Sourav Ganguly has said the Indian team is worried about the security situation in Pakistan, a month before they are scheduled to tour. “We are not worried about the Pakistan tour, we are worried about the security there,” said Ganguly, after India had lost the second final of the VB Series at Sydney.”We are concerned because we have families at home and it is not going to be easy. We have to go back and talk to the BCCI and get a clearer picture,” said Ganguly. The BCCI’s three-man advance team left for Pakistan on the morning of February 9 to inspect Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Karachi and Faisalabad, the various venues India is scheduled to play at. The team, comprising Ratnakar Shetty, the joint secretary of the BCCI, Amrit Mathur, director of communication and Yashvardhan Azad, a security expert.However, Ganguly clarified that the team had not made any decision yet about withdrawing from the tour. “I have heard some reports that players are not going to tour Pakistan, which is untrue. Our only worry is security. Any further comment won’t be fair at this stage.”
The past, present and future generation of West Indies cricketers will be on show today at the Carlton Club ground for a worthy cause.In an effort to raise funds to help with the construction of an autism centre, the Variety Club of Barbados has organised two matches, the first starting at 4 p.m. and the other at 7:30 p.m. under the lights.The feature attractions brings together a "West Indies" team and the Barbados team, and the preceding affair to set the stage will involve a clash with the island’s leading primary schools, Marshall Trading St Catherine and Barbados Public Workers Co-operative Credit Union Wesley Hall.Leading the list of former West Indies stars are: Senator Desmond Haynes, along with ace fast bowlers, Joel Garner, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose.Recent West Indies players: Stuart Williams, Keith Arthurton and Adam Sanford. West Indies Under-19 selectees, Patrick Browne and Alcindo Holder, arealso in the "West Indies" line-up which has borrowed Barbadians Sherwin Campbell and Philo Wallace.The most known names in thematch featuring the juniors are:Anthony Alleyne, captain of recently-crowned primary schoolschamps St Catherine,and his rival skipper Roston Chase.The night match, which is a 35-overs-a-side affair, will feature coloured clothing and black sightscreens.Admission is $10.
The Indian cricket team’s participation in the three-match limitedovers series against Australia in September was yet to be approved bythe Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).BCCI secretary JY Lele, who was in Mumbai on his way to Chennai, toldPTI that a decision whether to accept the invitation from theAustrailan Cricket Board (ACB) to play would be taken at the Board’sworking committee meeting to be held in the third week of July."We had asked for a change in the dates from the ACB as they clashedwith the Asian Test championship tie with Pakistan from September13-17 and the ACB has acceded to our request," he said. "However,the final decision whether to send a team for the series rests withthe working committee+, Lele said.The ACB announced from Australia yesterday that the three matchesagainst India will be held on September 21 and 23 (Colonial IndoorStadium in Melbourne) and September 26 at the Gabba in Brisbane.
Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira may be forced to make changes ahead of the Eagles’ clash against his former club Arsenal on Monday night.
Take nothing away from Palace this season; these changes won’t be a knee-jerk reaction to their recent form. With three wins and two draws from their last five games in all competitions, the Eagles have hit form at an ideal time.
They have bagged nine goals in that time, although their ability to pick up points of late is not just down to their goalscoring acumen.
Vieira’s side have displayed incredible defensive stability, with their water-tight defence leaking just two goals over their last five outings. Impressively, during that run they faced the second-highest scorers in the league in Manchester City and came away with a point and a well-earned clean sheet.
Unfortunately for Palace fans, there are doubts over the talismanic duo of Wilfried Zaha and Michael Olise after the pair picked up injuries whilst on international duty.
The Ivory Coast forward missed his nation’s friendly against England due to a hamstring problem, whilst the France under-21 starlet withdrew from international duty after suffering inflammation on his foot.
Although neither have trained since their respective returns from international duty, Vieira is optimistic that the pair could feature against Arsenal, with Eagles fans able to take solace in the 45-year-old’s positivity as the duo “still have a chance” of playing at Selhurst Park on Monday.
Here is how we think Palace XI will line up against the Gunners, in a 4-3-3 formation:
If our prediction is accurate, the game on Monday will see Vieira make four changes from last time out as the Eagles look to capitalise on their good run of form.
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Those changes could see the likes of Jack Butland, Eberechi Eze, Olise and Zaha – who all featured in Palace’s 4-0 demolition job against Everton in the FA Cup a fortnight ago – drop out. Vicente Guaita, Jeffrey Schlupp, Andre Ayew and Odsonne Edouard, who was hailed as a “special talent” by his former Celtic boss Neil Lennon – all coming in against Arsenal.
