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England’s players’ plea to Nottinghamshire to lift the ban on the Barmy Army trumpeter, Billy Cooper, in the first Investec Test at Trent Bridge, appears to have fallen on deaf ears after the club reiterated their stance.The vocal support of many England players, led by home town star Graeme Swann, had encouraged hopes that the county might yet relax its stance at the eleventh hour. Swann said he spoke for the England team in saying that it was “a real shame” that his home club would not allow Cooper – nicknamed Billy the Trumpet – to play as the England side consider him “the unspoken 12th man.”However, Lisa Pursehouse, the Nottinghamshire chief executive, said there will be no change in policy. “I think there’s been some hugely emotive language around this whole issue but the truth is, this is nothing new,” she told TalkSport. “Although I’ve only been chief executive for a year, I’ve been at Trent Bridge for almost ten years and the ground regulation was in place then.”Billy knows that this is not personal to him – we had exactly the same conversation in 2005. We just don’t let musical instruments into Trent Bridge. Billy’s not banned and he knows that, but it’s about the musical instrument. Billy’s been here before and he’ll sit and watch the cricket at Trent Bridge and I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.”However, the feeling among England’s players has been strong enough for ECB officials to broach the matter unofficially with Nottinghamshire to see if a compromise can be reached ahead of the start of the Ashes series.Swann said: “The players are all in favour of Billy blowing his trumpet wherever we are. He is the unspoken 12th man for us when we are on tour and in big series at home, so I think it’s a real shame he’s not allowed to play here.”Nottinghamshire have long contended that their blanket ban on musical instruments is stated on match tickets and, that being so, they could face requests for refunds from supporters who object to Cooper’s playlist.The ECB, however, is thought to have some sympathy with Cooper’s commitment to England’s cause – as well as respect for his professional playing ability.Compromises so far floated include Cooper playing from the balcony of the Trent Bridge Inn behind the ground, something which Nottinghamshire could not control, or even an official guest spot during an interval. Neither solution would recapture the feeling for England players that he plays when they most value it, during good times or bad.As a Nottinghamshire player, Swann might have been expected to have an influence on the decision. But he admitted that he had tried to persuade the authorities to no avail.”I know all the team are behind Billy the Trumpet,” Swann said. “The Barmy Army are a massive part of the English team. Nottingham have their rules as Lord’s do. It’s a shame in this day and age they can’t bend them for such a big event but so be it, it’s not my decision.”We don’t make the rules, we have just got to go out there and play our cricket now it’s been decided it’s not the right thing to do and I think that’s real shame. I have tried to have my say but I have been batted down.”A poll carried out by ESPNcricinfo on the County Cricket Live blog attracted more than 500 votes with only 15% opposing Cooper being allowed to play his trumpet at Trent Bridge.Nottinghamshire have also pointed out that Cooper was also been refused permission to play his trumpet at the 2005 Ashes Test when England secured victory on their way to regaining the Ashes. Since then, though, his presence has become a more recognisable part of England’s Test scene, at home and abroad.Pursehouse said: “There are lots of people that enjoy watching cricket without musical instruments. If you want to go to a ground where there’s drums and trumpets and big crowds you’re able to do that. There are other venues that offer that. At Trent Bridge we offer something different and that doesn’t make it wrong. It’s just different and people have always had a good time.”We’ve got a great atmosphere at Trent Bridge. We’re not stuffy or boring or any of those things and our feedback on the customer experience is fantastic and people do enjoy coming to Trent Bridge to watch the games. We’re an intimate ground, and the atmosphere is all created by the cricket.”The club aims to identify more with the traditional Test atmosphere at Lord’s in contrast to other Test grounds such as Edgbaston and Old Trafford and believes that this policy is justified by ticket sales. The match is sold out for all five days.This story was updated on July 9 with Lisa Pursehouse’s comments

