All posts by csb10.top

The Sri Lankan selectors have picked a 27-man squad for the forthcomingPakistan A tour of Sri Lanka, which was to commence on the 9th May, but hasnow been delayed until the end of May.The squad includes a number of players, who have played for the senior side,including Dilhara Fernando, Akalaka Ganegama, Thilan Samaraweera, AvishkaGunawardene, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Chamara Silva, Lanka de Silva, PrasannaJayawardene, Indika Gallage, Rangana Herath, Malinga Bandara and SureshPerera, who has finally recovered from injury and is being keenly watched bythe Sri Lankan management as they look for an all rounder for the 2003 WorldCup.There is, however, no space in the squad for left arm spinner DinukHettiarachchi, who impressed in the final Test Match against England, andNiroshan Banadaratillake, who looked to have bowled his way back intointernational contention just a few weeks ago. Their places have been takenby Sajeewa Weerakoon, a left arm spinner who has taken 66 first-classwickets for BRC this season, and Sajeeka Abeynayake, who plays forBloomfield. Malintha Warnapura, an off spinning all rounder, who played forSri Lanka in the Commonwealth Games comes back into contention.The pace bowling looks strong with the likes of Dilhara Fernando, AkalankaGanegama, Indika Gallage, Suresh Perera, being joined with Dinusha Fernandoand Sujeewa de Silva.The batting includes a number of exciting uncapped young players: SukithPeiris, who impressed on the recent Under 19 tour of Australia, the freeflowing Jevantha Kalatunga, Michael Vandort, Jehan Mubarak, MuthumudaligePushpakumara, who impressed against England, and Ian Daniel.The squad is currently training under the guidance of A-team coach, HemanthaDevapriya, and Under 19 coach, Owen Mattau.Full Squad:Avishka Gunawardene, Jehan Mubarak, Sukith Peiris, Chamara Silva, Lanka deSilva, Malintha Warnapura, Thilan Samaraweera, Rangana Herath, KaushalyaLoukuarachchi, Sujeewa de Silva, Indika Gallage, Gayan Wijekoon, DinushaFernando, Michael Van Dort, Shantha Kalavitgoda, Ian Daniel, TillakaratneDilshan, Upeka Fernando, Jevantha Kulatunga, Muthumudalige Pushpakumara,Suresh Perera, Sajeewa Weerakoon, Malinga Bandara, Akalanka Ganegama,Dilhara Fernando, Prasanna Jayawardene, Sajeka Abeynayake.

Pakistan go in to the First Test with question marks over the form of several key players and doubts as to whether they have had enough match practise.

With rain washing out the final day of the tourists game against Kent, Pakistan missed out on their final chance of cricket prior to the Test at Lord’s starting on Thursday. Although the huge first wicket partnership of 307 between Saeed Anwar and Saleem Elahi in the first innings of the Kent game showed those two players to be in fine touch, it also prevented any of the other batsmen benefiting from time in the middle.Yousuf Youhana has managed only nine runs in three innings, Inzamam-ul-Haq 31 from two and some of the others have barely had a bat. The seamers, too, have looked a little rusty in conceding centuries to English county players, Matthew Dowman and Robert Key.Richard Pybus, the Pakistan coach played down the lack of preparation, pointing out that the early summer weather in England was such that time was bound to be lost in the warm-up games. He also stated his belief that the inherent class of the Pakistan players, and their Test experience, would stand them in good stead.”At the start of the tour if you had said how many days would you bank on playing going into the first Test, we would have been quite pleased to have lost only one,” Pybus remarked.”These are experienced Test players and guys like ‘Inzi’ know when to turn it on. I don’t think he’s got any concerns himself so from the coaching side, if the player is confident, I am happy.”Players of their quality are confident in themselves. I remember a situation a couple of years ago where Saeed Anwar hadn’t played any cricket at all for four months, got called to the Sahara Trophy and took his bat and went out and scored 80-odd against the West Indies.”If the guys are mentally tough enough they can adapt,” he insisted.Shoaib Akhtar is one man for whom the First Test has come too early, however. The fast bowler has been beset by injury problems, illness and doubts over his action and has only just returned to first-class cricket. His performance at Derby illustrated that there was still some work to do before he was match fit and it would be a major surprise if he were to make the Test starting XI.Pybus was happy just to see the man reputed to be the fastest bowler in the world on the road to recovery.”It’s great just to see him running in, the gastroenteritis he had took a hell of a lot out of him,” Pybus explained. “It’s important for him that he’s working hard, he’s got a smile on his face again. He’s had a long time out of cricket.”

