All posts by csb10.top

The ICC will officially launch the Under-19 World Cup in Kuala Lumpur this Wednesday.The tournament takes place in Malaysia between February 17 and March 2 and will spread over three cities – Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor. Besides the ICC’s 10 Full Members and hosts Malaysia, five qualifiers – Namibia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Ireland and Bermuda – will take part.The 16 teams have been divided into four groups with the top two teams progressing to the Super League quarter-finals while the two bottom teams from each group will play in the Plate Championship quarter-finals.The winners of the Super League quarter-finals will qualify for the semi-finals whereas the losing quarter-finalists will play in the Super League play-offs. The winners of the Plate Championship quarter-finals will play in the Plate Championship semi-finals while the beaten quarter-finalists will participate in the Plate Championship play-offs.

The India hangover didn’t make it to a third day. Australia drank away 35 years of frustration with their series win last month, but in celebration there were no lands except Bangladesh left to conquer. Revisiting the same territory is often challenging and rarely as fun.Australia expect their pesky Trans-Tasman rivals to morph every time they meet, but their start to a series that concludes in less than two weeks was worryingly sluggish. As the first Test venue, the Gabba is a ground where rust is shaken off, but the Baggy Greens have been together for most of six weeks.Catches were dropped and overthrows conceded on day one, and the opening bowlers took only one wicket in an innings that allowed 147 for the last three combinations. Australia spent most of the second day struggling for parity. By stumps they were two wickets away from an almighty fight.The Berocca tablets and raw-eggs breakfast finally kicked in through Michael Clarke and Adam Gilchrist. Their bouncing, high-energy display returned Australia’s attacking spirit and the summer’s opening style was restored, allowing the traditional thunderstorm alerts to arrive on cue.Horizontal bat shots as hard as the wicket flooded the ground once Clarke and Gilchrist exploded. Clarke, nicknamed pup, overshadowed his vice-captain in a 216-run partnership that was a sixth-wicket record between the teams. Once Clarke departed Gilchrist held the stadium’s attention for his 12th Test century and the New Zealanders had the headaches with muffed catches and haemorrhaged lower-order runs.Stephen Fleming’s only break came in the morning when he moved a loose man in the cordon to leg gully, opening up Damien Martyn’s favourite region. Next ball Martyn lifted a short ball from Chris Martin and Craig McMillan barely needed to steady himself at third man. It was a small victory on a day of heavy losses.Worse came for Fleming when Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie pushed the score past 500 before setting about 550 and personal bests. A slog-swept McGrath six sent the dressing room into fits of shock and laughter, and the pair knocked back offers of the light. McGrath’s 62-ball fifty was scarcely believable on the ground or the dressing-room – Darren Lehmann cheered so hard he threatened to re-injure his hamstring.Fleming remained stern and kept striding around as he wondered how the day, the match, and probably the series had turned. New Zealand were in with a shout in the morning but instead had shaken and stirred Australia into action.Peter English is Australasian editor of Wisden Cricinfo.

A Sri Lankan government spokesperson revealed today that it had abandoned plans to sue the International Cricket Council for banning Muttiah Muralitharan’s doosra. After consulting its lawyers, the government has decided instead to appeal to the ICC, said Rohan Weliwata, spokesman for Mahinda Rajapakse, the prime minister.Speaking to a news agency, Weliwata said, “Even though lawyers felt there was sufficient grounds to sue, the first step will be to present an appeal on behalf of Muralitharan. The prime minister is getting the support of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan in this.”Muralitharan is now the highest wicket-taker in the history of Test cricket, with 527 wickets, and last week, Rajapakse took the unprecedented step of meeting Nirupam Sen, an Indian diplomat in Colombo, to enlist India’s support for the campaign to allow Murali his doosra.The ICC had threatened him with a one-year ban if he continued to bowl it, saying that he straightened his arm far more than is allowed under the rules of the game. Last week, Ehsan Mani, the ICC’s president, had asked Rajapakse to stay out of the controversy and allow the ICC to find its own solution.Rajapakse’s threat to sue had come in the wake of remarks from John Howard, Australia’s prime minister, that suggested Murali was a chucker. Mani, however, had insisted that there was no basis for legal action. “I don’t know how we’d be sued, but all our regulations are fully supported by all our members.”

