Former Pakistan coach Waqar Younis has expressed his disappointment with the think-tank for the selection of pacers Tanvir Ahmed and Rahat Ali

Umar Farooq19-Feb-2013Former Pakistan coach Waqar Younis has expressed his disappointment with the think-tank for the selection of medium-pacers Tanvir Ahmed and Rahat Ali for the tour to South Africa.”Pakistan is known for its fast-bowling legacy over the last five decades,” Waqar told ESPNcricinfo. “We are better than this and have better options than Tanvir. I don’t know what the selectors and team management have seen in him. Do they not know we need a bowler who can bowl with sheer pace in South Africa? Where is Aizaz Cheema and Wahab Riaz? Why weren’t they picked in the first place?”Tanvir’s previous national call-up was in May 2011, after which he was dropped for his poor performance and fitness. Before he was dropped, he played four Tests and picked up 16 wickets. Shortly after the Pakistan team landed in South Africa, Ali and Tanvir were called in as late reinforcements to bolster a side that already had four quicks.Tanvir’s outing in the second Test was disappointing. He bowled only 10 overs out of 102.1 in the first innings and was given another five overs in the second innings to finish with figures of 10-4-26-0 and 5-0-43-1. He failed to impress with the new ball, bowling at a speed of around 120kph.One of Pakistan’s selectors refused to take the responsibility for Tanvir’s selection, saying the team management had demanded reinforcement and it was their decision to play him in the final XI.The management did not use all the frontline bowlers picked for the series. Mohammad Irfan, who was set to play the first Test, was left out for Ali. Left-arm spinner Abdur Rehman was benched for the second Test, while Ehsan Adil, a young fast bowler who was picked after a strong domestic performance, only bowled in the nets.”The problem isn’t Tanvir. It lies with the selectors and the team think-tank who have to decide where they are going,” Waqar said. “I am really disappointed with Umar Gul, too. In my time, consistency was the key for every bowler. There was always a plan and a back-up plan every time, with a lot of commitment, but here everything looked uncertain.”In spite of being known for their fast bowlers, Pakistan have relied on spinners over the last three years, following bans on Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir. Saeed Ajmal has emerged as a dependable strike bowler for Pakistan on all surfaces. “He [Ajmal] will continue to play his part with success – because he knows his role and his line and length,” Waqar said. “We talk about our fragile batting, but it’s the fast bowlers who are letting the team down. Gul looked bad with both the new and old ball.”Waqar said Pakistan wasted the new ball in both Tests. “We bowled to their strengths. South Africa simply bowled in the right areas at perfect lengths. Pakistan were in a good position in the second Test, thanks to Ajmal’s outstanding bowling. But we lost the opportunity and handed them a win.”

Ravindra Jadeja was pleased to dismiss Australia captain Michael Clarke for the fourth time in the series

Sharda Ugra15-Mar-2013In his five innings in India on this tour, Michael Clarke has been dismissed by Ravindra Jadeja four times. His scores in those dismissals have gone from 130 to 91, 16 to a first-ball duck in Mohali.It is, in any batsman-bowler combination, the beginning of the ‘bunny’ syndrome. When Jadeja was asked if he was trying to make Australia’s best batsman his bunny, he laughed, ” (That’s what’s happening at the moment).”Three times, Clarke has been beaten by the ball turning away from the face of his bat. In Chennai, he charged out and ended up miscuing one to long-off. In Hyderabad, he defended with poise only to find the ball whizzing past his eyeline and knocking the top of off. In Mohali, Clarke walked in at a time loaded with significance. Australia have faced a few hairy days – four players were axed from the Test due to disciplinary reasons, the side’s best opening partnership of the tour had just been broken and Clarke had moved himself two spots up the order to come in at No. 3.Off his first ball, Clarke once again charged out to Jadeja. Then he watched mortified as the ball spun past the bat and headed into Dhoni’s gloves for a simple stumping. Australia could only stutter through the rest of the day. Jadeja said of his nemesis status against Clarke: “It’s not that I only want to get him out. But luckily when I’m bowling he’s coming to bat.” He said getting Clarke four times “feels good” because Australia are heavily dependent on his form. “So it’s very important to get him out as soon as possible.”The failure to take a wicket in the first session did not affect India’s morale, Jadeja said, because they had tried to keep the runs down – Australia scored 109 in 35 overs. “We were waiting to get a wicket or two. We wanted to bowl where we had planned. We knew that if we gave them too many runs, they’d be able to score more comfortably. In the first session, we didn’t give too many runs; we didn’t get wickets, but that we covered in the last two sessions.”Jadeja said India’s chances of getting a result from this Test depend on how the first half of the third day’s play would go. “We’ll try to get the three wickets early tomorrow, and then bat well and see the situation over the next two days.”The Mohali pitch, Jadeja said, didn’t turn as much it had on day one in Hyderabad or Chennai. “It was a good wicket for the first day, good for batting too.”

