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The new PCB chairman Ijaz Butt has said he was surprised that Sri Lanka and Bangladesh did not openly support Pakistan as the hosts of the 2009 Champions Trophy when the issue was raised at the ICC’s board meeting in Dubai last week.”It was a big surprise to me when Sri Lanka and Bangladesh didn’t speak a word when the issue was discussed during the meeting,” Butt said. “I was not expecting this from those two countries. After the meeting was over, officials from Sri Lanka and Bangladeshcame to me and said ‘We are with you’, but I told them ‘You didn’t say this during the meeting.'”Butt said that India, South Africa, England, West Indies and Zimbabwe openly supported Pakistan to remain as the host of the tournament which is now scheduled between September 24 and October 5 2009. It was originally scheduled for September 2008 but was postponed after South Africa, Australia and New Zealand expressed concerns over the security situation in Pakistan.Butt said that the venue for the tournament, which will be held in one city, will be decided after India’s tour to Pakistan in early 2009.”Shashank Manohar [BCCI president] has assured me his full support and the tour will be organized as per schedule,” Butt said. “The ICC agreed to reassess the security situation after we host India and it is fine with us.”

Match facts

Oct 20, 2008
Start time 7.30pm (1400 GMT)

Big Picture

When 14 Bangladesh players joined the ICL, many voiced concerns over the fortunes of the national side. But while Bangladesh are providing stiff competition to New Zealand, a refreshing change from their feeble performances in the recent past, the Dhaka Warriors are yet to win in the ICL’s second season.To be fair to Dhaka, they have come up against two of the better teams in the league, Chennai Superstars and Hyderabad Heroes, both of whom won tournaments in the first season. In a clash of the capital cities of Bangladesh and India, they face the Delhi Giants, who will aim to recover from the loss to the Royal Bengal Tigers.It’s the first match for both teams in Ahmedabad, where the conditions have offered a bit of assistance to the quicker bowlers. With Shane Bond in the opposition, Dhaka need to be wary early on in their innings. Alok Kapali scored the first century in the ICL against Hyderabad, but the batsmen need to fire in unison. Kapali scored 100 off 60 balls, but despite that Dhaka’s score was only 168; had it been 15-20 more, Hyderabad would have struggled to chase it down.

Watch out for

Left-arm spin: Both teams have two left-arm spinners in their ranks, and they will be buoyed by the performance of Ahmedabad Rockets’ trio of slow left-armers against Lahore Badshahs on Sunday. In ten overs, Sumit Kalia, Sridharan Sriram and Parvez Aziz took six wickets for 49 runs.Mohammad Rafique has been the best bowler for Dhaka, closely followed by Mosharraf Hossain, another left-arm spinner. Mosharraf was the highest wicket-taker in Bangladesh’s National Cricket League – the premier first-class tournament – in 2007-08. For Delhi, Ali Murtaza has been their strike bowler, with 21 wickets in 16 games and an outstanding economy-rate of 5.39. Abhinav Bali, though, has been far from impressive, and may not feature in Monday’s clash.Aftab Ahmed has sparkled with the bat so far in the tournament, albeit not for the duration his team would desire. Dhaka would expect more than quickfire scores of 24 and 30, but even if Aftab does score only that much, expect a shot to savour – against Chennai, he paddle-swept fast bowler Nantie Hayward for a six.Paul Nixon loves to get under the skin of opposition batsmen (read more on that here) but if he gets going, Dhaka’s spinners won’t be happy either. Nixon powered Delhi to victory with a 24-ball 43 against Ahmedabad, and his ability to clear the boundary and effectively play the reverse-sweep will make him a tough customer for the spinners to handle.

Quotes

“We need to be more disciplined with our work. We need to start playing for each other as we don’t have too many big-name players. There is a lot of talent in the youngsters but we need to play as a unit.”
Delhi captain Marvan Atapattu on what went wrong against Bengal.“The team can’t be loaded with 11 big-hitters. We have to gel as a team and each one should contribute towards a win. We can’t afford to have players who will get 10 runs in two balls and then get out.”

The Chandigarh Lions warmed up for the bigger prize with a six-wicket win over the Chennai Superstars in the ICL 20-20 domestic tournament final in Hyderabad. G Vignesh (48 from 32 balls) and Hemang Badani (51 from 42) scored the bulk of Chennai’s disappointing 136 after they chose to bat, and Dinesh Mongia’s team overhauled it in the final over. After stemming Chennai’s innings with 2 for 16 from four overs, Mongia, the Chandigarh captain, slammed 61 from 48 balls to help his side home.Chennai had Chandigarh in trouble at 21 for 3 but Mongia and Gaurav Gupta added 84 in ten overs. Mongia hit seven fours and two sixes during his innings and Gupta finished unbeaten on 43 to guide Chandigarh to victory.The second season of the ICL starts on October 10. There will be 41 matches played across four venues, with plenty of hype surrounding the ninth team, the Dhaka Warriors.

