All posts by csb10.top

Australian allrounder James Hopes will not take any further part in the ongoing seven-match series in India due to a hamstring injury and is set to fly back home. Cricket Australia’s selection panel has confirmed that Clint McKay , the Victoria fast bowler, will join the squad as cover.Hopes’ injury is the latest setback to the team which is currently 2-1 down with four games remaining. Hopes bowled just two overs in the first ODI in Vadodara before leaving the field after pulling his right hamstring.”James has done everything he can with medical staff to try and make himself available for the remaining games of the tour of India,” Kevin Sims, the team physiotherapist, said. “However due to the compressed nature of this tour and his speed of recovery so far, we feel now we have insufficient time to have James fully fit to take part in the remaining games of this series.”Therefore a decision has been made that James will return to Australia where he will continue his rehabilitation from this hamstring injury.”McKay, 26, was impressive for Victoria during the Champions League Twenty20, which he finished as the tournament’s joint second-highest wicket-taker (with Moises Henriques) with ten wickets at an impressive economy rate of 6 per over. In the 2007-08 FR Cup, he collected a remarkable 13 wickets at 14.76 from only five games.”Clinton is a young promising bowler who performed well at inter-state level last season and has recent very good form for Victoria in the Champions League in India,” Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors, said. “He will be very well suited to Indian conditions and we believe he is another young player who benefit from the experience of being in the Australian team set-up during this tour.”We also feel he has the ability to perform well at the international level. With Moises having played in the last ODI game and James Hopes going home, Moises will now remain with the squad in India for the duration of the series.”Hopes joins Australia’s strike bowler Brett Lee and wicketkeeper Tim Paine, who have already flown home after picking up injuries. Lee was unable to complete his quota of overs in Vadodara – he bowled six – after complaining of a sore right elbow.Paine broke his finger during the second game in Nagpur and was replaced by Graham Manou. Before the series began, Australia had already lost Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin, Callum Ferguson and Nathan Bracken to injuries.

Brett Lee has refused to blame the Champions League Twenty20 for the elbow injury that prevented him from bowling his full quota in the first ODI against India and kept him out the next game. His remarks on Thursday followed recent references by his captain and coach to the Champions League disrupting the team’s preparations for the tour.”I don’t think it’s got anything to do with the Champions League,” Lee said. “I want to play as much cricket as I possibly can, and with me missing the Ashes and having four months in England where I was only bowling in the nets and not in Test matches, to me it’s about playing a lot of cricket.”Unfortunately when you’re trying to bowl 155kph and you’ve got back-to-back series, times will come where there’ll be a niggle here and there. It’s not a long-term thing – a mild thing, and I was pretty much due to have a rest in one or two games of this series anyway.”Ricky Ponting and coach Tim Nielsen have both voiced their displeasure of the scheduling of the series over the last week. Nielsen though, called Lee’s injury a “stress-related” one, and Ponting rued the absence of six of his players while preparing for the seven-ODI series, due to the Champions League. Australia almost lost the first game in Vadodara from a winning position, and were outplayed in the second in Nagpur.That said, Lee’s performance in the final of the Champions League was instrumental in New South Wales winning the title and he said he had no second thoughts about playing for his home state. “That’s [NSW] where I was born, that’s what I’m all about. I had the opportunity to play and I thought it would be the perfect lead-in to the series over here. If I didn’t play the series, would I have picked up a niggle? Who knows, but all I can say is I’m enjoying my cricket and Australia always comes first.”Lee has not ruled himself out for the match in Delhi on Saturday. “I think I’ll know a lot more tomorrow at training,” he said. “I’m not going to make a call today to say whether I’ll be available for the weekend or not. I’m hoping to be, but I’ll know a lot more at training.”It’s important for me to get it right, to make sure I’m not playing with pain, so I’ll have a bowl tomorrow and assess how the elbow feels, and then take it from there. I’m wanting to play on Saturday, definitely.”Lee also said he was desperate to make a comeback into the Test side. “I’m as hungry as ever to get back in that Test team,” he said. “The only thing I can do at this point is prove I’m bowling fast and taking the wickets, and other than the game I missed yesterday, I’m hoping I’ve done that. I was pleased with how I played in England, pleased with the Champions Trophy and even more so pleased with how I did in the Champions League. I want to have a big series here, and it’s up to them if they want to choose me or not.”I still want to play Test cricket, definitely. I want my spot back and I’ll be doing everything I possibly can to get it. I had the ankle operation earlier this year, got back to full fitness, and have been very pleased with the way the ball’s been coming out.”I don’t think I can ask any more of my body, I’m still only young. Yes I’m 32, but I keep saying I don’t feel 32. You will have your niggles as a fast bowler, but I still want to play a lot more years of cricket, and definitely be playing at Test level. One-day cricket and T20 of course, that’s always been thereabouts, but Test cricket for me is where it’s at.”

