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Following yesterdays thunderstorms, and heavy overnight rain, it was not possible to make a start until 3:30pm on this third day of the PPP healthcare County Championship match at Riverside.With both teams anxious to gain a needed victory, 52 overs were taken from the day.Some frustrated members vented their anger on umpires Steele and Benson, and on some of the visiting players and officials. But those that stayed saw some interesting cricket as the sun shone into the evening.Martin Speight and Jimmy Daley pushed their fifth wicket partnership to 124 before Speight pulled Morris straight into the hands of Laney, and two runs later Warne had Daley trapped leg before.Andrew Pratt hit a belligerent 27* to guide his team past 300, but with Wood, Killeen and Harmison all going cheaply, Hampshire retained their record of maximum bowling points in each of their Championship matches this season. Morris took 3 wickets to return his best figures for some time.Jason Laney and Giles White made batting look easy on the bland wicket, against some wayward Durham bowling, and at close had reached 62-0 off 20 overs.The match, after so many stoppages, is in a difficult stage. Neither captain will want to give much away, as both teams are perilously situated at the bottom of Division One. However from an entertainment view, the spectators will hope that some collusion will be possible on the last day.

Buoyed by Ricky Ponting’s career-best score, Tasmania has continued to create headaches for Queensland on day two of the teams’ Pura Cup match at the Allan Border Field in Brisbane. At stumps, the Tigers have the Bulls pinned firmly on the back foot at 6/258 in reply to the Ponting-inspired total of 403.After a frustrating day in which several of his batsmen failed to capitalise on good starts, Queensland captain Stuart Law hinted that his team might already have effectively conceded the battle for first innings points. Law may even consider making an early declaration tomorrow in a bid to transform the match into a straight shoot-out for the six points on offer for an outright result.”We’ll wait and see because two points probably isn’t enough for us; we only got two from our first game,” said Law.”It depends what happens tomorrow morning because we might lose three quick wickets and we won’t have to worry. But if we’re still going at lunch, we’ll have a look and decide what’s best.”Accordingly, it seems that the immediate fate of the match will rest largely in the hands of overnight batsmen Andy Bichel (26*) and Clinton Perren (16*). That pair has already performed a fine job for Queensland, having stabilised things in the lead-up to stumps in the wake of a devastating late afternoon burst from underrated Tigers paceman Damien Wright (3/61).Wright put the skids under the Queensland middle order, playing a central role in a collapse which saw the wickets of the belligerent Andy Symonds (49), Law (21) and Wade Seccombe (3) fall within eleven runs of one another. Following steady innings from Jimmy Maher (47), Matthew Hayden (41) and Martin Love (31), Symonds and Law had threatened to tear the Tasmanian attack apart. But an error in judgement from Symonds as he drove at the spin of Daniel Marsh (1/29) served as a major setback for the Bulls and – followed as it soon was by Wright’s removal of Law and Seccombe – duly paved the way for a rapid turnaround.Earlier, the masterful performance of Ponting (233) finally met its end in the form of a dubious run out decision. Umpire Tony McQuillan ruled that the Test batsman had narrowly been beaten home by a direct hit from Symonds at cover, but the young Tasmanian looked far from impressed with the verdict. Easier to judge was the form of Bichel (5/126), whose fine bowling throughout the Tasmanian innings resulted in a well deserved five-wicket haul.

The decision of Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) to awarda contract to International Management Group and TransworldInternational Combine (IMG-TWI) towards team clothing sponsorship forInternational matches to be played in India or outside over the nextthree years from July 1 was on Wednesday challenged in the Mumbai HighCourt by Gayatri Arts.Gayatri Arts, a Mumbai-based company, filed a petition seeking aninjunction from the High Court on the BCCI for signing the contractwith IMG-TWI or any other group. It will come up for hearing on June1.According to Sham Dhumatkar, proprietor of Gayatri Arts, the threeyear contract was awarded to his company which had made the highestbid of Rs 90 crores through a legal tender advertised by the BCCI in anewspaper.The BCCI confirmed the contract in a letter to Gayatri Arts on May 3and gave 48 hours to the company to accept the offer. Accordingly,Gayatri Arts accepted the contract in a letter to the BCCI, thepetition submitted.On May 22, however, the BCCI’s marketing committee held a secondmeeting in New Delhi where the contract awarded to Gayatri Arts wasresiled and instead awarded to IMG-TWI after an open bidding andrevelation of prices.The petition alleged that the contract was complete with the BCCIwriting a letter to Gayatri Arts and the latter accepting the offer.Therefore, it was illegal on the part of the BCCI to renegotiate thecontract with others by keeping Gayatri Arts in the dark, the petitioncontended.The petition alleged that the BCCI was not transparent and did notrelease facts and figures to the general public and the media.Through its solicitors, Gayatri Arts had earlier sent a legal noticeto the BCCI asking for a list of tenders received before April 20 andletters of offer received before the second marketing committeemeeting of May 22 with the names and bid amounts.