After the opening hour on the second day of the Galle Test, Sri Lanka were 50 for 5 in their first innings, in response to New Zealand’s 221. Before the third day was done, the Test was finished, and Sri Lanka had won by ten wickets.”This is what winning Test matches is all about,” Mahela Jayawardene said after his team took a 1-0 lead in the series. “Winning tough moments and getting ourselves into a winning position under pressure.”It was a good Test match for the first two days. New Zealand fought really well with the new ball and put us under a lot of pressure. We managed to fight through that situation and get ourselves into a position where the first innings wouldn’t have mattered.”Through half-centuries from Jayawardene and Angelo Mathews, Sri Lanka bounced back from 50 for 5 and made 247, taking a slender first-innings lead. The Test had effectively become a one-innings contest.”We then had to play the last two innings well to win the Test match, and Rangana [Herath] and Nuwan [Kulasekara] bowled really well this morning to give us that opportunity,” Jayawardene said.New Zealand began the third day on 35 for 1 but collapsed against Kulasekara and Herath, who finished with 11 wickets in the match. They were dismissed for 118 and Sri Lanka’s openers achieved the target of 93 in the 19th over. Despite New Zealand’s capitulation, Jayawardene said they were “a fighting team”.”Their batsmen struggled purely because of some quality bowling,” he said. “Usually at Galle, the team that wins the toss and bats first holds the advantage and goes onto win the match. When we lost the toss, what we spoke about was to make sure that we kept the pressure on. The only thing we could do was to make sure we didn’t give them a good advantage after the first day.”Jayawardene said the Galle pitch was “a very good wicket, not one that will deteriorate much until the fourth and fifth day.””It still looked a very good wicket after the match,” Jayawardene said. “I thought Shaminda [Eranga] and Kule [Kulesekara] bowled really well up front, to take some early wickets and put their middle order under pressure, and Rangana came and bowled really well. When you lose the toss in these situations, you have to play safe and stay in control.”

Undaunted by the imposing Madhya Pradesh total of 490, Hyderabad did well in replying with 300 for four wickets off 99 overs at stumps on the third day of the Ranji Trophy pre-quarterfinal at the Daly college grounds in Indore on Monday.Hyderabad resumed at 34 without loss and openers Daniel Manohar and wicketkeeper M Srinivas put on 116 runs off 31 overs before the former gave Narendra Hirwani a return catch. Manohar faced 111 balls and hit seven of them to the ropes. Srinivas then found another able partner in Anirudh Singh and the two increased the score by 89 runs during a second wicket association that lasted 32.3 overs. Srinivas, who had by then reached his century, was second out at 205 when he was bowled by Bundela. For his 107, the 26-year-old right hander batted 4-1/2 hours, faced 186 balls and hit 12 fours and a six.Anirudh Singh was third out at 223 when he was caught by Yadav off Chauhan for 42. He faced 108 balls and hit five fours and a six. But Vanka Pratap and Vinay Kumar (27) then carried on the good work by adding 50 runs off 19.1 overs for the fourth wicket. Vinay Kumar was bowled by Chauhan but by close, Vanka Pratap had diligently built his score to 47 off 107 balls with five hits to the ropes. Keeping him company is skipper A Nandakishore (7). The stage is set for a keen duel for the all important first innings lead on Tuesday.

New Zealand batsman Dean Brownlie will travel to India in October, to work on his batting in spinner-friendly conditions. Brownlie, who was dropped from the New Zealand squad after a poor tour of the Caribbean, said he had been looking to take up such a training stint for ‘a couple of years’.”I’ve wanted this for quite a while,” Brownlie told . “I’ve been pushing for this for a couple of years, because I didn’t want to waste a tour – I suppose, like I did [against West Indies] – working out my best way to play in those conditions. But the cricket has been so full on and so busy, so it’s been hard to get the time to do it.”Brownlie will train at a Mumbai academy for five days, before heading to Pune to play in a few local matches. He will leave for India soon after the completion of New Zealand A’s home series against India A, which runs from September 18 to October 6.In the Caribbean, Brownlie had been dismissed on five occasions out of nine (including the tour game against WICB President’s XI) by the spinners, and got into double digits only twice on the tour, with a highest of 35.More than the technical aspects of his game, though, it is the mental side of it that needed some working on, Brownlie said. “It’s not so much about making big changes,” he said. “I need to learn to trust my game a little bit more. I realise it shouldn’t have taken six weeks on tour [in the West Indies] to realise what I was doing wrong, but it did.”I think I can play spin well, but I do need to work on how I play it in those [slow, low] conditions.”

