BCB Hoping To Confirm Pakistan Tour Soon

The Bangladesh Cricket Board hopes to soon have government approval to reschedule its limited overs series against Pakistan, which was postponed earlier this month due to security reasons.
"A favourable slot would be March 26 to April 9, but it is subject to clearance from the government," BCB's spokesman Mohammad Jalal Yunus said Tuesday.
The revised scheduled has been sent to the Sports Ministry, who are discussing it with the Home Ministry and other authorities in charge of security.
Pakistan has agreed to the new schedule, which would include two Twenty20 matches and five one-day internationals as originally planned.
State Minister for Youth and Sports Ahad Ali Sarkar, meanwhile, said the government will decide on the series after discussions with authorities.
"Our country has suffered a tragic incident and things are getting back to normal slowly," Sarkar said.
"Still, we have to talk with all concerned. When the Home Ministry and others give us a clear picture of the law and order situation, we can take a decision."
Pakistan's March 10-22 tour was postponed suddenly after a mutiny by border guards cost the lives of more than 70 people in Dhaka, days after a terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
The BCB was due to announce its cricket squad on March 5, but instead announced that the series was being deferred on government advice, following security concerns. Pakistan was due to arrive on March 7.
Bangladesh captain Mohammad Ashraful and his deputy Mashrafe Mortaza are committed to play in the Indian Premier League starting April 10. The national team also has a busy international schedule soon after, with the Twenty20 World Cup in England followed by tours of the West Indies and Zimbabwe.

Soapbox

Good Week, Bad Week
March 13 2009

Sri Lanka have had to give up the 2009 Champions Trophy because they couldn't guarantee it won't rain in September. Some would say the ICC look a bit silly trying to control nature's elements, that Haroon Lorgat is less a Cnut than a.....well, you get the idea.
Did no-one else greet this news by thinking, 'thank f*ck for that: we can have two weeks with the kids at Pontins'?
It seems not as they've now simply shifted the world's most irrelevant sporting event to South Africa. Meanwhile the 2010 Champions Trophy, which was changed a while ago to a T20, is going ahead in the West Indies next year. So, that's three 'world events' in 17 months and not one of them a World Cup, which comes a year later again?
Finally, with 12 months to go the 2010 T20 is being rescheduled again to accommodate the IPL, which goes to show how seriously we ought to take the whole thing.
West Indies
They own the Wisden Trophy for the first time this century. Better still they may be able to hold onto it in a two-Test series starting in May. For one thing, Lord's can be expected to produce a fourth successive Test of anodyne, income-maximising cricket; certainly Giles Clarke is banking on it. For another, the West Indies may be stronger than originally expected if the IPL crowd are available after all.
However, these are very much short-term gains. With a second Stanford series looking rather unlikely, the unbranded West Indies with their boring old wood-coloured bats remain the best hope for cricket in the region.
If the Caribbean islanders have to sit through many more series like this one then there is more chance of Sir Allen opening the batting with Gayle than there is of a true Windian revival. The Texan's maxim that Test cricket is tedious has looked disturbingly accurate in the last fortnight.
Australia's Ashes chances
England haven't won a live Test against a top-six nation since Pakistan at Headingley in 2006, a shocking indictment of their delusion in itself. Since they have survived almost exclusively on beating the West Indies and now cannot even do that. Not even New Zealand have lost to the WI in the last five years.
Whilst Owais Shah gets so nervous he gives himself cramp, Philip Hughes bats the best attack in the world off the park in South Africa. While Amjad Khan shows you why Denmark win even more infrequently than England, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus make you forget who Brett Lee and Stuart Clark are (and then worry even more when you remember them).
They have reversed the Christmas horror show against the Proteas and are well suited to a strong showing in the world championship this summer before another Ashes formality. It was nice while it lasted, but they're back.
Bad week for...
Ijaz Butt
This item might also have featured under 'Good week' for Daryll Hair, but we prefer to do it this way.
"I'd expect teams will tour here again as soon as possible. I'd give it six to nine months to get things organised," declared the PCB chief in one of the fledgling century's more optimistic announcements.
"I'd want us to get security to a level that would be a guarantee from my government that no such incident like this could happen again, or I will not invite anybody.
"Once I have this assurance I may then invite people to come here. But this can happen anywhere. I cannot give that guarantee, but my government can. If they cannot then we'll not have cricket in Pakistan at all. I definitely think that we'll stage part of the World Cup in 2011."
If the man really believes this then he is as qualified for the job as predecessors who managed Mohammad Asif's swift and seamless return from a failed drugs test in early 2007.

