Bob Woolmer, Pakistan’s coach, has said that it was important for Pakistan to beat India in the two-match ODI series beginning in Abu Dhabi to regain their confidence. Pakistan lost the recent one-day series at home 1-4 after beating India 1-0 in the Tests. However, they toured Sri Lanka and won the Test series 1-0 and the one-day series 2-0, their fourth win in the last five ODI series.”Its needless for me to elaborate on an India-Pakistan series,” Woolmer told Press Trust of India. “These games draw massive interest around the world. Our team is in high spirits for the two games. We certainly would like to have our names as the first-ever winners at this venue.”Both matches are day-night fixtures and will be played at the Zayad Cricket Stadium which can seat 16,000 fans. It is the second venue in the United Arab Emirates, after Sharjah, to host international cricket matches. The proceeds from the first game will be donated to the survivors of the earthquake that hit parts of Pakistan and northern India.Since October 2005, India have beaten Sri Lanka 6-1, Pakistan 4-1, England 5-1 and held South Africa to a 2-2 draw, and Woolmer admitted that they would be hard opponents. “Obviously India is not an easy team to beat. They are playing well at the moment but Pakistan has got the type of players to match them in all departments of the game.”India’s strength has been that different players have produced matchwinning performances and therefore the pressure on Rahul Dravid in the absence of Sachin Tendulkar has been reduced. The poor form of Virender Sehwag and Mohammad Kaif has been balanced by sterling performances from Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni. “We need both Veeru and Kaif at their best but I am glad there are others willing to raise their hand for the cause of the team,” said Dravid. “We have always had good contests against Pakistan and it should be no different in these two games as well.” India had a practice session at the stadium on Monday but were without Greg Chappell who was suffering from an upset stomach.Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan president, arrived to watch the first game and several other dignitaries – UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, BCCI President Sharad Pawar and Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel – will be present during the match. A host of Indian film personalities – like Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Zayed Khan and Esha Deol – were also expected to be at the matches. Preperations were under way for a spectacular laser and firework, where around 200 acrobats will perform.India: Robin Uthappa, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid (capt) Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar, Ajit Agarkar, Munaf Patel, Venugopal Rao, S Sreesanth, Rudra Pratap Singh.Pakistan: Imran Farhat, Shoaib Malik, Younis Khan, Mohammad Yousuf, Inzamam-ul-Haq (capt), Kamran Akmal (wk), Shahid Afridi, Danish Kaneria, Abdul Razzaq, Mohammad Asif, Rao Iftikhar, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Faisal Iqbal, Abdul Rehman.
Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) have signed a new four-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will result in both national and state players receiving pay rises and increased career and welfare support. In April this year, the players had finally ended months of negotiation and avoided a potential repeat of the sponsorship crisis that afflicted West Indies.The agreement meant that retainers of players contracted to the Australian board will grow at an annual rate of 5.78% and those of state-contracted players will increase at an annual rate of 5.53% over the term of the agreement. Test players, who will earn a minimum retainer of Au$145,000 in the 2005-06 season, will see their base income rise to Au$160,000 by the end of the deal in 2008-09. State players receive a maximum of Au$95,000 and a minimum of Au$34,000 next season, rising to a maximum of Au$110,000 in 2008-09. However, match fees for each Test (Au$12,250) and Pura Cup game (Au$3300) will not change yet.James Sutherland, the CEO of the Australian board, said the new agreement will allow the game to reward Australian and state players with increased payments, balanced with the ability to continue investing heavily in the game at grassroots level.”Cricket Australia is pleased that it has been able to continue the partnership with the Australian Cricketers’ Association,” Sutherland said. “Our starting point in negotiating this new agreement was to ensure that we can continue paying our players well, allowing them to share in the financial success