Matthew Fisher became the youngest post-war county cricketer when he was picked for Yorkshire against Leicestershire aged just 15 years and 212 days.Yorkshire were forced to turn to Fisher for their Yorkshire Bank 40 fixture at Scarborough to deal with an injury crisis that saw four teenagers make up the bowling attack. Ryan Gibson, 17, Ben Coad, 18, and 19-year-old Wilf Rhodes were also in the XI.It highlighted Yorkshire’s problems. They were forced to field a threadbare bowling attack last Sunday against Gloucestershire. Tim Bresnan is with England, Liam Plunkett and Jack Brooks have been injured and the workload Ryan Sidebottom and Steven Patterson have been forced to endure in the Championship meant they needed resting.Mercifully, Plunkett, looking very old at 28, returned from a thigh strain to face Leicestershire. But he lined up alongside a team-mate 13 years his junior.Born in York, Fisher has developed through the Yorkshire age-group teams and plays for Yorkshire Academy in the Yorkshire Premier League, where his 25 overs this season have gone for 3.48 runs an over. He has also played for Yorkshire 2nd XI and took 6 for 25 earlier this week against Leicestershire – the second-best figures for Yorkshire in the 2nd XI trophy.”Matthew deserves his call up into the squad,” Yorkshire first-team coach Jason Gillespie said. “We monitor the progress of all our players and the feedback I have received on the way Matthew has been playing has been excellent. He is very young, but he has the ability to be successful.”The youngest player to appear in a first-class match also turned out for Yorkshire when wicketkeeper Barney Gibson played against Durham MCCU at the age of 15 years and 27 days in April 2011. The aptly-named Charles Young is the youngest everto appear in a county game, for Hampshire against Kent in 1867 aged 15 years and131 days.

Jyotiraditya Scindia, a member of the BCCI and of its disciplinary committee, has said board president N Srinivasan must step down following the arrest of his son-in-law and Chennai Super Kings official Gurunath Meiyappan on charges of betting. Early this week, Punjab Cricket Association president IS Bindra publicly called for Srinivasan’s resignation, undermining the latter’s assertion that the entire board was united behind him.”Let me say this that I am not assuming or saying that anyone is guilty. But considering the environment that is around cricket today, considering the fact that we do need to cleanse the sport in every single meaning of the word, I do believe that it would be in the fitness of things if Mr. Srinivasan did step aside until this matter reached a conclusive end in terms of an inquiry,” Scindia, president of the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association and a federal minister, told the television channel .”If he and his family members, or rather his son-in-law, is absolved then surely he can come back. But considering the environment that cricket is in today, I do think that if you combine the fact of a conflict of interest and his own family member being involved in an ongoing investigation, it is in the fitness of things and more from a spirit point of view and propriety point of view, I do believe that he should step aside.”Scindia’s statement was the first from any of the politicians – including some of the country’s most high-profile leaders – who sit on the BCCI to criticize Srinivasan’s stand. It came amid growing public outrage over silence within the BCCI leadership over questions relating to Srinivasan’s apparently conflicted position on the issue. It came on a day when Kirti Azad, a BJP member of parliament, and a senior official of the Communist Party both criticized the board’s silence. Scindia is also the president of the state association to which Sanjay Jagdale, the BCCI secretary, belongs.Scindia said the issue of Gurunath’s exact role in Super Kings wasn’t relevant to the issue of his father-in-law’s continuance in office. “There’s a committee that’s going to be set up that’s going to look into this, I don’t believe that the nitty-gritty is important at this point of time. I believe propriety is important and, in the sense of propriety, I do believe that he should step down. I do believe he should step down, not only for himself but also for Chennai Super Kings and for the spirit of cricket per se.”Asked whether the BCCI was planning to follow an alternative route to convince Srinivasan to step down, Scindia replied by saying it’s what he would have done if he were in that situation. “The fact that he has not done so, I think it is time now for BCCI as a collective to see what the future course of action should be. In the fitness of things one should step aside, whether or not we believe we are guilty or not. If we are not guilty, then we will surely be reinstated. That example has to come from the top.”On a similar theme, he said that “a fair share” of the responsibility to clean up cricket lay with the BCCI. “I believe we must take the assistance of other stakeholders on board to ensure that such incidents don’t recur, and there is a very strict – and strictly enforced – due process.”On Sunday, Bindra, a former BCCI president himself, was unambiguous in his stand.”I demand that he should step down from the BCCI President’s position forthwith and not cause anymore damage to Indian cricket,” Bindra said. “His statement in Mumbai is shocking. It shows that he has not learnt anything from this episode. He continues to remain defiant as if nothing has happened.”

