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The touch, and the thwack
Jacob Oram is renowned for his ability to give the ball a mighty thump,but here he showed he could be subtle as well. Of the third ball he faced,and the last in Sanath Jayasuriya’s spell, Oram conjured up a delicatereverse-sweep, merely tapping the ball lightly and helping it on its wayto the third-man boundary. Soon, though, he was back at his furious best:when Lasith Malinga got an attempted yorker wrong and pitched it in thehitting zone, punishment was immediate – a huge straight hit, whichbounced just in front of the sightscreen.Fielding woes for Sanath
Sanath Jayasuriya had a great time with bat and ball, but in the field hehad a rather forgettable day. Fielding at short fine leg, he reprievedBrendon McCullum in the second over, getting both hands to the ball butfailing to latch on to a mistimed pull. That was nothing to theembarrassment he would have felt after the first ball of the 18th over,when Oram’s slog gained more height than distance. Jayasuriya tried to getunder the swirler, but was never in control, and eventually stumbled, felland never even got a hand on the ball.Bond dismantled
Shane Bond v Sanath Jayasuriya was always likely to be a key contest, andthere’s no doubt who took the honours there. Jayasuriya flayed two foursthrough the off side in the first over, and then cracked two more foursover mid-off and square leg in Bond’s second over. Bond’s figures took afurther beating when Upul Tharanga joined in the fun and pulled a superbsix over fine leg. And when he dropped a clanger from Jayasuriya soonafter – cupping the ball in his hands and then spilling it – his miserywas complete.

Scotland go into their latest match of their Intercontinental Cup campaign acutely aware that nothing less than a win tomorrow against Namibia, who lead the table, will suffice if they’re to stay in the competition.Scotland are languishing in fifth place on 26 points. Although the weather hasn’t helped them this season – two draws were rained off – they nevertheless need to perform now if they’ve any hope of staying alive.”It is a must-win game for us,” Ryan Watson, the captain, admitted. “We have been hurt by the weather in previous fixtures and so it has not turned out how we wanted but we still have a chance.”They (Namibia) are in the middle of their season and have been doing well in the South African competition they play in so this match is going to be one hell of a challenge.”Ironically, having got on the road and away from the unpredictable Scottish weather, there is a chance that this four-day game in a region that boasts the famous Kalahari Desert could be interrupted by rain. There has been an unusually large amount of rainfall in the Windhoek area in recent weeks and the Met Office has predicted a mixture of sunshine and showers for the next few days.”There’s nothing we can do about that,” Watson said. “We have prepared well for this tour. We’ve been here for a week now and we had a good win over a Namibia Invitational XI. Ideally we would have had one more preparation game but I think we are ready to go. No excuses, we know it will be tough but we have a good side.”Without the services of Dougie Brown and Kyle Coetzer, the Scots will rely on the experience of Gavin Hamilton, Fraser Watts, Neil McCallum and the skipper for the majority of their runs while John Blain has been in good form with the ball.The pitch at the Wanderers Cricket Ground in Windhoek is normally a batsman’s dream but with all the rain that has been around, it is not known how it will play this time. It might even take a bit of spin and, in that case, Majid Haq could come to the fore for Scotland.In contrast to Scotland, Namibia’s confidence is high. Topping the ICC Intercontinental Cup table ahead of Kenya in second place and defending champion Ireland in third, Namibia are favourites to make the final but Louis Burger, the captain, refuses to get carried away.”Scotland is a really good team and we know it’s going to be a tough battle for us. They will come hard at us because they know they need full points from this game or they are probably out of contention,” Burger said.”But the atmosphere in our team is very good. Everyone is happy and confidence is high so we are not going to be a pushover either. We love this competition, we take it very seriously and before it started we targeted a place in the final. We know that if we can just focus on our game and do what we do well, we should be OK.”The Namibia squad reads like a list of in-form players. Gerri Snyman, Craig Williams, Jan-Berrie Burger and Bjorn Kotze are all in the runs while Louis Klazinga, Kola Burger and Snyman are all in a hot streak with ball in hand.SquadsNamibia: Louis Burger (capt), JB Burger, Raymond van Schoor, Gerri Snyman, Deon Kotze, Bjorn Kotze, Kola Burger, Tobias Verwey, Louis Klazinga, Craig Williams, Sean Silver, Sarel Burger, Nicolaas Scholtz.Scotland Ryan Watson (capt), Richard Berrington, John Blain, Gordon Drummond, Gavin Hamilton, Majid Haq, Omer Hussain, Dougie Lockhart, Neil McCallum, Dewald Nel, Glenn Rogers, Qasim Sheikh, Simon Smith, Fraser Watts, Sean Weeraratna, Craig Wright.