Hughes and Ponting punish South Africa

Hughes and Ponting punish South Africa
The Bulletin by Moeed Ahmed
March 8, 2009

Australia 352 and 292 for 3 (Hughes 136*, Ponting 81) lead South Africa 138 (Duminy 73*, Johnson 3-25) by 506 runsScorecard and ball by ball details

Hughes has positioned Australia for victory and himself for celebrity. Just 11 days removed from posting a fourth-ball duck in his maiden Test innings, Hughes broke George Headley's 79-year-old record to become the youngest batsman in history to score centuries in each innings of a Test. His unbeaten 136 in the second innings at Kingsmead led Australia to 292 for 3 at stumps, and an impregnable lead of 506.
Fittingly, Hughes raised his second century in three days with an upper-cut boundary off the bowling of Morne Morkel. It was that stroke that brought about his early demise at the Wanderers last week, and prompted the likes of AB de Villiers and Mickey Arthur to publicly declare it a weakness in his armoury. Undeterred by the criticism, Hughes has continued to play the cut shot with frequency and potency. He has now scored 326 runs for the series - 128 clear of the second-placed Ricky Ponting - at the astonishing average of 108.66, and shows no sign of easing the pace.
The South Africans have thrown everything at Hughes - bouncers, yorkers, abuse - but to no avail. At 20 years and 98 days, and in only his second full season of first class cricket, Hughes has displayed a temperament and poise far beyond his age and experience, and provided Australia with the top-order spark that eluded Matthew Hayden in his twilight series.
Hughes' offside technique might not be to everyone's taste - particularly his penchant for backing away to short-pitched bowling - but it has yet to be proven flawed at the junior, first-class or international level. Eighty of his 136 runs in the second innings were scored between first slip and extra cover, and South Africa's stand-in captain, Mark Boucher, appeared powerless to stem the flow.
It was said prior to this series that Ponting was presiding over a crumbling empire, but his band of willing reinforcements are ensuring the walls of Rome are holding fast. The captain, himself, went far to ensuring a series-clinching Australian victory with an imperious innings of 81 and together with Hughes added 164 runs for the second wicket. The once marauding South Africans were in full retreat.
As in their golden age, the Australians were merciless in their pursuit of an ailing opponent. Hughes and Ponting propelled the Australian second innings at a spirited pace throughout the middle session, and experienced few problems in negating a surface that, just a day prior, had completely confounded the host team.
Hughes revealed Australia's ruthless intent in the over after lunch. The left-hander blasted a pair of boundaries that took him past 50 for the third time in as many innings, and Ponting promptly followed with a near-even time half-century. Soon after, Ponting moved past Steve Waugh to claim fourth place on the Test run-scorers' list with a pull stroke that, for well over a decade, has been his signature stroke. Frenetic and poetic.
The only blemish on an otherwise dominant day for Australia were the losses of Simon Katich, Ponting and Michael Hussey, but it mattered little. With a comprehensive win in Johannesburg and a 500-plus lead after three days in Durban, Australia have effectively discounted South Africa as an immediate threat to their Test crown.
Australia's batting fortunes contrasted sharply with those of the South Africans. The hosts began the day hopeful of adding the 14 runs required to pass the follow-on target, after JP Duminy (73) and Steyn survived the closing stages of what, for the South Africans, was a cataclysmic day two.
But they would add no further runs to their overnight total of 138, with Steyn and Makhaya Ntini falling in consecutive balls to Siddle, who will commence the second innings on a hat-trick. Ponting, as has become custom, opted against enforcing the follow-on to allow his bowlers some respite and his batsmen the opportunity to compound their opponents' misery. Judging by the South Africans' body language at stumps, Ponting has at least proven successful in the latter regard.
Seldom has a modern South African batting card read so poorly. In all, nine batsmen were dismissed for single figures - combining for 20 runs in total - and three failed to trouble the scorers at all. Extras (23) were second only to Duminy in terms of runs contributed to the team cause, while Steyn was the third highest-scorer among the batsmen with eight.
The last time the South Africans posted a total this modest, Arthur accused the Kanpur curator of "hijacking" his team's bid to win the 2008 series against India. And not since January, 2007 - when a rampant Shoaib Akhtar flexed his considerable muscles in Port Elizabeth - has a South African side combined for such a low innings score at home.

