All posts by csb10.top

Mohammad Asif’s B sample test has been postponed till August 18 after the Indian Premier League accepted his request for more time in order to obtain a visa to travel to Switzerland, where he will be assessed at a World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory. This is the second occasion that Asif’s test has been set back; it was shifted to August 6 after being originally scheduled for July 28.Asif’s lawyer, Shahid Karim, who is set to accompany him to Switzerland, was confident of securing visas on time. “The Swiss embassy conducted Asif’s interview on Monday [August 4] and have agreed to issue the visas. That is a big burden off us as we want to be present for the B sample test, which is our right,” Karim told the Karachi-based newspaper.Karim was critical of the Pakistan board’s stance on Asif. “It seems the PCB has distanced itself from Asif in this case. According to the board’s rules and regulations, we are not subject to request the board for any help,” he said. “It is PCB’s responsibility or rather choice, on whether they want to support us and send an official with us to Switzerland or not.”However, the PCB defended its position. “Until now, neither he [Asif] nor his lawyer have approached us for any assistance in securing visas for Switzerland or otherwise,” Nadeem Akram, the board’s director – human resources, said. “If they do request us for assistance we will consider helping him.”The board, though, maintained that Asif will have to fight the case on his own. “He is one of our valued players but since we have no jurisdiction in the IPL and they are communicating directly with him and his lawyer, he was advised to handle things himself and fight his case.”Asif is looking to clear his name after he was found to have used a banned substance during random dope testing at the IPL, where he played for the Delhi Daredevils. He is currently under suspension for the offence, and is due to appear before an IPL tribunal to face those charges and is likely to face some punishment from the PCB thereafter.

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) is confident the Stanford Twenty20 for 20 match between England and a Stanford All Stars team will go ahead as scheduled despite Digicel, the sponsors of the West Indies team, filing an injunction in a London high court.WICB chief executive Donald Peters said the board was confident there was no issue. “We are not part of this in that it is not our team, it is not the West Indies team that will be taking part, so Digicel’s rights are not infringed,” Peters told the . “They are our sponsors but we disagree on this matter. They believe one thing and we believe another but we expect that common sense will prevail.”The injunction relates solely to the proposed match between England and the Stanford Superstars to be held in Antigua on November 1, part of the five-year, US$100 million series – which consists of one All-Star match per year against an England select team. Digicel is seeking to have the WICB withdraw all approvals for the Stanford Super Series. Their concern is the deal between the WICB and Stanford encroaches Caribbean telecommunication company Digicel’s exclusive sponsorship rights. Reports suggest Stanford is close to signing on Cable and Wireless (Digicel’s competitor and a former sponsor of the West Indies team) as a sponsor for the series.The injunction will be heard on September 18 in London.

Jason Krejza, Australia’s uncapped offspinner, has won an endorsement from his former mentor, the Sri Lanka coach Trevor Bayliss, ahead of the India Test series. Bayliss coached Krejza at New South Wales and he believes his propensity to turn the ball sharply could make him a dangerous weapon in India.”He’s a big spinner of the ball, and that could be an advantage,” Bayliss told the . “If he does play, he could be a bit like Harbhajan [Singh]. He could bowl some big-turning, bouncing balls that can be difficult to play.”Krejza’s selection in the 15-man squad was a surprise and he is no certainty to play a Test on the tour. An attacking bowler who likes flighting the ball, Krejza moved to Tasmania during the 2006-07 season to further his prospects.Bayliss said during their time together at New South Wales, Krejza had been working on a delivery that was not unlike Ajantha Mendis’ carrom ball. Bayliss oversaw the recent Test series in Sri Lanka where his side beat India 2-1 and Mendis was named Player of the Series for his 26 wickets.”The unbelievable thing is how accurate he [Mendis] is with those variations,” Bayliss said. “I know Krejza was working in the nets on flicking it off the middle finger to the leg side, I don’t know if he still does it.”Bayliss said whoever took the ball for Australia, the key against India would be to stem the flow of runs. “One of the things we did well here,” Bayliss said, “was stop them scoring by building pressure from both ends, and it doesn’t matter whether you do that with pace or spin, it still works.”