Kenya beat bottom-side Canada after completing a comfortable run chase with 14 balls to spare

ESPNcricinfo staff11-Mar-2013
ScorecardElijah Otieno took 4 for 33 to restrict Canada•ICC/Zainab Malubhai

Kenya beat bottom-side Canada after completing a comfortable run chase with 14 balls to spare. There were solid contributions from all of the top order, opener Irfan Karim top-scoring with 65 for his maiden ODI half-century, after Elijah Otieno’s four wickets helped restrict Canada to 227 for 8.The foundations for Kenya’s victory were laid by Karim and Morris Ouma, who put on a 95-run partnership for the second wicket. Karim became Henry Osinde’s second wicket shortly after Ouma fell lbw to Hiral Patel and when the fourth wicket went down, 43 were required from 9.5 overs. Tanmay Mishra and Rakep Patel knocked off the runs at almost a run a ball to give Kenya their fourth win of the competition.Canada had earlier rebuilt from 26 for 2, with Ruvindu Gunasekera making 72, his highest ODI score. He fell to Ragheb Aga to leave Canada 132 for 4 but a 91-run partnership in 12.1 overs between debutant Raza-ur-Rehman and Usman Limbada pushed Canada towards a respectable score. Otieno and Nelson Odhiambo returned to put the breaks on, however, taking four wickets for four runs from the last ten balls of the innings.The result pushed Kenya to within two points of fourth-placed Netherlands and fifth-placed UAE in the WCL Championship table, with another fixture scheduled against Canada on Wednesday.

India eased to victory over Bangladesh in the first Twenty20 international in Vadodara. The 49-run win was set up by an opening stand of 130 by between Poonam Raut and Thirush Kamini

ESPNcricinfo staff02-Apr-2013
Scorecard
India eased to victory over Bangladesh in the first Twenty20 international in Vadodara. The 49-run win was set up by an opening stand of 130 by between Poonam Raut and Thirush Kamini. Both struck half-centuries, Raut smashing 75 off 56 balls with 10 fours and Kamini striking seven boundaries in her 57-ball 56. Their stand helped India reach a formidable 143 for 3. Salma Khatun, the Bangladesh captain, grabbed three wickets for just 12 runs and she was her team’s only saving grace in the defeat.Khatun also did well with the bat, making an unbeaten 49 off 43 balls, but there was virtually no support from the other end. The asking-rate, too, was too high, and Bangladesh could only settle for 94 for 7 in the end. India used seven bowlers, six of them bagged a wicket each.

A preview of the IPL match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kings XI Punjab

The Preview by Rachna Shetty13-May-2013

Match facts

Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Start time 1600 (1030 GMT)Ravi Rampaul has been a quiet performer for Royal Challengers•BCCI