of the game, without compromising the game at grassroots level. Results of a recent review into Australian cricket suggest it is in good shape, but can’t afford to rest on its laurels and expect to maintain its privileged place in the Australian way of life. We need to nurture the game, both at the elite level and the grassroots and due to the co-operation of the ACA we are now in a better position than ever to do this.Tim May, the chief executive of the Australian Cricketers’ Association, said the new agreement was an acknowledgement of the players’ contribution to the success of Australian cricket both off and on the field. “Our players have worked hard and achieved great things for Australian cricket and they deserve to be rewarded for this success and the revenue growth that this success has created,” May said. “By maintaining a 25 per cent share of Australian Cricket Revenue, players have an incentive to grow the game’s revenues and satisfy and support sponsor initiatives. An important platform of the new agreement is the significant increase to funding for the players’ Career and Welfare Program.May added that The Career and Welfare Program, coordinated by the ACA in conjunction with the state cricket associations, will enjoy an injection of a further Au$2million over the term of the agreement. The amount will assist the appointment of C&W specific resources in each state, subsidies to assist and encourage players to commit to higher education and development of their after cricketing careers, together with an expanded base of welfare resources off the field.The new MOU will also see:* Players receive 25 per cent of a redefined Australian Cricket Revenue pool, known as the Player Payments Pool (PPP). Cricket Australia-contracted players will receive 55 per cent of the PPP, while state-contracted players will receive 45 per cent of the PPP;* The ability for state teams to offer up to three extra rookie contracts per season (now eight); and* Au$2.8 million invested in career and welfare programs over the life of the agreement, including a set fund designed to encourage players to take up tertiary study. This is up from $800,000 in the previous MOU.
Khaled Mahmud’s future as Bangladesh captain continues to attract many column inches in Bangladesh’s newspapers, but for the moment he remains, although there is an increasing feeling that he will be replaced before the tour of Zimbabwe.Usually the Bangladesh board selects a captain and then names a side, but earlier this month it announced that it would let the selectors pick the squad before naming the captain. The change on policy reflects the thinking of Dav Whatmore, a firm believer in the Australian idea of selecting the skipper from the players.”We decided to break the convention as a show of respect to the selectors’ desire,” Reazuddin Al Mamun, chairman of the board’s media committee, explained.He also dismissed speculation that the board were about to name separate Test and one-day captains. “The question was raised in the board meeting but not for discussion because we don’t believe we have options for such luxury. I can assure you that only one person will lead the team in the coming series.”
For almost the entire fifth day at Eden Gardens, Bengal and and Gujarat may as well have been batting on completely different pitches, each the polar opposite of the other. The result, as was predictable for much of the day, was a draw, and Bengal qualified for the semi-finals of the Ranji Trophy by virtue of their first-innings lead.Resuming on 279/3, Bengal continued to pile on the runs with little difficulty. Rohan Gavaskar missed out on a century, adding only four runs to his overnight score of 74 before falling. But Subhomoy Das and Sanjib Sanyal, first-innings heroes, repeated their Damon-and-Pythias act, sticking together for a stand of 162 runs for the fifth wicket.Sanyal was the first to fall, tragically run out just eight runs short of his second hundred in the match. His 92 came off 132 balls and featured 11 fours. Das took his time over his hundred, making 107 off 196 balls, with 12 fours, before he too was run out.Gavaskar declared on the stroke of that run-out, leaving Gujarat with an impossible target of 515 runs. Sanyal, however, was not done yet. Determined to make his mark on this match as deep as possible, he picked two quick wickets for Bengal fans to actually entertain visions of an outright win.Three more wickets did fall, but Gujarat’s batsmen held on long enough to draw the match. At stumps, the visitors were 69/5, but the score was only of academic value, for Bengal had effectively won the quarter-final by qualifying for the semi-finals.