Alviro Petersen led from the front with twin hundreds as the Lions opened their season with a tense 37-run victory against the Warriors at Johannesburg. He hit 131 in the first innings and 120 in the second to leave the visitors a target of 251. They made a brisk start, but slumped to 81 for 4 when Ashwell Prince was caught at third slip off Cliff Deacon for 9, following two wickets in two balls for Garnett Kruger. The middle order fought hard and at 195 for 6 the game was back in the balance when Robin Peterson edged Deacon to the wicketkeeper. Andre Nel then cranked up his pace to remove Wayne Parnell before Deacon shifted the Warrior’s last major hope, Justin Kreusch, for 49. Petersen was handed the Man-of-the-Match award after a fine start to his season. His 131 formed more than half the Lions’ first innings, as they lost 8 for 75 to fall away to 255. The Warriors battled to an advantage of 61 as Kreusch ended unbeaten on 85, but that was soon wiped off by Petersen. Again, though, the Lions lost their advantage, slipping from 145 for 1 to 272 for 9, before a tenth-wicket stand of 39 between Nel and Kruger. In the final outcome, it proved the difference.The Eagles launched their SuperSport campaign with an 86-run win against the Cape Cobras in a match dominated by the seamers at Kimberley. Dillon du Preez, fresh from his county season with Leicestershire, claimed match figures of 7 for 76 as the Eagles attack out-bowled a star-studded Cobras line-up that boasted Charl Langeveldt, Monde Zondeki and Vernon Philander. Ryan Bailey’s 91, alongside 81 from Boeta Dippenaar, boosted the Eagles to 296 then the Cobras batting was ripped apart. du Preez and CJ de Villiers shared eight wickets as the Cobras collapsed to 79 for 9. Despite a last-wicket stand of 46 they still fell short of the follow-on, but Dippenaar chose not to enforce. He may have been regretting his decision as they staggered to 18 for 4, however Riley Rossouw, the Under-19 batsman, held firm with an unbeaten 63 off 133 balls to lift the lead to 300. The Cobras were always unlikely to reach the highest total of the match and couldn’t find anyone to play a major innings. Philander top-scored with 42, but the Eagles wrapped up their win with a day to spare.Imran Tahir brought his impressive form from the County Championship straight into the South African domestic season, claiming five wickets for the Titans, but their opening match against the Dolphins was severely impacted by the weather at Durban. The final day was washed out after the Dolphins earned a lead of 81, despite losing their top-order to Tahir. He claimed the first five wickets to fall, before Jon Kent (91) and Pierre de Bruyn (73) responded with a sixth-wicket stand of 157. There had also been one main stand in the Titans’ innings with Martin van Jaarsveld (58) and Gulam Bodi (62) added 101 after coming together at 13 for 3.

