Category Uncategorized

Ridley Jacobs has been left out of the West Indies squad for the ICC Champions Trophy in September. He was replaced by Courtney Browne, who won a place as a result of consistent performances in the regional competitions.Though a 14-member squad was announced, the captain was only named following a meeting of the West Indies Cricket Board. The Board met on August 11 to ratify the selectors’ recommendation, and gave another chance to Brian Lara to turn things round after a dismal spell in charge of the team. Ramnaresh Sarwan was reappointed as his deputy.Mervyn Dillon was also recalled, as the selectors felt that his presence would add experience to the bowling attack. Wavell Hinds was included after passing a fitness test conducted by a medical panel.Six players were left out from the 15-member squad that played in the recent NatWest tournament. Carlton Baugh, Tino Best, Ridley Jacobs, Ravi Rampaul, Darren Sammy and Devon Smith were those to miss out. While Best and Rampaul were forced out by injury, the rest were axed for their lack of performance.Squad
1 Chris Gayle, 2 Wavell Hinds, 3 Brian Lara, 4 Ramnaresh Sarwan, 5 Shivnarine Chanderpaul, 6 Dwayne Smith, 7 Dwayne Bravo, 8 Ricardo Powell, 9 Courtney Browne (wk), 10 Sylvester Joseph, 11 Mervyn Dillon, 12 Corey Collymore, 13 Ian Bradshaw, 14 Jermaine Lawson.

A Derbyshire Scorpions XI will play an inaugural fixture under the new Twenty20 Cup rules at the County Ground, Derby against a Derbyshire Premier Cricket League XI.The match – beginning at 5.30pm on Friday May 16 – will be played in coloured clothing and with a white ball, and admission to the 20 over per side game will be free of charge to spectators. Refreshments will be available on the evening. This shortened variety of the game takes less than 3 hours from start to finish.The purpose of the fixture is twofold – to promote the relationship between the respective organisations, and to provide a flavour of the exciting new competition being introduced to spectators in 2003."This provides a great test for the professionals against the best of the recreational game in Derbyshire – and should give everyone a glimpse of the thrills and spills that Twenty20 is intended to provide. The game is designed to attract new supporters to cricket, and we hope that local people will support their Club and County," said Derbyshire CCC Chief Executive, John Smedley.In the Twenty20 Cup regional zones, Derbyshire Scorpions will play three away fixtures and two home against County opposition – the home games will be versus local rivals Nottinghamshire Outlaws on Thursday 19th June, and the Durham Dynamos on Monday June 23rd.Twenty20 Cup Ticket information

Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly today praised his fast bowlersfor the discipline they showed in the second Test but said somethingneeded to be done about their seeming inability to polish off thetail. “I think it is creating a bit of a problem for us. We will tryto do something about this (in the third Test) in Colombo,” he saidreferring to Muthiah Muralitharan’s blistering knock of 67 whichenabled Sri Lanka to fight back from 157 for nine to 221 in theirsecond innings.Ganguly rated his own match-winning knock of 98 as one of the betterones and said his prolonged poor run with the bat had been hurtinghim. “I think it is one of my better Test knocks because it helpedIndia win,” Ganguly said referring to his brilliant knock which toolIndia to a seven-wicket win in the second Test against Sri Lanka.Ganguly, who had gone without a half-century in the last 13 innings ina frustrating poor trot, finally got his act together and played abrilliant innings yesterday. “The lack of runs was very upsetting,especially since I am the captain,” he said. Ganguly’s scintillatingknock was blemished by two dropped catches but the Indian captain feltit was only justified as he has had a number of hard decisions in therecent past. “It’s all equal now.”Meanwhile, Sri Lankan captain Sanath Jayasuriya refused to accept thatKandy was a jinxed venue for his team which has lost the last threematches on this ground. Every time they have squandered a 1-0 leadtaken in Galle. “We can’t complain about this venue. Just because weare not playing well, we can’t put the blame on the venue,” he said.Jayasuriya insisted that it was below-par performance by the batsmenthat let the team down. “This is bound to happen if the batsmen arenot performing. We got a lead of 42 runs in the first innings and thenthrew it away,” said the captain who himself failed to impress scoringthree and six in the two innings.He said the turning point of the match was when Sri Lanka lost fourwickets in the opening session on the third day and hoped that in thedeciding Test in Colombo, his team would come up with a performancesimilar to the one in the first Test in Galle. “We have to playpositive cricket in Colombo, like we did in Galle. The batsmen have abig responsibility,” he concluded.