Ernest Hilaire makes no attempt to sugar-coat the situation. Speaking before West Indies’ abject top-order batting performance against Pakistan at the Wanderers, the incoming West Indies Cricket Board chief executive spoke chasteningly of the manner in which the board and West Indies Players’ Association allowed an industrial dispute to descend into an international embarrassment.Hilaire will assume the reins from Steve Camacho, the WICB’s acting CEO, on October 1 and his first order of business will be to end the damaging dispute with the West Indies’ Players Association that prompted leading players including Chris Gayle, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan, to undertake strike action. The recent moves of WIPA and WICB to accept the recommendations proposed by the region’s CARICOM leaders appears a step in the right direction. However with the ICC’s pledge of a best-versus-best Champions Trophy already in tatters on account of West Indies’ second-string touring party – on Wednesday only a defiant rearguard and some inspired bowling staved off a complete rout against Pakistan – much damage has already been done.Hilaire recognises as much, and is determined to usher in a new era of cooperation with an increasingly militant WIPA. The veteran St Lucian administrator is hopeful that West Indies’ next international assignment – the Test and one-day tour of Australia – will witness a return to normality.”We need to work with WIPA in the future and make sure we do so constructively,” Hilaire told Cricinfo. “We need to be more mature about our relationship. The threat of strike action should not be a weapon of choice in negotiations. We need to have respect for each other and build trust in each other and identify that we are partners in this. We have the same ultimate goal, and that is to restore West Indies cricket to its pinnacle.”We must all ensure that we never go through this again. Even if we don’t agree with WIPA, we have to be mature and professional enough to resolve it without resorting to the measures we have in the recent past. Not for one minute could we dream that there will never again be differences between the board and the players. We just need to handle those in a mature and professional way. Nobody is looking to destroy WIPA.”Hilaire concedes the board’s governance has suffered from “inefficiencies” and “failures to communicate” in the past. He intends to submit a plan that will allow the WICB to streamline its operations and “build a professional and modern high-performance structure” that will assist the senior team in recouping the ground lost during this year’s damaging labour dispute, while also addressing the oft-neglected domestic system.They are lofty ambitions – particularly for a board with a lamentable recent performance record and a reputation for conflict among its various regional members – but Hilaire believes all will be attainable during his term as chief executive. To do so, he will need the board and the players’ union to lay down their arms and commit to a long-term partnership; a truce he hopes to broker in the short-term.”It would be very difficult for anyone to make the case that the board has been at its most efficient and effective,” he said. “That can be said of a lot of organisations and corporations, too. You just have to look at the size of the staff and the general ability to cope with the demands of international cricket. We have to have the capacity to implement changes, or we risk going down the same old road.”There are some long-lasting issues. There needs to be better efficiency and better lines of communication between the two parties. The issue of rights and contracts I suspect might take a little longer to resolve than some of the other issues. But we must make sure that the core issue of getting the players back on the field is not contingent on just one area of negotiations.”We have a very proud cricketing heritage. We dominated world cricket in the 1980s and for a period of the 1990s. The true dream of West Indies cricket is to return to that dominance, but we of course realise that there is a long, long road ahead for us to realise that. What we have is a very distinct brand of cricket – the way we bat, bowl and carry ourselves. That has to be rediscovered, but we must ensure that we do not become stuck in the past.”

Shaun Udal, the Middlesex captain, was knocked unconscious against Northamptonshire in the County Championship match, at Wantage Road, on Thursday.The incident occurred in the fifth over of the day when Udal was struck on the back of the head as he tried to avoid a bouncer from South African allrounder Johan van der Wath. He was unconscious for around six minutes and an ambulance was called while he was treated by the physiotherapists.Paramedics and a local doctor then assessed Udal on the pitch before he was driven off the ground.Play was suspended for almost half an hour as Udal was treated on the pitch, but he was able to recover in the dressing room rather than hospital.