Whilst Zaha is Palace’s top scorer this season, perhaps the biggest miss will be the “fearless” Olise, who has asserted himself as one of the most creative outlets in the league, creating seven big chances and providing five assists this season.
In other news – Huge blow as Vieira dealt double setback ahead of Arsenal clash, supporters will be gutted
BCCI president Sharad Pawar has announced a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh (around US$12,000) each for the 15 members of the Asia Cup-winning Indian women’s squad.Hailing the triumph, Pawar said, “I congratulate the women’s cricket team for winning the Asia Cup.” India were undefeated throughout the tournament, winning all six league games before crushing Sri Lanka by 177 runs in the final on Sunday to clinch their fourth successive Asia Cup.After Asha Rawat’s 114-ball 97 helped set up a stiff target of 261 for Sri Lanka, the Indian spinners sparked a collapse which saw the hosts lose their last eight wickets for 22 runs. It was the fourth consecutive time that India and Sri Lanka had clashed in the finals.India’s president, Pratibha Patil, also congratulated the team and their captain Mithali Raj for the victory.
Hampshire overcame a sluggish start to book their place in the Friends Provident Trophy final with a battling 40-run victory over Warwickshire at Southampton. They will meet Durham at Lord’s on August 18.On a sluggish pitch Hampshire’s total of 206 for 7 looked gettable, all the more so when Jonathan Trott and Kumar Sangakkara rebuilt the innings after a jittery start which included two superb catches by the ageing John Crawley.Almost inevitably the introduction of Shane Warne turned the game on its head. He lured Jim Troughton into holing out in the deep but when Sean Ervine dropped a routine slip catch offered by Sangakkara off him it appeared that it might not be Hampshire’s day.Ervine made immediate amends when he had Sangakkara well caught at short midwicket one run later, the first of two wickets in five balls, and Warwickshire never recovered. Tim Ambrose kept battling as partners came and went and he was last man out as Stuart Clark, in his final outing for the county, mopped things up to finish with 3 for 38.Crawley, the Man of the Match, had anchored the early part of the Hampshire innings which had an almost anticlimactic feel when Kevin Pietersen was caught high above his head by Darren Maddy at mid-off for 18. Crawley looked set for a hundred when he failed to beat Heath Streak’s throw, Ambrose doing well to gather a low return and whip the bails off with Crawley an inch short.Another run out – Ervine was the victim of more slick work from Ambrose – wobbled Hampshire and Ambrose was centre stage yet again soon after when he stumped Chris Tremlett, showing cunning in waiting as Tremlett lost his balance to a leg-side dart and tottered out of his ground.Dimitri Mascarenhas then had the unusual experience of surviving two third-umpire referrals off one delivery, first for a stumping and then, reprieved from that, when Warwickshire queried Peter Hartley’s decision to turn down a leg-before appeal. Replays suggested it was probably out, but the rules state the umpire can only be overruled if there has been an obvious error.Mascarenhas added a crucial 54 for the seventh wicket with Nic Pothas, as Hampshire collected 53 runs in the last 10 overs. It turned out to be the difference between the sides.
Mike Procter has arrived in to Kenya to inspect facilities as the country prepares to resume hosting one-day international matches with a three-game series against Bangladesh next month. More games will be hosted in the build-up to the World Cup, culminating in the inaugural ICC World Cricket League next January.During his visit, Procter, an ICC match referee, is due to tour five venues in Nairobi, including the Nairobi Gymkhana ground which staged the 2000 ICC Knockout tournament but which has fallen into relative disrepair since, and the Indian Ocean coastal town of Mombasa.”We need to have many of our facilities upgraded for official ODIs”, Samir Inamdar, the Cricket Kenya chairman told AFP. “Apart from Nairobi Gymkhana, the other existing facilities need to be upgraded as well.”Roger Harper, Kenya’s coach, recently criticised the local administration for doing little to improve the facilities, saying that the abundant cricket talent was not enough to make Kenya compete at the highest level.
