All posts by csb10.top

The State selectors have included Jo Angel in the Western Warriors teamto play the SA Redbacks, for the ING Cup game at the Adelaide Oval thisFriday.Angel returns to the Western Warriors ING Cup team to replace BradOldroyd, who has been ruled unfit to play, due to concussion.Oldroyd suffered concussion following a collision with Peter McIntyre,while bowling during the Warrior’s outright victory over the Redbacks,in the Pura Cup game at the Adelaide Oval earlier today.As a precautionary measure, Warriors Team Manager Ron Bowe, followingthe collision, took Oldroyd to hospital. Oldroyd has suffered concussionat least three times previously.Bowe will monitor Oldroyd’s condition during the next twenty-four hourperiod following the injury. Another appraisal of his condition will bemade at 10.00am tomorrow morning.Warriors Team – ING Cup:

• SIMON KATICH (Capt)
• MICHAEL HUSSEY (Vice Capt)
• JO ANGEL
• RYAN CAMPBELL
• MURRAY GOODWIN
• KADE HARVEY
• STUART KARPPINEN
• BRAD HOGG
• MATT NICHOLSON
• MARCUS NORTH
• CHRIS ROGERS
• BRAD WILLIAMS

Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsMichael Klinger scored 105 off 60 balls•Getty Images

Michael Klinger’s second Twenty20 hundred sent Perth Scorchers on their way towards their first victory of the season – a 35-run win against Melbourne Renegades at the WACA Ground. The 34-year-old opener powered Scorchers to a mammoth 3 for 192, and Renegades’ batsmen wilted under the pressure of a large chase, as none of the batsmen could raise a much-needed fifty.Scorchers had paid the price for a sedate batting effort in their previous game, against Adelaide Strikers, but on Friday, they raced off the blocks early, as the openers Klinger and Marcus Harris added 103 in 12 overs. That partnership, though, could have been sniped as early as the second over had Andrew Fekete held on to a straightforward catch to dismiss Harris.The pair’s stand was worth just 13 then, and by the time Harris was finally removed – top-edging Matthew Short straight to Aaron Finch at cover – he had already slammed 53 off 39 balls, with five fours and a six. Harris began with four early boundaries, but with Klinger running riot at the other end, was more content playing the supporting role later on, rotating the strike with singles and twos.Klinger, though, after a relatively slow start that reaped just 30 runs from his first 26 balls, broke the shackles in the 14th over, coming down the track to loft Short for six. Klinger’s last 34 deliveries fetched 75 runs, including 20 off an over from Dwayne Bravo. In all, he drilled seven fours and four sixes, the last of which brought up his hundred, off the last ball of the innings.It meant that Renegades had to score at more than nine an over right from the off, and in an attempt to do so, their top order all got out playing expansive strokes, as Jason Behrendorff, Ashton Agar and Andrew Tye claimed two scalps apiece to hamper the visitors’ progress. Callum Ferguson chipped in with 39 and Andre Russell top-scored with 43, but no other player was able to contribute more than 15, as Renegades were restricted to 9 for 157.