Graeme Smith has revealed that he has been struggling with worsening tennis elbow during the England tour, and says he will need to take some time out over the next few months to be ready to face Australia.Smith will take his place at the head of South Africa’s side for the five-match ODI series which starts at Headingley, on Friday, but concedes that he needs some time away to get his elbow treated otherwise he could be forced to have surgery. With South Africa facing home-and-away series against Australia, beginning in December, Smith has his eyes firmly set on that challenge meaning he could miss the series against Bangladesh in October.”I have managed to sneak that [the injury] under the radar,” Smith told the . “That is what has been bothering me the whole tour and it is just getting worse and worse. I had a scan the other day and I will have to have a break at some stage to get it better.”It will be about planning with the medical staff, missing some stage of the winter, to make sure I am ready for the big challenge at the end of the year. I don’t want to reach the point where there is no other decision in terms of what you have to do. Then you’re out.”Although Smith is going to battle through the one-day series, allrounder Albie Morkel may have to be sent home as he struggles to overcome his shoulder injury. Morkel picked up the problem playing in the Twenty20 for Durham and had already been ruled out of the first ODI.”It is probably not looking good for him at the moment,” Smith said. “I guess we will have to see where he is by the weekend and see whether or not he will progress.”If not we might have to look at someone else. If he is not going to get any better we might have to act but he is in the hands of the physio at the moment.”

Scorecard

Danielle Hazell spun the England Development side to a 33-run win over Ireland at Crowthorne on Sunday. Hazell, the England-contracted player, picked up 3 for 16 to including the wicket of topscorer Nicki Coffey to help them to victory after Georgia Elwiss and Jasmine Titmuss had dismissed the top order.Coffey ended with 47 but her efforts went unrewarded as Ireland were all out for 131, chasing the England side’s 164. Wicketkeeper Sophie Le Marchand was the home side’s leading scorer but she too fell just short of her fifty, with 46 before becoming one of Suzanne Kenealy’s three victims.The development side went on to meet England as part of the seniors’ warm-up for their one-day series against South Africa which begins this week, but the match was eventually abandoned.

A day before the national selectors meet to pick India’s Test squad for the tour of Sri Lanka, much of the speculation surrounds the participation of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Unconfirmed reports suggest Dhoni may skip the series and, while his own public statements have not cleared the air either way, the Indian board says it is unaware of any such decision.”He [Dhoni] hasn’t informed us about sitting out of the Test series. If he wants to sit out, he is free to do so,” Niranjan Shah, the BCCI secretary, said.Midway through the recent Asia Cup in Pakistan recently, Dhoni spoke about fatigue as a result of back-to-back-matches. On Monday, he welcomed Shah’s statement: “The board has done a good thing by saying that if someone needs rest, he can opt out.”This is not the first time Dhoni has considered opting out of a tour. In private, he had complained about exhaustion after India’s triumph in the CB Series in Australia earlier this year. Despite recovering from a finger injury, he kept the suspense hanging over his availability before the Tests against South Africa, before going on to play the entire series. Since the rigorous IPL campaign with the Chennai Super Kings, Dhoni has played non-stop, leading the side during the Kitply Cup as well as the Asia Cup.India’s coach Gary Kirsten, writing on his website, expressed concern about packed schedules and how important it was for key players like Dhoni to take a break. If Dhoni does request a break, Dinesh Karthik, who was last part of the Indian squad for the Australian tour, is strongly favoured to be the replacement ahead of Parthiv Patel.The BCCI is yet to decide on the actual strength of the squad due to fitness concerns from the fast bowlers. “We will only decide tomorrow,” Shah said when asked if it will be a 15- or a 16-member squad.