The exercise to select India’s next coach is finally over, with Greg Chappell, one of the game’s all-time greats, being appointed. The BCCI-appointed committee met at 10am on Friday, and made an announcement on the subject at 12.30pm. Initially, the board had not ruled out the chance of another round of discussions with the short-listed candidates after the preliminary round of inteviews was marked by chaos and confusion. Tom Moody, Mohinder Amarnath and Desmond Haynes were the others in contention.The committee – comprising Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Srinivas Venkataraghavan – began their first interview with Mohinder Amarnath at 2.25pm on Thursday, a delay of almost half-an-hour, as a photo shoot had to be completed first.Amarnath, the only Indian in the race, sporting a small Indian flag at the meeting, took close to two hours to make his presentation and finish his interview (although he was allotted 45 minutes) apparently because he had problems with the laptop computer he was using. This happened even though Amarnath had brought along his brother-in-law to help handle the technology side of things.So Chappell, the second in line to be interviewed, occupied the hot seat at around 4.20pm, a good hour-and-a-half after the time he was allotted. Furthermore, Cricinfo has learned that Chappell had to complete his presentation in quick time as Ranbir Singh Mahendra, the board president, and Jagmohan Dalmiya, the former BCCI chief, had to leave the Taj Palace hotel around 5pm to keep a prearranged date with the prime minister. The interviews of the two remaining candidates – Haynes and Moody – then resumed after 6.30pm when the officials returned.Sources close to the committee revealed that they were “impressed” by Chappell’s crisp presentation and the brief question-and-answer session that followed. In this period the committee attempted to glean the basics of what Chappell hoped to achieve if he was handed the job. One thing that went in Chappell’s favour was the fact that he was prepared to commit as many as 290 days a year to the job. When Chappell was last short-listed for the job in 2000, remuneration was reportedly a problem. However it has been learned that all four candidates this time around were happy to work with whatever figure the board thought appropriate.Haynes, meanwhile, emerged from his interview appearing relaxed and, when mobbed by waiting television channels and other media people, asked jokingly, “Are you guys going to leave me alone now?” The comedy continued when one of the reporters commented that Haynes was the dark horse in the race, to which he replied: “Yes, look at me [pointing to the colour of his skin], I certainly am the dark horse.”The BCCI could not afford to waste time in announcing the successful candidate, as two of those short-listed – Chappell and Moody – had also been in talks with the Sri Lankan board, which is keen to make an appointment soon. Moody, who was the last to emerge from this round of interviews, told the media that he believed the fact that he was the youngest of the four candidates was neither an advantage nor a disadvantage.He did, however, stress the fact that his knowledge of the modern game would work in his favour. When it was suggested that he had not played as much cricket as some of the others in the fray, Moody remarked: “I’m not here to represent India, I’m here to coach the team.”Ultimately, though, Chappell’s greater stature within the game, and an ability to think out of the box, helped swing it his way. After almost five years of near-steady progress under John Wright, Chappell now has the task of taking India to the next level – that inhabited by Australia.
A one-day triangular series involving Australia, India and Pakistan is likely to be held in Amstelveen, Holland, in August. According to a report in the Times of India, a spokesman for the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) confirmed that the VRA Ground in Amstelveen had been chosen as the venue, but also added the rider that the ICC would first inspect the facilities there.”The ICC inspection committee, in consultation with senior representatives of the Pakistan, Indian and Australian Boards, will clear the venue for the tournament,” the spokesman said. “The VRA Ground has already hosted a one-day international, when South Africa and Kenya played there in the 1999 World Cup.”The boards of Australia, India and Pakistan have already agreed to play a triangular tournament in Europe before the ICC Champions Trophy, which will be held in England in September 2004.
Daryl Tuffey must have achieved one of the more remarkable records in international cricket with the number of occasions in which he has taken a wicket in his first over opening the bowling at either end.He did it again in Napier today when New Zealand were playing India in the second match of their National Bank One-Day International Series.Tuffey has completed the feat 14 times in 11 separate matches, six times in Test matches and eight times in ODIs. He has taken two wickets in his opening over once each in a Test and ODI.Ten of the occurrences have happened this year and four against India this month alone.The list of victims are:Tests:Marcus Trescothick and Mark Butcher (England) at Auckland, 1 April 2002 Shahid Afridi (Pakistan) at Lahore, 1 May 2002 Virender Sehwag (India) at Wellington, 12 December 2002 Sanjay Bangar and Parthiv Patel* (India) at Hamilton, 20 and 21 December 2002ODIs:Saeed Anwar (Pakistan) at Napier, 20 February 2001 Saeed Anwar (Pakistan) at Christchurch, 25 February 2001 Marvan Atapattu and Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka) at Sharjah, 10 April 2001 Marcus Trescothick (England) at Auckland, 23 February 2002 Sanath Jayasuriya (Sri Lanka) at Sharjah, 14 April 2002 Imran Nazir (Pakistan) at Rawalpindi, 24 April 2002 Sourav Ganguly (India) at Napier, 29 December 2002* Bangar was dismissed in the first innings, Patel in the second innings.