Smart Stats

.Phillip Hughes' century in both innings is the 19th instance of an Australian scoring a hundred in each innings of a Test, and the seventh by an Australian opener. The two previous occasions of an Australian opener achieving this feat were both by Matthew Hayden.
.The first-wicket partnership put together 55 in the second innings, which followed the 184-run stand in the first. It was only the ninth time since 2000 that an Australian opening pair had a century and half-century partnership in the same match.
·On the first day, both Australian openers scored hundreds, which was only the 11th instance of both Australian openers scoring centuries in the first innings of a Test.
·South Africa's first-innings total of 138 is their third-lowest in Durban, and their worst since their readmission to Test cricket.
·The highest fourth-innings total in a victory at Kingsmead is 340 for 5, by Australia in 2002. In all fourth innings it's 654 for 5, by England way back in 1939.

Chanderpaul and Nash restore Windies faith

West Indies 349 for 4 (Nash 70*, Chanderpaul 52*)

trail England 546 for 6 (Collingwood 161, Strauss 142, Prior 131*) by 197 runs

Chanderpaul and Nash Overcame the potentially devastating loss of their captain, Chris Gayle, to a hamstring tear, as they batted clean through the final 51.5 overs of the third day in Trinidad to leave West Indies tantalisingly placed to secure the draw that will give them their first series victory since 2004.By the close, they had added 146 for the fifth wicket in a typically obdurate alliance, as England's five-man attack was worn down after an energetic performance in the first half of the day.
Though the small matter of 14 years and 112 Tests separate the careers of Chanderpaul and Nash, the similarities between the two are striking. Both left-handed, and both possessing temperaments that could freeze the Caribbean Sea, they nudged and prodded England's bowlers to distraction for three sapping hours, having come together midway through the afternoon session with the scoreline an unflattering 203 for 4, and with Gayle already lined up for an MRI scan after pulling up lame moments after completing his 10th Test century with a rash single to midwicket.
Chanderpaul himself is not in the rudest of health - he tweaked his groin while fielding on the second day, and hobbled to the middle as Gayle departed in the other direction. But he made light of his injury by setting himself to occupy the crease first and foremost, and run as an afterthought - 29 jogged singles formed the backbone of his innings, although he did rack up a rare two to fine leg to bring up his 73rd score of fifty or more in Test cricket.
Relatively speaking, Nash was more expansive, cracking 12 fours in 167 balls, including an expert uppercut over third man off Amjad Khan, to bring up his fifty in the third over against the new ball. All but the last of those boundaries came in the arc from third man to cover, as he dealt exclusively in width, flailing with precision as England over-reached in search of that killer delivery. He had one massive let-off on 24, when Monty Panesar rapped him on the pads as he sized up a pull, but with both of England's referrals wasted on the second evening, there was no recourse to video evidence. Not was there much likelihood of any favours from the umpire, Russell Tiffin, who was driven to distraction by Panesar's at times idiotic appeals.
Though there was very little turn on offer, Panesar was undoubtedly the pick of England's bowlers on his return to the side. He showed confidence and variety in equal measures, regularly tossing the ball up and even unveiling a rare arm-ball. Having dismissed Devon Smith in his first over of the innings, Panesar claimed his second scalp in the afternoon when the debutant Lendl Simmons fell lbw for a diligent 24 from 79 balls, and he ought to have had the prize scalp of Ramnaresh Sarwan as well, only for Paul Collingwood at slip to shell a sitter when Sarwan - who passed 600 runs for the series with his first scoring stroke - had managed only 12 from 28 balls.
Instead the honour of Sarwan's wicket went to the debutant Amjad. His four-over burst on the second evening had displayed raw pace and nerves in equal measure, but this time he got his line right straightaway, and Sarwan was pinned in front of middle by a fourth-ball outswinger, a decision so plumb that Gayle at the non-striker's end advised his team-mate not to waste a referral.
For half an hour, Amjad's approach could not be faulted, as he pushed 90mph on occasions while maintaining a willingness to experiment on an infamously unresponsive pitch, and he forced Simmons, who made 282 against England's bowlers in St Kitts last month, to wait for 23 deliveries for his first run in Test cricket. But then, almost without warning, Amjad's accuracy deserted him. No-balls and leg-side full-tosses flooded into his repertoire, as Matt Prior behind the stumps was made to leap one way then the next. By the close, England had conceded an extraordinary 61 extras, the most ever gifted to West Indies in an innings. Among these were 30 byes, including four in the penultimate over of the day that took them past the follow-on mark. Prior, to his embarrassment, is the only keeper to have conceded that tally twice.
The ease of West Indies' late-evening progress was a vindication for Gayle, who had much to prove after his controversial tactics in the field on the first two days. By rights he should still have been out there himself, for up until the moment of his injury, he was once again reprising the frill-free side of his game that surfaced to such match-changing effect in Jamaica last month. Having blazed along to 49 from 65 balls overnight, he was a transformed character upon the resumption, waiting a further 11 deliveries to reach his fifty, and a full 18 overs before adding to his eight boundaries. His innings was a masterclass of subdued diligence, but then came his injury, and suddenly West Indies were looking vulnerable.
The injury occurred during in a hectic passage of play which began with a casual clip off the pads against Stuart Broad. Owais Shah at midwicket misfielded badly, and Gayle, on 99, attempted to take advantage. Within seconds he knew he had made a bad error of judgement and had Shah's subsequent shy hit the stumps, it would have beaten his stretch for the crease by a matter of inches. But though he survived, his celebrations were muted in the extreme, as he slumped to his knees and beckoned for help. After lengthy treatment on the outfield he was helped back to the pavilion, having led from the front with 10 fours and two sixes in a 161-ball innings.
But West Indies have not and surely will not buckle in this series. There is too much at stake for them after 15 barren series, and the discipline shown by Chanderpaul and his acolyte Nash sapped every ounce of energy from England's fielders. James Anderson, suffering from a stomach upset, was below-par, while Graeme Swann was comfortably outbowled by Panesar, as doubts once again surfaced about his troublesome elbow. By the close West Indies were well set to emulate their game-breaking performance at Bridgetown last month, as England found themselves in a familiarly futile situation, and still searching for a combination that can deliver 10 wickets in an innings, let alone 20 wickets in a match.

