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Ben Sawyer has been reappointed head coach of the New Zealand women’s team for two years.Sawyer, who oversaw New Zealand’s first-ever T20 World Cup win earlier this year – they beat South Africa in the final – will remain at the helm until December 2026. This period includes the women’s ODI World Cup in India in late 2025 and the women’s T20 World Cup in England in mid 2026.”I’m stoked Ben’s re-signed with us,” white-ball captain Sophie Devine said. “The work he’s done with the White Ferns group and for women’s cricket in New Zealand has been huge.Related

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“The team is in a great spot right now, so I think locking him in for another two years and having that consistency will be big for us.”Sawyer, who has worked as an assistant coach with the Australia women’s team in the past, was first appointed New Zealand head coach on a two-year contract in June 2022, which ran through till the end of the India tour in October 2024. His reappointment follows an extensive review process, according to a NZC press release.New Zealand did not start their year well, winning just one in 13 T20Is heading into the T20 World Cup, but they turned things around in the UAE.”We’re so pleased to have Ben sign on for another two years,” Liz Green, NZC head of women’s high performance, said. “He’s unlocked a lot of belief and trust in this group and to have him stay now is massive, both for the current squad, and the long-term planning for the White Ferns. The consistency and stability is important.”Ben’s played a big part in progressing the White Ferns and helping build the women’s pathway. There was a huge amount of growth during that tournament, a result of what Ben and the coaches have been building over the last two years.”New Zealand will next take on Australia in a three-match ODI series that gets underway on December 19 in Wellington. The squad for the series will be announced later this week.NZC also said that the T20 World Cup trophy will be on display at the upcoming matches, “giving fans the chance to see it up close and capture photos”.

Brendon McCullum, England’s head coach, says his team have “no excuses” after crashing to a 2-1 series defeat with back-to-back losses in Multan and Rawalpindi, but admits he was surprised it took Pakistan until the second Test to prepare the sort of spinning pitches that have been his team’s undoing on recent tours of the subcontinent.Pakistan had been left with no place to hide after England’s ruthless victory on a flat deck in the first Test in Multan, where they powered past a seemingly impressive first-innings 556 to post 823 for 7 declared, the fourth-highest Test total in history, with Harry Brook setting up their innings win with a career-best 317.But, after changing their selection panel and tailoring the subsequent surfaces with the use of heaters and industrial fans, Pakistan transformed their fortunes, with spinners Sajid Khan and Noman Ali sharing 39 of England’s next 40 wickets, as their opponents mustered just 814 runs across their final four innings of the series.Not only is the result a stark turnaround from England’s 3-0 win in Pakistan two years ago, it comes in the wake of their 4-1 loss in India in February, meaning that England have now gone from winning four in a row under Stokes and McCullum in Asia, to losing six of their last seven, and by comprehensive margins.Related

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“That’s life,” McCullum told Sky Sports after England’s nine-wicket defeat. “We obviously coughed up the opportunity to win the series. We did some good stuff throughout, and we leave ultimately disappointed, but also very much complimentary of how Pakistan played. But we know within ourselves that we’ve had an opportunity to have been better than that and we’re a little bit disappointed about that.”Credit to Pakistan, the way that those two spinners bowled was superb,” McCullum said, after Noman and Sajid had combined to rout England for 112 in their second innings in Rawalpindi.”I thought they varied the pace beautifully. Noman from one end, taking pace off most of the time with the occasional fast one, and Sajid flipping that around and putting pace on with the occasional slow one. I thought was great partnership bowling. And our guys weren’t able to sustain the pressure, unfortunately.”Asked if he was comfortable with the extreme measures that Pakistan had taken to bring their spinners into the series, including the seemingly unprecedented reuse of the first-Test pitch in Multan, and the raking of the Rawalpindi surface to exacerbate the turn on offer, McCullum said he welcomed the initiative they had shown.”I kind of like it to be honest,” he said. “They were brave enough to make decisions on their personnel, and they were brave enough to make decisions on the surfaces that they wanted to play on.”When teams come to England, ideally we play on the surfaces that we’re more accustomed to, which allow our strengths to really flourish and maybe paper over some of the weaknesses as well, which every team naturally has.”I’m a little bit surprised it’s taken Pakistan as long as it has. Because when you go to Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, the ball is always going to turn. What we had here a couple of years ago, or in that first Test match, where it was pretty flat, was a different challenge. It’ll be interesting to see over the next couple of years whether they persist with these types of services, but certainly there are no excuses from our point of view. We had our chances, and we ran second.”Despite remaining magnanimous, McCullum acknowledged that the series defeat would increase the scrutiny on his team. Ollie Pope and Zak Crawley were notably short of answers in the more extreme conditions, while Brook managed a top score of 26 in his final four innings of the tour, having racked up four centuries and a fifty in his previous six in Pakistan.England were thoroughly outplayed in spinning conditions in Multan and Rawalpindi•Getty Images

