A mixture of insipid Mumbai bowling and inspired Tamil Nadu battingsaw the visitors post a more than healthy 397/4 at the end of thefirst day of the Ranji Trophy semifinal at the Wankhede stadium onTuesday. With both Robin Singh and Hemang Badani at the crease withbig hundreds to their names, Tamil Nadu can look forward to puttingthe pressure on the Mumbai side tomorrow.The wicket proved to have a bit of juice in it. The ball came nicelyonto the bat off the bowling of both opening speedsters. There was noexaggerated lateral movement, but just enough nip to keep the batsmenon their toes.Sreedharan Sriram’s golden run with the bat came to a premature endafter he had scored just two runs at the Wankhede Stadium. Thesouthpaw came to this match with 1063 runs from seven innings behindhim. Ajit Agakar, generating good pace, got the ball to fly past theoutside more than once before he finally had his man. Swishing at adelivery just outside the off stump, Sriram nicked the ball through tostumper Dighe who held the catch with ease.S Ramesh looked good for his 44 at the crease but was run outattempting one cheeky single too many. Ramesh was found short of hiscrease by a good pick up and throw from Amol Muzumdar in theinfield. JR Madanagopal’s streaky stay at the crease lasted just 12balls. After edging one past the slips to pick up four, Madanagopalflashed hard at a ball from Saxena without moving his feet. All hemanaged to do was edge the ball to Dighe. Even Sridharan Sharath neverlooked convincing at the wicket. The fall of his wicket soon after theplayers returned from lunch did not come as a surprise. Hanging hisbat loosely outside off stump, Sharath edged a Powar off spinnertowards the slips. Diving low, Amol Muzumdar snatched the ball inchesfrom the ground and sent Sharath on his way.Tamil Nadu captain Robin Singh joined in form Hemang Badani out in themiddle with the Tamil Nadu score on 149/4. Singh and Badani ran well,pushing the fielders. Converting ones to twos and snatching singlesout of half chances, the two got the scoreboard ticking over at ahealthy rate.Singh and Badani proceeded to forge a partnership that put Tamil Nadufirmly in the driving seat. Mixing aggression with caution, Singh wasat his best. Choosing the right ball to go after, Robin Singh provedto be an ideal partner for Badani.The last session of play saw Tamil Nadu end what was a superb day bycompletely dominating the bowling. The seamers, tiring in the heat,grew less and less focussed. In turn, both Badani and Robin gotgoing. Badani seemed to slow down a bit after he had made hiscentury. However, having spent most of the day at the wicket, this wasunderstandable.Robin never flagged through the course of his innings. Whenever hemakes runs, Robin underlines the value of simplifying one’sgame. Playing with a straight bat to anything pitched up, Robin usedthe crease superbly. The ball slipped down leg side on more than oneoccasion and was efficiently hit away to the fence. Whether he wasnudging the ball around the corner or sending it sailing over theropes, Robin looked in command.At the end of the day, a very tired Badani had 152 to his name.Robin, not far behind, on 142, was happy with his side’sperformance. Tamil Nadu are in a good position to bat Mumbai out ofthe game tomorrow.