Barbados offspinner Ashley Nurse has been called up to the West Indies A squad that will tour India later in September, in place of Shane Shillingford. The A tour of India is set to begin on September 15 and will comprise three one-day matches, one T20 and three four-day matches.Nurse had enjoyed a successful debut first-class season for Barbados, finishing third in the wicket-taker’s list with 45 scalps. Shillingford was the overall leader with 71.As the original West Indies A squad had been announced on August 28, and the West Indies tour of India announced subsequently on September 4, the WICB sought to replace Shillingford in the A squad and use Nurse in his place. Shillingford will most likely be in the Test squad for the tour of India, which begins at the end of October.It was also announced that the schedule had been adjusted, with all the matches barring the last four-day game in Hubli being brought forward by a day. The one-dayers and the T20 will be played in Bangalore, while the three four-day games are at Gangotri Glades in Mysore, the JNNCE ground in Shimoga, and the KSCA ground in Hubli.West Indies A squad: Kirk Edwards (capt), Kieran Powell, Kraigg Brathwaite, Jonathan Carter, Sheldon Cotterell, Miguel Cummins, Narsingh Deonarine, Assad Fudadin, Jahmar Hamilton, Delorn Johnson, Leon Johnson, Nikita Miller, Ashley Nurse, Veerasammy Permaul, Chadwick Walton.

Australia’s former coach Mickey Arthur has revealed the tourists planned to inflict damage and gain intelligence on England in the away series before pushing hardest to regain the Ashes in the return bout at home. He also said the 3-0 scoreline would not have changed irrespective of selections because “that is what we’ve got at the moment”.While the new coach Darren Lehmann had stated before the series that his objective was simply to “win, win, win”, there had been some suggestions that Cricket Australia would be content with a competitive showing in England, provided the home matches would reap a winning result. Arthur confirmed that he and the captain Michael Clarke had been talking in terms of using the first series to prepare for the second.”We had a goal that I will reveal. We wanted to try to push England really hard in England, but we wanted to win in Australia, this is what Michael and I wanted to do,” Arthur told ABC Radio. “We didn’t go into the series ever to lose it, but we wanted to develop enough intelligence on all the England players, we had a lot but there was going to be some current stuff we could use.”We were going to really push them close, give the players in our team the confidence to see that England could get beaten, and then go for them in Australia. That was how we wanted to go about our escapade there. You could have put anybody in [the team], the results were going to be the results because that is what we’ve got at the moment. That is the current crop of players. But as coaches it’s such a good challenge because there’s so much unfulfilled potential that you can make better.”Arthur was not the only senior CA figure pushing this view before the start of the series, and some players are understood to have been taken aback by the attitude when they assembled together in Bristol before the tour officially began. It remains to be seen whether the current leadership of Clarke and Lehmann have managed to glean enough from this series to help them at home.Looking back on his time as coach, a period ended suddenly in England before the Ashes tour and then played out acrimoniously in a legal battle with CA over severance payments, Arthur said a 4-0 defeat in India and its associated disciplinary problems had been a major blow. For that he cited the BCCI’s desire to avenge an identical series ledger in Australia in 2011-12, duly preparing pitches to suit the purpose.”India was a really tough tour for us in so many ways. I’ve been privileged to tour India a couple of times and those were the worst conditions that I’d ever seen,” Arthur said. “They hijacked us, and they clearly wanted revenge for the 4-0 series win we had got when they toured here the last time.”One goes back to the Perth Test where the wicket was green and we played to our strengths and won the Test in two and a half days. They clearly wanted retribution for that and produced some of the toughest conditions I’d ever seen. They went out of their way to prepare those conditions and I can’t argue with that.”Despite the circumstances of his departure, Arthur said he had been watching the Ashes series very closely. Too closely, perhaps, for members of his family, who had asked him why he could not let it go. “I’ve been watching every ball of the Ashes,” he said. “My family has been saying ‘let it go’ and I can’t. I’ve spent too much time with these boys trying to make them better cricketers, I’ve got to watch it.”I am talking to the television. The funny thing as a coach is with a trained eye and knowing the psyche of all the players, I can sit and watch something developing and know what’s going to happen an over later. I’m going ‘don’t do that again, keep hitting straight, they’re trying to set you up for the lbw … keep hitting straight, oh across the line, damn lbw again’.”