Zimbabwe vice-captain and all-rounder Guy Whittall is happy to be back in batting form after the selectors kept faith in him despite a disappointing performance in the last three overseas tours of India, New Zealand and Australia.”I wasn’t quite going on to make big scores," he says. “I was getting twenties and thirties and not making any big scores and I was putting a lot of guys under a lot of pressure. This was obviously not good for the team.”In the two-match Test series in India, Whittall averaged 31 with a best score of 84 in the first innings of the second Test. The other scores were 0, 29 and 11. In the one-off Boxing Day Test in New Zealand, Whittall averaged just 7.50.”Although I had not made any big scores of 50 in quite a few games, I still believed that I would play against Bangladesh because I believed that the selectors and management would have confidence in me at Test level. But I would not have been totally surprised if I wasn’t selected. I thought that Gavin Rennie who had batted well in New Zealand would be preferred ahead of me.”Rennie averaged 65 in the New Zealand Test after making Zimbabwe’s highest individual score of 93.”The selectors however had faith in me, obviously because of my past record at home, and I managed to come through for the team and for the team, which was the turning point for the season for myself. Against India I might still be in the opening position and this is going to be more of a test for me against a better side.”They have Harbhajan Singh in the attack and he has proven himself. They also have Srinath who I think is one of the best bowlers in the world. He gets a lot of lift and bounce so he, I should think, will be spearheading the Indian attack. They also have got a couple of youngsters who have a bit of pace and are fighting for position.”I will, once again, not be bowling because of injury. It will be another six more weeks and we’ll review the situation after that.”India have a very strong batting line up with Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. They also have Laxman who we actually saw in a warm-up match the last time we were in India around 1996 and we thought he was a real classy act. He is now among the best inthe world.”But obviously when you are playing at home and you have the home support, you sort of know more about yourself and about the actual game on your own turf.”We beat India here the last time but unfortunately I was not involved because of injury. Hopefully this time we can get a good combination of our batsmen and bowlers so that everyone can bowl and bat according to the team plan.”India have failed to produce the same sort of standard of cricket that they have away from home but they have got a new coach now in John Wright from New Zealand. I think on the actual fitness side and on fielding skills and duels, India will now be able to compete with any side in the world.”They are a lot tighter and a lot better in the field. They are actually throwing themselves around on the field. They never used to do that a couple of years back. They are here after a fantastic win over Australia, which I am sure they are very proud of and the rest of the world was quite happy to see.”But that should not make us afraid of them as they chase their first overseas Test series win since 1986. When you play sport you can’t have this fear of being the first to go down. Your main aim is to suit your own game and do what you think is the best for the team.”In the last two years we have come a long way. I believe we have got some good batsmen playing at the moment and we are in good form. We just need to learn to take 20 wickets in a game.”

The Australian women’s team began their tour of England on Monday with an easy 142-run win over an MCC Invitational XI at Walker’s Ground, Southgate, in north London.The Australians made 251 for 9 in their fifty overs before dismissing the MCC for 109 in 44.4 overs.Australian leg-spinner Olivia Magno took 6/34 from her ten overs after earlier scoring 34 runs before retiring. Opening batsman Louise Broadfoot and wicketkeeper Julia Price both made half-centuries for the Southern Stars before retiring, while Michelle Goszko scored 35.The star for the MCC Invitational side was New Zealand all-rounder Haidee Tiffen, who top scored with 34 and took 2/46 from her ten overs. The MCC eleven also included Netherlands international Pauline te Beest, as well as a number of former England internationals and current members of their developmental squad.The Southern Stars play two more warmup matches before the First Test in the CricInfo Women’s Series against England begins at Shenley on Sunday. They return to Walker’s Ground today to play an ECB Development XI, whom they will meet again at Radlett on Thursday.

In almost a repeat of the ’99 World Cup, the Pakistanis caved in against the Aussies in the NatWest Series, handing them a facile but highly satisfying win. All hopes revived by a win over their worthy opponents in the league and promises of making it a great fight, by skipper Waqar Younis, came to nought.Younis’s charges were as frozen as those under Wasim Akram a couple of years ago when they should really have been blazing away. The result was, the Aussies were all over them, crushing them by an emphatic 9-wicket margin.

