All posts by csb10.top

Wisden Cricinfo speaks exclusively to United States captain Richard Staple in the aftermath of the qualification for the Champions Trophy in SeptemberWhat’s been the reaction to your team qualifying?
Joy and happiness. This win has done a lot for cricket here judging by the response. It’s getting out that we won the tournament, and the awareness is much greater now.What sort of feedback have you had from the non-cricket community?
We’ve received some calls from politicians. It’s an election year. That’s always good for publicity, bringing the game into the public forum.How much preparation was there before the tournament?
We had a camp in Florida as most of our players are from the north-east. Mostly net sessions – we didn’t play for months. We had Faoud [Bacchus] as well as a few guys who live in Florida, like the former West Indian player Hamesh Anthony, assisting.Did you have any idea how quickly you had to win the last match to finishahead of Scotland?
About three-quarters of the way into the game we worked out we were going to have to win with two overs to spare.The batting was your strength – did you bank on that knowing the bowling would concede some runs?
Definitely. The wickets were batting tracks and we backed ourselves to bat second as we chase pretty well. We knew our bowling wasn’t as strong.In the build-up to the Champions Trophy, will you be looking for some more bowlers?
Yes, we have some good young fast bowlers. They were overlooked – I don’t know why, to be quite honest. There is a young boy named Imran Awan in Washington DC. He’s about the quickest we have in the country. and I think we are going to have to encourage young talent like him because our bowling attack is ageing. We have a lot of cricket prior to the Champions Trophy, so hopefully we can get a few young ones in.What was different about this squad to previous ones?
Clayton [Lambert] adds professionalism [which was] lacking in the previous sides. Normally, we would lose one or two wickets and then panic when chasing around 240. He keeps his cool, and allows the other players to play with a certain amount of relaxation.Should the ICC schedule more tournaments for the top six or so non-Test countries?
Yes. That would be great. We have been too inactive. We play a tournament and then don’t play for some time. Against teams like Holland, Scotland and Namibia, we can only improve.

England have reiterated their commitment to their current tour of Sri Lanka and will continue as planned with Sunday’s second Test despite another terrorist attack in the north of the country.According to Sri Lankan authorities, at least 15 people were killedand 38 injured when a Tamil Tiger landmine detonated beneath a crowdedbus one and a half hours away from Anuradhapura, 165 miles north of Colombo.Last week, two bombs exploded within ten hours of each other inColombo itself, killing at least 17 people including the personalsecretary of a government minister. England returned to thecapital on Wednesday night, hours after slipping to an 88-run defeatin the first Test at Kandy.”Reg Dickerson [England’s security advisor] has been in touch with theBritish High Commission,” Andrew Walpole, the team’s medialiaison officer, said. “Their travel advice has not changed. The players areable to leave the team hotel although, as is normal in this situation, they must inform the security manager of where they are going.”Security in Sri Lanka has been on high alert for several months, eversince the fragile peace between the government and the separatistTamil Tigers began to crumble in early 2006. In August of that year,South Africa’s one-day squad pulled out of a triangular tournament inthe country following a blast that killed seven and injured 17.”It definitely caused concern, but we’ve got to concentrate on thecricket,” Kevin Pietersen said after last week’s attacks. “It’s never nice to hear of casualties, and our hearts go out to those people and their families, but we’ve been told that our circle is pretty secure, hopefully. We’ve just been told to get on with the cricket and concentrate on what we’ve been paid to do.”