ScorecardThilan Samaraweera’s innings proved in vain•Getty Images

Glamorgan resurrected their hopes of reaching the Friends Life T20 quarter-finals with a final over victory over Worcestershire in Cardiff. The hosts were indebted to half centuries from Murray Goodwin and Jim Allenby and a match-winning cameo from Ben Wright. Set 158 to win, Glamorgan won by five wickets with five balls to spare.Glamorgan went into the match having lost three on the trot after they had won all four of their first group games. But they suffered three setbacks in the opening eight overs as they slipped to 46 for 3 in response to Worcestershire’s 157 for 6.The home side lost Mark Wallace in the second over before Chris Cooke was caught at third man and then skipper Marcus North was trapped leg before by Moeen Ali. Even with Allenby looking in good form and with Goodwin in support they needed 100 from 10 overs.Allenby took the pressure off by hitting a six off Shaaiq Choudhry and that started a good spell for Glamorgan as he and Goodwin shared a partnership of 59 off 43 balls for the fourth wicket. But Allenby, who reached his 50 from 42 balls, holed out off Gareth Andrew. At that stage Glamorgan needed 53 from 32 balls, which became 37 required from the final four overs.Goodwin brought up his 50 from 30 balls but was caught off the last ball of the 18th over to leave Glamorgan still needing 18 from the final 12 balls. But Wright, 22 not out from 12 balls, produced a productive penultimate over scoring 13 from the first four balls which meant Glamorgan needed only one to win from the final over.After Worcestershire won the toss Thilan Samaraweera was the mainstay of their innings with 65 from 42 balls with eight fours and a six.After being restricted to only 27 for 1 in the opening six overs, bowled exclusively by the seamers on a greenish pitch, Samaraweera dominated a second wicket stand with Alexi Kervezee worth 91 in 10.1 overs. That was after Ali was caught at cover off Wagg, who ended as Glamorgan’s star bowler with three for 15 from his four overs.Worcestershire accelerated their score when the spinners were on. The slower bowlers conceded 98 runs from nine overs. The visitors had looked well set thanks to Sri Lankan Samaraweera before he was run out by a direct hit from Goodwin in the 14th over with Worcestershire 103for 2.West Indian Andre Russell was bowled from an inside edge from Wagg before Nathan McCullum picked up the wicket of Kervezee (44 from 40 balls) in his final over. Wagg claimed a third wicket when Joe Leach was caught on the deep midwicket boundary before Ben Cox went in Michael Hogan’s final over.

Cricket Australia chairman Wally Edwards has given his chief executive James Sutherland the full support of the board, but there is no reason to believe that means what it usually does.As CEO of the game’s governing body in Australia since 2001, Sutherland is facing the kind of pressure he has artfully avoided for most of a 12-year tenure, for his role in Australian cricket’s descent into a pronounced dive. The sacking of Mickey Arthur and his replacement by Darren Lehmann a mere two weeks before the start of an Ashes series has led to serious questions about how Sutherland allowed the national team to reach a point of such disarray before intervening.However Edwards was unequivocal in his support for Sutherland, who recently negotiated a new A$500 million domestic television rights deal and remains secure in his position. There is no indication of the board offering its full support immediately before choosing to reach for the knife in the time-honoured manner. “Absolutely, without question,” Edwards told when asked whether Sutherland had the board completely in his corner. “We are very comfortable with the way things are tracking at that level.”Arguably the least visible chairman among cricket’s Full Member nations, Edwards stood to one side and watched Sutherland and the team performance manager Pat Howard explain at a press conference in Bristol why they had decided to jettison Arthur little more than halfway into a three-year contract. Edwards’ amiable, quiet way of doing business has been similar to Sutherland, but he supported the decisive action that took place before the Ashes squad assembled in Taunton.”That’s the reason for changing coaches, that things were not progressing the way we wanted, so that hard decision was made,” Edwards said. “That came initially from management. It would have been easy to ignore, to say let’s leave it for another year or six months and let the contract run its course, but we didn’t. That is what I call managing the business.”Sutherland and Howard were both offsite during the dramas of the India tour, leaving Arthur to mete out a punishment that caused former England captain Michael Atherton to suggest in the coach had been guaranteed to lose his job the moment he decided to suspend four players from a Test match for failing to follow instructions. Edwards did not deny more needed to be done.”That was a difficult time, no question, and it’s in those circumstances that the stress levels rise and issues that exist burst forth. That is what happened,” Edwards said. “We all wish that hadn’t happened, but it did happen. There are probably still issues there to be resolved. We will see how the new coach and new structure works.”In hindsight you can always do things better, but at the time it was a fast-moving issue and management and the board grappled with it as best we could with the information we had. We did what we thought was right at the time and backed management on the ground.”Sutherland did his share of deflecting in Bristol when pushed on whether he had considered his own position, and whether he had let things get out of hand just as Arthur, captain Michael Clarke and the team management had done in India and then during the Champions Trophy.”I don’t think it’s about me at all but it is about Australian cricket fans and what they want and expect from Australian cricketers,” Sutherland said. “It’s certainly caused me to reflect on issues and performance-related matters that as an organisation we need to take responsibility for.”