Former West Indies fast bowler Courtney Walsh and renowned American fielding guru Mike Young have signed on to be a part of the coaching staff at the ICC Americas selection combine to be held at Indianapolis World Sports Park in September.”I’m really excited by this opportunity to help identify and work with some of the best talent in the Americas,” Walsh said in an ICC press release. “It’s great that the ICC and the WICB are working together on this initiative that can only help cricket develop in the region.”Applications for players who are eligible to play for countries within the ICC Americas region were due to close on Friday, but the deadline has been extended an additional week through to July 24. Up to 100 players from around the region will be invited to phase one of the combine from September 18, as they compete for spots in a regional squad to participate in the WICB 50-over domestic tournament next January.A select group of players from phase one will then be invited back to phase two from September 24, where they will join pre-selected players based on performances from the ICC Americas championship in May, and the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier currently taking place in Ireland and Scotland. After the conclusion of phase two, a final squad will be chosen and top-performing players may also receive invitations to trial for teams in the 2016 Caribbean Premier League.Walsh is currently a WICB selector and bowling coach for the Jamaica Tallawahs. In 2011, he served as tour manager for the West Indies U-19 team in Florida where they swept the USA U-19 team in a four-match 50-over series. Young, a Chicago native, has been a specialist fielding coach serving on and off with Australia for the last 14 years, including at the 2015 World Cup.

While celebrating the Lord’s Test as a spirited contest between bat and ball nobody should forget the services rendered by Matt Prior, Sreesanth, Ryan Sidebottom, Sourav Ganguly, Kevin Pietersen and Michael Vaughan. Their contribution with bat and ball was crucial; their contribution with the lip more so.Contests work well with a bit of needle and watching cricketers react to provocation is a stirring spectacle in any sport. West Indies created history by chasing 418 at Antigua in 2003 but what stuck in the memory was Ramnaresh Sarwan’s squabble with Glenn McGrath.India v England has historically been a battle of the milk-sops. Pakistan v England matches regularly touch boiling point, West Indies v England has had blackwashes and batteries of raw pace, India v Pakistan an air of sibling rivalry. India v England has seen some tiffs, like the famous Vaseline controversy surrounding John Lever in 1976-77, but the overwhelming atmosphere is one of genteelness. Gundappa Viswanath even called back Bob Taylor in the Jubilee Test of 1980, after the umpire had given Taylor out. Now that’s just not cricket.After a largely bland first two days at Lord’s, Sreesanth added spice on the third evening when he fielded a straight-drive from Andrew Strauss and flung it right back at the batsman. Smack, flush on Strauss’ backside. The response from Strauss, backing away to the next ball when Sreesanth was halfway through his run-up, produced giggles. On such skirmishes does the character of a match hinge.Sidebottom chipped in with his share of aggro, shaking his head and the mop of hair above it, but it was really Prior who raised the bar. On the fourth evening, with Dinesh Karthik moving towards his fifty, Prior decided to step in, chirping “Come on Dhoni” every time he was within earshot. When Karthik blocked, Prior didn’t approve: “Let’s get the entertainer in.” Karthik, as if he were at prep school, thought of complaining to the umpire but he was lucky that Sourav Ganguly, that notorious streetfighter, was at the non-striker’s end. Ganguly pulled him back and took on Michael Vaughan and Kevin Pietersen on his own, a verbal joust that carried on even after stumps.”It wasn’t a great deal,” Vaughan said today, downplaying the chit-chat, “just a bit of talking after play seeing how he was going to play in the morning, that was all. I didn’t hear Karthik say anything. It was just a bit of playful banter. You’re always trying to put the batsman off, but it was nothing really.”What of Prior’s superlative effort behind the stumps? “Most keepers are of a pretty similar character. He’s doing well at the moment and I guess it’s part of his armoury to try and get one up on the batsman. I don’t think many batsmen listen but it’s certainly part of his armoury.”The seeds of the current generation’s rivalry were sown by Ganguly, Andrew Flintoff and Nasser Hussain; two of them bared their chest, all wore their heart on their sleeve. Ganguly’s stint at Lancashire, when he appears to have rubbed up many the wrong way, was when a largely peaceful bilateral relationship turned interesting. Hussain’s stubbornness helped. At Headingley in 2002, when India were 500 for 3 with Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar slaughtering the bowling in the dark, Hussain decided to turn on the sledging. The retort: “We want to hear you talk the same way when you go to the Ashes in December, don’t keep quiet there.”Vaughan, it is said, built on the cricketing platform laid by Hussain. He seems to be following suit in the bantering as well. “We are trying to play our cricket with a real intensity about it,” he said, “and that involves being a little bit aggressive. It’s nothing that we haven’t done in the past, it’s just something we’re doing well at the minute.”Even Rahul Dravid, that ultimate diplomat, didn’t seem to have a problem. “There has got to be a bit of that [chit-chat] in international cricket, especially in close games like Lord’s,” he said with a smile. “The team knows they’ve got to give everything to win or save a match on the last day. Tempers can get frayed, but the relations between the two teams have been good, off the field as well. I was happy with the spirit in which the first match was played. I don’t think it went across the line, a bit of that is good for the game.” In an era of clichés and plastic PR, it probably is.

