Yashpal Sharma, former India cricketer and deposed national selector, has criticized Greg Chappell for targeting players he did not like.”Chappell wants [Sourav] Ganguly out while [Virender] Sehwag, Harbhajan [Singh] and Zaheer [Khan] are the other targets in his mind,” said Sharma, who was ousted from the selection committee last week. “Chappell questioned my integrity and his behaviour shocked me. He also alleged that I was [Jagmohan] Dalmiya’s man. I felt very bad because I have played with honour for my country and he has no right to question my credentials,”Sharma, a member of the team that won the 1983 World Cup in England, had reportedly pushed for Ganguly’s inclusion in the team for the ongoing Test series against Sri Lanka. Ganguly was earlier dropped from the one-day side due to poor form, an elbow injury and a damaging public spat with Chappell.Sharma, Pranob Roy and Gopal Sharma were last week removed from the national selection panel after Sharad Pawar wrested control of the board. They were replaced by Bhupinder Singh, Ranjib Biswal and Sanjay Jagdale, none of whom have played Test cricket.Sharma played 37 Tests for India during the 1970s and 1980s, scoring 1,606 runs with two centuries. He also figured in 42 one-dayers in which he aggregated 883 runs.
South Africa’s selectors have dropped Dale Steyn and Hashim Amla, while Charl Langeveldt was ruled unfit and released from the squad for the fifth and final Test against England at Centurion which starts on Friday.Andre Nel, who was on standby, will now cover for Langeveldt, who broke his left hand at Cape Town and, despite an improvement, could not grip the bat comfortably.South Africa’s selectors resisted pressure to make more wholesale changes despite the side being slammed by the media in the aftermath of the defeat at Johannesburg. Two players under the spotlight, Jacques Rudolph and Boeta Dippenaar, have both been retained and will play.”We want to back the players. But there has to be a realisation that Test cricket is played over five days,” explained Haroon Lorgat , the selection convenor. “You’ve got to play and win each session. Too often in this series we have switched off. Look at the Durban match, we played well for two days and then we were hanging on to avoid defeat. We can’t have that.”Amla, who has scored plenty of runs at domestic level, failed to impress in two Tests, making 36 runs in four imnings, with serious questions being raised about his technique. Steyn showed signs of promise but lacked control and his eight wickets cost 52 each. Both, however, are likely to feature again in the Test side before too long.South Africa Graeme Smith (capt), Herschelle Gibbs, Jacques Rudolph, Jacques Kallis, Boeta Dippenaar, AB de Villiers, Mark Boucher (wk), Nicky Boje, Shaun Pollock, Makhaya Ntini, Andre Nel.
The XXXX Queensland Bulls opening ING Cup match of the season against Tasmania at the Gabba on Saturday will double as a public celebration of the Multi-Cultural Cricket project.The pilot "MCC" program was conducted at Macgregor, Durack, Warrigal Road, Darra, Riverview, Inala, Goodna and Dinmore State Schools last season and involved 240 children, as well as a number of volunteer coaches.It was aimed at introducing cricket to children from non-traditional cricket backgrounds and utilised aspects of the successful Milo Have-A-Go program. There were 24 different nationalities represented in the program including children of Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan, Tongan, and Aboriginal and Islander backgrounds.It was made possible through a Living in Harmony community grant to Queensland Cricket as part of the Federal Government’s Living in Harmony initiative.Saturday’s promotion will recognise the introduction of the "MCC" project, as well as a number of initiatives conducted by Queensland Cricket and Cricket Australia to increase the interest and participation in cricket from non-traditional cricket backgrounds and indigenous communities.Children and coaches from the pilot MCC program will take part in on-field displays during the main break of the match.Additionally, the Federal Minister for Citizenship and Multi-Cultural Affairs, the Hon Gary Hardgrave MP, will announce the inaugural Indigenous Cricket Advisory Committee – Queensland (ICACQ) during the break, which is scheduled to run from 1.30pm to 2pm.As part of the day, a naturalisation ceremony involving the Minister and more than 150 people will also take place in the Gabba Room at the ground.Tickets for the match were made available to a number of community cultural groups and the parents and children involved in the MCC Project.Queensland Cricket Chief Executive Officer Graham Dixon said cricket as a sport had much to offer Australians from non-traditional cricket backgrounds."Cricket draws heavily from the community through the army of volunteers who are so essential to ensuring cricket is Australia’s favourite summer sport," he said."One of the messages that we are promoting is that cricket is the Australian game for all Australians and through programs like the Multi-Cultural Cricket