What is certain, though, is the return of experience to the squad in the form of Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan. Kumble had to sit out of the last Test India played, against South Africa in Kanpur, while Tendulkar, who had opted out mid-way through the same series due to a groin injury, will submit a fitness certificate tomorrow. Zaheer has not played since his heel injury resurfaced after the first Test against Australia last year.A big loss is the unavailability of Sreesanth, who has been advised a few more weeks’ rest. That, and the below-par performances of RP Singh and Irfan Pathan, is the chief reason behind the selectors being hard-pressed to include Zaheer. Pathan is likely to get the axe due to his fitness. He failed to report his side strain to the selectors ahead of the Asia Cup, and missed the initial games and his bowling form since his return has been ordinary.Among the slow bowlers, Harbhajan Singh is expected to return to the squad as the second spinner, having served the five-match ban imposed on him for slapping Sreesanth during an IPL game. If the selectors opt for a third spinner, the left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha, who made his ODI debut in the Asia Cup, is the frontrunner. “He qualified for the national team based on the long spells he’s bowled on the domestic circuit and he brings variety,” a national selector said about Ojha.At the top of the order, Gautam Gambhir’s solid performances in the one-dayers and the IPL might force the selectors to consider him ahead of Wasim Jaffer, who has looked scratchy in the last couple of series (in Australia, he made 49 runs in three Tests, while he only managed 126 runs in as many matches against South Africa).In addition to the squad for the Sri Lanka Tests, the selectors will also pick a pool of 30 probables for the Champions Trophy in September in Pakistan.

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–>The ICC is considering a Test championship to ensure that, amid the increasing popularity of the Twenty20 format, “a special place is maintained for Test cricket in the calendar”.”The ICC will consider a number of options in the upcoming board meetings (in Dubai later this month), one of which is an option to introduce a Test championship or league,” the ICC’s acting chief executive, Dave Richardson, said at the launch ceremony of the Champions Trophy in Pakistan.The details of the championship, though, are yet to be worked out. “There are so many ways this could be done, a league over one year, two years or four years,” he said. “I am certainly in favour of looking at such an option to make sure we provide a good quality context for Test cricket to take place so that it can be preserved as the pinnacle of the game.”Richardson acknowledged that domestic Twenty20 leagues such as the IPL had been a “fantastic success” but maintained that international cricket remained the game’s highest level. “If you ask any player around the world what he would like to do, he would like to play Test cricket for his country.”The first ICC Test Championship was launched in May 2001 and was a ranking system based on the results of the most recent series (a minimum of two Tests constituted a series), home and away, between each of the teams. It was then revamped in 2003 to reflect the results of each Test, rather than an entire series, and also to take into account the strength of the opponents while awarding points.

New Zealand had Brendon McCullum and Scott Styris at the crease, andonly needed a further seven runs in the 20th over to win. The matchwas theirs for the taking, provided they didn’t lose any furtherwickets, and the series would have been levelled. But at 7.25pm, sixballs away from ensuring a result for either side, the umpires gave into the lashing rain at Edgbaston. New Zealand were well and trulyrobbed, as were a hardy and patient crowd of 16,000.”It’s a game we would have won if we’d played all the overs,” DanielVettori, the New Zealand captain, said, “or even got that 20th over,so there’s a sense of disappointment in the dressing room. It’s almostlike a loss.”Fortune generally favours the brave, but not on this occasion. New Zealand desperately needed a slice of luck, a break – anything to get their tour back on track after losing the Test series, and receiving a whipping in both the Twenty20 and first ODI. Despiteoutplaying England, today it was not to be, thanks to the most anal ofregulations. Rain and poor light had prevented play from startinguntil 3pm, but even so, it was decided they would take a 30-minuteinterval in between innings, in spite of the awful weather forecastdue and the excellent light the ground was enjoying at that precisetime.”It’s just one of those common-sense solutions [that was needed],”Vettori said. “We bowled one allotment of 13 overs and one of 11, soit wasn’t like we were tired or anything. It could have been reducedto ten minutes and we’d have gone straight back out there,[especially] with that knowledge of what weather was coming. If youcan take the common-sense approach to most things, they normally getsorted out.”In addition to the interval, England were themselves a little slow intaking nearly an hour to bowl 13 overs, further hampering the game’sprogress, and Vettori was quick to emphasise the umpires’responsibility. “There were a lot of stoppages. Some were necessary,some were not. I’ve played for a long, long time and never been finedfor a slow over-rate. If some people can do it, then I think youshould push the case through.”It’s all too easy to blame the umpires on occasions like these, butthere was undoubted gamesmanship from England that could easily havebeen nipped in the bud by Steve Davis and Ian Gould. A stray plasticbag seemed to take an age to be removed, while England’s oddlyenthusiastic fielding changes appeared to take place after nearlyevery delivery. Responding to their tardy over-rate, Paul Collingwoodinsisted that there was no foul play from England or dirty tacticsinvolved.”It wasn’t a tactical thing or anything like that,” he said,pointedly. “I guess we were chasing the ball a little bit at times.That happens, and you’re not going to get through your overs as quick.It wasn’t tactical and I didn’t realise it was that slow. I waswatching the Duckworth-Lewis all the time and we were there orthereabouts. We were only one wicket away from clinching it really, soit was going down to the wire.”Like Vettori, though, Collingwood blamed the no-result on the fattenedinterval between innings. “That’s probably the disappointment of the day actually,” he said.”When you’ve got a shortened game like that, to have a 30-minute breakbetween innings surprised us a bit, to be honest. We were ready to goout in 10 or 15 minutes.”It’s a shame that it was 30 but it’s in the regulations and we can’tchange it. It needs to be looked at, because we’d all had lunch beforethe game had started, so there was nothing to do between innings.”I can understand [the crowd] getting frustrated when it goes down tothe wire. It’s in the rules and regulations so there’s nothing we can doas players, but I do believe it’s something that has to be looked out.We could have gone out there in 10 or 15 minutes; from a player’spoint of view, we were ready to go.”In the current climate, it is unfortunate timing for 50-over cricketto be made to look so foolish. Its younger, hip cousin has it allwrapped up in half the time, after all. Cricket’s regulations areoften its Achilles heel, and in times like these, when the landscapeis changing so quickly, common sense simply must prevail. One-daycricket remains a huge income stream for boards, but its dissenterswill be quietly chuckling at the archaic regulations that were playedout so perfectly today.