Worcestershire have signed a deal which will allow county cricket to be transferred to Kidderminster Victoria CC at 48 hours notice in the event of a repeat of last summer’s floods at New Road.The county will invest a total of £50,000 into the Chester Road ground over a five-year period which will initially be invested in improving facilities for players and umpires.”Our relationship with Kidderminster goes back many years and last summer they really helped us out when we needed it most,” Mark Newton, Worcestershire’s CEO, explained. “By the end of the summer it became clear that we needed to develop a robust contingency plan to deal with any repeat in future years and a key part of this plan is to secure an alternative venue at short notice in an emergency.”This agreement is initially for five years and will mean we can transfer 1st XI cricket at 48 hours notice if necessary.”

Zimbabwe’s route back to Test cricket may not have been finalised just yet, but their coach Robin Brown feels the day his side play a Test match again may not be as far away as people imagine.Despite putting up some late resistance, Zimbabwe were ultimately beaten comfortably, by an innings, in a four-day match against the Patron’s XI in Karachi. However Brown, who took over from Kevin Curran as coach in September last year, believes there are enough positives to draw on not just from this match, but other results in recent months.”Obviously, we’re very disappointed at not scoring enough runs and the result,” he said after the match. “Every match is a learning curve for us and is an opportunity to learn about different situations and experiences in matches, how to handle them, how to adapt. I’m happy with the way the guys performed.”Zimbabwe voluntarily suspended themselves from Test cricket in 2006 following concerns that their side wasn’t competitive enough at the top level, but according to the Future Tours Programme (FTP) they are due to host India for two Tests and three ODIs in May. Though the ICC has to take a decision on their status before they can play Tests again, Brown felt progress had been made.”We’ve had some good results in South Africa before this and we take positives from here as well. Test cricket is much harder of course, but we are getting useful experience and I don’t think we are too far away from competing on the Test stage,” he said.Brown was also confident that once Zimbabwe become a Test nation again, there is enough talent domestically for them to once again become a competitive side. “There is the depth of talent there. Schools cricket is very strong, the academies are up again and the U-19 sides are doing well. Guys in the team today have progressed from U-19 cricket.”Now when guys in the team go back to play first-class cricket in Zimbabwe, standards will definitely improve. Cricket will not die in Zimbabwe but it will improve.”

Scorecard

Abbas Ali smashed an unbeaten 64 as the Delhi Giants easily chased down the Mumbai Champs’ 115 at the Tau Devi Lal stadium in Panchkula. There was more bad news for the Champs as Brian Lara, who captained them in the first edition, was ruled out of the tournament after failing to recover from a left-arm fracture.After they had posted a modest total, the Champs’ hopes were raised as they took two early wickets, including the big one of captain Marvan Atapattu. Ali, though, was unconcerned by the loss of wickets as he plundered 16 runs off a Tino Best over, the highlight of which was a huge six over long-off. Ali, who was the third-highest scorer in the inaugural edition of the ICL last year, put on a 41-run stand with Avishka Gunawardene for the third wicket.Left-arm spinner Avinash Yadav broke the partnership with his first ball, foxing Gunawardene with an arm ball. Former Australian fast bowler Michael Kasprowicz, playing his first ICL game, struck another blow in the next over by getting Abhinav Bali to edge through to the wicketkeeper. However, there were no further alarms for the Giants as Nic Pothas, the former South African wicketkeeper, and Ali guided them to a six-wicket win.Earlier, the Champs, after opting to bat, turned in an unconvincing batting performance with several of their batsmen getting starts but not scoring at the rate demanded by the Twenty20 game. After the openers put on a brisk 41-run stand, former South African allrounder Dale Benkenstein struck, getting Saman Jayantha to hole out to Shane Bond at long-off.Only 20 runs came off the next five overs and even captain Nathan Astle was unable to force the pace. With the runs drying up, the pressure told and Kiran Powar and Shreyas Khanolkar fell in quick succession. Astle lifted a couple of sixes off T Sudhindra but the Giants gave away only seven runs in the final two overs. Ali then backed up the good work of the bowlers to ensure the Giants opened their campaign with a comfortable victory.