Another half-century from captain Paras Khadka propelled Nepal to a three-wicket win over Namibia in Windhoek on Wednesday. The result puts both teams in a tie at the top of the WCL Division Two table at 3-1 with Namibia marginally ahead on net run rate. Khadka teamed with vice-captain Gyandendra Malla for a 58-run third-wicket partnership to put Nepal in control chasing a modest target of 143. Khadka fell for 64 off 56 with Nepal 17 runs off the target and a flurry of wickets fell late but Basant Regmi hit the winning boundary with 12.1 overs to spare.The relatively easy chase was set up by another solid bowling effort, vindicating Khadka’s decision after winning the toss to send Namibia in first. KC Karan and Sompal Kami reduced Namibia to 15 for 3 by the end of the sixth over. Raymond van Schoor provided the most resistance for Namibia with 28 off 80 balls but received little support. Fast bowler Karan backed up his five-wicket haul a day earlier against Canada with solid returns of 3 for 12.Nitish Kumar notched the tournament’s first century in a 111-run win for Canada over Uganda. The first List A century for the 20-year-old came off 106 balls with 10 fours and a six and eclipsed his previous List A best of 67. Kumar was part of two half-century stands with Rizwan Cheema (36) and Ruvindu Gunasekera (30) to give Canada a strong platform after winning the toss and batting. Captain Jimmy Hansra provided a late flourish with 63 not out off 54 balls to boost Canada up to an easily defendable 293 for 6.Seamer Cecil Pervez ripped through the Uganda top order with three wickets in the first nine overs before Phillimon Selowa countered back with a half-century. Offspinner Nikhil Dutta finally ended Selowa’s stay for 70 and burrowed through the rest of the Uganda middle order to finish with 4 for 52. Pervez came back late for one more wicket to finish with 4 for 23 and left-arm spinner Parth Desai finished off the tail as Uganda subsided for 182 in 42 overs.Netherlands bounced back strongly from a lopsided defeat on Tuesday to Namibia to post a five-wicket win over Kenya. The Dutch kept Kenya to 212 for 9 after winning the toss and opting to field first. Kenya got off to a solid start behind 43 from wicketkeeper Irfan Karim and 48 from Narendra Patel but the innings floundered after Karim’s dismissal in the 35th over at 130 for 4. Ahsan Malik helped keep the tail in check and finished with 3 for 27.Stephan Myburgh aided his side’s desperate bid to reduce their overall net run rate deficit with Nepal and Namibia by crashing 95 off 64 balls to open the chase. Captain Peter Borren picked up where Myburgh left off and produced a rapid burst to end unbeaten on 28 off 11 balls as Netherlands reached the target with 19.1 overs to spare to keep their chances of finishing in the top two alive.All teams have an off day on Thursday before the final day of the group stage on Friday in Windhoek. Nepal and Namibia both control their own destiny for promotion while Kenya and Uganda currently sit in the relegation zone and no longer have any chance at moving up.A win for Nepal over Kenya and the same for Namibia against Canada would clinch a berth for both teams into the 2015-2017 ICC Intercontinental Cup and World Cricket League Championship. Nepal can still clinch a spot in the top two even with a loss to Kenya if Namibia beats Canada and Uganda beats Netherlands.To move into the top two, Canada would not only need to beat Namibia but also would have to erase a 1.196 net run rate deficit with their opponent. Canada also trail Nepal by 0.857 on net run rate so a win coupled with a Nepal loss to Kenya and a more manageable overhaul of their deficit with Nepal could see Canada finish in the top two.Netherlands has a bigger net run rate deficit than Canada to make up on both Nepal and Namibia at 1.250 and 0.911 respectively. However, they face the weakest opponent in the tournament for their last match, Uganda, and have an outside chance of erasing that deficit but would need one of Nepal or Namibia to lose and then leapfrog that losing team plus Canada on net run rate to finish in the top two.

Peter Moores, the England coach, made a tentative defence of his position following his side’s calamitous World Cup exit after a 15-run defeat to Bangladesh.Moores was appointed only in April last year but England’s early departure from the World Cup following five months where one-day cricket was their sole focus will bring his future into question.

Downton gives Moores backing

Paul Downton, England’s managing director, has spoken in support of the Peter Moores, saying it will “take time” to rebuild the team. England went out of the World Cup at the group stage to further extend a rocky period that began with the 2013-14 Ashes debacle in Australia.
“I have every faith in Peter Moores,” Downton told Sky Sports. “Part of the reason for appointing Peter Moores was he is a very experienced coach.
“Whoever took this job was going to have a really difficult job. We had a side that broke up in Australia, we had to introduce new players and part of dealing with it – which was obviously going to be pressurised – was that experience. We’re very early into an appointment. Much as we’d like to change things instantly, it takes time.
“Look at New Zealand and where they were with their one-day cricket two years ago – it takes time to bring things through. We had a very successful team between 2009 and 2013, we have to rebuild again. There are no shortcuts. We have to back our players, invest in them and in time we will be back there again.”

Asked whether he could still make a difference, Moores said: “I think I can. I can’t say I’m making a difference having just been knocked out of a World Cup but I’m going to go away, it’s going to hurt like hell and I’ll look at what I could have done differently. People will ask questions but that comes with the territory.”Moores offered few excuses for England’s failure to beat Bangladesh and said he felt he had “let people down”. The defeat lengthened England’s miserable World Cup record; their last extended run in the tournament came back in 1992.”I thought 275 was chaseable after a decent start. I don’t think we bowled as well as we could have done in the middle but we started well and we finished well. I don’t think we’ve bowled as well as we wanted to and that’s been reflected in how it’s gone. Everyone has got to take their part in responsibility and you’ve just got to take it on the chin.”You’ve got to be able to take pressure as a good team if you want to win tournaments and we have to accept that we didn’t take it. We should have chased that down and we didn’t play well enough.”England jettisoned Alastair Cook as captain before Christmas, handing the job to Eoin Morgan and favouring a more dynamic top-order, only to bring in Gary Ballance at No. 3 at the start of the tournament. Ballance made a high score of 10 in four innings before Alex Hales, one of the most highly-rated one-day players in domestic cricket, was given another opportunity against Bangladesh.Show me the way home: Peter Moores’ England are out of the World Cup•Getty Images