Player of the week – Alviro Petersen
After finishing the tour of England with a 4-0 hammering in the one-day series, South Africa coach Mickey Arthur said it was time to start rebuilding the limited-overs team. Alviro Petersen has had a brief taste of international cricket with five ODIs against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh between 2006 and 2008, and the way he has begun this season another chance may not be far away. The future of some senior batsmen such as Herschelle Gibbs and Jacques Kallis is uncertain so, at 27, Petersen is part of the generation Arthur will be looking at. His back-to-back centuries against the Warriors have set a high standard for his season and won’t have gone unnoticed.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Chennai Superstars remained atop the ICL points table thanks to a five-run win over Delhi Giants, who slipped to their third defeat. It was a close game, with Delhi hitting 19 off the last over when needing 25, but ultimately the brace of top-order wickets were responsible for their defeat.Having chosen to bat, Chennai’s start was poor. Ian Harvey fell for 4, edging TP Sudhindra, R Jesuraj was run out for 5, and Abid Nadi trapped Russel Arnold lbw first ball. It was an uncharacteristic top-order failure, and Chennai owed plenty to a 77-run stand between Hemang Badani and R Sathish.Nabi’s second over went for 16, with Badani hitting 14 of them. G Vignesh played a few handsome shots but Shane Bond needed just four deliveries to strike. Vignesh backed away too far and was bowled for 24. Enter Sathish, who collected four boundaries in eight balls. With Badani smartly rotating the strike and finding the boundary, Chennai were back on course.Sathish picked up two more boundaries and a six in his 28-ball 41. Captain Stuart Law proved his worth with a cameo 28 from 17 and Badani finished unbeaten on 51 from 45 balls. Chennai finished on 166 for 6, meaning Delhi needed to score at 8.35 an over to win.Not for the first time, Delhi lost steam after a good start. Marvan Atapattu, who had just 29 runs in three games before this, and Monish Mishra hit 60 in 7.2 overs. Mishra was belligerent, carving 36 from 20 balls, before he was first out, bowled around his legs by Syed Mohammad. Atapattu was run out for 25 just after and Nantie Hayward removed Syed Abbas Ali for 3. Abhinav Bali’s wicket, bowled by Sathish for 10, hurt Delhi further.”The team haven’t been getting starts, though, and I’ve been going in with us needing 10 and 11 an over and having to hit boundaries from ball one,” Paul Nixon said before this match. When Nixon walked in at 90 for 3 in the 13th over, Delhi indeed needed boundaries. They didn’t come at any quick rate however, even though Nixon slapped Hayward for three in four balls. Shabbir Ahmed cleaned up Nixon for 24 at the start of the 19th over and Delhi went into the last over, bowled by Bond, needing 25. They got 19 thanks to some lusty hitting from Dhruv Mahajan.

Amit Bhandari, Delhi’s veteran medium-pacer, has been dropped for their Group A Super League match against Mumbai, which begins on Sunday. Bhandari was not included in the XI for Delhi’s previous match against Hyderabad where they conceded the first-innings lead. Bhandari’s replacement in the squad will be Sumit Narwal.Bhandari, 30, has been pushed by the new crop of bowlers, for the last two seasons. A comeback for Ashish Nehra this season meant there was one less place in the side. Bhandari did play the season opener for Delhi, and took two 2 for 86 and 1 for 19 against Punjab.Bhandari expressed displeasure over being dropped for the match against Hyderabad, and asked the selectors not to pick him if he was not going to play in the XI. “I can’t just sit in the dressing room if they think I am a liability,” he told the . “I am not unfit, I have been taking wickets to justify my place and I am as committed as the rest. Being the senior-most I did not deserve this humiliation.”I have been serving Delhi cricket as loyally as any one else and I deserved a better treatment from colleagues who I have known for more than a decade. None deemed it fit to communicate the decision to me that I was being dropped from the XI in the match against Hyderabad. Suddenly I felt unwanted.”However Chetan Chauhan, the chairman of the selection committee, said they didn’t show any disrespect in dropping Bhandari. “It is horses for courses and we will call him when we need him,” Chauhan said. “It is not the end of the journey for him. We didn’t want to pick him and then keep him in the reserves.”Squad: Aakash Chopra (capt.), Shikhar Dhawan, Mithun Manhas, Rajat Bhatia, Puneet Bisht (wk), Chetanya Nanda, Pradeep Sangwan, Ashish Nehra, Parvinder Awana, Aditya Jain, Sumit Narwal, Yogesh Nagar, Gaurav Chhabra, Mayank Tehlan and Narinder Singh.

