laying in darkness would unfairly penalise the batting side - but if players are not going to be required to complete the scheduled

ATLANTA -- The Atlanta Hawks are planning a $192.5 million renovation of Philips Arena, with the city providing the bulk of the funding.As part of the deal announced Tuesday, the Hawks agreed to an 18-year lease extension to remain at the city-owned arena through 2046.The city will contribute $142.5 million toward the project, which will most noticeably alter the look of the luxury boxes stacked on one side of the arena. There will be new amenities, a variety of different-size suites, improved sightlines for basketball, a state-of-the-art video system, and connected concourses throughout the 17-year-old facility.Philips Arena originally was built to host both the NBAs Hawks and the NHLs Atlanta Thrashers. The hockey team moved to Winnipeg in 2011.Mayor Kasim Reed had pledged to contribute to an arena renovation when the Hawks were in the process of being sold by former controlling owner Bruce Levenson, who gave up the team after revealing that he sent a racially insensitive email. Tony Ressler wound up leading a group that purchased the Hawks and operating rights to the arena.Ressler said all along that he preferred to remain downtown rather than pursue a new facility, as long as Philips Arena was upgraded.We knew that a key part of producing a winning team, providing a superior fan experience and being a civic asset to the city of Atlanta required a renovation of our arena and a meaningful improvement to the downtown area of this city, Ressler said. Todays announcement with the mayor is a significant step toward this goal, and we look forward to this exciting transformation that will ensure that we provide the best fan experience possible now and for the next 30 years.Reed said the renovation was part of a long-range plan to transform an unsightly tract of downtown adjacent to the arena and the new $1.4 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, a retractable-roof facility set to open next year as home to the NFL Falcons and a Major League Soccer expansion team, Atlanta United.There have been talks about turning the area, known as the gulch, into a mixed-used development much like the highly successful LA Live complex next to Staples Center in Los Angeles. Reed said its part of a plan to connect the sports venues to popular tourist attractions around Centennial Olympic Park, as well as to one of the citys biggest development flops, Underground Atlanta.This is the first stake in the ground in transforming the critical corridor, Reed said. I want to thank Tony Ressler and the Atlanta Hawks ownership for committing to this deal that will keep the NBA in our city and help re-imagine downtown for the millions of residents, visitors and tourists who come to Atlanta each year.Its another huge commitment by the city to a sports venue, though Reed stressed that no money from the citys general fund will be used and no new taxes will be needed.About $110 million will come from extension of car-rental tax and the city will contribute $12.5 million from the sale of Turner Field to Georgia State University and a development company, a deal expected to close by the end of the year. The remaining $20 million from the city will come from a series of expected future land sales, the mayor added during a City Hall announcement.The renovation of Philips Arena comes on the heels of the city agreeing to spend at least $200 million -- and perhaps much more, some critics have argued -- for the Falcons new stadium, which will replace the 24-year-old Georgia Dome. In addition, suburban Cobb County put up some $400 million on public funding to build a new baseball stadium for the Atlanta Braves that opens next season.SunTrust Park, about 12 miles from downtown, will replace Turner Field even though that stadium is only two decades old. Georgia State plans to downsize the Braves former home into a 30,000-seat stadium for its football program.The renovations on Philips Arena will begin next summer and should be completed by the start of the 2018-19 season. 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Jefferson has been charged with assaulting his girlfriend. Devin Hester Bears Jersey . A statement from the worlds top-ranked player says all checks "were satisfactory and showed positive evolution" regarding the injury, which contributed to his loss to Stanislas Wawrinka in the final in Melbourne. Its easy to dismiss complaints about slow over rates as the grumblings of a few non-representative malcontents. Its probably also true that many spectators are not bothered - at least not beyond brief shoulder-shrugging. Corruption, dead pitches, and (mis-) governance are certainly more pressing issues. Yet that isnt to say its not a problem that shouldnt be fixed.The way Tests are marketed works against spectators realising their loss. One is encouraged to buy a ticket for a day, not for the minimum number of overs scheduled for the day. The overs lost are almost imperceptible, unless one is keeping an eye on the progress. Even when overs are lost, the percentage of cricket reduced seems trivial. Three overs out of 90, the number that England failed to bowl on the first day at Lords against Pakistan, is a mere 3.33%. Much ado about nothing?A moments consideration will, however, reveal the unacceptability of such short-changing. Would, for example, all in attendance at a football match be content if the players downed tools after 87 minutes? Would cinema-goers put up with the last four minutes of a two-hour film being chopped off? Would the audience applaud were an orchestra to pack up without playing the last few bars of the symphony?Officially, 90 overs is a minimum, albeit more of a theoretical, aspirational minimum than a literal minimum. That it is well within the realms of possibility is highlighted by the fact that not only do recreational cricketers regularly fit 90 overs into an afternoon but also that it isnt completely unheard of for international teams to meet the target.Six hours of 15 overs each should therefore not be viewed as too taxing, even without making