk in yet. Thats all we said was needed, just a shot, Edwards said. Now were going to go to Homestead, were going to do what we need to do. This was a great test. We came here and did what we needed to do, we performed, and I really believe we can do that at Homestead.The rain-shortened victory was certainly appropriate for Edwards after how his championship Chase ended last year.Last years race at Phoenix was delayed nearly seven hours as a series of storms passed through the area, and then once it started under the lights was called after 218 laps. Edwards finished fifth, leaving him five points out of the final spot for the Chase finale.Edwards three Joe Gibbs Racing teammates are among the six other drivers still in contention this season, and clearly not all of them can advance.Light rain had already been falling, and plenty more was on the radar around the track, when the caution came out with 45 laps remaining of the originally scheduled 334-lap race.All the cars were brought to pit road four laps later, and it was only a few more minutes before NASCAR declared the race over and official after 293 laps. It could have taken two hours or more to dry to track.We were in a bad spot if we went green again, Edwards said. But the last run before it rained, I think we could have held off, Im not sure.Edwards had taken the lead on lap 258 late Sunday after beating Martin Truex Jr. off pit road, and led the rest of the way.It was Edwards first win at Texas in eight years. He swept the two Cup races there in 2008, the season he had nine wins overall and a career-best finish of second in points.Joey Logano, another Chase contender, finished second while leading a race-high 178 laps. Truex finished third and Chase Elliott fourth.Logano is third in season points, with Kyle Busch fourth. Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch are in the fifth through eighth spots. If one of those six drivers dont win Phoenix, the final two championship spots would be determined by points.Harvick got his track-record eighth win at Phoenix in March, and has won five of the last six races there.Weve done it I dont know how many times, Harvick said. Well just go there and do what we always do and race as hard as we can.Some other things from Texas:TRAILING AFTER GREEN: Polesitter Austin Dillon led only the races first six laps, but didnt lead a green-flag lap. He was passed by Logano for the lead on lap 7, the first lap after the green flag.BIG BOBBLEHEAD: The first 30,000 fans were given Tony Stewart bobbleheads commemorating the retiring Sprint Cup drivers final race at Texas. During driver introductions, track president Eddie Gossage presented Stewart with his own bobblehead -- a life-sized replica with an oversized head.HELD OUT: Matt DiBenedetto wasnt allowed to drive because of NASCARs concussion protocol. He was involved in a hard crash in the Xfinity Series race Saturday, and wasnt cleared by doctors to drive in the Cup race even though he said he felt perfect on Sunday.LOUD POP: A tire specialist for Richard Childress Racing was treated and released from the infield care center after a tire just taken off Paul Menards car popped while being checked behind the wall. Adidas NMD Uitverkoop .S District Court against Major League Baseball, the Office of the Commissioner and his own union, the MLBPA. Adidas NMD R2 Heren . -- The Bishops Gaiters are showing they belong among the countrys top varsity football teams. http://www.nmdbelgie.com/kopen-adidas-continental-80-sale.html . The Americans, skipped by John Shuster, seized the advantage in the eighth end by scoring five points for a 7-3 lead. The Czechs pulled two back in the ninth, but Shusters team of third Jeff Isaacson, second Jared Zezel and lead John Landsteiner ended with another point to secure the last Olympic berth on offer. Adidas NMD Belgie . According the Toronto Star, a knee injury will keep Sundin out of the lineup, which includes former teammates Gary Roberts, Darcy Tucker, Tie Domi and Curtis Joseph. Adidas NMD Goedkoop . Soukalova missed only one target and completed the 15-kilometre course in 40 minutes, 32.6 seconds for both victories in this seasons individual discipline. Darya Domracheva of Belarus was second, 34. Eleven oclock on a bright, slightly sticky Saturday morning in Manchester. Mohammad Amir runs in from the Statham End and bowls to Joe Root, who is 141 not out. The ball is on a good length but wide of the off stump. Root plays no shot and it passes to Sarfraz Ahmed behind the stumps.And so another day in the grass arena has begun. One ball has been bowled and there are scheduled to be roughly 539 more; or a minimum of 1617 pieces of action if we include the participation of bowler, batsmen and fielder. Some will be faithfully recorded and never mentioned again; others, the dismissal of Ben Stokes, for example, will be reviewed and scrutinised for, perhaps, five minutes.I wouldnt care if it was another sport but cricket takes up so much of the day. With these words the partner of even a club player explains why things arent working. Yet for many of its supporters the length of a first-class cricket match is the essence of its attraction. They like the slow accretion of events and the way time imposes its demands. They enjoy their T20 matches - this isnt an either/or dilemma - but they appreciate a format in which a cricketers endurance and mental strength are examined and in which batting for ten hours receives its due reward. It is, for them, truly a ball-by-ball game in which progress can be close to invisible.And so they enjoyed Roots 618-minute innings and his Jesuitical quest for absolution after his transgressions at Lords. Successful Test batsmen are defined by their ability to go on. For them, a century is a junction not a terminus. So it is with Root and it was curious how his watchfulness in facing the Pakistan bowlers in that first session was matched by that of most spectators as they, in their turn, watched the way he began again.For most people on earth, the idea of being watched as they work is inimical; for sportsmen it is essential. And the symbiosis between the crowd and cricketers repays its own close attention. We watch the watchers watching the watched. The applause that greeted Chris Woakess first fours - a cut, a cover-drive, a square-drive - were almost celebratory, as if the good times had begun to roll and another drink was, indeed, the order of the day.Root, though, continued to wear a hair-shirt and we were 16 overs into the morrning before he found the boundary courtesy of an edge and Younis Khans dropped catch at slip.dddddddddddd He scored 44 runs in that first, exploratory session and only after tea did he bat as if truly liberated. By then, of course, there were beer snakes and fancy dress; some spectators may have watched the cricket a little less closely than they had in the morning. Stokes and Jonny Bairstow played trampling innings on tired fielders, hoping that weight of runs would earn early wickets. There was less intensity but more fiesta; summer in full, good-humoured riot.Then the declaration and a re-cranking of tension. A new guttural as James Anderson ran in from the Pavilion End. Earlier in the day Andersons team-mates, suddenly spectators themselves, had watched from one of the pavilion balconies. But it was not the local hero who made the breakthroughs. That honour fell in large measure to Woakes, whose three wickets were greeted with fresh roars as spectators scraped their plate in the last hour of the day.6.25 on Saturday and the air is a little fresher, the clouds higher. Stokes runs in from the Statham End and bowls to Shan Masood. The ball is on the off stump and the batsman plays it defensively and safely. There is a slightly subdued gasp from the crowd as if the air had been released from a huge balloon. Then ringing applause for the England players as they return to their dressing-room.For Woakes this has been another fine day; his shares on crickets stock-market have risen. He has masqueraded as a nightwatchman and reinforced his position as a potent strike bowler at a time when England are not short of them. As the crowd disperses, many are talking about how his bowling has helped make their day memorable.Within fifteen minutes Old Trafford is almost deserted and a few minutes later Pakistans players, rucksacks on their backs, are returning to their coach, trooping over the outfield like blue-uniformed trekkers.And so it ends, this gentle, fierce ticking down of 540 pieces of action, the shape of it all collaborative, confrontational, intense. If you rush, youll never get anywhere, said the man on the gate this morning. ' ' '