“We haven’t got a settled team and we lost two key players at the top of our order,” Moores said. “But we tried to find the best players to get in that team. Gary is a very good one-day player but he hasn’t played well enough here. There was no obvious team to pick because it’s such a young team, we’ve got nine guys here who have never been to a World Cup. You pick the side who we thought was the best team but we have to accept they didn’t play well enough.”We went for more explosive batters and we went for more firepower in the order. We also know historically that most experienced sides do well in World Cups so we were taking a risk.”Eoin’s more disappointed than anybody else. He started to play well actually. I thought he captained well on the field today. He’s new to it and it’s something to look at going forward but I don’t think he’s a bad captain just because we lost tonight.”Moores also denied England are over-reliant on statistical analysis: “We don’t do analysis as it’s talked about in the press, it’s not the way we do it. Players will look at footage as they always do, you can’t not look at other players in a tournament like this because it’s on TV all the time. Realistically a player has to decide what his strengths are and go and apply them and coaches have to help them try to do that. That’s not the issue here, we just haven’t played well enough.”The inquest into England’s shortcomings will include another look at the county game and Moores said there were “fundamental” issues to sort out.”We haven’t got a left-arm seamer here or a left-arm spinner and we haven’t got a bank of them at home either,” he said. “So if we had a lot of experienced one-day players that we weren’t selecting it would be different but we haven’t got that. We’re not overloaded with high-class one-day players.”

The review of umpiring decisions, being trialled in the series, has already generated a lot of attention and did so again on Saturday, when a confident appeal by India for an lbw against Thilan Samaraweera was turned down initially by the on-field umpire and then on review.Samaraweera was struck on the pad by a ball from Anil Kumble but it appeared as if he might have got an inside edge. However, replays showed ball hitting pad before bat, and it appeared as though the ball would have gone on to hit the middle stump three-fourths of the way up. The decision, though, was upheld and Samaraweera, then on 5, went on to score 35.Mark Benson was the on-field umpire involved in that decision, and he admitted it had been a hard day at work. “It has been a tough day for the umpires; there have been three decisions overturned but in the end of the day the correct decision has been made and we have to live with it,” he told broadcaster Ten Sports after the day’s play. “It’s not easy with all these bat-pads and these mystery spinners (read Ajantha Mendis). It’s a trial and the review system has got to be for the obvious mistakes. It can only be for good if we get rid of the obvious mistake”There were seven review calls made by both teams on Saturday. Benson and Rudi Koertzen were the two on-field umpires, with Billy Doctrove standing as the third umpire. Benson had a few suggestions for improving the system.”The review system needs to get the HotSpot in,” he said. Benson also said perhaps the review should check if the entire ball pitched outside the line of leg stump in case of leg-before decisions, instead of looking at percentages. Currently, the rule states that more than 50% of the ball must pitch in line with the leg stump, whereas for the impact of the ball on pad, as long as a part of the ball is in line with the stumps the batsman can be given out.The present review system uses the Virtual Eye technology, which maps where the ball pitched and the point where it hit the pad, and predicts where the ball will hit the stumps (though this is not available to the third umpire due to doubts over its accuracy). However, the system produced a gaffe when it failed to detect a deflection from Virender Sehwag’s front pad onto the back pad in India’s second innings at the SSC, and showed the impact of the ball in line with where it hit the back pad, but at a distance from the stumps where his front pad was. Third umpire Rudi Koertzen too failed to point out the glaring error to the on-field umpire.Sri Lanka have had the better of the review system so far in the series, with captain Mahela Jayawardene particularly making some superb calls in the field on the first day of the Test, with lbw shouts against Rahul Dravid and Gautam Gambhir, initially given not-out by the on-field umpire, were upheld on review. Trevor Bayliss, the Sri Lanka coach, was for the system. “We’ve had a number decisions turned around in our favour. The other way of looking at it is sitting here and complaining about seven or eight wrong ones,” he said on Saturday. “In fact we had those turned around. I think it’s doing its job. There are one or two areas that have to be cleaned up a little bit. But from our point of view we are reasonably happy the way it has gone.”Bayliss felt the review system would balance the contest between bat and ball. “Everyone says the game is a batsman’s game. I think the review system might be a little bit of a comeback for the bowlers. There will be more outs than not outs. All the bowlers should be pretty happy that the review system is in place.”

Sri Lanka spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan will resume training after ahernia operation in two and a half weeks time, according to Sri Lanka coachDav Whatmore.Muralitharan was flown to Melbourne, Australia for surgery straight afterthe second Test at Centurion and could now be available for Sri Lanka’s tourof Australia in December."We have spoken to him in Australia and he is coming along well," saidWhatmore. "He will probably resume training in two and a half weeks."Muralitharan’s previous two visits to Australia have been marred bycontroversy over his bowling action. There has been concern that he would besubjected to similar scrutiny on this tour.Sri Lanka will take on Australia and England in the annual one-day roundrobin before the World Cup which starts on February 8.