use of the extra half-hour, which is supposedly a reserve, only to be used if needed. Unfortunately, it now appears that the extra time is viewed as an entitlement rather than an option to be used only in extremis. To run past the official close time may be regarded as a misfortune; to fail to complete the overs in the extra time should be regarded as carelessness.Worse, it smacks of discourtesy. In much the same way that certain tins of chocolates appear to have quietly scaled down over the years, over rates are another example of almost invisible under-provision: the amount paid for the product stays the same, but less of the product is handed over.To put some figures on this, take the example of Englands 87 for 90 at Lords. A top-price ticket cost ￡90, meaning one over held a value of ￡1. Therefore a ticket holder would have failed to see anything for three of the pounds that he or she handed over. Three pounds may not seem like a great deal, but its not nothing. Not everyone at Lords is a London high-flyer awash with cash.Now bear in mind 29,000 were at Lords that day. Not all would have paid ￡90 - some tickets were down at ￡60, while some will have enjoyed hospitality in private boxes - so for purposes of argument, assume that the average ticket cost was ￡75, meaning the average loss would have equated to ￡2.50.Naturally, no refund was offered; none is given if even a mere 25 overs have been bowled, 27.78% of the supposed minimum, yet again highlighting the flexible nature of the word minimum. Twenty-nine thousand multiplied by ￡2.50 yields a collective loss of ￡72,500.So much for the financial element. However, more is at stake. On the last ball of the 87th over, Pakistan had lost their sixth wicket. Three further overs, including one from the on-song Chris Woakes, would have been engrossing watching. Of course, its not entirely correct to imagine the hypothetical overs as being added on to the end of the day; still, the more overs bowled during the day, the more chance of action for the spectators.It would be impractical to force players to complete the overs regardless of conditions - playing in darkness would unfairly penalise the batting side - but if players are not going to be required to complete the scheduled overs even when conditions are suitable,, then an effective way of policing it needs to be found, one that stands a chance of benefiting paying viewers.ddddddddddddThe current system of policing over rates via the threats of forfeiting match fees, or in extreme cases, banning captains, leaves much to be desired. Suspending captains, while obviously more likely to concentrate the minds of the players, is liable to be gamed. During the World T20 in 2012, when Mahela Jayawardene was in danger of incurring a suspension, Kumar Sangakkara was named as the official captain against England. Yet it quickly became apparent that Jayawardene was still in command on the field.Furthermore, suspending the captain perversely punishes the spectators at the next game, depriving them of seeing one of the teams best players, a point that has been made before. As far as match-fee fines go, while the threat of losing 20% of a ￡12,000 fee might be a significant restraint for mortals, its hard to see how it would be anything but water off an England captains back (water down the back being a common experience in that climate), and does nothing to compensate the ticket holders. In-game penalties, with immediate application, are the way forward. It is curious that in England the form of the game that least suffers from running slightly overtime - T20 - is the one where teams incur the heaviest immediate penalty: six runs if the 20th over has not commenced after 75 minutes. This is despite the fact that, arguably, neither the batting side nor the spectators miss out. All the necessary overs will still be bowled. If only 114 balls are delivered before the 75-minute cut-off, rather than the required 115, the net effect is only to increase the average time taken for each delivery from 39.13 seconds to 39.47. Its hard to justify a claim that the intensity would appreciably suffer without such a constraint, although, in fairness, the introduction of the countdown clock adds an extra element of tension to a crowd-pleasing format.Test match cricket needs such an in-game penalty much more than T20 does. A five-run penalty would be an obvious first step, but since five runs rarely makes much of a difference in a Test match, that appears too minor. Another possible approach would be to inflict a ten-over delay for the new ball - or, should the umpires determine that that would unduly benefit the fielding side, grant the batsmen ten overs with a ball of their choice: the old ball, a new ball, or an un-shined ball of comparable wear.A more radical solution would be that should the over rate in one session drop below the threshold, one fielder is suspended for the following session, forcing the team to make do with ten men. Such a penalty would wonderfully focus the minds of the fielding team, especially if the suspended fielder turned out to be their strike bowler. While spectators would be momentarily deprived of seeing that player perform, they would be treated to the extra intrigue of the batting side attempting to capitalise on their temporary significant advantage - an 11.11% reduction in fielders, excluding the keeper and bowler - as they saw fit, quite possibly through higher scoring for that session.Something similar could be arranged if the side at fault is batting in the next session. A player could be prevented from batting during that session, thus forcing a rejig of the batting order. If nine wickets were lost and one player was currently suspended, the team would be all out.Whichever approach is considered preferable, it is time to make over rates an in-game rather than post-game issue, for the sake of the spectators. As a noted England skipper, of sorts, was once said to say after a humbling defeat: I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. Were a few more captains to experience such sentiments, over rates and their associated debates might be relegated to the past. ' ' '