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New Zealand have agreed to a match being dropped from the itinerary of their West Indies tour.New Zealand Cricket’s chief executive Martin Snedden said today that a request had been received from the West Indies to drop a planned three-day game between the One-Day Internationals and the first Test.Snedden said the West Indians felt it would be better to have three days as rest days and he agreed, especially after the vigorous programme of games New Zealand will have had in Pakistan and in the ODIs.Apart from a one-day warm up game against the University of West Indies Vice Chancellor’s XI in Jamaica, every other game on the tour will be an international.

Manicaland fell 13 runs short of their rearranged target last Sunday against Old Georgians to lose the league cup final. It was a disappointing end to the league season and a toss captain Neil Ferreira probably regrets winning.In overcast conditions at Harare Sports Club, where bowlers traditionally expect help in the first hour, he had no hesitation in asking OGs to bat. It proved to be the best half of the day for batting with the ball flying unhindered to the boundary. After the rain, when Manicaland were chasing, the ball was heavy, slippery and difficult to propel in any direction.In reaching 248 from their 50 overs, Manicaland’s chief tormenters from the Logan Cup defeat a fortnight ago came back to rub salt in the wound. Craig Evans hit 53 and Angus Mackay 87, with only Richie Sims (10-0-32-3) and Jon Brent (10-0-42-2) making meaningful inroads.Requiring five an over, Manicaland were on track at 99 for one after 21.2 overs (Ferreira 31, Andre Soma 25) when rain and Duckworth-Lewis dictated a revised target of 115 in 15 overs. This they almost achieved with Richie Sims (84) and Jon Brent (17) going well with 33 to get off the last three overs. Their consecutive dismissals signalled the end of a game played in good spirits and watched by a festive crowd of OG supporters. Evans rounded off his match-winning day by cleaning up Guy Whittall and the rest of the middle order with 8-0-43-4. To boost the crowd OGs’ cricket section had laid on free lunch and invited all club members.The team now heads off to Harare and Kwekwe to play four-day Logan Cup matches against Mashonaland A and Midlands before returning to Mutare for the final game of the season against Matabeleland, starting on Thursday 5 April.The ZCU has announced that all league and school cricket will be returning to `straight’ declaration cricket next season. Since the early eighties when Zimbabwe’s future was thought only to be limited-overs cricket, all domestic cricket has been geared towards producing successful ODI sides. The national team’s dismal run at Test level has brought about a change in thinking.School cricket will be played over 110 overs with the team batting first required to declare after 60 overs. National league will be played over 120 overs with 65 being the first innings cut-off. Fielding and bowling restrictions will no longer apply and no game will finish before 1630 hours. It’s evident – particularly at school level – that one-day shots are favoured and coached to the detriment of innings-building efforts. Logan Cup first-class cricket will revert from fourto three-day games – played over two rounds when national team members are not away touring. Games will start on Thursdays with 50-over ODI-type games on the Sunday.In a fortnight’s time during the upcoming school holidays, Hillcrest College will host the first Zimbabwe Under-14 inter-provincial tournament. Set to run from 2 to 4 April, it is part of a new countrywide selection initiative that sees the Under-16s playing in Bulawayo, the Under-19s in Harare and the Under-13s in Hippo Valley/Triangle. Four teams will compete, two from Harare, one from Matabeleland and one from `Zimbabwe Districts’. Manicaland players will have to force their way into this Districts team drawn from Peterhouse, Watershed, Lomagundi, Highveld and all the Midlands schools.