South Africa’s coach, Mickey Arthur, has reacted with bewildered amusement to the recent outburst from opposite number Tim Nielsen in which he claimed Arthur and Graeme Smith had been “talking themselves up” and accused the South Africa coach and captain of “cheap talk.””Initially I thought he must have been misquoted but apparently not,” Arthur said. “I’m intrigued to know where we have talked up our chances, where did Tim see these quotes? All Graeme and I have ever said is that we are happy with our squad and we believe we have players capable of succeeding in Australia.”We have also said that beating Australia on home soil is the hardest job in cricket and that, despite the retirement of several legends of the game, we expect this tour to be just as hard as ever. Australia always find a way – just when you think there is a chink in their armour, they close ranks and prove you wrong.”I have great respect for Tim, for Australian cricket and for this Australian team. Neither Graeme nor I regard ourselves as favourites and I certainly won’t be drawn into any conversation which could be regarded as ‘cheap’.”Nielsen’s comments appear to be a break from Australia’s general tradition over the last decade and a half where only its superstars have made bold media statements while the coach and the ‘mortal’ players remain below the parapet.”We came to expect McGrath and Warne to ‘target’ certain players and to say they were going to hammer us,” Arthur said. “They made those statements because, by and large, they were good enough to back them up. Maybe it’s become an Aussie tradition to make these big statements before an important series but, to be honest, it doesn’t sound quite the same coming from the coach, does it?”On South Africa’s last tour to Australia three years ago, Smith deliberately made three or four headline-grabbing statements as a ploy to divert attention away from a young and inexperienced squad. The intention was to allow his players to concentrate on cricket without media distractions.”There won’t be any of that this time,” Arthur said. “Graeme and I are both naturally honest and open people, we both enjoy and respect the media and appreciate the fact that their job is to give the series a bit of hype, get people excited. Maybe that’s what Tim was doing, just giving the media a helping hand.”

Scorecard

Half-centuries to Rhett Lockyear and George Bailey drove Tasmania to 8 for 184, a total that was out of reach of a struggling Queensland. The Tigers’ spinners Jason Krejza, Dan Marsh and Xavier Doherty were economical as they stalled the Bulls’ reply on a cool afternoon in Hobart.James Hopes opened with 58 off 34 balls and Queensland were 0 for 84 before Hopes fell to Doherty and the momentum was lost. Lee Carseldine finished unbeaten on 35 but the Bulls, who are without a win, needed a greater surge towards the end of the game and they finished at 4 for 166. Tasmania’s first success of the competition was set up by Lockyear (52 off 28 deliveries) and Bailey (52 off 34).

West Indies coach John Dyson has said his team deserves credit for pushing New Zealand in an evenly-contested draw in the final Test of the two-match series. A series of convincing individual performances ensured an outright result was never in prospect in the decider, but Dyson said earning a draw was “better than losing”.”We came here obviously trying to win, as the first match was affected by the weather. We expected a very good pitch here and that’s what we got. I’m pleased with the way the team fought throughout this match,” Dyson said. “At no point in this match did we give up and that is what I’m very pleased about. It ended up a pretty good game and could have gone either way in the final afternoon.”Key contributors to the draw in Napier were the Australian-born Brendan Nash, with scores of 74 and 65, and fast bowler Fidel Edwards, who took a career-best 7 for 87 in the first innings before making an invaluable 20 with centurion Chris Gayle to delay New Zealand’s second innings until only 60 overs were available.Nash featured in crucial partnerships in both innings to stall New Zealand’s progress. In the second innings West Indies were effectively 42 for 4 when he combined with Gayle to add 124 for the fifth wicket. “He’s done very well for his first series,” said Dyson.West Indies’ second-innings 375 was largely down to Gayle’s 197, a vital knock which spanned roughly eight-and-a-half hours, and contributions from the lower order. Though he was out first ball in the second innings, Shivnarine Chanderpaul made a vital century in the first on a batting pitch where taking 20 wickets was not easy.The drawn series means West Indies remain at seventh place and New Zealand one behind them on the ICC Test rankings.Daniel Vettori, meanwhile, identified opener Tim McIntosh and Jamie How as positives from the series – one that extended New Zealand’s unbeaten record against West Indies to ten Tests, five won and five drawn, dating back to a ten-wicket loss at Bridgetown in 1996.McIntosh, in his second Test, batted for 455 minutes for his first-innings 136 in Napier, and that pleased his captain. “It was an openers’ hundred, I think as a New Zealand team that’s something we’ve been crying out for for a long time,” said Vettori.In the second innings, How snapped a series of low scores with a 65-ball 56. Vettori backed How, a sign that the 27-year-old may feature in the home series against India in March-April. “I’m a very big fan of Jamie, in my mind I want him to play as much as possible,” said Vettori. “The selectors feel he is an opener of international class and we want to give him as much time as possible.”The two teams will now play a Twenty20 International on Boxing Day in Auckland before a five-ODI series. Three players – left-arm spinner Nikita Miller, allrounder Kieron Pollard and left-handed batsman Shawn Findlay – arrived on Sunday for the limited-overs leg of West Indies’ tour.”We have a few new players who have joined the team and they have been to the nets trying to get over their jet lag,” said Dyson. “We just have to readjust our thinking and the way we approach the game as we look forward to these matches and get ready for Twenty20s. With our team, they have a lot of 20/20 experience and it is a form of the game they are very comfortable and happy with.”