Big picture

While it would have disappointed them immensely, Royal Challengers Bangalore’s loss to Kolkata Knight Riders hasn’t hurt their chances of qualifying for the play-offs much. They are still fourth on the points table, ahead of Sunrisers Hyderabad in terms of net run-rate and are much better placed than them.Their last two matches are at M Chinnaswamy Stadium, where they’ve had an enviable record this season. There’s an outside chance that Royal Challengers can qualify even if they lose their remaining two matches. But they’ll be looking to secure their position in the top four as quickly as possible, with a last game against Chennai Super Kings on May 18*.Royal Challengers’ opponents tomorrow, Kings XI Punjab, still have an outside chance if they win their remaining matches but, at this stage, that seems purely academic. More importantly, they can affect Royal Challengers’ chances. The last time these two teams played each other, David Miller struck a whirlwind century to stun Royal Challengers in a big chase.Having struggled on a slow pitch, Royal Challengers will find the easy pace of the Chinnaswamy track a welcome relief. The bigger problem for the home side, however, is their struggle to shut the opposition out of the match. That defeat to Kings XI aside, Delhi Daredevils ran them close in spite of Royal Challengers having posted 183 on the board. They’ll be hoping to shut out Kings XI, else there is a possibility a top four spot could prove elusive.

Form guide

Royal Challengers Bangalore LWLWL (most recent first)
Kings XI Punjab LLWLL

In the spotlight

He may not have picked up as many wickets as Vinay Kumar, but Ravi Rampaul has been effective. In the nine matches he’s played this season, he has 12 wickets at an average of 20. He’s created the breakthroughs at the top of the order and done that without conceding too many runs – his economy rate of 6.75 is the lowest among Royal Challengers’ bowlers this season.With their tournament almost drawing to a close, the spot of the fourth foreign player is still a conundrum for Kings XI. They’ve rotated between Azhar Mahmood, Adam Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh, Michael Neser, David Hussey, David Miller, Dmitri Mascarenhas and Ryan Harris throughout the tournament, and the inconsistent form of some of these players has troubled the team.

Stats and Trivia

• With 210 T20 games till date, David Hussey is second on the list of players who played the most matches in the format. Albie Morkel leads the list with 222 games.
• Chris Gayle is one run short of 1000 T20 runs in this calendar year. This is the third successive year that the West Indies batsman has scored 1000 or more runs in T20 cricket in a single calendar year.

Quotes

“Since no one else is going to do us any favours, we need to take care of ourselves.”
*0600 GMT. This has been corrected to reflect the result of last night’s game

Sir Ian Botham has added his voice to those praising James Anderson as one of the leading bowlers in world cricket and suggested Anderson will “sail past” his England record.

George Dobell24-May-2013Sir Ian Botham has added his voice to those praising James Anderson as one of the leading bowlers in world cricket and suggested Anderson will “sail past” his England record.Earlier in the week, England bowling coach David Saker praised Anderson as “the most skilful bowler in the world”. Botham, England’s leading Test wicket-taker with 383 victims, largely agreed with Saker and also backed Anderson to take well in excess of 400 Test wickets.”He and Dale Steyn are ahead of the competition,” Botham told ESPNcricinfo. “It’s no surprise that the two best sides in world cricket have the two best bowling attacks in world cricket. South Africa have Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander and England have Anderson, Stuart Broad and, at the moment, Steven Finn with lots of competition waiting to get in.”Anderson is right up there with the great England swing bowlers. Right up there. He’s a terrific bowler. He’s only 30 and he’s kept himself very fit so he can easily play another 40 or 50 Tests. If you think that he will take, on average four wickets a match, well, he will sail past my record and he’ll sail past 400, too. I think he can get up to 450 and beyond.”Anderson has his got his own action. They tried to change him, but thank goodness he booted all that into touch and got on with bowling his way. He has his own style. He works on his other skills and fine-tuning his natural skills”There is a lot of skill in what he does. Anyone can bowl an inswinger, but to do it as subtly as he does it with the slightest of movements becomes very difficult for the batsman to pick.”Botham also welcomed the success of Broad at Lord’s and suggested that the Broad-Anderson partnership could yet develop into one of the most challenging in world cricket.”That’s the frustrating thing with Stuart,” Botham said. “He’s very much a rhythm bowler. When he gets it right, he is capable of those spells. You think of that spell against Australia at The Oval. He has height, the bounce and the pace to complement Anderson in the way that Morkel complements Steyn and like other partnerships of the past: like Willis, who had the pace, and Botham, or Lillee and Thompson, who was the one with the outright pace. That’s the perfect combination: swing at one end; pace and bounce at the other.”Such confidence in the bowling attack and a firm belief that Kevin Pietersen will be fit for the Ashes had led Botham to the conclusion that poor weather presents Australia’s best chance of avoiding a 5-0 Ashes whitewash.”I actually do think England, if the weather does stay fine, could whitewash them,” Botham said. “But they need the weather. That’ll be the only thing, I think, that stops them.”I don’t see Australia competing with England for a little while, a few years yet. They appear, to me, to be struggling in quite a few departments at this stage. They’ve brought back players that are 35 years of age; never even heard of in Australia before. They even approached – we believe – Hussey and Ponting to see if they would come back and consider playing. Well, that’s not the Australia I know. That’s panic.”