Ed: Maria Naureen is our correspondent from Karachi, a FM 101 radio talk-show host, cricket radio commentator and sports journalist

Glamorgan 370 for 3 (Northeast 186*, Carlson 77, Root 67) vs MiddlesexIn a dank start to the year, few would be able to state with any confidence that they’ve yet heard their first cuckoo of spring. But cock an ear to the shires on this cold grey day in April, and you’d hear loud and clear the mocking laugh of the Kookaburra – an invasive species in these parts, and one that’s been flown in direct from the Antipodes to disrupt the habitat of county cricket’s native seamers.By the close, Glamorgan’s own man from the south east, Sam Northeast, was laughing longest and loudest. Ashford in Kent is not quite so far flung as the Eucalypt forests of Queensland, but for Middlesex’s toiling bowlers, Northeast might as well have been Ricky Ponting at the Gabba in 2002-03, for all the effortless dominance he exerted after being handed first use of a characteristically flat Lord’s deck.For it was a case of four washouts and one wipeout on the opening day of the 2024 County Championship. The legendary status of the Lord’s drainage meant that London’s morning downpours were never likely to cause the issues encountered at Derby or Old Trafford, but when Toby Roland-Jones won the toss for Middlesex and chose to bowl first, he could not have envisaged a first-day scoreline of 370 for 3 grinning back at him, or that his incorrectly calling counterpart would be sitting pretty on 186 not out from 266 balls.Perhaps, like Nasser Hussain in that fateful Brisbane Test 20 years ago, TRJ’s was an instinctively defensive decision, borne of his team’s memories – almost exactly a year ago to the day – of being reduced to 4 for 4 by Essex’s Jamie Porter and Sam Cook. More likely, though, it was an unthinking assumption that the ball, any ball, would do enough talking to fast-track Middlesex’s bid for an instant return to the top flight.Not so fast. Although the impact was more apparent at Lord’s than elsewhere, if you squinted through the clouds that enveloped this first day of county action, a common theme emerged, with many of the contests reflecting precisely the type of clear-skied Ashes scoreline that this ball-switching experiment has been designed to do away with – a smattering of breakthroughs within the first 15 or so overs, including Ethan Bamber’s snicking-off of Zain-ul-Hassan for this year’s maiden Championship wicket, then scant reward and a lot of hard yakka thereafter.Billy Root notched a fifty after moving up to open the batting•PA Photos/Getty Images

Both Billy Root and Kiran Carlson might have had designs on centuries of their own when each fell to a glaring misjudgement – with Root’s waft across the line to a decent deck-hitting delivery from Henry Brookes giving Middlesex’s new signing his first and only scalp in 12 energetic but under-threatening overs.Northeast did had a moment of luck on 11, when Max Holden spilled him at backward point off Bamber, but he could hardly have made it count with more aplomb. With a short boundary down the hill to the Mound Stand, he peppered his drives as the shine went off the ball and the Kookaburra’s more slender seam resolutely refused to grip.Notwithstanding a schoolboy hundred for Harrow versus Eton in 2007 (when Gary Ballance, no less, had been a team-mate), in three previous Championship matches at Lord’s, dating back to his first-ball duck for Kent as a 21-year-old in 2011, Northeast had mustered a total of 50 runs at 10.00. Now, en route to what he later described as a “bucket-list” century, he rushed past that total from just 51 balls in a joyous spring offensive. At the other end, Root was scarcely any more sluggish in getting to his fifty from 63 balls, in a second-wicket stand of 129.And, in a direct rebuttal of one of the most pervasive pre-season narratives, by mid-afternoon, the home attack was being carried by the unlikely spin twins of Josh De Caires and Leus du Plooy, a man who might already be feeling a touch of buyer’s remorse after his high-profile move from Derbyshire. Du Plooy even found some purchase in his six exploratory overs, including a snorter that bit past the outside edge to clip the back pad, but it wasn’t enough to dislodge a free-flowing Glamorgan captain.By the time he’d flicked the under-used Ryan Higgins off his toes for the 26th and final four, Northeast had romped along to 179 from 241 balls, and with almost an hour of the day still remaining, he seemed odds-on to rack up a remarkable first-day double-hundred.Instead, with the second Kookaburra offering perhaps just a fraction more assistance than the first, he took his foot off the throttle as the close approached – as is the wont of a man who, two seasons ago, racked up the Championship’s most recent quadruple-century. At the rate this innings has progressed, and with the new ball already primed for its mid-life crisis at the age of 16 overs, there’ll be plenty more where those have already come from.”I plan to be very greedy on day two,” Northeast said at the close. “It’s been a fantastic day and I’m not sure we could have dreamt of it this morning. I want to lead from the front, so it is a nice way to start that, but I’d like to be walking away from here with a victory, that’s the most important thing.”It’s been a good toss to lose at the minute. I would have had a bowl as well, but that’s the way things go. We’ll see what it’s like when our bowlers get on it. We were expecting the wicket to do a little bit more, maybe that is the Kookaburra ball. We may have to get a bit imaginative with how we go about things.”Brookes added: “The Kookaburra is different. You don’t get as much movement and the ball doesn’t stay as hard for as long, but it’s here to stay for a few games this year so we have to work hard with it, see what movement we can get and do things a little bit differently.”