project, we can hopefully introduce the sport to children and parents alike who might not have encountered it," Dixon said."Queensland Cricket and Cricket Australia have identified non-traditional cricket backgrounds and the ingenious communities as among those areas where we have to work harder as a sport to develop."We have made a number of initiatives in this are, including promoting Milo Have-A-Go cricket in Torres Strait through the Eddie Gilbert Program, which has made some promising progress in indigenous communities in Far North Queensland.""The formation of the first Indigenous Cricket Advisory Committee – Queensland will also assist the growth of the sport at the grassroots", he said.Dixon said Queensland Cricket teams in the past had been culturally-diverse, with the current Bulls squad containing players from a range of different backgrounds.Opening batsman Daniel Payne has Japanese, Javanese, Aboriginal and Greek ancestry while injured pace bowler Scott Brant is originally from Zimbabwe and was granted Australian residency earlier this year.Saturday’s match commences at 10am with gates opening at 9am.ING Cup, XXXX Queensland Bulls v Tasmanian Tigers, Saturday, the Gabba: Stuart Law, Daniel Payne, Martin Love (c), Clinton Perren, Lee Carseldine, James Hopes, Wade Seccombe, Nathan Hauritz, Mitchell Johnson, Joe Dawes, Shane Jurgensen, Steve Farrell (12th man to be named).
“It is not who is right, but what is right that is of importance.”Ring out the old – ring in the new. For Canada, 2001 has been both full of promise, but frustrating because of still vastly unfilled potential growth.The ICC Trophy 2001 was a brand new and untried format, the largest event of its kind and yet was ” the best of the previous Events.” To the many people at ICC, CCA and the CCA organizing sub-committee, we again extend our congratulations and thanks for their sterling efforts. The CCA Boards of Directors that stayed the course, approving the Bid process and the Event, sometimes in trying financial circumstances we salute you.””When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.”Against many odds, we have qualified teams for the U-19 world Cup in New Zealand in January 2002 and for the Senior world Cup in south Africa in 2003. We thank the many coaches, umpires, volunteers, scorers, families and supporters, all essential to continue Canada’s path to excellence.Most importantly we thank the commitment and sacrifice of the players and officials who got Canada this far. Far greater commitment and sacrifice is now needed. Can we deliver? We have done it before. We shall do it again. The players need your complete support, however. We have training and multiple prep tournaments in 2002 and in 2003 leading up to the World Cup. Youth players need to be groomed and encouraged to step up.We wish our fellow World Cup bound colleagues in Kenya, Holland and Namibia, the best in the future and in the World Cup. Kenya we trust will shortly follow our friends in Bangladesh to FM status.We in Canada continue to strive to follow them initially to ODI member status, in the immediate future. It is a beacon of hope for development in the vast Americas television market. Time waits for no one. ” Set a stout heart to a steep hillside.”We at the CCA wish the Full, Associate and Affiliate members of International Cricket a peaceful and productive year. ” Either men will learn to live like brothers, or they will die like beasts.” Battles should be fought on the cricket field with bat and ball, not with bullets and accusations or provocations.Canada’s international diplomatic and safety record are avenues for renewed cricket international prime-time event marketing. Our World Cup bound teams will benefit profoundly, as will Americas’ development.We hope that we shall experience a “cricket-year”- no new crises, no alleged or real exposé’s, no new actions, incidents or confrontations that bring the greatest game in the world into disrepute. We need action, not words. “Clapping with the right hand only, will not produce a noise!”We seek a year of recovery and of growth in Canada, in the Americas and around the whole fraternity of world cricket.To all but especially to our players, officials and volunteers and in the Associates and Affiliates, our best wishes. We offer that:”In order to succeed we must first believe that we can.””In every thought and action, think excellence.” It must follow.If frustrated, consider that “Patience is a bitter plant, but it has sweet fruit.” Press on. Respect and respectability shall come!” `God’ seeks comrades and claims love (respect?), the devil seeks slaves and claims obedience?”” To do all that one is able to do is to be a man, to all that one would like to do, is to be a God!” HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Southampton may have finally found their Virgil Van Dijk replacement at last in 6 foot 3 centre-back Mohammed Salisu, who signed for the club last season in a £10m deal with Real Valladolid – but it was another defender who caught the eye yesterday during their 3-1 FA Cup fifth-round victory at home to West Ham.