Zimbabwe won’t be taking part in South Africa’s domestic four-day competition, Gerald Majola, chief executive of Cricket South Africa (CSA), told the , a South African newspaper.The decision came at a meeting of CSA’s general council on Friday, which was called after players expressed their reservations over travelling to Zimbabwe. The Highveld Lions were to play a four-day match in Harare starting on October 28.Majola indicated that there would be further talks with Tony Irish, the chief executive of the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) and that decisions regarding Zimbabwe’s participation had been put on hold.”Instead of them playing in the SuperSport Series, we are looking at the possibility of Zimbabwe playing some four-day matches in South Africa against composite teams,” Majola said. Zimbabwe might still feature in the domestic one-day competitions in South Africa.Majola re-affirmed that CSA would oblige the request from the ICC to assist Zimbabwe cricket.”The decision has been taken. It is now a matter of sorting out logistics,” he said.He also suggested that the objections from the SACA were cricket-based, over the extra fixtures and possible impact of Zimbabwe playing the competition, especially if the fixtures clashed with their international obligations.With the other competitions – the MTN 45-overs competition and the Standard Bank Pro20 in March – starting only next year, there is still a chance that Zimbabwe could play. Majola dismissed suggestions there were moral objections to playing in Zimbabwe. “We leave politics to the politicians and the ICC.”

“You can’t take any team lightly these days. You don’t know which bush will throw up what snake.” These words, by Vijay Bharadwaj, the Karnataka coach, indicates how cautiously they are approaching the Ranji Trophy game against Himachal Pradesh. Karnataka will start as clear favourites, though: the team has Anil Kumble, who has just become the national captain, and Rahul Dravid, fresh from a double-hundred. Plus, they are playing at home.Both teams are carrying just one point from their previous games, as the batting let them down in the first innings. Karnataka collapsed against the spin of Ramesh Powar on a tricky first-day wicket against Mumbai while HP struggled against the Saurashtra spinners – Kamlesh Makvana and Rakesh Dhurv – and collapsed sensationally from 131 for 1 to 181.”It was one bad session of batting that cost us dearly,” Sandeep Sharma, HP’s captain, said. “But we are confident of a better show against Karnataka. Our bowling is in very good shape and I am sure the batsmen will come to the party.”Sharma has reason to believe that his team won’t be embarrassed. In Vikramjeet Singh Malik and Ashok Thakur, the left-arm seamer who took 11 wickets in the last game, they have a decent pace attack. And spin is their main strike weapon as they have the in-form left-arm spinner Vishal Bhatia and Sarandeep Singh, the former India offspinner who moved from Punjab to HP last season. Bhatia, who was the highest wicket-taker in the Plate league with 38 victims, and Sarandeep, who took 28 wickets last season, ensured that HP didn’t lose a single game en route to becoming the Plate champions.Their batting will be led by the captain himself and he will look to the young players like Paras Dogra, wicketkeeper Maninder Bisla, and Manish Gupta to get the runs on the board. Dogra was the top scorer last season with 528 runs at 48, while Sharma, too, enjoyed a good season.They have a fairly unchanged nucleus for the last three years. “We all know each other pretty well, there are quite a few talented youngsters, and it’s a very healthy attitude that prevails in our camp,” Sharma said. How these youngsters adapt to the challenge of playing against the experienced Karnataka players on an untested wicket will be the key.

The pitch is of some concern as it was recently re-laid, and just a couple of games have been played on the new surface. The top layer has been changed, with soil brought in from Kakinada, a district in Andhra Pradesh. It’s anybody’s guess how the track will play; some players from both teams think it will assist spinners fairly early in the game as they reckoned the top surface is quite powdery. The curator, however, is confident it will hold up for the game.”We have left a sprinkling of grass on the track and it should hold up. It should be a sporting wicket,” Narayan Raju, the chief curator, told Cricinfo. “Of course it will take spin, perhaps from the end of the second day or by the third day.”Both teams have said that they will bat first if the coin falls in their favour. “Since it’s a newly laid track, we would look to bat first,” Bharadwaj said.Dravid practised for nearly a couple of hours in the morning on the practice wickets and he would be itching to have another big knock under his belt before the Tests against Pakistan. Kumble, who was in Mumbai for the selection meeting, is expected to fly back tonight and will pair up with Sunil Joshi as Karnataka’s spin weapons. The fast bowlers, Kumble will hope his fast bowlers – Vinay Kumar and NC Aiyappa, who was restricted to just one game due to an injury in the last season and bowled well only in patches in the last game – can put up a good show. Karnataka is likely to go with the same team that drew against Mumbai, while HP will finalise their playing XI tomorrow.

