After much toing and froing, including reports on Thursday that the Faislabad Wolves, Pakistan’s domestic Twenty20 champions, had been denied visas for the qualifying round of the 2013 Champions League, the decks were cleared on Friday for Misbah-ul Haq’s team to play in India.

Narendra Modi, from being an RSS pracharak to BJP office-bearer to three time Gujarat chief minister and now BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. Despite called by many as a “polarising” and “divisive” figure after the post-2002 Godhra riots, Mr Modi continued to battle against all odds and opposition from within the party to emerge as the face of BJP for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Mr Modi will turn 63 on September 17.

Enthused by a successful rally addressed by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in the tribal heartland, the Congress has geared up to organise a series of more such rallies and programmes.

Indian football’s honeymoon with the South Asian Football Federation Championships is over. Since its advent in 1993, India had won in six out of the nine competitions and in Dhaka, 2009 emerged victorious with a second string squad.

Reactions from political parties over the anointment of Gujarat strongman Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate has been on predictable lines with the Congress denouncing him as a divisive leader and the BJP leaders and allies of the NDA endorsing their poster boy.

As the likelihood of a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif in New York later this month grows stronger, India has said that a conducive atmosphere is essential for the meeting.

ONGC booked their maiden Durand Cup semi-finals berth, upsetting I-League runners-up Pune FC 2-1 in a quarter-final league match at the Ambedkar Stadium here on Friday.

A batch of 350 cadets, including 70 women, were today commissioned into the Army on successful completion of short service commission training at the Officer’s Training Academy (OTA) here today.

In a prescient sort of way, the world outside began warming to Narendra Modi just a little less than a year ago. And now that Narendra Modi has been anointed the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, it’s expected that more foreign governments will warm up to Mr Modi, seeking to end the pariah status many bestowed upon him post the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The decision of the Indian cricket board’s disciplinary committee to ban cricketers accused in the spot-fixing scandal made it judgment day here in the capital on Friday following a city court sentencing those found guilty in the murderous gangrape of a 23-year-old woman paramedic in December last year to hang till death.