The New Zealand contingent arriving in Dhaka on August 24 will have most of the elements of the bio-secure environment that the BCB provided Australia with, according to chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury. The only major difference will be that the New Zealand squad will not get the direct tarmac-to-hotel ride that Australia got from the airport – Australia arrived by chartered plane, while New Zealand will be on a commercial flight.”They [NZC] have requested us to give them the same bio-bubble environment that we ensured for Australia,” Chowdhury said. “Keeping everything in mind, we will do as much as practically possible to put together a complete bio-bubble environment to have a successful series. They will be travelling commercial, so their airport procedure won’t be exactly like Australia’s arrangements. But we will try to minimise public contact on their way to the hotel.”The contingent will undergo a three-day in-room quarantine on getting to the hotel. Once that is over, they will start to train at the Shere Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka, where all five matches of the series will be played.At the airport, New Zealand are likely to go through the usual VIP channel and have their immigration process done separately, as is usually the case for cricket teams travelling to Bangladesh these days.Chowdhury also said New Zealand were not inclined to play the tour match scheduled for August 29, in the lead-up to the five-match T20I series that begins on September 1, to avoid bio-bubble complications. “They were offered [a practice match] but since it means an additional bio-bubble in another venue, they [NZC] have discouraged it,” Chowdhury said. “They also want minimum movement during the series.”The Bangladesh players, meanwhile, have been instructed by the BCB to be conservative in their movements ahead of joining the bio-bubble for the series. “They will enter the bio-bubble when it is ready,” Chowdhury said. “Our players have been instructed to keep their movements restricted, and told to be within the family environment. They have been discouraged from attending public functions.”Chowdhury also confirmed that the games will start earlier than usual, keeping New Zealand audiences in mind. “We plan to start the matches at 4pm (local time) after speaking to the team management. We have kept in mind the viewership in New Zealand.”

For many fans watching on, let alone the players, the manner of Sri Lanka’s defeat in the second ODI was particularly tough to take. Amid one of the worst streaks in the country’s cricketing history, the opportunity to get one over an old enemy – even if their first choice XI was halfway across the world – would have been as good a salve as any. But, Deepak Chahar had other ideas.So, it’s now down to Dasun Shanaka – Sri Lanka’s 10th captain in four years – to rally his troops, go again and avoid a whitewash. While the Super League points up for grabs will no doubt be a motivating factor, it’s clear what this Sri Lankan team needs right now is simply a win.”If we had won that last game, it would have been a big boost going into this game,” Shanaka said. “But I have a lot of belief that this young team can start winning soon.Related

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“If you look, even from the England series, the team has been improving little by little. Today our bowlers had a good practice session focusing on their spot bowling, something which is important in a match. Every time we’re out in the field we’re looking at improving. Of course, we can fall back down once in a while, but we need to keep faith in the process. The goal is to end this match on a high note.”Much of the criticism that spilled over from the last game centered around Shanaka’s handling of his bowlers at the death. While using the excellent pair of Dushmantha Chameera and Wanindu Hasaranga in the final few overs was understandable, the decision to bring on both Kasun Rajitha and Lakshan Sandakan in the overs that preceded them was more contentious.Both Rajitha and Sandakan went for more than seven runs per over, but Shanaka said it was a decision that was easier to criticise in hindsight.Dasun Shanaka: ‘I have a lot of belief that this young team can start winning soon’•SLC