The Aussies had obviously saved their best, and the Pakistanis their worst, for the final.This is the kind of one-sided victory that leaves the losing side with egg all over its face. Sadly, more so in this case, for it seemed Pakistan had learnt from their earlier humiliations. There were too many similarities between the performances in the two finals, though they came two years apart. The final was at Lord’s again, and it was again a sunny day. Pakistan had won the toss then as it did now, it had elected to bat then as it again did on Saturday, and it had a miserable collapse then as it did now. The only difference being that it rustled up 20 more runs than two years ago.Again, it was more or less a case of self-destruction. On a pretty easy wicket with the ball not doing anything really, with 300 on the board a possibility, all the Pakistani batsmen with the exception of Inzamam-ul-Haq maintained their ambivalence about the price they put on their wickets. Inzamam may consider himself unfortunate to be adjudged leg before on full forward stretch. Umpire Peter Willey, declared him out when most umpires may have given him the doubt playing so far forward.The rest of the batsmen were all pretty ordinary efforts. The worst culprits of them all were Saeed Anwar and Yousuf Youhana, the former giving it all away after being well set for greater things and the latter consuming too many deliveries in a really patchy effort. In his innings, Youhana could have been run out twice and caught off a leading edge once. He didn’t make the most of it, and Saeed’s and his departure put Pakistan on a downward slide from which they never recovered.The bowling, a slightly weaker link in the otherwise exceptionally strong Aussie chain, ended up psyching out the might of the Pakistani batting. And that was that, for 152 was really not a defendable target.

And with Adam Gilchrist, 76 off 93 deliveries, and Ricky Ponting, 35 consuming just 23 balls, the Aussies cantered home. This time round improving the margin by a wicket – their only loss Mark Waugh, run out going for a third run – from their previous famous victory over Pakistan, with nearly half the quota from a regulation 50 overs remaining unused.This NatWest Series was a great triumph for the pocket sized dynamo, that Ponting is. His 298 runs at an average of 99.33 and strike rate of 98.7, one hundred and two fifties, in five games is really phenomenal. Bad news for England for the Ashes.The Pakistanis, licking their wounds as it were, should contemplate what they have been doing wrong to end up like this: frozen whenever there is a crunch. With Pakistan’s cricket administration, distancing itself from the dismal results of the national team for the last one year, claiming that its performance should not be judged in concert with that of the cricket team, the lessons still have to be learnt. Sadly, the lessons weren’t learnt in the last two years after the World Cup debacle. One is instilling self-confidence, and the other is weeding out players who show a singular lack of it, such as Saeed Anwar, at the top of the order.

Secondly, my question to the selectors and the team management is when would they learn the most rudimentary thing in cricket: that without a settled opening pair and one-down position, a side can never win consistently.Overall, the failure will require soul-searching within the PCB, and its handpicked management and coaching teams including the latest induction of a foreign coach, failing as miserably as he had on the three previous occasions he had served with the Pakistan team.To end on a positive note (perhaps an effort to lift the gloomy feeling), Waqar Younis could not have done more to inspire this bunch of cricketers to greater heights. That he has failed, in the final analysis, is not because he lacked in effort, but because there wasn’t enough tactical support from the PCB and its selectors. More on that in future pieces to follow.

Mark Wagh again showed his liking for the Durham attack as he thrashed 112 and allowed Warwickshire to set their hosts a target of 404 at Chester-le-Street.In seven overs Durham reached 12 without loss and Warwickshire hope Vasbert Drakes will be fit to bowl today after resting the knee injury he suffered on Friday evening.The declaration came just before 6pm on 324 for six with Dougie Brown on 67 not out, made off 64 balls, after Wagh and Dominic Ostler had softened up Durham’s depleted attack.Simon Brown, who also suffered a knee injury while bowling on Friday, took the field only to make two not out in the morning as Durham’s remaining three wickets went down for 23 runs and they were all out for 231.Wagh and Ostler put on 99 in 24 overs for the fourth wicket as Wagh completed his second hundred of the season, both made against Durham.He reached 50 off 99 balls but needed only 57 more deliveries to complete his hundred, racing to the target with a six over mid-wicket in an over from Nicky Phillips off which he took 16 runs.He hit two other sixes plus 16 fours before edging an attempted cut off Michael Gough.Ostler then put on 86 in 15 overs with Brown before falling 14 short of his second century of the match when he sliced a drive to point. He had ten fours and two sixes in his 126-ball knock.Brown completed the onslaught by smashing successive balls from Phillips for four, six, four just before the declaration.