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
In the increasingly intense fight for the play-offs, Mumbai Indians joined Rajasthan Royals at No. 2 hours after the latter had broken away with a win of their own. And the win came easy against the defending champions, Kolkata Knight Riders. It was the kind of win that coaches love: almost everything went to plan. They won the toss, batted first, Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik got them a target, and their superior attack shut Knight Riders out. Only a faulty light tower and some good fielding towards the end of Mumbai’s innings posed any resistance.It was all one-way traffic from the moment Tendulkar smacked Ryan McLaren for five successive fours, all to different areas of the ground, in the fourth over. By the time the power failure countered the Tendulkar blaze, he had reached 29 off 17 balls. Despite Dwayne Smith’s struggle to get going at the other end, Mumbai were headed in the right direction.The lights came back on for Tendulkar to score 19 more off 11 more balls. Smith failed to reach a run a ball, but by the time they fell, Mumbai had reached 99 in the 14th over. Some good fielding – Eoin Morgan’s catch at deep midwicket, lobbing the ball up, stepping over the boundary and coming back in to complete the catch; and two run-outs – reduced Mumbai to 144 for 6 in the 19th over.Karthik, though, kept scoring from one end. Most striking was his unsettling of Sunil Narine. He used sweeps to hit Narine off his length, and took 20 off the 11 balls he faced from Narine. Mitchell Johnson, as if to give a sample of what was to follow, smacked the last ball of the innings for a straight six.Ten minutes later, he began swinging the ball at a high pace. An inside edge saved Manvinder Bisla first ball, and then next hit him high on the thigh pad. Two balls later, Gautam Gambhir played for the non-existent swing, and was bowled for a duck. Jacques Kallis and Bisla looked to revive the chase, but Pragyan Ojha had Bisla stumped just after the Powerplay.Kallis soon fell to Harbhajan Singh, who had dropped him earlier. And when Eoin Morgan sliced Abu Nechim to point in the 13th over, the game was virtually over, just like Knight Riders’ campaign.

Glamorgan will breathe a sigh of relief with the confirmation that Michael Hogan, the Western Australia bowler, is to leave Australia to come and play in county cricket with his British passport.Justin Langer, the Western Australia coach, had said he would do everything in his power to try and keep Hogan in Australia but his efforts have proved in vain and Hogan will arrive in Cardiff for the start of the new season.Hogan, 31, took 130 wickets at 27.66 in first-class cricket during his four years at WA – including 30 at 25 in the 2012-13 Sheffield Shield – a record that prompted Langer to increase his efforts to keep Hogan in Perth.”He has been an excellent servant of WA cricket over the past four years,” Langer said. “He made a positive impact during his time here, not only as an outstanding bowler but a popular team member as well.”Michael has also been an excellent role model, leader and example to all, that if you persevere and work hard, regardless of your age, then you can forge a successful career as a professional cricket player. He will be missed and we wish Michael all the best in the UK.”Glamorgan will be pleased to have secured an experience bowler to replace James Harris, the England Lions bowler who left for Middlesex at the end of last season. Hogan will join experienced left-armer Graham Wagg alongside youngsters Huw Waters, John Glover and Michael Reed in the fast-bowling ranks in Cardiff.Hogan said he was leaving WA with the side in rude health under Langer. “The signs are really good. There’s a lot of young kids who are only going to get better with more experience,” he said.”With Justin in charge he’s not going to let anyone off the hook, so the boys will be working really hard to get to that Shield final which we’ve just missed out on in the past two years. I’d love to see the boys get into one and win one.”I had a great time, the playing group in particular accepted me as an outsider from day one and I can’t thank everyone enough for that.”