Yan Valery, who was standing in for Ghanaian 22-year-old Salisu who is out with “a little bit of a problem” was praised by manager Ralph Hasenhuttl, who was running out of superlatives for the Frenchman.
“Valery played a fantastic game as a centre-back,” said Hasenhuttl.
“Valery, very impressed, unbelievable performance. With the ball he can still be a little bit calmer, he didn’t want to take too many risks today, absolutely okay.
“He played a few more long balls, absolutely okay. Against the ball, how he defends now, I know that he can do this. His whole body language and his belief in what he has doing has changed completely for us and this is for me very important.
“When we played at Chelsea in the cup game, when he played in a back-three, I knew he was strong but now getting into a back four, sliding, defending, making decisions, it is much more difficult and you need to have more quality but fantastic, I must say, fantastic.”
The 23-year-old natural right-back was once described as the Saints’ “weak link”, but he’s now finally beginning to prove his harshest critics wrong. He has made just six appearances this season so far, with Tino Livramento and Kyle Walker-Peters ahead of him in the pecking order – so with that in mind, it was an excellent decision to begin transitioning the Saints star into a central defender.
He made a very impressive six interceptions and four clearances against West Ham, as well as making two tackles to win back possession and winning 75% of his aerial duels.
The last match before yesterday he played was against Coventry City in the fourth round of the FA Cup, and he was once again deployed as a central defender, this time on the right side of a back-three, and he also did very well – achieving a 7.4 match rating.
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Should the homegrown defender continue his solid form as a centre-back, he could save the Saints millions on a new defender in the future, and potentially even form a solid partnership with Salisu at the back.
In other news: £10.8m Saints star who lost possession 16x has just given Hasenhuttl a big headache
Andy Roberts, the former West Indies fast bowler, has won the Grand Cross of the Most Illustrious Order of Merit. The honour, Antigua and Barbuda’s second-highest civilian decoration, was conferred during the annual Independence Day parade at the Antigua Recreation Ground.Roberts, 56, who was the first Antiguan to play Test cricket for the West Indies, took 202 wickets in 47 Tests at 25.61 and 87 wickets in 56 ODIs at 20.35. He was part of the famed quartet of fast bowlers who took West Indies to the top of world cricket in the 1970s and early ’80s, the others being Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft. He was also part of the West Indies team that won the 1975 and 1979 World Cups.Antigua and Barbuda was celebrating its 26th Independence Day anniversary.
Canterbury were forced to follow on after finishing 234 short of Otago’s 601, but half-centuries by Todd Astle, Brendon McCullum and Peter Fulton ensured that they comfortably drew the game. Otago were led by James McMillan, who took career-best figures of 7 for 105 to restrict Canterbury to 367, but in the 51 overs left in the day Canterbury cantered to 213 for 2.Resuming at 330 for 7, Canterbury added only 37 more before being bowled out, with McMillan adding two more wickets to the five he had on the third day. Chris Harris was the first batsman to be dismissed on the final day, being bowled by McMillan for 122. The tail didn’t contribute much, allowing Otago to have another shot at the Canterbury batsmen.Todd Astle and McCullum immediately eased the situation with a 111-run stand for the first wicket. When Astle and McCullum fell after getting half-centuries, Fulton took over, making an unbeaten 62 before play was called off. Otago took two points from the game, thanks to the first-innings lead they managed.