Day 3 of 3Dales CC:
Berkshire 222 and 254
Herefordshire 476-7 and 4-0
Herefordshire (24 pts) bt Berkshire (4 pts) by 10 wktsBishops Stortford:
Hertfordshire 201 and 262
Buckinghamshire 234 and 218 (Atkins 95*)
Hertfordshire (21 pts) bt Buckinghamshire (6 pts) by 11 runsWhitchurch:
Shropshire 143 and 364-6 dec
Dorset 151 and 243 (Lamb 98*)
Shropshire (20 pts) bt Dorset (4 pts) by 113 runsRansomes:
Suffolk 266 and 64
Northumberland 192 and 139-3
Northumberland (21 pts) bt Suffolk (6 pts) by 7 wktsSouth Wilts CC:
Cornwall 126 and 281
Wiltshire 133 and 179 (JCJ Stephens 6-38)
Cornwall (20 pts) bt Wiltshire (4 pts) by 95 runsDay 2 of 3Alderley Edge:
Devon 203 and 55-1
Cheshire 252 (RG Hignett 95, P Bryson 75)Netherfield
Cambridgeshire 228 and 173-9 dec (C Jones 75)
Cumberland 144 and 13-2Day 1 of 3Manor Park:
Lincolnshire 300 (JC Harrison 98, MA Fell 69; C Brown 5-111)
Norfolk

Roland Perry on Saturday asserted that his chronicle of the Dream Teamwas an authentic version of Sir Donald Bradman while seeking to put atrest doubts raised by former India captain Sunil Gavaskar.”I can vouch for its authenticity. The Bradman Museum Director and SirDonald’s son, John Bradman, have also fully supported the book. Thisshould lay the controversy to rest,” Perry told PTI in Sydney.In a recently published book ‘Bradman’s Best’, Perry has chronicled 12all-time great players who he claimed had been selected by Bradman forhis ‘Dream Team’. Sachin Tendulkar is the only current cricketer inthe team while two other Indians, Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar, whowere in the initial short-list of 69 players, failed to make it to thefinal team.Gavaskar had questioned Perry’s claim saying Bradman would not haveliked to get into such a controversy.Perry differed with Gavaskar on the latter’s opinion that Bradmanwould never criticise a player. “It is not true. There are manyinstances of constructive criticism of players and analysis ofcricketers in his autobiography ‘Farewell to Cricket’ published in1950,” he said.On Gavaskar’s own credentials in the eyes of Bradman, Perry said, “SirDonald regarded Gavaskar’s batting style as technically perfect inevery way. He bracketed him with Sir Leonard Hutton, the openingbatsman and captain of England.”The choice of the (Dream) team is from his (Bradman’s) own mould andhe thought that Gavaskar’s chief fault was a lack of aggression,”Perry said.

The West Indies Cricket Board’s (WICB) planned expansion for this year’s Red Stripe Bowl competition will not go ahead due mainly to financial constraints. The WICB is on record as wanting to expand the competition to include 20 teams, up from the 10 teams which have participated over the years.The WICB’s Chief Cricket Operations Officer, Michael Hall, said: “Neither Canada nor the United States are able to participate for financial reasons. They are both suffering financial constraints after their participation in the ICC tournament in Canada earlier this year.”Eight teams will compete in this year’s Red Stripe Bowl competition which begins on 2 October, and will be contested in two zones – one in Jamaica and the other in Guyana.WICB’s CEO, Gregory Shillingford, said in an interview: “We had decided after last year’s Red Stripe Bowl that we would have embarked upon a 20-team competition. When reviewing the concept paper for the competition, we realised it was quite ambitious given the circumstances of the WICB. At our last annual general meeting, we reported a loss of about five million US dollars for 2000 and the results of this year did not reveal a profit.”Shillingford explained that the WICB still hope to have a 20-team competition next year that will include all 14 islands that fall under the umbrella of the WICB, the Americas, not only Canada, United States, Bermuda and Cayman Islands but also Argentina, along with one or two English county sides and an international team.Zone “A” which includes Jamaica, Northern Windwards, Trinidad and Tobago and Leewards XI will be contested in Jamaica, while Zone “B” which includes Antigua, Barbados, Guyana and Southern Windwards will be contested in Guyana.The Red Stripe Bowl competition begins on 2 October, with the semi finals on 11 and 12 October, and the finals scheduled for 14 October at the Kaiser Sports Club.The Windward Islands are the 2000 Red Stripe Bowl champions.