“We can’t always say with certainty what would have happened. There are two ways to look at it; if Dasun Shanaka and Chamika Karunaratne had bowled and got hit, many would have said that there would have been overs left over from Kasun Rajitha and Lakshan Sandakan. It was Sandakan, after all, that got the crucial wicket of Suryakumar (Yadav).”We can’t always know which way would have been best. As a captain my main goal is to win, at the time I did what I thought was best but going forward I’ll need to learn from these experiences.”In terms of positives for Sri Lanka, the performances of Charith Asalanka and Karunaratne have been right up there. Karunaratne’s late-order hitting has been crucial in Sri Lanka setting respectable targets in both games so far, while Asalanka has proven to be a steadying middle-order presence. Unsurprisingly, the unreliable nature of Sri Lanka’s top order combined with both players’ form has led to calls for them to be promoted, something Shanaka was hesitant to sign off on.”We need to fix the playing environment first. When Asalanka was batting at No. 3 in England, a lot of people might have been saying he wasn’t of international standard. As a captain, the way I looked at it was, how do we get the best out of him? I spoke to coaches and selectors, and we decided that he should first play at No. 5, where he can first gain experience playing in the middle order. Then gradually put him into that No. 3 role. We need to give players time to settle in. That will give him time to learn about international cricket, how to play certain bowlers, when to accelerate an innings, when to stretch things out, he will gradually get a better understanding of these things.”Just like Asalanka, Chamika has been playing really well. But Chamika also needs time to settle in. He has shown he can finish, so we need to give him more time in that role. That’s how you build his confidence. So that’s why both are in their specific positions, to gain that crucial experience.”Much of Sri Lanka’s success also depends on the continued fitness of Chameera, whose pace has caused problems for many an opposition batter. That means successfully implementing a rest and rotation policy. Chameera, however, has been playing non-stop since the start of the year and, seeing how crucial he is to the side, a rest seems unlikely. A logical replacement would be Lahiru Kumara, but he’s just coming back from injury himself.”We do have a problem in being able to replace some players,” Shanaka said. ‘In the past, we’ve lost a lot of in-form players due to injuries, to the detriment of our side. So now we need to manage our fast bowlers a lot more carefully. We have about three fast bowlers who can bowl over 140kph, but if we can nurture a few more to that level it’ll make things easier in terms of rotation.”Having a player like Lahiru Kumara is very much an advantage, but we need to manage his bowling load, and with him coming back from injury, we need to get him match fit properly without rushing him back. As a captain, I would of course like to have both Dushmantha and Kumara, but we need to manage the bowling loads properly.”Going forward, we will hopefully have more players coming through from the Under-19 and A team levels, and at that point, we should be able to properly implement a rest and rotation policy. It’s honestly a good thing because if you look at someone like Dushmantha he’s been in a bubble for three months straight.”