Ricky Ponting will consider introducing Brad Hodge to Test cricket at No. 4 in a move that would push Michael Clarke down a place against West Indies on Thursday. Clarke has struggled to make his mark since replacing Damien Martyn after the Ashes loss and Ponting said he would consult with both players and the selectors before making a decision.”When Michael went up there we saw him as being a long-term holder of that spot,” Ponting said in . “He has been given a few games there now. Whether it is the right thing to keep him there or move him is something we’ll have to work out.”Clarke made 39 and 5 in the Super Test last month and 5 and 14 not out against West Indies in Brisbane, and past players, including Steve and Mark Waugh, believe technical changes are necessary for him to seal the transition. While Clarke is trying to find his perfect position, the paper reported Hodge as starting at No. 4 in 152 of his 297 first-class innings. “It is probably my decision but I will speak to the selectors and some of the senior players,” Ponting said. “Michael and Brad will also have to be consulted.”Andrew Symonds is also a middle-order candidate and Ponting, who was launching his Ashes tour diary in Hobart yesterday, said the allrounder had “shown his character” to bounce back from the suspension for drinking before Australia’s loss to Bangladesh in Cardiff last winter. “I did what I had to do as captain of the team on that day,” Ponting, who wrote about his anger at Symonds, said. “We had to handle it as quickly as we could to get it sorted out.”I had to get my opinions across to Andrew and the other players and talk it through. I felt he let myself and all the other players down. ‘Simmo’ totally knew where I was coming from but, to his credit, he bounced back and played unbelievable cricket from that moment on.”
Andrew Strauss made short work of wrapping up an historic victory for England on the final morning of the first Test at Port Elizabeth. Time may not have been of the essence, although winning before the forecast rains came was, but Strauss and the solid Graham Thorpe hurried England along to the 49 runs required in just 36 minutes. This is their eighth consecutive Test victory, a new national record, and the seven-wicket win gives them a 1-0 lead in the series.The young Dale Steyn was forced out of the attack after two overs, as Strauss steered him fine for four, hooked a six picked from outside off stump and then slashed another four high and long over third man. Graeme Smith replaced him, but he could find no breakthrough with his part-time offspin.The winning runs came when Strauss cut Makhaya Ntini past backward point for four. It was fitting that Strauss – the obvious choice as Man of the Match – should deliver the historic eighth win. He dominated the scoring this morning, collecting 41 runs to Thorpe’s eight, and still has a spotless record as an England player: played eight, won eight.Just to rub it in for South Africa, two hours after the match finished the rain poured down: it’s unlikely that any play would have been possible after lunch.In the end, the historic win came at a canter for England. But victory was no foregone conclusion in a match which ebbed and flowed like the tide on the nearby Port Elizabeth beaches. England shaded the first day by taking seven wickets – including Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis for ducks – and bossed the second through an opening stand of 151 between Strauss and Marcus Trescothick, only for South Africa to bounce right back into the match on the third.They removed Strauss early on, then Makhaya Ntini took three wickets in four balls to shake England to the core – and they went on to lose seven wickets for 159 runs. But in a madcap scramble after tea, England’s tail put on 67 for the last two wickets, which must have done some serious psychological damage to the South Africans.Steve Harmison should have been out twice to Dale Steyn, but was dropped once and then when he was caught – by Thami Tsolekile – the umpire had called no-ball. Harmison and Simon Jones should both have been run out as well, but South Africa let them off the hook in what was probably the decisive passage of the match. Still, it could have gone either way at the start of the fourth day – until a collapse even more dramatic than England’s had been.South Africa lost their last seven wickets for 87 runs – and this time there were no low-order high jinks, as England wrested back the initiative one last time. Mind you, South Africa had a ray of hope as Trescothick and Mark Butcher both fell for ducks – and Michael Vaughan’s departure represented a further wobble at 50 for 3 – but the impressive Strauss made no mistakes and, with the phlegmatic Thorpe, applied the finishing touches to a very real test.Jenny Thompson is assistant editor of Cricinfo.
After writing England’s, and Michael Vaughan’s, summer obituaries at the end of the first day at The Oval, the English newspapers were forced to change their tune after England’s historic win against South Africa yesterday.