That’s how to play it
Andrew Flintoff failed to add to his overnight score when he couldn’t get over the top of a cut shot and offered a simple catch to backward point. Three balls later, Matt Prior showed how the shot should be played – albeit to a slightly wider ball – as he connected with a rasping cut that raced to the boundary. It highlighted the narrow margins there are for batsmen between success or failure, but Flintoff probably hadn’t finished slamming the dressing-room furniture to be able to watch Prior’s effort.Shiv’s eye-patches no help
Shivnarine Chanderpaul has become an unexpected style icon for the black patches he wears under both eyes. “One day in Miami I was struggling to open my eyes and Faoud Bacchus [the former West Indies batsman] came and stuck two under my eyes,” he told the series programme. “It actually worked then so I kept it.” Well, they didn’t help him much when he failed to steady himself under a steepling top-edge offered by Ryan Sidebottom. As the ball fell agonisingly out of his reach, Chanderpaul signalled as though he’d lost it in the sun.Rudi’s right again
After Paul Collingwood was the first England batsman to be on the receiving end of a referral yesterday, Steve Harmison today became the first to ask for a decision to be checked. After Jerome Taylor struck him with a full, inswinging delivery, he immediately asked for the second opinion. It wasn’t the plumbest of lbws you will ever see, but there wasn’t enough doubt to allow Daryl Harper to reverse his decision. When Hawk-eye was eventually used the ball was shown to be clipping leg stump and Rudi Koertzen had been proved right for a second time.Tone setting
Andrew Flintoff has been involved in some barnstorming overs in Tests – Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis were two memorable victims – and his first to Chris Gayle was right up there. His second ball was planted straight back over mid-on for six and all Flintoff could do was shrug his shoulders. However, he soon responded with a searing bouncer that whistled past Gayle’s nose. It is easy to drift off occasionally in the Caribbean sun, but that over woke everyone up.Replay crazy After one referral in 121 overs, five were then called for in the next 12 split across the end of England’s innings and start of West Indies’. The most hopelessly optimistic came when Andrew Strauss lost the plot early in Ramnaresh Sarwan’s innings, to a delivery that would have missed a second set of stumps. But Sarwan was soon the beneficiary after he’d been given out lbw to Harmison by Tony Hill. The third umpire said there was an issue with height and Hill reversed his decision. One of the main talking points through all of this was the time it took to make the decision with some waits approaching three or four minutes. This is the trial phase, but the delay will be something ICC will need to look at.Bell gets clanged
One man probably wishing Sarwan had been given out was Ian Bell. A couple of balls after the lbw was overturned, Sarwan clipped the ball strongly off his pads. It went straight at Bell – although even his harshest critics, of which there are plenty, would be hard pressed to call it a chance. What really hurt, though, was where it hit him. On first look it appeared to strike his knee, but in fact it crunched him a touch higher up where everyone, except the person hit, finds it very funny.