Delhi were quickly in command on the opening day of their North ZoneRanji Trophy league match against Jammu & Kashmir at the Maulana Azadstadium in Jammu on Friday. After dismissing the hosts for 198 runs,Delhi replied with 79 for no loss before play was stopped at 4.07 pmbecause of bad light.J&K, opting to bat, lost two wickets for 44 runs but Kanwaljeet Singh(53) and Ashwani Gupta (32) steadied the innings by adding 58 runs forthe third wicket off 15 overs to push the score to 102. Thereafterwickets fell at regular intervals thanks in the main to the formerIndian fast bowler Ashish Nehra who finished with four wickets for 39.Of the later batsmen, only Vijay Sharma with an unbeaten 30 put up asemblance of a fight.Delhi openers Akash Chopra (51) and Ashu Dani (21) batted at a briskrate scoring 79 runs off 13 overs to come through unbeaten at stumps.Chopra was easily the more aggressive of the two hitting his runs off53 balls with ten hits to the ropes.

Mark Richardson is the sort of batsman you don’t really travel miles to watch, but want in your side when the going gets tough. On a scorching day at Rajkot he held one end up in a manner that would have made Gary Kirsten proud, defying all manner of pace and spin. Forget Kirsten, it would have made John Wright proud, and that means a great deal to Richardson.”He [Wright] probably doesn’t know it but he is my role model,” said Richardson, pouring buckets of sweat after his marathon 381-minute stint at the crease. “I know when I was a kid and when I was playing backyard cricket, I wanted to be John Wright. Once I started batting, he’s the guy I tried to model my game on a little bit. I admire the way he played and if I could go half as well as him, I’d be pretty pleased.”But it could not always have been Wright as a role model, for Richardson began his first-class career as a left-arm spinner. When that began to fail, he put his head down and re-invented himself. “The fact was that I lost my bowling. I couldn’t bowl and I wanted to play first-class cricket. I started to play as a batsman and I would get very nervous waiting to bat so the best way to overcome the nerves was to bat first. I like the lifestyle of a first-class cricketer and I didn’t want to work in a factory or anything. I had to find a way of performing so I just put my head down and really self-taught my batting,” he said, as though it were a matter of snapping his fingers. Few people in the history of the game have gone from batting No. 11 to opening with such aplomb. Ravi Shastri springs readily to mind, but he again was a tough cookie mentally.”Ninety percent of batting today was mental, wanting to survive the whole day. This is my first bat in a game for probably three months since we returned from Sri Lanka,” he admitted. “We have done a lot of work in the nets but you can only do such much in the nets. I was desperate to get time in the middle and didn’t want to throw my wicket away cheaply but I hope I haven’t used all my luck up.” People who watched him bat will tell you there was hardly any luck involved in the course of Richardson’s unbeaten 128.Then again, there’s little reason to be surprised. Richardson had success in Sri Lanka on similar wickets. He puts his success down to a sound gameplan. “I just graft away. The wickets over in Sri Lanka were pretty flat. I put my head down and did what I know best. I don’t struggle overly with the heat. I find it tough but I’ve never had trouble with heat stroke or anything like that. I was just sticking to my gameplan, and it hasn’t changed in the last four years. I just stuck to that and hoped it would get me through.” He admits, though, that his technique against spin needs working on. “I am not overly happy with the way I play spin but I have got a technique that sort of works. I have had a bit of success with it and I just stick with it.”There’s so much talk of planning in this New Zealand camp that you might get the impression that the rest of the cricket world just walks out to the middle and has a whack. Pre-tour jousting began with talks of New Zealand’s special training camps where the accent was on mimicking Indian conditions. After scoring a century the good old-fashioned way, Richardson did the world a favour by debunking some of these myths. “We’ve done a lot of work about being accountable for our gameplans. We’ve only really had nets so we have tried to make the nets as close to game scenarios as we can and I think that does help when you go out to the middle rather than just treating net time as a bit of a hit. I don’t know if we are overly innovative but what we have worked on is being really, really dedicated in the way we train.”For some strange reason, that approach almost always seems to work.