Australia are in for a tough test against spin on the fourth day, double-centurion Cheteshwar Pujara has said. Pujara reached his second double-century in Tests, was involved in a triple-century stand with M Vijay, before R Ashwin picked up two wickets in Australia’s second innings with India still leading by 192.”They need to apply themselves,” Pujara said after the third day’s play. “They don’t know how to go about on turning tracks. They have prepared, we know what their strengths are and are trying to find their weaknesses. I think our spinners have been doing it successfully and they need to continue what they are doing.Only one wicket fell on the second day; on the third there were 11. “It’s turning a little more and the odd ball is jumping,” Pujara said.Australia didn’t pick Nathan Lyon for this Test; Pujara said he was comfortable facing him as well as other Australian spinners, including Glenn Maxwell and Xavier Doherty. “I think he went for lots of runs, that’s why they made the change. I have batted well against [Graeme] Swann and [Monty] Panesar in the past, which helped me play against Australian spinners.”Pujara batted for almost seven hours and was seen limping for a good part of his innings due to a hamstring injury. “I pulled my hamstring and yesterday in the first session it was very difficult for me to run and even focus on my batting. When my hamstring was sore, I just wanted to hang around and let the time go by and afterwards I was much better and could concentrate on my batting. The injury is settling down and I hope I will be better.”Pujara fell trying to hook James Pattinson when on 204, being caught at fine leg. It was a shot he was still working on, he said. “I think it’s a scoring opportunity but you need to play the shot at the right height. The ones which are above the shoulder I need to leave those balls. I still need to learn that shot and I will be working on it for sure.”A knee injury, for which he had to undergo a surgery, sidelined Pujara for a good part of 2011 and the start of 2012. “Injuries have taught me a lot,” he said. “It motivates you to work hard on your game and even on fitness as well.”

Is India a better one-day side or a Test side? Going by thelatest ICC tables, one can hardly get a conclusive reply to thatquery. The Test rankings have India sixth in the table, while theODI ratings have India in fifth place.

The fact remains that the team has had mixed results in bothforms of the game. The triumph in the NatWest Trophy in Englandand the joint-champions tag in the ICC Champions Trophy in SriLanka are notable achievements. But they have been reverses invarious competitions, especially abroad. Besides, the irritatinghabit of faltering at the final hurdle continues, with theNatWest Trophy being an exception. On the Test front, India hashad five victories abroad in the last two years, but a seriestriumph outside the subcontinent continues to be elusive aftermore than 16 years, even as the home record continues to beimpressive.The debate about whether India is a better one-day or Test sidemay continue, but there is little doubt that with the World Cup alittle over three months away, the emphasis these days is, notunexpectedly, more on the team’s performance in the limited-oversversion. Seven one-day internationals against the West Indiesfollowed by another similar round in New Zealand is perhaps thebest way to prepare for the big event. The Indians have just twomore Test matches against New Zealand to be played before theWorld Cup, and the focus will increasingly be on the one-dayteam.Perhaps then the time is ripe to try out a few experimentswithout damaging the basic team structure, and it was good to seesome steps being taken towards this direction in the first matchagainst the West Indies at Jamshedpur, in the absence of ZaheerKhan and Sachin Tendulkar. The promotion of Ajit Agarkar tonumber three and the inclusion of Jai P Yadav in place of DineshMongia are to be welcomed. The search for a genuine all-roundercontinues, and if the selectors, backed by the team management,succeed in finding one before the World Cup, such experimentshave to be carried out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, goesthe saying, and bold and adventurous steps need to be taken. Suchan approach is bound to pay off in the long term.At the moment, the best man to fill the all-rounder slot wouldseem to be Virender Sehwag. The manner in which he bowled in thevital tension-packed overs towards the end of the ChampionsTrophy semifinal against South Africa marked him out as one toback for that role. His off-spinners, low in trajectory and slowthrough the air, are difficult to hit, much as batsmen found ithard to play slog-shots against Kris Srikkanth’s slow spinnerssome 15 years ago. The immense value of Sehwag’s bowling wasagain proved against the West Indies at Jamshedpur on Wednesday,and it was only when he erred in giving the ball air that he washit.I still remember the venturesome West Indian batsmen, eager toget on with their strokes, getting impatient with Bishen Bedi’sultra-slow spinners at Chepauk in January 1967. There are timeswhen slow bowling can prove to be a tricky proposition, even