Champagne moment: Andrew Flintoff guzzles the bubbly after England’s historic win
Mike Walters, in , summed up the buoyant mood of the English public and players, describing the win as sensational and swashbuckling. He gushed: “In a summer of more twists than the London Underground map, Michael Vaughan’s men went from dunces to diamond geezers in the space of five days.” And he added that Vaughan, who joined in a playful game of football with a space-hopper on the outfield, was lucky that “five of his foot-soldiers ensured the final npower Test will go down in the pantheon of their greatest wins”.And those five foot-soldiers – Marcus Trescothick, Graham Thorpe, Andrew Flintoff, Stephen Harmison and Martin Bicknell – all received accolades in varying degrees. Christopher Martin-Jenkins, in , more soberly pointed out that those individuals had “played to their potential” and that the team performed “as a whole with a determination and professionalism that did them all proud”. splashed a photo of Alec Stewart hoisted on his team-mates’ shoulders, with the corny headline “We’re Oval the moon”. John Etheridge described the win as staggering and mind-boggling, and insisted that this victory “will rank alongside anything Stewart experienced in his time at the top”.But while most eyes were on the departing Stewart, Vaughan didn’t escape the column inches. Angus Fraser, in , wrote that even though Vaughan has had only four matches in charge of England, “He will have been through a far greater range of emotions than Steve Waugh in the four years he has led the world champions.”And although Fraser said that Vaughan can feel proud after coming through his “biggest test”, Oliver Holt in noticed a note of reservation in Vaughan’s manner. “Quite why Michael Vaughan looked as if he’d just been told his mum had found a stack of porn mags concealed under his bed is a more complex issue,” Holt said. “Vaughan had just led his team to one of England’s most remarkable victories to square a series that seemed on the first day to have slipped into their opponents’ hands. But the England skipper appeared somewhere on the sheepish side of morose after this nine-wicket thriller of a win. Drained by the relief flooding out of him. Just glad it was all over.”Well, you can’t blame him after leading England in a season which has been consistently inconsistent, according to Simon Barnes in : “One minute we are watching a very decent side, the next we are watching a bunch of losers,” Barnes pointed out, adding that “It is the sort of thing that unsettles a chap.” He highlighted Trescothick as an example. “One day Marcus Trescothick is a spent force, the next he is the most imperious batsman in world cricket. Certainly, pressure inspired Trescothick. He moved from circumspection to certainty and from certainty to majesty. He made nearly 300 runs in the match for once out: not bad for a man who was all washed up.” And Barnes concluded: “But if England are consistent only in their inconsistency, then we must come to terms with the fact that, in a perverse way, inconsistency is their strength.”But what of South Africa? They fly home this evening knowing that they ought to have won the series after dominating the first two matches. And we’ve seen it all before. While Michael Owen-Smith told us in that Graeme Smith rejected charges that his team had yet to get rid of the label of being chokers, the ran a headline: “Wanted: Spin and swing.”Owen-Smith and the Daily Mail‘s Mike Dickson then picked out where South Africa, despite an encouraging tour, still fall short. Smith may have become “the darling of the English cricketing media for his availability, his transparency, his honesty and his humility,” they said, but his team are short of a strike bowler and their spin bowling remains the biggest single concern: “Paul Adams had an up-and-down tour on pitches that did not always suit him, while Robin Peterson is early in the learning curve.”And then there is also the worry of replacing Gary Kirsten. They argued that “Kirsten’s decision to play on has at least allowed Jacques Rudolph more time to settle,” and that “Rudolph has had a disappointing series, but he has shown enough glimpses to suggest that he is a player of quality.”While South Africa take those concerns on with them to Pakistan, the England selectors have already been in discussions for the winter tours. As CMJ pointed out, “There has been, in the end, a strong contrast between England’s success with a young team under Vaughan in the one-day internationals in the middle of the season and the manner in which the experience of Thorpe and Bicknell, both 34, and Nasser Hussain, 35, helped them to draw this series with the second-best Test team in the world.”However, he suggested that Bicknell is unlikely to join “the small band of seam bowlers on the slow pitches of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka before Christmas, even less so on the slightly faster ones of the Caribbean in March.” And David Llewellyn in concluded: “It would appear that Harmison has the pace Bicknell lacks and that Bicknell has the consistency Harmison is missing. Old heads on young shoulders springs to mind. The selectors’ job gets no easier.”