But for the difference of a few days, Ottis Gibson might well now be in Barbados, overseeing the preparation of the West Indies team for the forthcoming tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa as head coach. Instead, the widely travelled former Barbados and West Indies allrounder leaves South Africa on Monday for the Test series in Sri Lanka as the officially appointed bowling coach to the England team.Gibson has been in South Africa for the past two weeks on his first assignment since the confirmation of his full-time contract with the England and Wales Cricket Board. It is a one-on-one project with Steve Harmison aimed at getting England’s leading fast bowler, literally out of action since July with injury, technically and physically ready for the three Tests in Sri Lanka.As Gibson explained it during a net session at the Wanderers Stadium, England got in with their proposition days before he was to make a presentation to the West Indies Cricket Board in support of his application for the head coach vacancy.He first forwarded his interest and his CV to WICB cricket operations officer Tony Howard back in June and was subsequently asked to make a formal presentation on October 19. By then, following South African Allan Donald’s departure, he had been assigned to the England job on a temporary basis for the separate tours of Sri Lanka, for five ODIs in early October and for the forthcoming three Tests.”Things went very well in the ODI series in Sri Lanka which England won for the first time,” Gibson said. “I’d worked with the head coach Peter Moores before so he knew what I am capable of doing. He told me he wanted me to stay on.”Acquainted with his well-publicised interest in the West Indies job, the ECB moved quickly and submitted a permanent contract on his return from Sri Lanka. “The decision was whether to take it or wait for something else,” Gibson stated.By the time he went back to Barbados, with his young son, for a week’s holiday following the initial Sri Lankan trip, his mind was made up. There was no longer any point in pursuing the presentation to the WICB which ultimately named Australian John Dyson as head coach.”The England offer was what was on the table and I accepted within a day of it being put,” Gibson added. “I got back in touch with Howard and told him what was happening from the England side and that was that,” he explained. “They [WICB] didn’t indicate whether they wanted me for the job or anything like that, just that it was my decision to make.”While he was “absolutely delighted” to be with an England team that is “on the up”, with several promising young fast bowlers to work with, Gibson was convinced that there was still enough talent in the West Indies for him to have had a go at lifting them out of their lengthy decline.”When I was in Barbados, a lot of my friends told me I had done the right thing to take the England job, given the state of West Indies cricket,” he said. “I made my decision but I wouldn’t have put in for the West Indies in the first place if I didn’t believe that, with the right people around me, I could make a difference.”Gibson, looking as lithe and athletic as a 38-year-old has any right to, enjoyed a dream all-round season with Durham in the County Championship. He earned the prestigious Professional Cricketers’ Association Player-of-the-Year award on the votes of the players, and was beseeched by Durham to stay one last season.But he has no qualms about moving into coaching. “Durham’s success [winning the one-day title and finishing second in the Championship] and my own made you feel that you could go on for another year but you had to be realistic,” he said.In spite of his record – ten wickets in an innings against Hampshire, 80 wickets at an average of 20.85 overall, mostly from swing bowling in the high 80mph range, and 576 hard-hitting runs at 27.52-Gibson said he had to appreciate he was 38 and “not getting any younger”.Durham was the last of his many stops as player. Apart from two Tests, 15 ODIs and two A-team tours with the West Indies, he also represented Barbados, Border Gruiqualand West and Gauteng in South Africa and Glamorgan and Leicestershire prior to his two seasons with Durham.”The truth is that an opportunity like this, to be involved with an international team, might not come around again and I’ve always wanted to go out and prove myself as a coach,” he noted. A few days later and he might well have had the chance with the West Indies.

Pakistan allrounder Abdul Razzaq has joined Worcestershire for the remainder of the 2007 season as a replacement for Phil Jaques and Doug Bollinger who have returned to Australia for the A-team tour of Pakistan.Razzaq had announced his retirement from international cricket as a protest against his omission from Pakistan’s Twenty20 World Championship squad. He arrived in Worcester on Sunday and would join the squad for training before travelling to Canterbury for the Championship match against Kent starting on Tuesday.”It has been very difficult to find quality replacement overseas players because of the forthcoming Twenty20 World Championships and Abdul’s availability has come at just the right time,” Worcestershire chief executive Mark Newton said. “He has scored over 6500 runs and taken nearly 350 wickets at international level and will certainly give us the quality and experience we need during the last few weeks of the season, particularly in the Natwest Pro40 competition. We have received clearance from the Pakistan Cricket Board but still need to complete the registration procedures with the ECB.”