Virender Sehwag will meet the Delhi and Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) chief Arun Jaitley on Tuesday to discuss his future with the state side a week after reports emerged that, fed up of selection interference, Sehwag was seeking a move to Haryana.Other senior Delhi players backed Sehwag’s claims about the DDCA’s selection procedures, with several saying that they would not hesitate to shift teams as well.According to reports, DDCA officials accused Sehwag of trying to get his cousin picked in the Ranji team, allegations that Sehwag denied.

West Indies have persisted with a weakened squad for the third ODI and the Twenty20 match against Bangladesh in St Kitts. Chris Gayle and other top players still find no place, and the only change was the exclusion of fast bowler Nelon Pascal, who sustained a finger injury in the first ODI last Sunday.Bangladesh have already clinched the one-day series 2-0, and are still undefeated on the tour.West Indies squad
Floyd Reifer (capt), Darren Sammy, David Bernard, Travis Dowlin, Andre Fletcher, Rawl Lewis, Nikita Miller, Kieran Powell, Dale Richards, Kemar Roach, Devon Smith, Devon Thomas, Gavin Tonge

Iain O’Brien, the New Zealand fast bowler, has been penalised for showing dissent to an umpire’s decision.The incident occurred during Leicestershire’s Championship match against Essex between July 21-24.Umpires Steve Garratt and John Holder reported O’Brien to the ECB, and it was announced today that it was a Level One breach of the code.This penalty remains on O’Brien’s record for a period of two years, and any further Level One breach during that period will result in a further three penalty points.

Mohammad Asif has been fined Rs 1 million (US$12,500) by the Pakistan board over his detention at Dubai airport for alleged drug possession. Asif, 26, was detained for 19 days in June last year while returning to Pakistan after playing in the inaugural edition of the IPL.The matter was investigated by a three-member PCB committee headed by Wasim Bari, the interim chief selector, which submitted its recommendations to PCB chairman Ijaz Butt. “On the recommendation of the committee we have fined Asif one million rupees,” a PCB statement said.”Asif has accepted our decision and he feels he had made a mistake,” Bari told AP. “It was our committee’s unanimous decision that Asif should be handed a financial penalty as we took a number of things into account before deciding the penalty.”In documents in the possession of Cricinfo, prosecutors in Dubai confirmed that he was found with a small quantity of opium; he was ultimately let off without a charge, local authorities arguing that the offence was a ‘trivial’ one and a case not worth pursuing. The documents, though, clearly state that Asif was deported.He is also banned from playing any form of cricket till September, after he tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid Nandrolone during the IPL last year. “Asif will be available for selection once he completes the IPL ban,” the PCB release said.That was the second time in brief international career he’d tested positive for the same steroid, after his transgression during the Champions Trophy in 2006. He was subsequently banned for one year while team-mate Shoaib Akhtar, was handed a two-year ban.”I am delighted I will be considered for selection again but as far as the fine is concerned I will consult my lawyer about it. But the most important thing for me is to resume my career in September,” Asif saidAsif has taken 51 wickets in 11 Tests since making his debut in Australia in 2005. He also has 36 wickets in 31 ODIs and 12 in his nine Twenty20 internationals.