Overview

It’s that time of the season South Africa dread: major tournament time. No matter how much they try to convince supporters, the media and themselves, there is no doubt that major ICC events inevitably invoke anxiety. This undoubtedly leads to the same questions: Will they finally win? If not, how will they exit this time? And how bad will the aftermath be?What makes this time different is…. Absolutely nothing. Instead of talking up the current squad as being the one that will change South Africa’s fortunes, Gary Kirsten did not promise anything. He only “hopes” that the team can do better than they have in previous tournaments, and even if they don’t, he said he would leave the job a happy man.That will not lessen the pressure on the fifteen who will travel to England. They know that apart from saying goodbye to Kirsten, they have fans to appease and a point to prove.With no Graeme Smith or Jacques Kallis, they are low on experience and will rely on the more quiet leaders such as Hashim Amla and Robin Peterson, to assist AB de Villiers. Their batting line-up is the less settled of the two departments, which will put extra responsibility on the bowlers. Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Lonwabo Tsotsobe have been through enough campaigns to have seen what it takes to win.AB de Villiers has plenty to ponder over the coming few weeks as captain, wicketkeeper and senior batsman•AFP

Key player

AB de Villiers has been called one of the most talented players of his generation, and was voted the most innovative batsman at the recent IPL. His contributions will be crucial to South Africa’s success. Whether he promotes himself up the order to allow more time to launch an assault, or saves himself for a late burst, de Villiers will set the tone for South Africa’s totals.He will play an equally important role as captain, where his tactical acumen will have to be at its highest in the absence of Smith and Kallis. While not having the senior men around could be a disadvantage, it could also give de Villiers the space he needs to establish his own leadership style, which will be important for South Africa’s development.

Surprise package

Having established himself in the Test team Alviro Petersen earned a recall to the one-day side on county form and reputation. In two championship matches for Somerset, he accumulated 437 runs, but his only notable limited-overs contribution of late was an unbeaten 63 in the Yorkshire Bank 40.Andrew Hudson, convenor of selectors, said Petersen was picked over Henry Davids and Quinton de Kock because of the experience he could add to a line-up missing Smith. “We don’t want to be 10 for 2 upfront, we’d rather have someone who can give us solid starts,” Hudson said. Petersen is not known for his big shots, but is level-headed and can build an innings. With South Africa aiming for safety first, this could be his opportunity to show he belongs in the shorter formats too.

Weakness

Since 1999, South Africa’s biggest challenge in major tournaments has been overcoming themselves and dealing with expectation. So far, they have not been able to get it right. Be it miscalculation of a Duckworth-Lewis target like in 2003, or mind games in 2011. When pressure mounts, South Africa struggle.Any opponent who has done their homework will know the best way to beat them is mentally, although this time they can also exploit an unsettled batting line-up. With a new opening pair, a young No.3, and inexperience running through parts of the squad, South Africa will be vulnerable in this department too.

Champions Trophy history

South Africa have reason to remember this competition with pride because it is the only ICC event they have won. They were the inaugural champions in 1998 when the format was still a knockout, beating West Indies in the final.In the next edition, they broke another common misconception by winning a knockout match in a major event when they beat England in the quarter-finals. They did not defend the title, though, and their results went downhill from there.In 2002 and 2006, they lost in the semi-finals, but the real heartbreak came when they hosted the tournament in 2009. They were set a steep target of 324 to beat England in the group stage and qualify for the next round. Smith scored a century in the cause but was denied a runner by Andrew Strauss, and eventually fell with South Africa too far behind.

Recent form

At fourth place on the ICC’s ODI rankings, South Africa do not go into this tournament as one of the favourites, but that is probably more because of the transition phase they are in, than where they lie on the charts. Their results have not been as consistent of late as Kirsten shifted the focus to Test cricket for the two years of his tenure.Last summer, South Africa lost a home series to New Zealand 2-1 and beat Pakistan 3-2, but it was a hard-fought series that went down to the final fixture. Since Kirsten took over in 2011, South Africa have played 24 ODIs, won 13, lost 10 and had one no-result. Their win percentage has dropped to 54% from around 62% overall.