Scorecard

Federal Areas had an impressive first day against top-placed Sind in Islamabad, bundling them out for 222 and then scoring 119 for the loss of three wickets.With his 5 for 58, Sohail Tanvir ensured Federal Areas made good first use of the pitch. Sind lost wickets at regular intervals, Tanvir removed two of the top four, while Yasir Arafat and Shehzad Azam took one apiece. A 71-ball 53 from Naumanullah held up one end for a while, but the knock of the innings came from Shahid Afridi, the Sind captain.Coming in at No. 6, Afridi blasted 70 off 49 balls, with eight fours and three sixes. At 194 for 5, Sind were in with a chance to reach 300, but Saeed Ajmal and Tanvir triggered a collapse. Ajmal got rid of the dangerous Afridi, out caught-and-bowled, while Tanvir scalped Sarfraz Ahmed, Danish Kaneria and Sohail Khan. Ajmal, an offbreak bowler, took another wicket as well, but figures of 2 for 64 off six overs indicate he suffered the most during Afridi’s onslaught.Federal Areas made a strong reply with an 82-run opening stand, before Afridi removed Umair Khan for 19. Umair’s partner Raheel Majeed did the bulk of the scoring, with 72 off 93 balls. Sohail Khan, who scythed the Baluchistan top order in the previous game, picked up two wickets before stumps to reduce Federal Areas from 114 for 1 to 119 for 3.ScorecardAfter being shot out for 42 against Sind last week, Baluchistan’s batsmen did better against Punjab, managing 298 for 7 on the first day at the Jinnah Stadium in Sialkot.However, Baluchistan frittered away the advantage, they were at 208 for 2 at one stage, but lost five wickets for 90 runs as Punjab fought back. A 121-run second-wicket stand between Yasir Arafat and Rameez Alam laid the platform for Baluchistan. Arafat made 62, while Alam scored 84 before he was bowled by Mohammad Hafeez.Saeed Bin Nasir chipped in with 46, and wicketkeeper Gulraiz Sadaf ended the day unbeaten on 36. For Punjab, opening bowler Wahab Riaz was the pick of the bowlers with 2 for 53.

If the rumours are to be believed, Steve Harmison, England’s injury-prone fast bowler, might have done a little too much moaning and not enough bowling of late for the likes of England’s selectors. With the England squad for the tour of the Caribbean set to be named shortly, the noises from those close to the England camp are that Harmison could well find himself in the wilderness.Harmison missed the current series of Sri Lanka after breaking down in Bangladesh, and reports hint that the management were not overly impressed with his attitude while he was in Bangladesh. He returned home with the aim of getting himself ready for the second leg of the trip, but failed an eve-of-tour fitness test and missed out. One reporter accompanying the side said that Harmison had been “considered history ever since he failed to return”.In September he was not awarded a central contract, something of a surpise to many, but, according to insiders, a move aimed at giving him a kick up the backside. If that was the intention, it seems to have failed.Since arriving back from Bangladesh, Harmison has shown a marked reluctance to travel from his home in Durham to the National Academy in Loughborough for ongoing treatment, something that has not gone down well with selectors or been unnoticed by the tour party.Although Harmison is a matchwinner, he is a notoriously poor tourist with a record of returning home early. England may well prefer to take a gamble on two other players recovering from injury – Simon Jones and Andy Caddick – rather than be seen to be rewarding someone with a questionable attitude.The squad should have been named this week, but a minor operation on David Graveney has delayed the selectors’ meeting for a few days.

The financial ramifications of England’s refusal to play in Zimbabwe during the 2003 World Cup continue to be felt, but a report in the Daily Telegraph claims that the brunt of the cutbacks caused by the loss of income will fall on club cricket.Barrie Stuart-King, chief executive of the Club Cricket Conference (CCC) and a member of the ECB’s recreational advisory group, told the CCC’s annual dinner that central funding to clubs was set to be cut to a far greater extent than it was to the first-class counties.He also revealed that a deficit of between £2-4 million had been unearthed in the ECB’s pension fund for staff and umpires.”The reasons for the cut include the uncertainty over the fine yet to be imposed for the England-Zimbabwe fiasco, estimated at £1.3 million, and the recently discovered black hole in the ECB staff and umpires’ pension fund," Stuart-King explained. "Neither has anything to do with recreational cricket.”And he delivered a stinging attack on the way that the funding was effectively controlled by “18 private members’ clubs” – the professional counties. "The ECB’s idea of ‘one game’ is a joke,” he said, but he admitted that the lower levels of the game were powerless to do anything but accept their fate.