All things considered, South Africa could not have asked a great deal more of Shaun Pollock and his overhauled team than has been forthcoming in Sri Lanka over the past five to six weeks.The first post-Hansiegate tour has to be regarded as a success, – not an entirely unqualified success perhaps, but a campaign that produced more good than bad. At the risk of pre-empting history, South Africa’s 2000 tour of Sri Lanka is likely to prove a watershed moment as the game in this country grows into the millenium.The rain-ravaged third Test ended in a draw on Thursday, leaving the series tied at 1-1. A few weeks ago South Africa reached the final of the Singer Cup, but lost to Sri Lanka. On the face of it, these might seem average results, but they bear a closer look.The current rule of thumb for Test cricket is this: win your home series and do your damndest to avoid defeat when you travel. To this can be added the rider: especially when travelling to the sub-continent. With this in mind, South Africa have already had a terrific year, beating India in India and drawing with Sri Lanka. If you’d offered this to Australia at the start of the year, they’d have taken it.As far as the Singer Cup is concerned, South Africa beat Pakistan twice and lost three times to Sri Lanka. Given that the South Africans were coming off a winter break, these results are probably no better and no worse than might have been expected. Had the one-day tournament been played after the Test series, the outcome might well have been different.The tour also threw up two notable individual successes – Lance Klusener and Nicky Boje. Klusener has had an amazing 18 months with the bat. The seeds of his World Cup form last year were sewn in New Zealand, but now he has kicked up a level, adapting and adjusting his approach to Test match cricket on turning pitches against one of the world’s best spinners.Klusener’s secret, if it is one, is his simplicity: he blocks the good balls and hits the bad ones and when this approach is underpinned with complete self-belief, it can prove well nigh irresistible. Sri Lanka couldn’t work out a reliable method of dismissing him so they settled for trying to contain him. It was an admission that the South African had the wood on them but it served mainly only to persuade Klusener that he wasn’t ever going to get out.Batting at six, he organised the lower order to bat around him, convincing even the likes of Paul Adams and Nantie Hayward that it was worth their while to stick around for as long as they were able. All this, together with a new-found ability to bowl slowish off-cutters, made him South Africa’s man of the series.Boje, too, had a wonderful tour. After floating around the fringes of the side for the past four years, he finally established himself as the first-choice spinner, leapfrogging Paul Adams in the process. Boje bowled with control and intelligence and his progress since being brought into the squad for India as a late replacement for Adams gives South Africa a left-arm orthodox spinner able to tie up an end for hours.Adams, on the other hand, will be glad to see the last of Sri Lanka. Any number of explanations have been offered for his poor form on this tour – he had been out of cricket since January, the pitches were too slow for him, the batting never gave him big enough totals to bowl to and so on and so on. The truth is, though, that Sri Lanka targetted him and Adams was unable to find a counter.South Africa will clearly have to rethink Adams: how, where and when to use him. It is all very to argue that he is an attacking bowler, but that is to miss the point. In an attack that is usually likely to contain three or four attacking seamers, balance is provided by someone able to close up an end. Boje can do it. Adams, on all available evidence, can’t.The greatest strides forward, however, were taken by Pollock as the captain. There is still an argument that fast bowlers shouldn’t captain Test teams. History throws up very few bowlers who have successfully captained – either their bowling or their captaincy suffers. It is still to soon to see whether Pollock gets caught up in this double bind. Perhaps by the end of the coming domestic season a clearer assessment of his abilities will emerge.At the same time, though, he grew as a tactician and strategist by the day, almost by the session in some instances. More than this, he (and coaches Graham Ford and Corrie van Zyl), lifted the side back up again after the Singer Cup final and a dismal first Test. That took personality. There may be more to this particular management team than anyone had the right to expect.

Wellington’s frustration increased twofold when the third day of its Shell Trophy match with Canterbury at the Basin Reserve went the way of the second – abandoned today without a ball being bowled.Showers of varying intensity crossed the Basin throughout the day, driven by a building southerly wind, till umpires Evan Watkin and Ian Shine ruled at 2.30pm that no play would be possible.Wellington considered itself in a strong position when it reached 314-4 by stumps on the first day, responding to Canterbury’s invitation to bat. But with only one full day remaining and with no provision to make up lost time, the chance of any meaningful result from this match seems to have been lost.Wellington’s best hope tomorrow, when conditions are expected to be cloudly but dry, seems to be to achieve a first innings result unless Canterbury is prepared to enter an accomodation involving the forfeiture of innings.Wellington coach Vaughn Johnson has been demonstrably eager over the past two days to take advantage of any break in the weather to advance his team’s position. But the covers have remained on the pitch since Monday night and the persistence of the rain has made further play impossible.Play resumes at 10.30am tomorrow with Roger Twose 27 not out and Chris Nevin two not out.

