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The injuries keep piling up for the Detroit Tigers, who announced Wednesday that they have placed center fielder Cameron Maybin?on the 15-day disabled list with a Grade 2 left thumb sprain. The move is retroactive to Aug. 4.Maybin, 29, opened the season on the DL with a left wrist fracture but has been an offensive catalyst for Detroit since making his season debut in May, batting .325 with 75 hits and 29 RBIs and totaling 13 stolen bases. He has not played since Aug. 3, a 2-1 win over the Chicago White Sox.Maybin has quietly been a key contributor to a Tigers lineup that more famously features?Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez. With Maybin in the starting lineup, Detroit is 35-24 (.593 winning percentage), but only 26-28 (.481) without him.The Tigers also announced they have recalled relief pitcher Warwick Saupold from Triple-A Toledo. Setup man Shane Greene was unavailable to pitch in Tuesdays 15-inning loss to the Seattle Mariners. After the game, manager Brad Ausmus told reporters that Greene is battling a back issue and is aiming to avoid the disabled list.The recent roster moves come on the heels of the Tigers third consecutive loss and with the team reeling from injuries.Starting pitchers?Jordan Zimmermann?(neck) and Mike Pelfrey (back) are both on the disabled list, along with third baseman Nick Castellanos (hand).The Tigers wrap up a three-game series in Seattle on Wednesday night before heading to Texas to face the Rangers for a three-game series. . Deulofeu injured a muscle in his right leg in Evertons 4-1 win over Fulham in the English Premier League on Saturday. Barcelona says that its team doctors will "co-ordinate" with Evertons medical staff as Deulofeu recovers. . Batiste, who briefly signed with the Eskimos in 2006, has spent time with several NFL teams including the Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins. . Brazilian national coach Luiz Felipe Scolari has confirmed that the veteran goalkeeper is set to join Toronto on loan, saying it will help him be ready for the World Cup. . -- San Francisco 49ers linebacker Ahmad Brooks was fined $15,570 by the NFL on Wednesday for his hit on Saints quarterback Drew Brees last Sunday. . The quest begins with what is supposed to be an easy one, although Germany has traditionally been a stubborn opponent to Canadian teams at international tournaments. Arguably no other sports practitioners and followers spend as much time as Test crickets do on going back to the past and looking at similar in-match scenarios to try to foretell what is going to happen in a completely different match in a completely different time and played with a completely different set of personnel. Perhaps it is because of the time available overnight. Few other sports rely on the changing nature of a surface during the course of a match. Maybe motor sports because of rain, but that is not natural deterioration.It is perhaps this mix of uncertainty and leisure that sends us back to old scorecards, and cricketers are not immune to it. All through the opening days play, especially when flat deliveries began to go more than a metre upon pitching, we kept thinking of the last Mumbai Test between these two sides. Just to recap, India got the turner they wanted in 2012-13, won the toss, batted first, were bowled out for 327, conceded 413 and couldnt recover from the deficit against the spin duo of Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar.India ended the first day then at 266 for 6. England have managed 288 for 5. R Ashwin, who played a big part in bringing it down to a similar scoreline, couldnt help comparisons. In normal circumstances, 288 on the board on a pitch that became remarkably more difficult over the course of one day should worry India, but the way Ashwin compared the two matches should ease the nerves of Indian fans.When asked what score India would be comfortable responding to looking at the state of the pitch, Ashwin said: When we played England [here] last, the morning, the first day was a bit damp. It spun a little. It was absolutely flat on days two and day three. Im seeing very similar traits here.We got out of jail and got to about 330-340 the last time we played them here. If we can hold them somewhere [there]... if we had got one more wicket tonight, we might have been on course to do that. Probably come out tomorrow morning, and try and snap a couple of quick wickets and see how quickly we can stall their innings.Therein lies the difference. Then, India came back from 60 for 3 and 119 for 5 on a damp pitch. Here, England rollicked along to 230 for 2 before giving India an opening which Ashwin used to bring them back with three quick wickets. That should be a sign of a pitch becoming more difficult to bat on with time, as opposed to getting better on days two and three. But to put this comeback down to just the pitch would be unfair on some classical offspin bowling from Ashwin.England had had a near-perfect first session of 117 for 1 when Ashwin began to pull things back in the second. In a mid-afternoon spell of 12-1-21-1, he cut down debutant Keaton Jennings, he claimed Joe Root yet again, and kept Moeen Ali and Jennings honest. This spell was as much about drift and dip as it was about turn off the surface. After having scored 65 runns in the first session, Jennings spent the next 40 minutes sweating for five runs, which took him 29 balls.dddddddddddd Jennings then got away with reverse-swept and a cover-driven boundaries in successive deliveries, but Root could not.I must say I worked that dismissal in my head because he has got out a lot of times in the slips, Ashwin said of the outside edge he drew from Root. In the last three Test matches we have played, he nicked one in Vizag… I thought he did, but that was overturned. But he has got a tendency to nick spinners to the slip cordon. I saw him nick Dane Piedt in South Africa. He has done it quite a few times, to Nathan Lyon as well. I was just imagining on the first day that this is one of those wickets out of the four Tests we had where edges actually carry to slips. So I was just mentally working it over and it happened.The real rewards, though, came in the final session when England probably played one shot too many. The approach - reverse-sweeping Ravindra Jadeja, stepping out to spinners and not worrying about hitting in the air - seemed like a direct result of coach Trevor Bayliss comments that England had perhaps played themselves into a shell in their last three innings after they had been forced to do so trying to save the Visakhapatnam Test. There can be a case made either way as to whether it worked or not, but Moeens top-edged sweep did give Ashwin an opening.Ashwin didnt mind it because he knew he deserved more for his toil in the afternoon. I thought the rewards in that spell came for what I did in the afternoon session, Ashwin said. I thought I bowled a really good spell then to Jennings, and was that Moeen Ali? Yeah. Got Root out in that spell, but I thought that was one of the better spells of the day, and I got the rewards for that as soon as I came back in the third spell.Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler then showed the message from the coach was more wholesome. He didnt ask for mindless attack. Throughout the series, England have been throwing away parity in the last half hour of sessions and days. But here, the two batted watchfully for 13.4 overs even if brought them just 39 runs. They did what the situation demanded on a pitch they reckoned got difficult to bat on.Ashwin, though, expects otherwise. I think this is a very similar pitch in terms of what it had on the first day, he said. I dont know what it was, but I am just guessing it could have been just the moisture that made the ball spin a little bit in the afternoon session, and towards the end, I think it was the seam position. The more top spinners you bowled, it started spinning more. I am just expecting the wicket to play well from tomorrow onwards.The rest of the team and Indias fans will be hoping for Ashwins expectations to come true. ' ' '
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