Ebony Rainford-Brent, one of England’s standby players for the Ashes trip, says the team are heading Down Under with more aggression after being shocked by the pace of the game’s development. England have been training at Loughborough over the winter, and will come out with a plan to be really positive.”We’re looking a lot more aggressive, a lot more attacking,” she told Surrey Cricket. “Australia and the Kiwis are really aggressive, they’ll bowl bouncers and hit over the top. The women’s game is coming on really quickly and I think that was a bit of a wake-up call for us as well.”We had to put our foot down and get more aggressive. We’re all really fired up. The girls are bowling well, really on top of it. The girls are feeling good, the coaches are feeling good. We’re ready to get off the bowling machines and get onto the grass.”Rainford-Brent would love to join them in February if she gets the call-up as she is fighting fit at the moment. She has been playing as a batsman because of a serious back injury, but it has not affected her recently, and she feels strong. In fact, the problem has had an unexpected benefit: improved batting as she has been concentrating hard on that discipline.”The winter’s been really good. I’ve not been bowling, so I’ve had long words with the coaches what I need to achieve as a batter. I think I’m coming on and understanding my game. I’ve not had any problems at all [with my back]. I’ve been doing loads of gym work. I’ve not had any problems, feeling really strong.”But whether she’s part of the action or not, she can sense a real momentum with England at the moment. “Hopefully we will have a good series and hopefully retain the Ashes. We want to hold on to that. We need to hit the ground running. We really want it. It’s the first time we can feel we’ve got the upper hand. If we win out there it would be an amazing win.”Meanwhile, the women’s squad has had a boost with the news that British fashion designer Paul Costelloe will supply their official formal wear. For formal occasions a suit with white trim and the ECB logo embroidered onto the left breast pocket will be complemented by a white cotton shirt. For more casual occasions, navy blue linen trousers have been chosen to be worn with a navy and white striped top.A white linen jacket completes the look. England women’s captain Charlotte Edwards commented: “It’s fantastic. The whole look gives us an identity as a team and both outfits are of really high quality.”

149* v Pakistan, Hobart, 1999-2000
It was one of the great comebacks after Australia fell to 5 for 126. They were chasing 369 for victory and the top order, boasting plenty of experience with the Waugh brothers, Michael Slater and Ricky Ponting, had failed. Gilchrist, on the other hand, was playing in only his second Test and he and Justin Langer combined for 238 in 59 overs to set up the win. His unbeaten 149 took just 163 deliveries, and featured 13 fours and a six. Steve Waugh later said he looked like he was playing in his own backyard. It was the first of many times that Gilchrist would turn a game on its head.204* v South Africa, Johannesburg, 2001-02
An emotional man, Gilchrist cried on reaching one of many milestones in the innings after being the victim of a vicious internet rumour. He was brutal throughout the performance which at the time was the fastest double-century in Test history, his 204 coming from 213 balls. Eight sixes were thrashed, most over midwicket, as he showed his amazing power in a performance that would remain his highest.122 v India, Mumbai, 2000-01
It was 99 for 5 when Gilchrist walked in. Only Matthew Hayden stood his ground in the hot cauldron as Harbhajan Singh ran amok. In a couple of hours he changed the face the game and the contest. Sweeping, cutting and lofting, he raced to an 84-ball century, the fastest by a visiting batsman on Indian soil. Even if he was playing his first Test in India, the foreign conditions didn’t matter. He took risks, survived clear chances and half chances, but never retreated.113 v Pakistan, Sydney, 2004-05
The scorecard shows Stuart MacGill as the Man of the Match and Ricky Ponting as the dominant batsman with 207, but it was Gilchrist’s 109-ball century that really wrested the match away from Pakistan. It was his 13th Test hundred – he passed Andy Flower’s record for a wicketkeeper-batsman – and featured scintillating striking towards the end. He brought up the milestone with a straight six off Shahid Afridi and had raced within reach thanks to consecutive sixes pulled off Mohammad Asif. For Yousuf Youhana and Shoaib Akhtar, who had also been part of the Pakistan team Gilchrist destroyed in Hobart five years earlier, there was a touch of déjà vu.102* v England, Perth, 2006-07
Only Viv Richards has reached a century faster than the 57 balls it took Gilchrist on his home ground in the 2006-07 Ashes. On a boiling Perth day he sizzled, taking to Monty Panesar (24 runs in an over that started with a dot) and Matthew Hoggard in a stunning burst, which included 12 fours and four sixes. Had he known about the record he could have broken it, but no message came from the dressing room, and he was glad he didn’t get there. “Viv deserves that mantle as the fastest hundred,” he said.149 v Sri Lanka, World Cup final, Bridgetown, 2006-07
It’s one thing to blast runs in any old ODI, but only the best of the best save their finest moments for the biggest stage. Gilchrist’s 149 in the World Cup final gave spectators reason to remember the match for pure cricketing brilliance, not its farcical finish in the dark. After morning drizzle made the fans nervously check their schedules for the reserve day, Gilchrist reminded them why they were there. He belted eight sixes in his 129-ball display, and for a while it seemed he could make 200 even in an innings reduced to 38 overs. He was so mesmerising that occasional boos came from the crowd when he gave the strike to Matthew Hayden. Squash ball or not, this was undoubtedly the pinnacle of a glittering ODI career.