SL cricketers injured in terror attack

Stewart Returns To Surrey

Former England and Surrey captain Alec Stewart is to take up a coaching position with the county.
Stewart, who retired from the game six years ago, will return to The Oval dressing room on a part-time basis to work under new professional cricket manager Chris Adams.
The 45-year-old has undertaken ambassadorial duties for the county since ending his playing career but will now expand his remit to include coaching, mentoring and consultancy.
He will join another former Surrey and England batsman, Graham Thorpe, on Adams' cricket management team.
Stewart, who played 133 Tests and 170 one-day internationals, said: "I have been a Surrey man all my life and am relishing the opportunity to get back involved in a cricketing role at the club.
"We have some bright young talent on the staff and I hope I can help them wring out every drop of their ability to secure success for both Surrey and England over years to come."
Stewart, who will specialise in batting and wicketkeeping coaching, played 587 times for Surrey in all competitions, scoring 24,683 runs and taking 665 catches.
He will combine the new role with his business and media commitments.
Adams said: "A true great such as Alec Stewart should always be involved at his club and I could not be happier to welcome him onto our coaching staff.
"I saw Alec do some coaching when I was at Sussex last year and getting him involved in the first-team set-up was one of my key goals when I started at Surrey.
"He is still a model professional and utterly exemplifies the excellence I want my players to aspire to."

New Yorks Deal For McGrath

Yorkshire captain Anthony McGrath has signed a new three-year contract taking him through until September 2011.
McGrath was the White Rose county's leading run scorer in Twenty20 cricket last year, scoring 400 runs and will captain the first XI this season in his benefit year.
The 33-year-old said: "I'm delighted to stay at the Club for the next three years. I have enjoyed a fantastic career here so far and I think the next three years will be an exciting time for the club and for me, especially in my new role as captain."
Yorkshire chief executive Stewart Regan said: "It's great news that one of our most senior players and our captain has chosen to commit himself to the club for another three years.
"Under Anthony's leadership I'm confident that 2009 will be a successful year for the team and Yorkshire County Cricket Club."