onefraught with danger, especially in limited-overs cricket. Can oneforget Tendulkar, with his deadly spin cocktail, restricting theSouth Africans to just three runs in the last over of the HeroCup semifinal at Calcutta in 1993, with the visitors requiringjust six to win? Under the circumstances, then, Sehwag should beencouraged to bowl more than just a few overs, and it was good tosee him get a full quota on Wednesday ­ the only Indian bowler tosend down 10 overs, and deservedly so, one might add.With the selectors having decided that Rahul Dravid will keepwickets in the mega-event, the nucleus of the World Cup side isalready in place, and it only remains to try out variouscombinations and permutations from among the players already inthe fray. Promoting Yuveraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif in the order,keeping alive the search for an all-rounder by giving Sehwag morebowling, the captain also keeping the options open for turninghis arm over more than he is doing these days – all these arepossible experiments.The issue of Tendulkar coming back to the opening slot may not bea closed chapter, and this is one more idea that could be givenserious thought, if the team management is so inclined. Also, onSouth African pitches, the accent will have to be on pacebowling, and a decision has to be taken as to whether there willbe place for only one specialist spinner in the final 11. Adecision will also have to be taken about Javagal Srinath, andwhether he will continue to be useful to the squad in SouthAfrica. It is interesting to note that even with Zaheer absent,Srinath was not played at Jamshedpur on Wednesday.Brijesh Patel and his co-selectors, as well as John Wright andSourav Ganguly, will have a lot of analysing to do over the nextcouple of months. Fortunately, they have enough opportunities tocollect relevant data and reach a consensus on what would be bestfor an Indian team that is making a serious challenge to regainthe trophy after 20 years.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board has barred an Indian national from entering any stadiums in the country after he admitted to being a bookie.A resident of Hyderabad, Durga Prasad was seized by security staff while seated in the international gallery of the Shere Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur during the BPL matches on Monday evening. “We accosted Mr Durga Prasad inside the stadium,” BCB’s head of security, Col (retd) Mesbahuddin Serniabat, told ESPNcricinfo.”We followed him and found that he was sending a lot of text messages. After speaking to him, we found out that he is a Hyderabad resident who had come to Bangladesh on February 2.”Serniabat said Prasad had later “admitted that he is a bookie. He earns money from betting. We have banned him from the Shere Bangla National Stadium because betting is illegal in the country.”Prasad he said had given an undertaking to not enter any stadiums in Bangladesh.This is however not the first time a man has had to be ejected from Mirpur during the BPL. In the tournament’s first season, a Pakistan national named Sajid Khan was handed over to the police for suspected involvement in match-fixing after he was stopped from trying to enter the players’ zone.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsShamsur Rahman’s 52 off 45 balls helped Rangpur Riders register their first win in this year’s Bangladesh Premier League, as they beat Chittagong Kings by six wickets in Khulna on Tuesday. Set 133 to chase, Rangpur overcame some early stutters as Rahman and, later, Nasir Hossain made significant contributions to the innings.Credit for Rangpur’s win should also go to the bowlers who put in a disciplined effort to restrict Chittagong to 135 for 5. By the time the Powerplay overs were bowled, Chittagong had lost three wickets for just 21 runs – a poor start after they chose to bat first.Fidel Edwards and Dimitri Mascarenhas, Rangpur’s newest arrivals, bowled accurately, forcing the Chittagong batsmen to play too many shots. A great catch by Taposh Ghosh also helped matters. Ghosh ran from deep-square leg to fine leg and dived forward to catch Naeem Islam, who mistimed a hook shot off Kevin O’Brien.Chittagong captain Mahmudullah and Brendan Taylor added 73 runs for the fourth wicket but their progress was slow by T20 standards. Taylor made 65 off 51 balls with seven fours and a couple of fine sixes straight down the ground. The big-hitters, Jacob Oram and Ravi Bopara, failed to provide a final flourish.Edwards, Mascarenhas, Kevin O’Brien and Rangpur captain Abdur Razzak took a wicket each but, more importantly, the experienced bowlers kept the runs in check.Shamsur Rahman, a talented but inconsistent batsman, played sensibly after losing his opening partner Imrul Kayes for a duck in the first over. The O’Brien brothers didn’t contribute much to the innings: Kevin O’Brien was cleaned up by Shaun Tait’s pace, while Niall fell to Mahmudullah’s offspin.Nasir Hossain and Shamsur were relentless against the spinners as they added 68 runs for the fourth wicket, taking Rangpur to the brink of victory. Nasir was unbeaten on 45 runs off 33 balls, which included five fours and a straight six off Tait.