Lahore, Nov 7: The four-day Quaid-i-Azam Cricket Trophy Grade I matchbetween Lahore Whites and Rawalpindi ended in a draw at the LCCAGround on Tuesday.Seeing no possibility of a result, umpires Salim Badar and Feroz Buttdecided to finish the match with Lahore Whites on 202 for eight in69.4 overs. The hosts were chasing a target of 251.Rawalpindi claimed three points for taking first innings lead.Rawalpindi had gained 29-run lead in the first innings by scoring 225runs andthereafter restricting Lahore Whites to 196. Rawalpindi scored221 for nine in their second knock.Resuming their second innings at 194 for six, Rawalpindi added only 27runs this morning. Mujahid Hameed hit an unbeaten knock of 58 in 133minutes, studded witheight boundaries. Yasir Arafat contributed 31.Paceman Sajid Ali took three wickets for 54 while Irfan Fazil andcaptain Naeem Ashraf claimed two wickets each, conceding 83 and 33runs, respectively. Shahid Javed, who had broken his right thumb off adelivery from Naeem Ashraf on Monday, could not bat on Tuesday.Lahore Whites’ chase for victory was shaky as paceman Yasir Arafatclaimed three wickets. Kashif Siddiq top-scored with a fine knock of64 off 147 balls, which included six boundaries. Test opener ZahoorElahi scored 41 (including five fours and a six), Tariq Aziz 45 (threefours and a six) and Kazim Ali 20.
Every Premier League game has become important for Frank Lampard and his Everton side as they battle for safety this season so that their top-flight status can be maintained.
Tonight they will host Newcastle United at Goodison Park in a rescheduled fixture that gives them the opportunity to gain distance from the relegation zone.
The Toffees boss revealed in his pre-match press conference that Dominic Calvert-Lewin is still uncertain for the game and will be assessed further ahead of the clash, with the decision on his selection going down to the wire.
Yerry Mina, Tom Davies and Fabian Delph remain on the injury table, and Jonjoe Kenny will be unavailable for selection following a one-match ban after receiving a red card over two yellow-carded fouls against Wolves.
With that being said, this is how Football FanCast expects Everton to line up their team against Newcastle United this evening…
We predict that Lampard will make just two changes in his team that lost to Wolves last weekend, but will switch formation from 3-4-3 to 4-4-3, matching Eddie Howe’s favoured set-up for the Magpies.
The first player we expect to see integrated into the team is Allan, who may return to the midfield, alongside Donny Van de Beek and Abdoulaye Doucoure. The Brazilian national has proven time and time again he offers fantastic attributes in the midfield over the course of the season so far, playing the full 90 minutes in every single one of the six victories that Everton have tallied.
According to SofaScore, the 31-year-old makes 2.8 tackles and 1.1 clearances on average per game, has an 87% pass success rate in his own half and is successful in the majority of his dribbles (68%) in his 22 Premier League appearances so far, proving that he is effective in that central position in midfield.
The second player we expect to be given their chance against Newcastle United is Anwar El Ghazi, who hasn’t had the opportunity to start a game yet and has only had 11 minutes of game time for the club since he joined in January. But with the team failing to score in their last four league games Lampard could put a fresh perspective in the attacking line.
The £9m-rated gem who was hailed “unstoppable” by Alan Hutton, has already scored against the Tyneside club this season when he netted the second goal in Aston Villa’s 2-0 victory over Newcastle at Villa Park in August, and the Toffees boss will be hoping that he can emulate his performance tonight.
With El Ghazi’s inclusion in the side, it means that Lampard will need to drop an attacker from his front line, and we expect that Demarai Gray will be the player to lose out in the starting line-up for this game.
The £42k-per-week forward who was dubbed a “big player” by Lampard, could be the man that loses out with Anthony Gordon and Richarlison holding their spots in the team to make way for a chance to be given to another offensive face.
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Ultimately, Everton cannot afford any room for error and must impose themselves effectively on this Newcastle side this evening, as they are currently only safe from the drop zone by goal difference.
This game in hand over their relegation competitors is the perfect opportunity for Lampard to take in front of the home fans at Goodison Park.