The 25th anniversary celebrations of India’s 1983 World Cup-winning campaign will not involve the Board of Control for Cricket in India in any capacity. It is reported that the BCCI was reluctant to get involved because a few members of that squad, including the captain Kapil Dev, have shifted to the rival Indian Cricket league (ICL), which the board has refused to recognise.The private celebrations have been organised by Professional Management Group, a firm run by Sunil Gavaskar, who was also a member of the squad. Speaking to the , Kapil said it was highly unlikely the BCCI would even be invited.”I’m not hurt that the board is not organising the function,” Kapil told the paper. “Why should I be hurt? The important thing is not whether the board is backing off because of me or the ICL, but whether we will invite the board members or not. Right now, it doesn’t look like that we’ll interested in calling them. This is an event by Sunny [Gavaskar] and I’m helping him with it.”The BCCI also confirmed they weren’t doing anything to honour the cricketers. “Let them do whatever they’re doing,” Ratnakar Shetty, the BCCI’s chief administrative officer, said. “We haven’t got any invitation from them for any intimation.”The BCCI’s non involvement in the celebrations was always on the cards ever since former players like Kapil, Madan Lal and Balwinder Sandhu joined the ICL. The board responded by revoking pensions to all former players linked to the league. Kapil was sacked as chairman of the BCCI-run National Cricket Academy after accepting the position as the chairman of the ICL’s executive board.As part of the celebrations, all squad members will be involved in four six-a-side matches across the country next month. Dubai will host a dinner function on June 19 before the big party at the Long Room at Lord’s six days later, where the team pulled off the victory. The celebrations will include a music programme and a golf tournament. Several of the West Indies players who featured in that match are expected to attend.

The Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) has hit out at Dr Rudi Webster for his strong comments over alleged indiscipline of Barbadian students at the Shell Cricket Academy of St George’s University.Webster, director of the Grenada-based academy and a noted sports psychologist, described the Barbadian graduates as among the most indisciplined in a wide-ranging interview on Voice of Barbados (VOB) on September 21.In a frank exchange of views involving top BCA officials and the Press at the Island Inn Hotel yesterday, BCA president Stephen Alleyne said the board of management discussed fully and viewed very seriously Webster’s comments."The board of the BCA has written the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), of which the BCA is a member, indicating that it has extreme reservations and concerns about a public statement being made by someone associated with the academy without the courtesy of providing that same information, and more importantly, the details of that information to the BCA," he said."The WICB has indicated it has concerns that it will research and investigate the matter and will respond."The BCA is awaiting that response before deciding what further needs to be done."In the VOB interview, Webster, who pioneered the establishment of the academy, also praised Barbadian fast bowler Fidel Edwards.Edwards, a brother of West Indies pacer Pedro Collins, was described by Webster as one who was "absolutely magnificent" and gave him 100 per cent for attitude, work ethic and discipline.There were charges of indiscipline among the other five Barbadians and Webster said the Guyanese and Jamaicans were the most disciplined of the 28 students in the May 15 and August 7 programme.