For the last decade or so, the princely game of cricket has passed through a mounting tide of indiscipline giving way to criminal tendencies. The players’ involvement in several evils like ball tampering, gambling, bribery, match fixing and now, indulgence in the use of drugs has badly tarnished the sacred image of the game.The prime responsibility for rooting out such crimes lies squarely with administrators of the game. Unfortunately, for saving face, undue publicity and other reasons I feel they deal with the defaulters rather too lightly. They either sweep the cases of in-discipline under the carpet, hush them up through some vague inquiries, or when things become worse they close the cases after awarding minor punishments to the offenders.It is well recognized that punishment is a deterrent to crush crime. Had the ICC and the Cricket Boards adopted the policy of awarding severe-cum-suitable punishments to law-breakers, I am sure, there would have been little need for establishing an Anti-Corruption Unit headed by Sir Paul Condon and other such commissions set up by the Cricket Boards. The recent publication of the Condon report has clearly amplified this aspect.Though attention of the cricket world is currently focussed on the Condon Report, the other cases of in-discipline must not be allowed to disappear in the noise over the big issue. The case under review is the ‘marijuana smoking scandal’ that erupted in Antigua during South African team’s tour of the Caribbean last month. An incident also took place in Grenada when Pakistan were touring in 1992-93.In the recent one, six members of the visiting team, Herchelle Gibbs, Paul Adams, Roger Telemachus, Andre Nel, Justin Kemp and the team physiotherapist Craig Smith were allegedly caught smoking marijuana in a hotel room. Despite the fact that the players were caught on the spot and accepted guilt, no action was taken by the local administration. The team was allowed a clean break from the incident, completed the tour and returned home where the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA) dealt with the case.On rendering an apology, “the players were extremely regretful and remorseful of the incident and would like to apologize to the UCBA, the cricket loving people of South Africa and the West Indies for their indiscretion”, the culprits were let off with a fine of R10,000 (US$1250) each. On assuring the Board further that ‘this was a once off incident and that it will not happen on any South African cricket team tour again’ the issue was closed.The very fact that the Antiguan police and the local administration showed absolutely no reaction to the incident is baffling. I feel perplexed on such leniency especially if one recalls a similar case that happened during Pakistan’s tour of the West Indies.On arrival at the island of Grenada, skipper Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Aaqib Javed and Mushtaq Ahmed visited the beach. Two foreign female tourists and a local man accompanied them. According to reports, having found some marijuana joints lying nearby, the local police hauled them up and took them to the police station on the charge of ‘constructive possession of marijuana’.Since no drugs were found on them they were released on bail and directed to appear in the court five days later. The incident shook the whole team because if found guilty, the boys could have been fined up to $92,500. The funniest part of the story was that the venue of the incident happened to be a public beach open to use by all and sundry. Even at the time when the alleged narcotics were found, a number of people were present there. One can only guess how many other people would have visited the beach earlier. What the Pakistani boys perhaps forgot to do was to sweep the area of garbage and joints around them!The team manager had to engage a panel of eminent jurists to defend the players and the incident cost the Pakistan team dearly in terms of money.One can thus really wonder where have the West Indies’ strict anti-narcotic laws gone? Or do they vary island by island? In the recent case, the players were found in the state of having taken the drug. Still, the local police took no notice of the offence. One can only surmise, the hotels and beaches in the West Indies are far too permissive and possible sanctuaries for crimes and irregularities?

In a thrilling and controversial match between two of the top three sides in Division One of the NCL the Notts Outlaws successfully chased a revised (D/L) victory target of 228 to win by six wickets with four balls to spare. Paul Johnson led the run–chase scoring 88 not out. Earlier, the reigning champions had posted a total of 228-8 with Jeremy Snape hitting his first competitive century.Greg Blewett’s first innings as an opener for Notts lasted until the third over when Michael Cawdron trapped him lbw. In another attacking change of order Paul Johnson was promoted to number three but it was Notts skipper Darren Bicknell who gave the innings early impetus, sweetly timing seven boundaries in a classy half-century (70 mins 72 bails).On a good batting track runs flowed as easily as they had for the Gladiators lower order and the 100 was posted in the 22nd over. Johnson began to monopolise the strike and moved within 5 of his partner as he brought up his own 50 (74 mins 53 bails 6×4)The stand had reached 118 when Bicknell, in trying to work Mark Hardinges to leg, played all round the ball and was bowled. Usman Afzaal then came to the crease and was shortly the innocent party of a controversial incident.Johnson pulled Snape high to midwicket, towards Martyn Ball. The fielder, leaping high, completed a brilliant catch but clearly appeared to come down adjacent to the boundary rope, his ankle seeming to twist as he landed. Ball, presumably realising that he couldn’t complete the catch fairly, dropped the ball but recovered to hurl it in towards Jack Russell. Johnson had wandered down the wicket after his shot and both batsmen were at the same end – although they had made a token crossing.Russell removed the bails and despite a hostile crowd screaming that the rope had been touched the umpires gave Afzaal out, much to the anger of the spectatorsGloucs may well have rued the emergence from the pavilion of Kevin Pietersen, who for the second day running flayed the bowling to all, parts. A quite scintillating half century came up in just 34 minutes (35 balls 6×4 1×6). When he departed only 2 runs were needed for victory and Johnson completed the formalities.Earlier the Gladiators had recovered from 33-5 to reach 228–8 from a rain– reduced 44 overs. The final total was indebted to a domestic one–day seventh wicket record of 164 between Jeremy Snape and Mark Hardinges; Snape hitting an unbeaten 104 and Hardinges weighing in with 65 on his competition debut.