In other news: Everton dealt fresh injury setback ahead of NUFC, Frank will be frustrated
Bails don’t budge The last ball of the 70th over had an otherwise resolute Jacques Kallis in a spot of bother. Harbhajan Singh, with a 6-3 leg-side field, got one to turn and spit up from outside off stump and Kallis stayed back to uneasily fend it off. What followed drew loud gasps from all who saw it. The ball struck Kallis’ glove, rolled onto the stumps and made contact. The bails, however, stuck to the grooves and remained intact. The next time the ball deflected off Kallis’ bat the bails did come off, but by that time he’d helped himself to 132.Heads up India’s fielding on day two was pretty ordinary, but there were moments when it appeared they didn’t care. On two occasions between lunch and tea, the fielder at cover collected the ball and passed it to mid-off, as is customary, who proceeded to throw it towards the bowler – andmiss the man altogether. The first occasion it was Irfan Pathan on the receiving end, who’d already seen a needless throw give up three runs, and on the second it was Sreesanth, walking back to his mark, who almost ducked as a lob went over his head. These were elementary errorsthat many school coaches would have sent their wards for laps of the ground for.Cheeky, cheeky AB de Villiers has played some energetic innings in one-day cricket and while batting on 98 he pulled out a typical ODI shot to reach three figures. Clearly itching to get to the mark – he tried to hit one down the ground the over before – he walked right across his stumps and paddledSourav Ganguly from outside off down to fine leg. That shot has became rather en vogue, and de Villiers pulled it off like true pro.A four-storey shot de Villiers scored a brilliant century against West Indies in last year’s World Cup, virtually on one leg, and today he raised his highest Test score with a shot off one leg. Skipping down the track to Harbhajan, he was beaten in flight but went through with his almighty heave, falling over and landing on his back. While de Villiers lay there in a heap, and the Indians craned their necks as the ball made its way onto the deep midwicket roof. That ball travelled at least 100 metres. It was a shot that would have made Rohan Kanhai and Denis Compton proud.No, is how you do it As people looked up and wondered how to get that ball down from the roof, thankfully one of the manual scorers, already on the roof skipped across the tiles and threw the ball back onto the field. It was a fine throw to the bowler’s end, right in the line of the stumps before Pathan intercepted it with one hand. It was the best throw all day. This kid could be the news channels’ colour story of the day.Drama queen Harbhajan was clearly the most animated player on the field and at the start of the 130th over he caught a bump ball off de Villiers and had the crowd excited by pretending to celebrate the dismissal. Spurred by the spectators’ response, Harbhajan repeated his act in the next ball. More drama from him four overs later when Sourav Ganguly failed to back up to stop five overthrows off his bowling. Harbhajan, peeved at such incompetence, gave Ganguly an earful.
A day before the Indian team for the tour of Bangladesh was to be selected, Yuvraj Singh hammered a stylish 70 to win Punjab a berth in the final of the domestic Twenty20 championships, where they will take on Tamil Nadu (see points table). After failing to fire in each of Punjab’s first three matches in this tournament, where he made 0, 25 and 12, Yuvraj came to the party in fine style against Orissa, going after the bowling with characteristic freedom and aggression, giving full expression to his range of strokes.Being put in to bat, Punjab’s strong batting line-up put up the first 200-plus score of the tournament. Ravneet Ricky, who has been scoring consistently, made 25 at the top of the order, but it was Yuvraj and Dinesh Mongia (43) who did the serious damage. Early on in his innings, Yuvraj was content just looking to hit fours, and his powerful pulling on a good batting surface meant that the fielders had plenty of work to do