On Thursday at the HPCA Stadium nets, Cheteshwar Pujara was batting like a man who had just made a double-hundred. He was stepping out frequently to R Ashwin, Jayant Yadav and Kuldeep Yadav, and driving down the ground with immense power – one straight drive broke the single stump at the bowlers’ end.On a couple of occasions, he even went as far as lofting the spinners. Pujara being Pujara, he had probably brought the shot out of cryogenic storage simply because this was Dharamsala, which has some of the smallest boundaries among all Indian grounds, and is situated at an altitude – 1317m above sea level – that may cause the ball to carry further.The last time he batted in a Test match, Pujara did not loft the ball once. He did nothing that could even remotely imperil his stay at the crease, and ended up spending more than 11 hours there.Shortly before padding up for his net session, Pujara had addressed a press conference where he was asked about how he had acquired the gifts of patience and temperament that so define his batting.”I think when it comes to patience, it is all hard work,” he said. “I started playing cricket at the age of eight and then I played [my] first game for the state [junior] team at the age of 13. Since then, I have been playing this format and I think the experience [of] playing in the domestic circuit and working hard day in, day out, is paying off now.”At times during his innings in Ranchi, it seemed as if Pujara had entered a meditative state.”I can say that, at times, I am in that zone where things are happening for me because of that experience, because I know how to do things, how to continue batting and how to continue concentrating for a longer period of time. I know what to do, how to focus, how to switch off and switch back [on] again. I have been doing it in domestic cricket for a long period of time, which is helping me now.”Does he have any cues, before the ball is bowled, to help him switch on again?”Not really,” Pujara said. “I believe in practising well, preparing well before the series, so I am always confident when my preparation is good. I don’t really think when I am batting in the middle, I try and keep my mind really blank.”Having played an innings as epic in scale as he did in Ranchi, how difficult does Pujara find it to recover, physically and mentally?”I focus on my diet,” he said. “I try and sleep on time and have a good sleep. Do some recovery sessions, have a massage. Those sort of things, I have some routines once the match finishes, I try and focus on that, I give a lot of importance to recovery.”I don’t know mentally – I think you just have to be up for it. Mentally, you can’t do anything extra to just come out of it, but when you’re tired you just have to motivate yourself and the ultimate goal is to win matches for the team and win this particular series.”With the teams locked 1-1 ahead of the decider, India have arrived at a new Test venue whose location is unlike any other international ground in India, and whose pitch – at least in domestic cricket – always offers something to the quicker bowlers. Asked about this, Pujara said India weren’t too fussed about the conditions they may be playing in.”It looks like a good wicket,” he said. “I think we have played a lot of cricket even in Dharamsala. We have played enough first-class cricket, we know the conditions. We will just try and focus on things which we want to focus on rather than worrying about how the wicket will play.”We have played enough cricket on different pitches throughout the season. So I don’t think the wicket will matter a lot to us. We are very confident, the way we have played throughout the series. Apart from the first Test match, we have played very good cricket. So we would look to continue that and win the series.”In the days leading up to the match, the BCCI announced its new list of centrally contracted players. Pujara was promoted to the top grade for the first time in his career.”It’s good to be recognised, but at the same time, we’re in the middle of a series and I don’t want to think about the contract,” Pujara said. “We have an important game coming up and I would still like to focus on the game and prepare well. We have practice the next couple of days so we’d like to focus on that.”

Bangladesh squad for first Test

Mushfiqur Rahim (capt & wk), Tamim Iqbal, Imrul Kayes, Mominul Haque, Sabbir Rahman, Mahmudullah, Shakib Al Hasan, Mehedi Hasan Miraz, Taijul Islam, Rubel Hossain, Kamrul Islam Rabbi, Soumya Sarkar, Taskin Ahmed, Nurul Hasan, Subashis Roy
In: Rubel Hossain, Taskin Ahmed
Out: Shuvagata Hom, Mosaddek Hossain

Mushfiqur Rahim has been named in Bangladesh’s 15-man squad for the first Test against New Zealand in Wellington, with the selectors expecting him to recover from his hamstring injury in time to play. Pace spearhead Mustafizur Rahman has been rested, meaning Taskin Ahmed – who is yet to debut in Test cricket – is likely to lead the bowling attack when the match gets underway on January 12.Bangladesh have made two changes to the squad that was picked for their last Test, against England in Dhaka. Shuvagata Hom and Mosaddek Hossain have been left out while Rubel Hossain and Taskin are included in their place.Bangladesh have already lost the ODI and T20 series, so a strong line-up was expected for the Test side. While the batting line-up remains similar to the one fielded in the other two formats, the pace-bowling attack is very inexperienced.With 23 Tests, Rubel is by far the most experienced member of it. Like Taskin, Subashis Roy has never played in the longest format, while Kamrul Islam Rabbi has played just the two Tests. Three of these four will likely make the XI, with spinners Shakib Al Hasan and Mehedi Hasan (also only two Tests so far) likely to complete the bowling-line up.The players outside of the squad who are present in New Zealand are Mustafizur, Mashrafe Mortaza, Mosaddek, Shuvagata, Nazmul Hossain Shanto, Ebadot Hossain and Tanbir Hayder – Bangladesh have been taking their extended preliminary squad, which had trained in Australia earlier, along on this tour. A decision on which of these players to send home will be taken over the next couple of days.The decision to rest Mustafizur comes ahead of a busy season for Bangladesh – they play a Test in India next month, followed by a full tour of Sri Lanka in March, before preparation for the Champions Trophy in England begins. He might feature in the second Test, though.