As he set about the task of throttling back Usman Khawaja from Twenty20 to Test matches, Australia’s batting coach Stuart Law spoke of his desire to return to the nation’s batsmen the sort of collective “ruthless streak” that limited him to one Test in a career that ultimately reaped more than 27,000 first-class runs.Law had the help of Ryan Harris, recuperating from shoulder surgery, plus Ben Cutting and Nathan Hauritz to bowl to Khawaja at Allan Border Field, while time was also reserved for the Pro-Batter technology that allowed the left-hander to face up to a bowling machine synchronised with video footage of Sri Lanka’s pacemen and spinners.He defended Cricket Australia’s decision to pull Khawaja and the rest of the Test squad out of the BBL, and spoke with the passion of an unfulfilled international batting talent of the opportunities afforded to batsmen by the retirement of Ricky Ponting, who he debuted with in Perth in 1995.”We’re trying to get a ruthless streak back into our batters that we had going through domestic cricket 20-25 years ago,” Law said. “If we can get that back where players aren’t just scoring 60s and expecting the next step to happen, but they’re scoring 100s, 150s and doing it consistently, not just once or twice but three, four times, that will put their names up in lights.”What an opportunity now? Ricky Ponting, one of Australia’s greatest has retired, you’ve got an opportunity to take over his position – you’d cut your own leg off to have that opportunity, and you want to be doing everything you possibly can to get it. I know Big Bash is a big part of the Australian cricket calendar now, but we’re in the middle of a Test series.”We just got beaten by South Africa, we’ve gone 1-0 up, we want to put everything into winning this next Test match so we can take a series. That’s our whole objective. If that means sacrificing a few players who don’t play in the Big Bash, there’s more games after this Test series to be involved in and surely we’re all for the greater good of Australian cricket – the Test team is the No. 1 team to play for.”Khawaja’s time in Brisbane is geared more towards getting his batting rhythms and routines more right for Tests, after last summer’s disastrous India series for Shaun Marsh, who came back into the national team via the BBL. Marsh made an audacious 99 for the Perth Scorchers in Melbourne, then cobbled a measly 17 runs in six innings against MS Dhoni’s team, a contribution so meagre that it has probably ended his Test career. Law noted that if anything Khawaja’s international shortcomings so far have been more as a fielder, runner and athlete than as a batsman, but that he would benefit from deliberate time to adjust.”He’s one of the better batsmen technically going around, he’s very sound, [but] there’s other things these days to playing cricket,” Law said. “You’ve got to be able to do more than one skill. If you’re not bowling you’ve got to be able to field, and that was pointed out to Usman a while ago that he has to improve in certain areas, as well as going back and scoring runs.”He didn’t really have a problem with his batting, he didn’t get the big scores that would have kept him in the side. Usman’s joined the Australian team for the Boxing Day Test, so we’ve got to get him prepared as best as possible for that to take place. To get him out of Twenty20 mode and back into Test mode is pretty important.”Australia’s team performance manger Pat Howard, meanwhile, has spoken of how fervently CA are seeking ways of reducing the chances of the national team going a man down in mid-Test match. The loss of James Pattinson in Adelaide arguably cost Michael Clarke’s team the chance to defeat South Africa, while injuries to Ben Hilfenhaus and Clarke very nearly did the same against Sri Lanka in Hobart.”Absolutely the reality is the current situation’s not good enough,” Howard said of the injury toll. “We want to be better than that, and I’m really disappointed with where we’re at the moment. I’m not shying away from that, and we’re making sure that any issues we’ve seen come up have been raised. We need to be better.”