retrieving the ball from the boundaries. In addition to his eight fours, Yuvraj launched four sixes, one of which ended up on the roof of the stands over midwicket. Yuvraj’s 39-ball 70 took Punjab to 201.Orissa had little chance of chasing down the target and ended on 130 for 7 from 20 overs, falling well short of the target before them. One of the talking points, after Yuvraj’s innings, was the bowling of Harbhajan Singh, who managed 1 for 15 from two overs. Although Twenty20 is hardly a stage to judge a bowler, the outing at least gave Harbhajan a chance to get some overs under his belt in a competitive situation.”You need to play a lot more in Twenty20 to get an idea of what to do and what not to do,” Harbhajan said soon after the game ended. He also felt that Twenty20 was the sort of game where raw strength and power, rather than skill, would help batsmen succeed. He called the format a “fun game”, although who was having fun under the scorching Mumbai sun, with no spectators at the ground, was not immediately clear. “You need bowlers who can be effective in this game if you want to win,” said Harbhajan, while adding, “The challenge of playing Twenty20 at the domestic level is less. Bowling to the world’s best batsmen is not so easy.”And it has not been an easy few months for Harbhajan. Although he has enjoyed the support of his captain and the selectors, the wickets are not coming as easily as they used to and the bowler who gave the ball a rip and bamboozled the Australians to the tune of 32 wickets from three Tests back in 2001, seems a distant, faded memory. Harbhajan, today, is an offspinner who bowls flat rather flighted, restrictive rather than hungry for wickets. In his last 50 ODIs he does not even average one wicket a game, with just one five-wicket haul. Each of his 48 scalps has come at an price of 38.43 runs. These are not the numbers of a champion offspinner leading an attack.When the selectors and the team management sit down to pick the team for Bangladesh, Ramesh Powar will be the first spinner they agree on. If Dravid bats for Harbhajan, as he has in the past, then there’s a chance he’ll keep his place, albeit under careful scrutiny, with a clear brief to bowl for wickets. The one thing going in Harbhajan’s favour is that Powar is a naturally attacking bowler, and this might make space for a bowler who is restrictive. Also, just as Anil Kumble’s career – at least in Tests – was boosted massively by the competition for a place that Harbhajan brought, and he was forced to become a more versatile bowler, this might be the chance for Harbhajan to take his game to the next level. Whether that opportunity will be afforded to him, depends on the thinking of the selectors, the captain and Ravi Shastri, the cricket manager.Three of the selectors – Dilip Vengsarkar, Bhupinder Singh and Ranjib Biswal – have plenty of time to talk about the decisions they would take tomorrow as they watched a match of no consequence, between Karnataka and Railways. Rahul Dravid, under the weather, didn’t play, and Railways knocked off the 163 runs they needed to register a facile win.
Venugopal Rao has been named captain of the India A side for the six-nation EurAsia Cricket Series at Abu Dhabi from April 22 to May 5.Robin Singh has been named coach of the squad, which, apart from Rao, also includes three players who were part of the mix in the national side during the home series against England: Piyush Chawla, the 16-year-old legspinner, played in the first Test, while RP Singh and VRV Singh were in the one-day squad and played the fifth match at Jamshedpur. The squad also includes Dinesh Karthik, the wicketkeeper from Tamil Nadu who played for India before being upstaged by Mahendra Singh Dhoni.India have been bunched along with Pakistan and Holland, while Sri Lanka, Ireland and UAE comprise Group B. India open their campaign with a match against Holland against April 23.Squad Robin Uthappa, Shikhar Dhawan, Sivaramakrishnan Vidyut, Venugopal Rao (capt), S Badrinath, Abhisek Jhunjhunwala, Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Shib Sankar Paul, RP Singh, VRV Singh, Piyush Chawla.