After staging possibly one of the greatest ODI comebacks, that helped Pakistan thrash West Indies by 126 runs, Pakistan allrounder Shahid Afridi said his goal going into the game was to give back to the team and not just ‘survive’.

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Jul-2013In his last 10 matches before the ODI against West Indies in Guyana, Shahid Afridi had scored 142 runs at an average of 17.75 and had taken just three wickets. It was a run of failure that had forced his ouster from the Pakistan team for the Champions Trophy. But after staging possibly one of the greatest ODI comebacks, that helped Pakistan thrash West Indies by 126 runs in the first ODI in Guyana, Afridi said his goal going into the game was to give back to the team and not just ‘survive’.”I try hard and I back myself and I want to thank people back home,” Afridi said. “It is not time for me to just survive in the team, but to give a lot to the team. It was not easy to survive so I tried to stay positive.”On a pitch where batsmen from both sides struggled to score runs, Afridi’s 76 came off 55 balls and his 120-run partnership with Misbah-ul-Haq rescued Pakistan from a dangerous 47 for 5.”Whenever I got the ball in my zone I went for it,” Afridi said. “I knew Misbah was at the other end. I knew he would stay till the end, it gave me the confidence to go after it.”Afridi, who finished with seven wickets for 12 runs, making it one of the best all-round performances in ODI cricket, was thrilled with his bowling: “Oh wow, wow, wow, wow what a pitch it was for me to bowl on. I just kept it simple, and it worked.”Calling the track ‘one of the more difficult pitches’ he had played on, Misbah said he targeted a score of 200, as he believed it would challenge the West Indies batting.

Comeback king

Afridi’s performances in matches in which he’s made a return to ODIs (after missing out on one or more series) have been excellent. In eight such matches he averages 46.85 with the bat from seven innings, including four half-centuries. His bowling outshines his batting in these matches: he has taken 23 wickets, including two five-fors, at an average of 10.30 and a strike rate of 15.3. His impact in these matches is reflected in the number of Man-of-the-Match awards he’s won in these eight games – four.

“It was a much-needed performance,” Misbah said. “Especially the way Shahid Afridi played. It is one of the more difficult pitches I have played on. It was seaming, it was stopping, it was really difficult to middle the ball. I thought if we could reach 200, we could fight. And Shahid helped me. On a pitch that it was difficult to middle the balls Shahid was hitting fours and sixes. Jason Holder bowled well. The fielding was wonderful. Everybody was charged up. Every bowler bowled well.”West Indies captain Dwayne Bravo called it “a game to forget”. Bravo praised his bowlers, specially Jason Holder, for their early spells, which reduced Pakistan to 47 for 5, but said a player like Afridi could simply change the momentum of the game. Bravo also stressed that his batsmen would need to regain their confidence quickly if West Indies had to draw level with Pakistan by winning the second ODI on Tuesday.”It’s hard to pinpoint where we went wrong. As a batting unit, we let ourselves down,” Bravo said. “Coming after the last two disappointing games in Trinidad, we came here to Guyana, we had a good practice session. I think the batters lacked confidence and as a batting group, the team lacked runs. They have a very good bowling attack, so credit to the Pakistan team. They got to a good total after 47 for 5. Afridi changed the momentum, but he played his part with the ball, also. We should give credit to them, they outplayed us. It’s something we have to definitely look at again.”While admitting that the team played badly, Bravo ruled out any changes to the side, saying it wouldn’t help West Indies.”That XI was our best XI and we believe in the team,” Bravo said. “We have to back the players who did it for us, but yeah, making changes after one game is not going to help. We have to give players the opportunity to continue to get back that form and we know how dangerous our key players can be once they get back into form. Changes will not sort the problem, it is a more mental situation, so once you get over that, we’re going to be fine.”In spite of a poor day in the field, Bravo said his bowlers had improved from their last two games against India and Sri Lanka in the tri-series. “One of our biggest improvements from the last two games in Trinidad was the last 10 overs,” Bravo said. “They only scored around 50 runs in the last 10 overs, while in the games in Trinidad, the teams scored over 100 runs in the last 10 overs.”