St Thomas College 22 for 2 trail Royal College 294 for 6 dec (Edussuriya 140*, Ratnayake 49) by 272 runs
ScorecardThe Sri Lanka-Australia Test at Galle might be attracting all the international attention, but the 125th annual Royal-Thomian match – the famed three-day “Battle of the Blues” – at the Sinhalese Sports Club was all the talk in Colombo. And a superb hundred by Dhanushka Edussuriya, which gave Royal College the edge at the end of the first day, was sure to generate headlines tomorrow.Edussuriya came to the crease with his side struggling on 60 for 4 after they had lost the toss and been inserted by St Thomas College. He added 101 for the fifth wicket with Ganganath Ratnayake (49) and then 134 for the sixth wicket in 30 overs with Manoj Morawake (45*).In front of a decent crowd, including a fair number of politicians and corporate big-wigs, the morning session belonged to St Thomas as their seamers exploited the early moisture to rip through Royal’s top-order.But St Thomas’s bowlers, bereft of Chathuranga Somapala who failed a late fitness test, lacked the penetration to press home their advantage, and Edussuriya’s took charge. His innings was a masterpiece of timing and control – he reached his fifty in an hour-and-a-half, his hundred in three hours, and never allowed the bowlers to settle. His stand with Morawake left St Thomas’s wilting, and enabled Royal to declare and give themselves 45 minutes to have a go at St Thomas.The tactic worked, as both openers were dismissed in the nine overs before the close.

Sir Viv Richards has resigned as West Indies’ chairman of selectors after two years in the job. His commitment to commentate with the BBC was cited by the West Indies board as the main reason for his decision. Richards himself was unavailable for comment.Richards will be replaced on the three-man selection panel by Clyde Butts, the former Guyana and West Indies offspinner – Joey Carew and Gordon Greenidge are the other two selectors. Carew will take over from Richards as chairman.The WICB has appointed interim selection committees for the next two months pending the conclusion of the review of the management structure of the West Indies team. The recommendations of the review are expected to be implemented following the ICC Champions Trophy in England this September, and will have an impact on the role of selectors.Richards, 52, took over as chairman of selectors in May 2002, but his last few months in charge became increasingly controversial, with reports of rifts between him and Brian Lara, the captain. On West Indies’ tour to South Africa earlier this year, the two were involved in an extraordinary incident, when Lara made a last-minute change to the fourth-Test team during the toss – apparently against Richards’s wishes – bringing in Merv Dillon for Adam Sanford.

Pieter Strydom, a former South African international, has been named captain of the Eastern Cape for the next season. Strydom, nicknamed “Striker”, had played two Tests and 10 one-dayers for South Africa in the 1999-00 season apart from captaining Border for several years.Reunert Bauser, the CEO of the Eastern Cape franchise, said that Strydom’s experience of captaining Border for a number of seasons was one of the main reasons for the appointment. iAfrica.com quoted Bauser as saying, “He is a shrewd captain and his all-round ability with both bat and ball has earned him the respect of many an opposing team.”Reacting to the appointment Strydom termed it as a “challenge” and added, “I am proud to be named to lead the franchise for next season. I hope my captaincy and the results we achieve will repay the faith the Board have in me.”Strydom, 34, was born in the Eastern Cape and studied educated at Grey High School, which also has Hansie Cronje, Herschelle Gibbe and Nicky Boje on its alumni rolls. Strydom shifted to Border in 1992-93 and played as vice-captain to Peter Kirsten for a few years. He took over as captain in 1997-98 and carried on for six seasons.Under his captaincy, Border reached the SuperSport final in three consecutive years apart from making the final of the Standard Bank Cup in 1999. last year, he surprisingly lost the captaincy to Justin Kreusch.Strydom’s best bowling in first-class cricket was 4 for 12 against Northerns at Centurion Park, while another highlight of his career was the 6 for 17 that he snared against Western Province in 2001-02. In 2002-03, Strydom played his 100th first-class match and was awarded a benefit year as well.