Slowly through the first day of the Chennai Test, the years peeled back. Before lunch it was October 2004, with Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer pummelling a hapless India, much as the Australians had done in Bangalore just days ago. Score: 111 for no loss. After lunch Harbhajan Singh got his groove back, made the ball spin and bounce, and picked up the openers as Australia’s advance halted. Was it 2001, perhaps? Score: 189 for 3. In the last session, it was the 1990s all over again, as Anil Kumble dismissed batsman after mystified batsman, evoking a series of tired cricket cliches borrowed, tellingly, from warfare: destruction, annihilation, demolition. Score: 235 all out. All ten of Australia’s wickets had fallen for 99 runs, their last eight for 46 – and this was a first-day pitch.There is one crucial difference between Sourav Ganguly’s team and Indian sides of days gone by – this one may falter, but they do not wilt. In the Bangalore Test, India’s lower order batted with an application that sides of the past would never have shown, and even when defeat was certain, after the eighth wicket fell on the fifth day, they hung in there grimly, refusing to succumb to the customary collapse. They displayed those qualities here as well – Ganguly did not panic, and his bowlers played with fire and self-belief. With the ball a little older than when he first got it in the tenth over, Harbhajan dismissed the openers from his presence. Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan, never threatening in the morning session, came back with sharper spells. And then a lion in winter shook Chennai in the autumn.Anil Kumble has won more matches than any other Indian bowler, and for much of his career, he’s been the sole strike bowler in the team. Fast bowlers performed sporadically for India in the ’90s, and the spinners who bowled with Kumble were support acts, worthy apprentices like Venkatapathy Raju and Rajesh Chauhan, but none of them was a matchwinner on his own. Harbhajan unquestionably is.Kumble and Harbhajan have hardly played together at their best. Kumble was out of the side with a shoulder injury when Harbhajan began to blossom, and many of their series together have been overseas ones, where India mostly baulked at playing two spinners in the XI. During the home series against New Zealand last year, Harbhajan carried a finger injury, though that wasn’t known at the time. They showed today what they are capable of achieving in tandem, with almost all their wickets – barring those of Hayden and the strangely over-aggressive Darren Lehmann – being earned. The prospect of what they can achieve together adds a fascinating dimension to a series which is already engrossing enough.It wasn’t a typical first-day pitch that they bowled on, though it seemed like that when the day began. When Hayden and Langer were bringing up their 12th hundred partnership – among opening combinations second only to the formidable firms of Greenidge/Haynes (16) and Hobbs/Sutcliffe (15) – the pitch seemed not to have much in it for the bowlers. But as the day went on, what seemed a harmless little frog was revealed to be the prince of darkness. The ball turned as if two or three days of the Test were already over, and there was plenty of bounce as well, one of Kumble’s main weapons.Having said that, it was no fifth-day crumbler, and Simon Katich showed that the Indians, well as they bowled, were not unplayable. Watching him, you wondered what the fuss was all about, and why these spinners were such a big deal. If you need a textbook lesson on how to play spin in India, get some tapes of Katich’s innings in this series. He either played late on the back foot, watching the ball onto his bat, or got to the pitch of it, and was never in trouble at all. The way Damien Martyn was out to Kumble was instructive as a contrast to this approach – Martyn prodded forward to a good-length ball that bounced a bit more than expected and popped up off his bat to forward short leg.Of course, Shane Warne will also enjoy the turn and bounce on this pitch, and the Australian fast bowlers are capable of running through sides regardless of the conditions. In Bangalore, despite having a weak link in the lackluster Zaheer Khan, India’s bowling attack had done quite well. Their batsmen had let them down. How would they perform in this Test?How far can faith go?How much faith do you need to move a mountain? A heck of a lot, you’d think, and Ganguly certainly has plenty of it. When Australia came to India last, in 2001, he staked his captaincy on getting Harbhajan back into the Indian team, in place of that other turbanned offspinner, Sarandeep Singh. It worked spectacularly. When Yuvraj Singh was discarded from the one-day side after his first stint in blue pyjamas, Ganguly brought him back and nurtured his talent. Ganguly made Sehwag open in one-dayers, and later, he made Sehwag open in Tests as well.He has shown the same kind of faith in this series, by asking Yuvraj to open the batting, and by not discarding Zaheer, who bowled well below his best at Bangalore. Zaheer was largely unimpressive here as well, especially while fielding on the boundary, and Yuvraj was out early, albeit to spin and not the new ball, as his detractors had prophesied. Will these men justify Ganguly’s faith in them?If self-belief is one prerequisite for success for an individual, a good team must have a captain who believes in his players, though Ganguly is selective, as he is entitled to be, in the players he backs. Aakash Chopra is out of the side after performing to his brief all through the tour of Australia, and after being the victim of umpiring errors in two of his last three innings. It hasn’t evened out for him.A final thoughtA number of players walked today, and Michael Kasprowicz did so even though it appeared that David Shepherd, the umpire who must have been hopping all through the lunch break because the score was 111, would not have given him out. Is that dissent? Should he be fined?