“It’s pretty much the same batting group that came here two years ago, and were outstanding in these conditions, and it’s the same batting group that put on 800 in the first Test match,” McCullum said. “As the conditions changed, we were presented with different challenges and we weren’t quite able to adapt to those challenges. And that’s a missed opportunity.”I have no doubt, and the skipper has no doubt, that our batting group that we’ve now had together for the best part of 18 months is the best that we’ve got,” he added. “We’re very confident, we’ve just got to make sure we keep allowing guys to develop them and keep becoming the players that they want to become, and will benefit from that.”The focus will also fall on England’s spinners, particularly Shoaib Bashir and Jack Leach, whose direct counterparts Sajid and Noman exploited the conditions with significantly more success in the final two Tests. Bashir, whose selection for the India tour had been on the basis of his natural attributes, rather than any proven record in first-class cricket, has now bowled more overs in Tests in 2024 than any other player, but his series haul of nine wickets at 49.66 pales compared to Sajid’s 19 at 21.10.”[Sajid and Noman] were brilliant in the way they bowled together, and they challenged in different methods with the paces that they used,” McCullum said. “Could we have been better? Yeah, of course, right? Anytime you lose a Test or lose a series, you’ve got to have that period of reflection. And we’ll do that, and say, right, next time we’re presented with conditions similar to that, how will we respond? What do we need to do? Do we need to vary our pace more? Do we need to adjust our tactics more? That’s natural, right? It’s no difference to when a batsman gets out.”You’re always trying to improve, but you’ve got to be really careful that you’re not seeking perfection, because it doesn’t exist in an inconsistent game. The game we play is going to come with periods where it’s not going how you want it to, but you’ve still got to hold firm.”We will be confronted with spinning conditions at some stage in the future, and we hope that some of the lessons, good and bad that we’ve had throughout this series, will give us a bit more of a base to be able to be successful.”

The range of viable investors in the Hundred teams is “way broader and bigger” than anticipated ahead of Friday’s first-round deadline for bids. That is according to the ECB’s senior leadership team, who defended the Hundred’s projected valuations of overseas broadcast rights on Wednesday by insisting: “We are confident in our product”.The ECB sent investment prospectuses to around 100 interested parties last month, who were set a deadline of October 18 to register their initial interest in buying a stake in one of the eight Hundred teams. The teams are currently owned by the ECB but will become franchises run as joint-ventures with host counties (or the MCC) once the sale process is complete.The Hundred’s overseas broadcast rights are currently valued at around £2 million per year. Financial projections in the prospectuses distributed by Deloitte and the Raine Group – who are running the sales process – involve a jump to £33 million by 2030, with a year-on-year growth rate of 42%.One prospective investor, who has since withdrawn from the sales process, told ESPNcricinfo that those figures “make no sense” and had not been fully explained. “It seems like they first thought of a valuation then made up the numbers to justify it – things like the sudden and exponential growth in broadcast revenue from India and North America,” they said.Richard Gould and Richard Thompson, the ECB’s chief executive and chair respectively, are in Multan this week during England’s second Test against Pakistan, ahead of the first-round deadline. They said the board has fielded interest from a “full gamut” of potential investors and defended the projected increase in revenue from Indian broadcast rights.Related

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“We are not making an assumption that India’s men’s players will be released, because that has not been what has happened,” Gould said. “We are confident in our product, in terms of the window we occupy and the players we’ve got available. There are loads of T20 and short-format franchise competitions out there at the moment, and I don’t think they are all going to last, in truth.”Gould said that “about 100 or so” interested parties had requested access to the ECB’s “data room”, including “a lot of Indian interest” with the majority of owners of IPL and WPL franchises understood to be involved in the process. He said there has also been interest “from America, from other sports and investment houses”.He said: “We’re getting towards the end of stage one this week… at the moment, they can express an interest in all eight clubs. We’ll have a better indication over the next week or two. Thereafter, we’ll spend a month or so going through those. At the end of that process, they will be able to go and meet the county clubs and see where their relationships work best.”During that period they can have an interest in up to four teams. When we get to the crunch time, which is the next phase, they can only put their name in for two teams, and they can only win one. Clearly, we want to maximise the value, because the value the ECB holds is on behalf of the game.”Gould said there were “a few tyre-kickers” among the parties to initially register their interest, but Thompson insisted that the ECB had outstripped expectations overall. “Raine originally said they thought there’d be three to four bidders per team,” he said. “The investment base is way broader and bigger than they expected.”Vikram Banerjee, the ECB’s director of business operations, said last month that the sale process could be delayed beyond next year if the right bids do not come in. Thompson suggested that the 2025 season could be a “hybrid” model, with some teams still owned by ECB and others by private investors.”What we don’t want is to just feel bounced into selling all of them and thinking, ‘We could have got a lot more if we’d held back because that particular team wasn’t ready to go,'” he said. “The worst thing we could do would be to undersell the game and look back thinking, ‘We let some of these franchises go at prices that weren’t full market value.'”