Ricky Ponting is not losing any sleep over becoming the first Australian captain to lose the Ashes for 16 years. Ponting took over from Steve Waugh, who with his predecessors Mark Taylor and Allan Border made sure England have not held the trophy since 1989, and when he landed in England insisted he was not worried.”I’m not looking at it as being the first to lose them,” he said. “I’m looking at being another Australian captain to retain the Ashes. It comes back to us being here and preparing well.”Ponting said this series carried no more pressure because Australia had been the favourites for the past ten years. “It is not something we have thought about,” he said. “We are here to play the best possible cricket.”

For many years Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose maintained West Indies’ prominent place in world cricket. As the seemingly endless emergence of fast bowlers from the Caribbean reduced to a trickle, the two of them held the attack together, almost on their own in their twilight years. Now they are gone, and there has not been anyone even close to filling the void. And Walsh fears for the future.”Our bowling is a real concern,” he told the Independent’s Angus Fraser. “The potential is there but there has been a real lack of consistency. The word on the street is that Curtly and myself should come out of retirement.”In the 1980s and 1990s West Indies survived on raw talent and the legacy of the Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards years. But in-fighting within the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), coupled with chronic under investment, made the decline depressingly inevitable.There are steps being taken to remedy the situation but it is far too little, and decades too late. And remarkably, the board has not even asked Walsh, their last great bowler, for any advice. “I would like to think I could help the bowlers, but the WICB have not asked me. I try to help out the Jamaican team whenever I can. I have asked Curtly the same question and nobody at the WICB has asked him as well.”At this moment in time … we do not have anyone to lead the pack. I don’t know whether it is a lack of planning on our part or that we are expecting too much. We need to find out if this lack of consistency is caused by a lack of discipline or bad practice. It could be that this lot just don’t have it in them and we need to find a new crop.”I don’t believe this is the case. In Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor I believe we have two bowlers with the ability to go all the way. But …they have not yet learnt their trade. They need more help from the senior players.”Sadly for the youngsters, those the board see as capable of helping them don’t include Walsh or Ambrose.

Bangladesh are planning to stage a one-day tournament in December in a bid to improve their one-day ranking. At the moment, Bangladesh are 11th in the ICC’s rankings, but this will improve to 10th in the coming weeks as some of Kenya’s wins are expunged from the calculations.Under the ICC’s new rules for Champions Trophy qualification, Bangladesh need to be in the top 10 to be part of the play-off between countries ranked from No. 7 to 10 to decide one of two places in the competition.To help do this, Ali Ashgar Lobi, the Bangladesh Cricket Board’s president, told reporters that the board would be looking to stage a triangular one-day series involving Kenya and Zimbabwe, two sides immediately above them in the rankings. Although sources in Kenya indicated that this series would take place in the second week of November, Lobi said that it would be in December or January.Lobi hinted that Chittagong might get the chance of hosting the tournament as there will be no venue in Dhaka at that time.

Geraint Jones is still hurting from his disappointing Ashes debut, but he hopes to pay back his team-mates if picked for the second Test. While his performance was highlighted by two simple dropped catches in the second innings, Jones was criticised by commentators for a performance that included an irresponsible dismissal – he pulled Glenn McGrath to Jason Gillespie at mid-on – when England wanted to hang on for a draw.However, Jones, who will face pressure from Nottinghamshire’s Chris Read, said he deserved a spot at Edgbaston next Thursday. “There are always those worries but I hope that one performance will not be detrimental to the way I’ve performed,” Jones told the . “It still hurts. I was disappointed to miss those two chances but the rest of the summer I’ve been keeping as well as I ever have.”Allan Border, a former Australia selector, said the display of Jones was “clearly a worry”. “He will need to improve or I would be looking closely at his position within the team,” Border told .Jones hoped the bad patch was just a “blip” after earning his spot against New Zealand last year and holding it through the successful South Africa series. “I know myself that I’m good enough,” he said. “To miss those two chances did hurt a lot, but that’s part of the game. When you think you’ve got everything under control, cricket bites you hard.”