Australia spent their first 24 hours in World Twenty20 exile paying the price for slow over-rates and arranging for Test-only players to fly to England two days earlier than originally scheduled. On a day Ricky Ponting had hoped would be occupied with net sessions and Super Eights strategy meetings, Australia instead awoke to hollow emotions and empty schedules after their tournament-ending six-wicket defeat to Sri Lanka on Monday.The move by ICC match referee Chris Broad to fine Australia’s cricketers 5% of their match fee – and 10% for Ponting – for slow over-rates during Monday’s defeat to Sri Lanka was the final indignation of a woeful three-day World Twenty20 campaign. Lighter in the pocket, the Australians then boarded a bus for a week-long stint in Leicester, where Ponting will look to ensure the disappointment of the 20-over tournament does not corrode the squad’s Ashes preparations.Australia will not play an additional tour match during their unexpected break, but have taken the opportunity to fly Test-only players Phillip Hughes, Simon Katich, Stuart Clark, Marcus North, Andrew McDonald and Graham Manou to England two days earlier than originally scheduled to join the existing squad members. The entire 15-man touring party will gather in London next Tuesday before embarking on the first of their practice games against Sussex at Hove from June 24.”I won’t be focussing on any of the negative stuff that happened here in the last couple of days,” Ponting said. “It’s about looking at the positives we created in our Test team over the last few months. I’d love to think that none of this would linger around. It’s about creating an environment that everyone wants to be a part of when they get here. The excitement and atmosphere at the start of the Ashes is going to be tremendous, and if we can caught up a little bit in that then I’m sure there won’t be any negatives hanging around from the last few games.”It can’t hinder us, I guess, to have some more time with the red balls and the white clothing. Now that England are through to the next round they’ll obviously play this form of the game for another week at least. If there is one positive, maybe we can get some from our week in Leicester.”In all honesty, there appears little value in Australia spending a quiet week in the East Midlands at a time when two of their key players are in desperate need of constructive game time.Michael Hussey, the foundation of Australia’s middle order for the past four seasons, has yet to prove he has overcome the extended slump which prompted selectors to rest him from the recent ODI series against Pakistan, and Brett Lee was jolted in his early steps towards an international comeback. Lee conceded 95 runs in eight overs against the free-swinging West Indian and Sri Lankan batsmen at the World Twenty20, and will no doubt be looking forward to a steadier outing at Hove.Ponting, as ever, came out in support of his beleaguered players, but must surely be wary of the impact an underperforming Hussey and Lee could have on Australia’s Ashes campaign.”I know how good a player Mike is and has been for Australia over the last few years,” Ponting said. “I know that he is going to be an integral part of our Ashes campaign going forward. As a batsman, everyone goes through their ups and downs through their career. Knowing Mike the way I do and how hard he works on his game, he will certainly give himself every opportunity to have a big Ashes campaign.”We all know how good a bowler Brett can be and will be when he gets some more bowling under his belt. He’ll be a little bit disappointed with these couple of games, but it’s a really fine line – when you’re bowling as quick as he does with the new ball on these sort of wickets and these sort of grounds, if you’re just a little bit off batsmen use your pace and before you know it the ball is rocketing to the fence. Definitely he’s still working back into it. I’m sure when the first Test comes around he’ll be firing on all cylinders.”

Twenty20 cricket poses a greater corruption threat than the traditional forms of the game, Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive, has said. However, he says he isn’t perturbed by the IPL’s decision not to employ the services of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit.”The board has consistently said it cannot afford to be complacent [about the risk of corruption in Twenty20 cricket],” Lorgat told Cricinfo. “We are mindful that with Twenty20 cricket there is great excitement and money. Put those ingredients into a pot and there is a higher concern.”Lorgat’s sentiments echo those of the ACSU’s chairman, Sir Paul Condon, who last year told the council’s executive board meeting, “the IPL brings with it the biggest threat in terms of corruption in the game since the days of cricket in Sharjah.”There remains a question mark over anti-corruption arrangements for the tournament. The ICC says it offered the IPL use of their security agents for the five-week tournament in South Africa, only to be informed that the Indian league had made its own arrangements.However, Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, denied refusing the ICC’s offer of ACSU staff. “We are using the same system as we did last year,” he saidThe IPL last year formed its own anti-corruption unit, which comprised 10 officers from police and military backgrounds. All were briefed by officials from the ACSU prior to the start of the inaugural IPL.Several ACSU officers were deployed at last year’s IPL – one of whom ejected Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shah Rukh Khan from the players’ dug-out for not being properly accredited – and briefed IPL officials at length on anti-corruption matters. None will be in operation in South Africa.Bob Nicholls, co-owner of the firm charged with providing security for the current IPL season, said anti-corruption measures were not part of their remit. “The ICC anti-corruption and security unit has various functions that they conduct and those include obviously anti-corruption investigations as well as security,” Nicholls said. “So the part we do is security. As far the corruption part goes we are only involved only as far as it relates to security because there is a crossover. The crossover part is the security. We have no knowledge about the IPL refusing ACSU on board this season.”Lorgat, though, says he wasn’t perturbed by IPL’s decision not to employ the services of the ACSU. “It is not dissimilar to county cricket, in that it is a domestic tournament, and the onus for matters such as anti-corruption and doping lie with the home board,” he said.