Mumbai Indians officials are hoping to persuade Shaun Pollock, the former South African allrounder, to extend his contract with the IPL franchise. Pollock, whose contract with Mumbai Indians was only for one year, said that he didn’t want to play cricket anymore.”I have reached a stage where I think I have played enough cricket,” Pollock told Cricinfo. “My contract with the Mumbai Indians was for one year and I was very happy with the way things went. I enjoyed every bit of the IPL experience but I want to stop playing now. But I will come back in some capacity.”His franchise, however, had not given up hope of Pollock returning. “We are in talks with him. We understand his position but we are positive we will be able to convince him to reconsider, “a Mumbai Indians’ spokesperson said.During the first season of the IPL, Pollock had told Tendulkar that he might not return next year but the seniors, including Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya, convinced him to continue playing at the time.Pollock was the captain of the franchise during the first half of the tournament after Tendulkar was injured and Harbhajan Singh was banned. He scored 147 runs in eight innings at a strike-rate of 132.43 and took 11 wickets in 13 matches at an economy-rate of 6.54.

Australia have announced their preliminary 30-man squad for the Champions Trophy in Pakistan in September, with Shaun Tait being recalled as he continues to work his way back into international cricket after taking a self-imposed break due to exhaustion. The squad also includes five newcomers in Xavier Doherty, Ryan Harris, Brett Geeves, George Bailey and Tim Paine.”The squad recognises the continued success of the one-day side and its outstanding efforts in the West Indies, together with the strong performance of our young emerging talent in the Ford Ranger Cup,” Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of Australia’s national selection panel, said.Offspinners Nathan Hauritz and Dan Cullen and legspinner Cameron White will stake their claim for the spinners’ spot in the final squad. “Closer to final selection a decision will be made on the make-up of the squad and whether a specialist spinner needs to be added to the final 15,” Hilditch said. Beau Casson, he said, missed out as he needed “more exposure” to the one-day format.Tasmania’s Ford Rangers Cup success last season means that they have provided four of the newcomers to the squad. Doherty, the left-arm spinner, and seamer Geeves were the among four bowlers who finished joint-highest on the wicket-takers’ list with 15 scalps. Paine, the wicketkeeper who has turned into a specialist batsman, contributed 261 runs at 37.38, while Bailey, despite his limited success – 258 runs at 25.80 – is marked as one for the future. Harris, the bowling allrounder who moved to Queensland from South Australia, has taken 49 wickets at 35.51 in his List A career.Hildicth added that Ben Hilfenhaus was not considered as he was recovering from an injury. The squad will be whittled down to a final 15 on or before the August 11 deadline.

Attempts to finalise a tour of Kenya by Zimbabwe continue to stall because of claims by Zimbabwe Cricket that their itinerary is too busy to allow them to fit in with dates offered by the Kenyans.A source inside Zimbabwe Cricket told Cricinfo that while Cricket Kenya had offered two alternatives for a one-day series in Nairobi and Mombasa, the Zimbabwe board had countered that the only time they had free was a small window in late October, at the same time the Kenyans are hosting Ireland in the Intercontinental Cup and then a one-day series.It is possible that the Ireland series could be replaced with a triangular tournament including Zimbabwe, but that could throw up political issues in asking Ireland to take the field against Zimbabwe.Zimbabwe have not played an international match since February, when they were whitewashed in a five ODI series. They have repeatedly put obstacles in the way of playing Kenya away from home, much to the frustration of both Cricket Kenya and, increasingly, the ICC, who have put Zimbabwe Cricket under increasing pressure to play the lower-ranked Test countries as well as the leading Associates.Zimbabwe’s schedule is hardly packed. They are down to play one-day series with Sri Lanka at home and away during the next year, and they are also hosting a Pakistan Academy side next month. Last season they played a large number of matches in South Africa’s domestic competitions, but with relations between ZC and Cricket South Africa now frozen, there appear to be big gaps in their itinerary.”It’s as much about not wanting to be seen losing to Kenya than anything else,” the ZC source told Cricinfo. “It would be easy to arrange the tour if the will was there. The players want to play. It’s the administrators who are running scared as they worry that a defeat by them [Kenya] would make people inside the ICC sit up and start asking more questions about funding.”

Pakistan will visit England from June 5to 23next year to play three One-day Internationals and four one-day practice matches, PCB announced Wednesday .The tour opens with a match against Scotland in Edinburgh on June 7. Pakistan then face Essex at Chelmsford on June 9, followed by a game against either Northamptonshire, Hampshire or Sussex two days later.Leicestershire are Pakistan’s final opponents at Leicester on June 14 before the internationals begin.Pakistan then take on England in the first One-day International, a day/night affair, at Old Trafford on June 17. The remaining two matches will be played in London at The Oval (June 20) and Lord’s (June 22).