Hampshire choose from 13 for their third round Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy meeting with Durham at the Riverside in Chester-le-Street on Wednesday.Director of Cricket Tim Tremlett calls up Giles White and Alex Morris to the eleven that recorded a 64-run triumph over the same opponents on Sunday at the Rose Bowl in the National League.That means there is still no place for wicket-keeper Adrian Aymes, who falls foul of the continued youth policy programme being employed in limited-overs encounters.Derek Kenway will continue behind the stumps with James Hamblin and Chris Tremlett in line for their competition debuts.Squad: Jason Laney, Neil Johnson, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Derek Kenway (wk), Laurie Prittipaul, Will Kendall, Giles White, Robin Smith (capt), Shaun Udal, Chris Tremlett, James Hamblin, Alex Morris, Alan Mullally.

Yorkshire had to settle for 10 points from a draw as the weather ruined the prospect of a good finish against Northamptonshire at Wantage Road.The visitors needed 243 for victory going into the final day’s play, and had reached 10-1 from 7.4 overs when rain halted proceedings at 11.35am.Conditions failed to improve, and the match was duly abandoned after an early tea at 3.30pm.The Northants spinners, Jason Brown and Graeme Swann, were expected to find some last-day assistance in the pitch, but it was the seamers who enjoyed themselves at the start.Paul Taylor and Michael Strong were both able to swing the new ball under heavy, overcast skies, and Taylor struck an early blow when he trapped Matthew Wood leg-before with 2 on the board.Scott Richardson and Michael Lumb were at the crease when the rain started, and despite the draw Yorkshire are still 33 points clear of their nearest challengers Somerset at the top of Division One.For their part, Northants are still without a Championship win this season as they battle to avoid relegation.

Since the conclusion of the Edgbaston Test Match the lads really haven’thad much time off to speak of. Apart from the day at the Wimbledon Men’sSingles final, we’ve trained and, of course, had our tour match againstSomerset at Taunton.During that tour game, Tugga (Steve Waugh), Warney and Pidgeon (McGrath) spent some time with their families away from the team. This was a good thing as it gives these guys time with their families and away from cricket to recharge the batteries for the battle ahead.At different stages of the tour, all the lads will have this opportunity.The team currently has a footy tipping competition covering both the AussieRules and National Rugby League. For reasons unknown to all and in a quitemind-boggling result to date, our fitness guru, Jock Campbell, has raced awayinto the lead.The boys think he is sabotaging the count! Poor old Alfie Langer isbringing up the rear and there is an even spread between the two lads.The Poms are shattered about the rugby and we have heard every excuse underthe sun as to why they have lost.It has been given huge coverage in all the papers here with the scribesblaming injuries and bad scheduling as reasons (the public who come up andspeak to us about it) but I think that they were just beaten by a betterteam! After all they did have their chances too!With the tight schedule, haven’t had a chance to see my South Australianskipper Darren “Boof” Lehmann, but we saw Redback teammate Greg Blewett atour one-dayer versus Pakistan at Trent Bridge.All the lads hope to catch up with them a bit later in the tour.We are all in London now for the Lord’s Test and I am expecting anothersleepless night. The good news is that Haydos, Slats and Binger (Lee) are all fit so with that news I hope we can nail the Poms and go two-nil up.

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).

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.