The 2024 Women’s T20 World Cup, starting October 3 in the UAE, will be the first ICC event to feature the Smart Replay System. The technology was previously used in the Hundred and IPL 2024.”The coverage will feature a minimum of 28 cameras at every game, and will be complemented by a variety of analytical and visual enhancements. The Decision Review System (DRS) will also be available at all matches, with a Hawk-Eye Smart Replay System in place that enables the TV umpire to instantly review synchronized multi-angle footage for accurate decision-making,” the ICC stated in a release.Related

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Under the Smart Replay System, the TV umpire will receive inputs directly from two Hawk-Eye operators who will be sitting in the same room as the umpire and provide her with images captured by Hawk-Eye’s eight hi-speed cameras across the ground. The TV broadcast director, who used to be a conduit between the third umpire and the Hawk-Eye operators until now, will no longer be involved under this system. This also allows the TV umpire to refer to more visuals than she previously had access to, including split-screen images.In case of a stumping referral under the Smart Replay System, the TV umpire can ask the Hawk-Eye operators for split-screen visuals. In case there is a visible gap when the ball passed bat, the TV umpire will not ask for the UltraEdge (to see if it was a caught behind) and instead directly proceed to check the side-on replay for the stumping. If the TV umpire doesn’t see a clear gap between bat and ball, only then will she refer to UltraEdge.For stumpings, the new system will show the TV umpire tri-vision – essentially footage from side-on cameras as well as from front-on in a single frame. The front-on camera angle is important because it gives an accurate picture of bails being removed. Previously the broadcaster would show the side-on angle from each side along with footage from Stump Cam. But Stump Cam records the action at a low speed of approximately 50 frames per second, as opposed to the Hawk-Eye cameras which record at approximately 300 frames per second, meaning there will now be more accurate footage for the umpires to base their decision on.Like it was at the T20 World Cup last year, this tournament will also have an all-female panel of umpires and match officials.

Sri Lanka wicketkeeper-batter Niroshan Dickwella has been suspended indefinitely following a doping violation, Sri Lanka Cricket has confirmed.Dickwella is understood to have failed a doping test held in line with World Anti-Doping guidelines, during the recently concluded Lanka Premier League, and will be suspended from all forms of cricket while further investigations take place.”The suspension is effective immediately and will remain in place until further notice,” stated an SLC media release.”The test, which was conducted by the Sri Lanka Anti-Doping Agency (SLADA) during the Lanka Premier League (LPL) 2024, is part of SLC’s ongoing commitment to maintaining the integrity of the sport.”This initiative, undertaken in collaboration with the Ministry of Sports and in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) guidelines, is aimed at ensuring that cricket remains free from the influence of prohibited substances.”SLC, together with the Ministry of Sports and SLADA, conducts these tests during domestic tournaments randomly to safeguard the sport against anti-doping violations.”The 31-year-old, who had captained Galle Marvels in LPL 2024, had last turned out for the national side in March 2023 but had received a call-up for Sri Lanka’s T20I series against Bangladesh earlier this year. He did not feature in a single game.Following his selection, the selectors intimated that they had spoken with Dickwella over his poor disciplinary record. The left-handed batter has been no stranger to controversy throughout his career, with his off-field lifestyle proving a lightning rod for criticism in light of his frequently erratic form. He was most notably among three players banned for breaching bio-bubble protocols in 2021, alongside Kusal Mendis and Danushka Gunathilake.Dickwella has kept wicket for Sri Lanka across formats, scoring 2757 runs in Tests, 1604 in ODIs and 480 in T20Is.