Trevor Bayliss has described speculation over Alastair Cook’s future as captain as “a pain in the backside” and insisted that the dressing room is united in its support for him.Cook’s future has been called into question since he gave an interview to the magazine on the eve of the Bangladesh and India tours in which he said: “Deep down I don’t know how much longer I am going to carry on. It could be two months, it could be a year.”Suspicions he was preparing to step down only escalated after Cook described Joe Root as “ready to captain” following defeat in the Mumbai Test. That result meant England had lost three Tests in succession, four of their last five and five of their last seven. From a position where England were a result or two from reaching the top of the Test rankings in August, they are now facing the prospect of dropping to fifth if they lose the final Test of the series against India in Chennai.But Bayliss, the England coach, is clearly in no doubt that he wants Cook to continue. Describing Cook’s record as “fantastic”, Bayliss acknowledged that talk of him standing down had become a distraction.”I think everyone, to a man, in the dressing room would be disappointed if he wasn’t captain,” Bayliss said. “But when it’s constantly in the media all the time, it’s a bit of a pain in the backside. Especially when no one around the team believes that or thinks that. It’s a little bit aggravating.”I suppose anyone who’s done the job for that long, there’s always going to be questions towards the twilight of his career. But the job he’s done with the group, I think, has been fantastic.”Bayliss was especially frustrated as talk over Cook’s future had, he felt, detracted from “all the good things” England have achieved on the tour. And it is true that, while the scoreline is grim, England can take some comfort in the emergence of a couple of promising top-order batsmen, in Keaton Jennings and Haseeb Hameed, and the improvement in Adil Rashid’s legspin bowling.”It takes the focus away from all the good things we’ve done on this tour,” Bayliss said. “I think we’ve played some good cricket here. We’ve got to give credit where credit’s due: we’ve played good cricket and they’ve played even better cricket.”Bayliss now plans to speak to Cook and Andrew Strauss, the managing director of the England team, to resolve the uncertainty over the captaincy.”We’ve had some discussions in the past,” he said. “But those two guys – Cook and Strauss – have obviously had a big history. I’m sure we’ll have a chat between the two or three of us.”Bayliss has previously stated that he expected Cook to be captain for the Ashes series in 12 months’ time. “He’s talking about the next Ashes series and being out in Australia,” Bayliss told the BBC last week. “Sometimes there are little comments made along the way and they get blown out of all proportion.”He’s certainly up for the fight. I haven’t had any discussion with him any other way and that’s what we’ve been working towards. I was as surprised as anyone when I saw that in the papers.”

Perth Scorchers have been fined for breaching their salary cap ahead of the 2016-17 Big Bash League.The team was $5000 over the salary cap of $1.3 million and were fined $150,000, of which $145,000 was suspended pending no further breach of the cap for five years.Cricket Australia said the Scorchers had reported the breach themselves.”Following a thorough investigation, we understand that this was not a purposeful breaching of the rules by the Perth Scorchers, and this has been taken into account for the purpose of fixing an appropriate penalty,” Cricket Australia’s Head of Integrity, Iain Roy “The Perth Scorchers understand the seriousness of this error and have accepted the fine imposed by Commissioner Lewis and we thank them for working with us during this investigation.”This serves as a timely reminder that the integrity of our game is a high priority and we won’t accept this being compromised.”The 2016-17 season of the BBL begins on December 20. The Scorchers play their first game on December 23, in Perth.