For Somerset, the accent is now on avoiding relegation in the Championship and ducks for Nick Compton and Marcus Trescothick did not help as Sussex threatened further misery

Ivo Tennant08-Jul-2013
ScorecardMarcus Trescothick now has three ducks in a row for Somerset•Getty Images

For Somerset, the visit of the Australians and two no-less-bumper T20 crowds have made for a pleasing diversion from the nitty-gritty reality of the LV= County Championship.They are now not aiming to win it, as was expected of them at the start of the season, but merely looking to remain in the First Division. To that end, they were bowled out for 244 by Sussex upon winning the toss and conceded runs at a disturbingly rapid rate in reply; there was scant indication on this day at last that their survival goal would be achieved.At least this match will not finish within five sessions, as was the case when these two sides met at Horsham earlier this summer. There were, though, plenty of additional surprises: Nick Compton out for a duck, ditto Marcus Trescothick, although, sadly, he has not scored a run in his last three innings; a smaller attendance than normal for the opening day of a Championship match; and the non-appearance of Ed Joyce, the Sussex captain, who will dip in and out of this contest.Joyce, and George Dockrell, the Somerset spinner, are both required to play for Ireland in a World Cup qualifying match against the Netherlands. Assuming that is completed in one day, they will participate in the third day of this match – also assuming, of course, it is not over by then.One is a first-class match and the other is not, yet the one-dayer is deemed to be of more importance. It is all unsatisfactory and only devalues county cricket.Maybe it was inevitable that Compton, excluded by England from their party for the first Test this week, would be dismissed by an Australian. Steve Magoffin it was who gained sufficient movement to have him caught at first slip in the second over. Trescothick had already gone by then, edging a ball from James Anyon that lifted sharply outside off stump.Normally there is assistance for the new ball bowlers only in the first hour at Taunton, but now this was to be the scenario for much of the day.Given how swiftly Sussex bowled out Somerset at Horsham, and their respective positions in the Championship, perhaps it was not such a good idea to leave some grass on the pitch.Jamie Overton, after tea, relished the movement off the seam this afforded him, soon having Luke Wells edging to first slip. Steve Kirby had Chris Nash caught behind, but Somerset’s change bowling was far from impressive.Mike Yardy and Matt Machan both reached half centuries rapidly, off 40 and 56 balls respectively, each with ten fours, and during a period of 12 overs added 113 runs against medium pace which constantly erred in length. Yardy was six runs short of a century by the close. Given the fine weather, there will be a positive result, for sure – perhaps before Joyce re-appears.The two Somerset batsmen who profited were James Hildreth, who chose to take on the Sussex attack in reaching a half century at virtually a run a ball with eight fours, and Craig Kieswetter, who batted responsibly before chancing a single to mid on that could only have been born of T20 cricket; Anyon threw the wicket down from only a few feet distant.Magoffin finished with four wickets, including that of Alviro Petersen, caught behind off a thin edge. There were useful runs at the end of the innings from Alfonso Thomas, assisted, reasonably ably, by Steve Kirby, who took 32 balls to get off the mark.