Sydney Thunder have secured a significant signing ahead of WBBL10 by bringing in allrounder Georgia Voll from Brisbane Heat on a three-year deal.Voll, 20, is one of the most highly regarded batting talents in the Australian game and has also had an impact with her offspin.Last season was somewhat of a struggle with the bat in the WBBL as she slid down the order during the tournament, finishing with 206 runs at 18.72 and a strike-rate of 112.56, but she claimed 4 for 19 in the Challenger final against Perth Scorchers before Heat went down to Adelaide Strikers in the final.Related

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However, her batting prowess was on show later in the season when she struck a double century in the red-ball ‘Green and Gold’ game in Adelaide and also made two WNCL hundreds for Queensland.Voll had interest from a number of WBBL clubs but said conversations with Thunder coach Lisa Keightley had swayed her decision.”I never expected myself to play for a New South Wales team, to be honest, but after talking to Lisa and the guys down there, I’m super excited for the opportunity, and it’s a really good young group coming through,” she said.”Lisa was quite clear on the role she wants me to play and what she wants me to do and that sort of got me over the line. I liked what the Thunder were about last year, really playing as a team and getting around each other on and off the field.”Trent Copeland, Sydney Thunder general manager, added: “Georgia has shown since the day she arrived on the scene that she is a special talent with both bat and ball If you were to pinpoint the next young star to crack the Australian setup, Georgia is it. The 200 for Australia A in red-ball cricket, two hundreds in WNCL last season and the all-round capabilities we’ve seen for the Heat in WBBL. This is a huge signing for the club.”Voll’s departure continues significant change at Heat during the off-season with them also losing New Zealand allrounder Amelia Kerr to Sydney Sixers while coach Ashley Noffke has departed for a job in New Zealand. However, they have signed South Africa allrounder Nadine de Klerk on a two-year deal and will still have a formidable top order that includes Grace Harris, Georgia Redmayne, Laura Harris and emerging allrounder Charli Knott.

Wes Agar has been forced to cut short his 2024 season at Kent after sustaining a shoulder injury in their County Championship match against Worcestershire in the second week of May.Though Agar recovered sufficiently enough to play against Essex at the end of last month, the decision has been taken for the fast bowler to return to Australia to facilitate a full recovery. Agar, who has two ODI caps, was originally due to be at Canterbury until the end of July, available for both the County Championship and the Vitality Blast. He leaves having not appeared in the latter this summer.The loss of the South Australian was softened by confirmation that Agar will return for the 2025 season, again on an all-format deal running from April to July, subject to regulatory approval. Agar took 12 County Championship wickets at 34.25 this season, having taken 21 at 28.33 during his first stint at the club in 2023, which saw him finish the campaign as their joint-leading wicket-taker alongside Matt Quinn, despite playing just six matches.”I’m thrilled to be coming back to my ‘home away from home’ again next year,” said Agar in a statement on Tuesday. “I feel fully part of the Kent Cricket Family now – it’s a great Club full of great people on and off the field and the decision to sign on again for another English summer was an easy one to make. I can’t wait to pull on that Kent shirt again and perform in front of our Members and supporters in 2025.”I’m gutted to be leaving the lads early this time, and I’ve absolutely loved my time in Canterbury this year. See you all in April!”Kent’s Director of Cricket, Simon Cook, said: “Wes is a talented multi-format cricketer and a very popular member of our dressing room – we’re extremely pleased that he will be joining us again next Summer.”His ethos and work ethic is great to have around the place, and we’re looking forward to him being an important part of our attack at the front end of our 2025 season. It’s sad to see him leave early with his shoulder injury, but we know that he will come back with the same enthusiasm to perform at his best in a Kent shirt next year.”Agar’s recovery will be with a view to playing a full part in South Australia’s Sheffield Shield campaign. He will then turn out for Sydney Thunder in the Big Bash League, having left Adelaide Strikers after eight seasons as the first player in the BBL to be traded as part of a pick exchange in the overseas draft.

Lancashire have routed Kent by an innings and 83 runs in their Vitality County Championship showdown at Canterbury.The visitors bowled Kent out for 222 in their second innings, Will Williams taking three for 26 and Tom Bailey three for 36. Charlie Stobo hit his highest first-class score of 64 but the hosts were all out after 30.2 overs on day four.The result, against the only side who were below them in Division One before this round of fixtures, drastically increases Lancashire’s chances of avoiding the drop, while Kent remain anchored to the foot of the table.It was an outcome that had looked almost inevitable ever since Kent lost a cluster of wickets midway through day one. The hosts were a shadow of the side who won convincingly at Old Trafford earlier this season, with six of the players who pulled off what remains their only red ball win of the season injured or unavailable.They resumed on 143 for six and with a deficit of 162 not many observers were expecting them to take the game deep into the fourth day.Beyers Swanepoel, batting with Tawanda Muyeye as his runner, was the first man to fall, cutting Bailey to Jack Blatherwick for 26 in the fourth over of the morning, but Stobo and Matt Parkinson responded with an obdurate stand that took out 18.3 overs.The sparse crowd meant the on-field chatter was amplified, especially, it seemed, when George Balderson bowled. During one over Lancashire’s fielders shouted: “Go on Baldie!” or variations thereof, a staggering 37 times, including 10 after a single delivery. No other bowler received this level of encouragement: Nathan Lyon’s next over was greeted with near silence.The partnership broke when Parkinson, who’d joked on Tuesday night that he planned to block for 96 overs, abandoned his previous discipline. He tried an ill-advised pull shot against Lyon and although that was spilled by Bailey at backward square leg, he was out to the next ball he faced.Stobo brought up his second first-class fifty in the next over when he drove Luke Wells for four, but after taking a single Parkinson was left with the strike and Wells pinned him lbw for seven.Wells then had George Garrett caught at first slip by Keaton Jennings at first slip for five and the victory was sealed when Williams used the new ball to send Stobo’s off stump cartwheeling.