Andrew Flintoff has insisted his recovery from an ankle injury is progressing well as he backed himself to return to England’s starting line-up in the first Ashes Test.Flintoff, whom the England selectors want to captain the team in Australia, said he was confident he would take the field at Brisbane’s Gabba ground on November 23. “I’m about three weeks in to a 12-week rehab which will finish probably mid-October,” he told BBC television on Tuesday. “We don’t leave for the Ashes until the first week in November, the first Test isn’t until the back end of November, so I’m confident I’ll be fine.”He believed England needed to beat Pakistan in the fourth and final Test at The Oval, which starts Thursday, to give them a confidence boost going into the their Ashes defence. “You want to take momentum going into a big series like this. Hopefully we can do that at The Oval this weekend and win the series 3-0. If we play anything like we have done over these past two Test matches we’ll have a great shout.”Flintoff was the outstanding performer in England’s 2-1 Ashes series triumph last year with 402 runs and 24 wickets. The next big date in his calendar is a benefit event on August 24 at Old Trafford in Manchester when his county, Lancashire, take on Flintoff’s England XI. “It’s going to be two good sides playing against each other,” Flintoff said. “For England a side with the likes of Steve Harmison, Paul Collingwood, Ian Bell, Monty Panesar to name a few. For Lancashire, the likes of Darren Lehmann and Chris Cairns are going to guest for them.”