At stumps, Jacob Oram was unbeaten on 40 and had passed 1000 Test runs and, as he told the media, he held some hope that Australia’s massive total of 463 could be chased successfully. Meanwhile, John Buchanan, Australia’s coach, defended his team’s decision to bat past lunch and praised Ricky Ponting as a captain.

Jacob Oram
On the approach tomorrow
We are up against history and this is a huge chase. All we can do is try to get through to small targets. We might be able to reassess at lunch or tea if a couple of guys get big scores.On his surprise at Australia’s declaration
I’m not here to question the world champions’ tactics. I was under the imagination that they would come out and pretty much throw the bat. We had a look at the forecast and saw rain predicted. But they seem to be going well with the decisions Ricky makes and, when they had us 5 for 30, everything was rosy.On the pitch
The rough is a big factor and when Warne bowls into it the bounce is a bit awkward. It’s tough and it’s always going to be, it’s a matter of survival and scoring is out. You have to try to negate the bounce and smother it. That’s worked so far for me.On the confidence of the top order
I don’t know whether you can say we’re batting poorly or they’re bowling extremely well. They are bowling at the top of the innings and seem to be getting things out of the pitch that we can’t. They are making us play defensively and not giving us anything to attack.They are getting edges and we’re not. It’s good fun atthe same time.On his attitude
Coming over here was always going to be tough and I was under no illusions. The results are obviously not expected, or what I hoped for, but the type of cricket is exactly what I expected and that’s why I’m enjoying it the most. I spent three weeks in Bangladesh – thisleaves it for dead and we’re losing. I’m loving being here; it’s tough, it’s bloody hard. But it’s not hard to get up: if it was it would be `hang your boots up`.On his bowling
That’s the worst part of the series for me. I was disappointed with the way I was bowling in Brisbane, especially backing up a hundred, and it was probably my worst innings for New Zealand. I’m still not 100% at the crease, but happy enough with where it’s going.I’m extremely annoyed I haven’t got a wicket to my name and won’t get another chance. It’s bloody annoying.On the attacking batting towards the end of the day
It wasn’t due to any change of tactics. It’s just the way Brendon McCullum bats. He strides out there with no lid on and full of bravado and it’s gone well for him. Against a champion leg spinner, bowling into thick rough, it was great to watch. Some of those shots you would think impossible, but he made them look easy. If he gets in tomorrow he could be a huge key for us.John Buchanan
On the thoughts behind the declaration
The more we believed we could dig the grave for New Zealand, or they could dig it for themselves, meant we could make a declaration. It’s not just about runs, wickets and overs.On deciding when to declare
We had a number of options, including declaring straight away. The rest were at various stages through the morning, subject to the way New Zealand were placed. When we did we believed it was the appropriate opportunity. We had 140 overs for the rest of thematch and that gave us the opportunity to bowl 50 overs today.

On the match situation
Obviously we were hoping to pick up a good percentage of wickets and we did, so at this stage we are very happy.On the rain forecast for tomorrow
It was all factored in this morning. It’s very difficult to plan on what the weather is doingtomorrow.On the team’s bowling
The way our bowlers went about the pre-tea session was exceptional partnership bowling. It was simply outstanding and it would have taken a very good teamto come through that period without losing at least a few wickets.On Ponting developing as captain
The way he’s approaching his captaincy role was expected. He has had that capacity and shown it in the one-day side. The more you do it the greater the knowledge, experience and confidence you get in terms of managing and directing. His ability has always beenexceptional.On Matthew Hayden’s top-edge off Daniel Vettori
He’s nursing a sore jaw, about four stitches and a little bit of ribbing from his team-mates. I’m sure we’ll see him bouncing around on the field tomorrow.