The 2026 IPL auction will take place on December 16 in Abu Dhabi. This will be the third successive year when the IPL auction is being held overseas. The 2024 auction in Dubai was the first time it was held overseas. The two-day mega auction for the 2025 season was held in Jeddah in November 2024.Like all mini auctions, the 2026 edition, too, will be a day-long exercise. Franchises have to first sort the list of players they want to release and retain from their 2025 squads, by 3pm IST on November 15. After that they will be sent a registered pool of players to shortlist. That long list will then be pruned for IPL to finalise the auction pool.The trading window, which opened after the 2025 season, will continue until a week before the auction and then resume to go on until a month prior to the IPL start date in 2026. The 10 franchises cannot trade a player who will be bought at the 2026 auction.So far there have been four confirmed trades among five teams. That includes the most high-profile player swap in IPL history which involved five-time champions Chennai Super Kings (CSK) getting Indian wicketkeeper-batter Sanju Samson from Rajasthan Royals, who have traded in the allrounder pair of Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran.On Thursday, Mumbai Indians, also five-time champions, procured India allrounder Shardul Thakur and Sherfane Rutherford in all-cash deals from Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) for INR 2 crore and Gujarat Titans (GT) for INR 2.60 crore, respectively. In a separate trade, LSG got Arjun Tendulkar at his base price of INR 30 lakh from MI.The tentative window for IPL 2026 is March 15 to May 31.

Sean Williams, the veteran Zimbabwe batter, will not be considered for national selection and his central contract will not be renewed after Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) said he disclosed to them that he has been struggling with drug addiction.In a statement, ZC referred to “a history of disciplinary issues and repeated unavailability, which has impacted team preparations and performance”.Williams, 39, has played 273 matches for Zimbabwe across all formats in an international career spanning more than 20 years, but ZC confirmed that his contract will not be renewed beyond the end of 2025.Related

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Williams had most recently withdrawn from the Zimbabwe squad on the eve of the Men’s T20 World Cup Africa Qualifiers, citing “personal reasons”. On Tuesday, ZC revealed that they had conducted an internal investigation to understand the reason for his unavailability, after which Williams had disclosed to the board that he has been struggling with drug addiction, and had voluntarily entered into rehab.”ZC expects all contracted players to uphold the highest standards of professionalism, discipline and compliance with team protocols and anti-doping regulations,” the board said in its statement. “While ZC commends him for seeking rehabilitation, withdrawal from team commitments under circumstances involving potential testing raises serious concerns regarding professional and ethical standards.”Since making his international debut in 2005, Williams has scored more than 8000 runs across all formats for Zimbabwe. He was most prolific in ODIs, making 5217 runs at an average of 37.53, with eight hundreds and 37 fifties. Earlier this year, he overtook James Anderson to become the longest-serving active international cricketer.Williams, however, was also never far from controversies or from a fractured relationship with ZC. Although he led the U-19 side in the World Cup in Sri Lanka in February 2006 – the highlight being a win over England – there were rumours both before and after the tournament that he was not happy with the board. Williams subsequently turned down a central contract the following month, opting to look for a more settled career overseas. However, he changed his mind three months later, thus returning to play for Zimbabwe. The on-off farrago resurfaced in 2008 when he again quit for a contract in South Africa, only to return weeks later.In late 2014, despite being one of Zimbabwe’s best players of spin, Williams was not considered for the tour of Bangladesh after interruptions in his involvement in a training camp, and an aborted disciplinary hearing.”ZC sincerely acknowledges and appreciates his immense contribution to Zimbabwean cricket over the past two decades,” the board said. “Williams has played a pivotal role in some of the most significant moments in our recent history, leaving a lasting legacy both on and off the field. ZC wishes him strength in his recovery, and every success in his future endeavours.”