Sri Lanka Board President’s XI 298 for 9 dec and 77 for 8 (Hoggard 5-25) lead England XI 134 (Bopara 47) by 241 runs
Live scorecard

Matthew Hoggard demonstrated his imperturbability in the face of a bowling crisis, while Ravi Bopara rose to the occasion with both bat and – less expectedly – the new ball, as England’s cricketers turned their fortunes upside down on a frenetic second day at the Nondescripts Cricket Club in Colombo.At the tea break, England were bracing themselves for embarrassment. Their batting had imploded for 134, less than half the 298 for 9 on which their opponents had declared overnight, and to make matters worse, they had been reduced to a solitary fit fast bowler in Hoggard. With Steve Harmison already receiving treatment for a back spasm, James Anderson reported soreness in his left ankle while warming up in the innings break and took no further part in the day.And so Hoggard did what he has done so often in the course of his 64-Test career, and hoisted the entire burden of the attack onto his own perpetually stooped shoulders. First, he inflicted Upul Tharanga’s first failure in three innings by bowling him for 5, then he bagged three further wickets in four balls – Tillakaratne Dilshan edged low to Owais Shah at slip, Jehan Mubarak was trapped lbw for a second-ball duck, and Chamara Kapugedera fended his first delivery to Paul Collingwood in the gully.In between whiles, Bopara, maintaining a brisk line and length, picked up a bonus wicket as Malinda Warnapura played across the line to a straight one. Hoggard then wrapped up a fine spell by removing the attritional young keeper, Kaushal Silva, with a thin nick to the keeper, and finished with the superb figures of 9-3-25-5.Only the opener, Mahela Udawatte, showed any measure of control. He had negotiated his way to 45 from 83 deliveries before Bopara, who had earlier completed the run-out of de Silva, found the thinnest of edges through to Matt Prior. He was the eighth man out, and with Lokuarachchi in hospital, England needed just one more breakthrough to wrap up the innings, but Welegedera and Amerasinghe made it through to the close.It was entertaining cricket, but it wasn’t quite what England had had in mind when Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook had walked out to open their innings at the start of play. This was meant to be a day in which the top-order gained valuable time in the middle ahead of next week’s first Test at Kandy. Instead Vaughan fell for a duck, losing his off stump to a beauty from the left-armer Sujeewa de Silva, to set the tone for a day of batting collapses.Ian Bell was the next to go, after a chaotic 16-ball innings in which he was dropped at slip on 1 and caught at square leg on 3 off a no-ball. de Silva made it third time lucky when he grazed the inside edge of a loose defensive stroke, before his fellow left-armer, Chanaka Welagedera, inflicted another failure on the out-of-form Kevin Pietersen. He was pinned lbw for 1.Cook looked in fluent form for his 35, until he missed a sweep at Kaushal Lokuarachchi and was given out lbw, but Owais Shah at No. 5 looked anything but. With Bopara enhancing his claims for a Test spot with every passing minute, Shah required 34 balls and more than an hour at the crease before he recorded his first run, and was eventually bowled through the gate for 26 as he drove without conviction at Ishara Amerasinghe.The pair had at least added an important 54 for the fifth wicket, but Bopara was the one to make his opportunity count. He survived one life on 17 when Lokuarachchi dropped a tough caught-and-bowled chance – so tough, in fact, that he was forced to leave the field with a broken finger. He picked off four fours in the course of his innings, including a pair of pulls off de Silva, and a half-century was there for the taking until he drove uppishly to short cover with only the tail for company.England’s tail, once again, did not cover itself in glory. Prior managed 10 from 27 balls before edging Kapugedera to first slip, while the remainder didn’t manage a single run between them. Hoggard and Anderson were both bowled for ducks, and Harmison didn’t come out to bat. The last four wickets fell for 11 runs in 20 balls and Muttiah Muralitharan will be licking his lips.