Sourav Ganguly, the former Indian captain, has laid to rest all speculation of a power-struggle for captaincy by saying that he had no issues playing under Rahul Dravid, the current Indian captain. He has said that his top priority was to score runs for the team.”I have played under other captains, so it should be no problem. I am happy to play anywhere, whatever suits the team, Rahul [Dravid] and Greg [Chappell],” Ganguly told PTI. “I have been selected in the team to perform, as was the case when I was picked for the first time. You have to perform at this level.” He was banned for six one-day internationals by the ICC for slow over-rates when Pakistan toured India in April. The ban was reduced to four ODIs by Albie Sachs, an ICC-appointed arbitrator, following a BCCI appeal on Ganguly’s behalf. He spent the last two months playing for Glamorgan and has regained some form on the English county circuit. “I have been in touch with the game and it would be good to score runs and help India win the trophy,” said Ganguly. “As I can see if we bat well in the competition we have a good chance of winning.”The pitch at Dambulla has not been conducive to prolific run-making and Ganguly said that he had a fair idea of how to negotiate the wicket. “It is a kind of wicket where you have to grind for your runs. You don’t get easy runs here. I am not too sure about the pace; perhaps it is two-paced.”After all the attention he received for five-and-a-half years as the Indian captain, Ganguly said that a break from the spotlight would be appreciated. “Actually, I don’t mind it [lack of attention]. I had a lot of attention for five years. If for the next three or four games, or whatever happens in this series, I am not too worried. Whatever will happen, will happen.”Ganguly said that his wealth of experience would always be available to Dravid if required. “As I see it, it will be hard work for Rahul. It always is for the captain. There are a lot of things which are on mind and if I feel something could benefit the team, I will definitely pass on the suggestion to him.”Ganguly, who is 33 short of 10,000 runs in one-day cricket – a feat achieved only by Sachin Tendulkar and Inzamam-ul-Haq, said that he was looking forward to the milestone. “It is something I am looking forward to,” said Ganguly “but more than personal marks, I am keen to do my bit for the team to win the trophy.”

It is being suggested that the Sydney Cricket Ground could lose its status as the primary venue for international cricket in New South Wales. ABC Sport has reported that Cricket New South Wales is calling for tenders for a long-term contract to host international and domestic matches. Their contract with the SCG ends in September 2005.The SCG has long been one of the great venues of international cricket. Cricket has been played there since the 1850s, and it hosted its first Test in 1881-82. A total of 91 Tests have been played there, the most recent being the classic between Australia and India earlier this year, in which Steve Waugh ended his career and Sachin Tendulkar (241 and 60 not out) and Anil Kumble (12 for 279) almost took India to a series-winning victory.The Olympic Stadium has a capacity of over 80,000, and New South Wales have already played two domestic one-day games there. But can the splendour of the new ground win out over the sense of history that the SCG evokes? Watch this space.

Worcestershire County Cricket Club retained their unbeaten tour record against a strong Kwa-Zulu Natal Invitation XI in Phalaborwa, on the edge of the Kruger National Park in South Africa, yesterday.On a slow damp wicket with movement for the ball off the seam, Worcestershire were asked to bat first and reached a final total of 189 all out. David Leatherdale top scored with 67 helped by Vikram Solanki with 42. In reply the Invitational XI struggled to reach a final total of 152 with David Leatherdale once again leading the way with 4 wickets backed up by Chris Liptrot with 3 wickets and Mark Harrity with two wickets to help secure a 37 run victory and a third successive victory.The final tour game will take place on Friday against an NCD Invitational XI before the squad fly home on Monday. The team will travel to Hove to take on Sussex next Wednesday and Thursday.Overseas Player Nantie Hayward flies in next Tuesday to join the team during the final weeks of pre season training before the opening 4 day game against Hampshire at New Road on Friday 18th April.

A place in the semi-finals of the ECB Under-17 County Championships awaits Hampshire Young Cricketers – if they can beat Glamorgan in a two-day match starting at the Rose Bowl on Thursday, 11am.Hampshire are able to name a full strength squad, which includes New Milton pair Ben Neal and David Wheeler.Hampshire squad: Ed Brogan (Burridge)(Captain), Michael Barnes (Portsmouth), Paul Cass (Calmore Sports), Dave Griffiths (Shanklin), Matt Hooper (Andover), Chris Lyon (Guildford), Kevin Latouf (Flamingos), Mark Mitchell (Ventnor), Ben Neal (New Milton), John Richardson (Locks Heath), James Walters (Winchester College), David Wheeler (New Milton), Chris Wright (Liphook & Ripsley).