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ScorecardAfter a sequence of one-sided games, the fifth and final one-dayer at Dhaka went down to the wire as Bangladesh scampered home by three wickets against Zimbabwe, sweeping the series 5-0.Chasing a modest 194, Bangladesh were coasting to victory before a middle-order collapse, orchestrated by Gary Brent, pegged them back. Habibul Bashar, the captain, repeated what Inzamam-ul-Haq did earlier this week against West Indies, marshalling the lower-order and setting a good example with an ice-cool unbeaten 32 to steer Bangladesh home in difficult circumstances.After having restricted Zimbabwe to 193 for 8 thanks to another disciplined bowling performance, the Bangladesh openers, Shahriar Nafees and and Mehrab Hossain Jnr got off to a sound start. They added 86 as the pace bowlers, particularly Elton Chigumbura, came in for some stick.With no breakthrough in sight, captain Prosper Utseya switched to the military medium pace of Gary Brent and the tactic worked as he picked up two wickets in his second over. It appeared that the wicket suddenly changed in character as both Nafees and Aftab were trapped in front by deliveries that kept low. Brent then captured the wickets of Mohammad Ashraful and Mehrab Hossain in similar fashion, and Zimbabwe were right back into the contest, having also managed to put a stranglehold on the scoring rate.Bashar and Saqibul Hasan then resurrected the chase, adding a valuable 25 for the fifth wicket. However, a farcical run out in the 39th over pegged Bangladesh back again. Hasan attempted a tentative second run off an overthrow and fell short of the crease at the batsmen’s end, throwing the game wide open. Brent was back in business two overs later as he pouched a difficult chance at mid-on to send back Mashrafe Mortaza. Farhad Reza was the second run-out victim in the innings and Zimbabwe sensed a rare consolation win. Bashar kept his cool and along with Mushfiqur Rahim, brought in for this match, the pair guided Bangladesh home with an over to spare.Earlier, opener Stuart Matsikenyeri, who top-scored with 75, was the only Zimbabwe batsman to offer some resistance as the rest faltered yet again. Put into bat, Zimbabwe got off to a steady start, as Matsikenyeri and Chamu Chibhabha added 63 for the second wicket after debutant Tino Mowoyo fell in the eighth over. Matsikenyeri and Chigumbura took the score to 138 in the 25th over, but the dismissal of Chigumbura, caught behind by Mushfiqur Rahim off Mehrab Hossain, sparked a collapse.Matsikenyeri, well set to record his first century in one-dayers, fell for 75 soon after, giving Hossain his second wicket. Fast bowler Mortaza returned to take the last three wickets in a lively spell at the death. He finished with 3 for 36 while left-arm spinner Abdur Razzak, Bangladesh’s most effective bowler in the series, did his bit in the middle overs with an economical spell of 1 for 27 off his quota of ten overs.

Marlon Samuels will undergo independent analysis of his bowling action at the National Cricket Academy, at Loughborough University in England on February 11, after he was reported for a suspected illegal action by the umpires in the third Test between South Africa and West Indies in Durban.Due to the injury to Dwayne Bravo and absence of Chris Gayle, Samuels, a part-time offspin bowler, sent down 21 overs in South Africa’s only innings of the game. On-field umpires Simon Taufel and Aleem Dar and third umpire Brian Jerling reported their doubts over his action, especially with respect to his “fast” deliveries. Roshan Mahanama, the match referee, subsequently informed both the ICC and the West Indies team management of the report, as per the ICC regulations governing the reporting process.Samuels’ analysis will be performed by Dr Mark King, member of the ICC Panel of Human Movement Specialists. The outcome of the analysis is expected within 14 days after the tests, which was confirm whether the offspinner’s action is legal. Although only Samuel’s “fast” deliveries have been reported as suspect, the process requires his action, including the “fast” deliveries, to be analysed.If the analysis confirms that only Samuels’ “fast” deliveries are illegal, then he would be allowed to continue bowling in international cricket without using that delivery but subject to the warning that should he bowl his “fast” ball he would run the risk of being reported a second time.However, if this month’s analysis concludes that Samuels generally bowls with an illegal action, he will be suspended from bowling in international cricket until such time as he has corrected his action and submitted to a fresh independent analysis that concludes that his action has been remedied.Samuels has taken seven Test wickets at 127.00 apiece and 57 ODI wicket at 43.24.

Sachin Tendulkar could be declared fit to tour West Indies next month, having made a rapid recovery after undergoing shoulder surgery in London, according to Dr Andrew Wallace, his surgeon.Tendulkar was ruled out of the seven-match ODI series against England after suffering a tear, and faces a long tour of West Indies, which includes four Tests and five ODIs.”The surgery was fairly straightforward,” Wallace told BBC’s Test Match Special. “He’s made an excellent recovery. I expect he will be back for India some time in the very near future.”Wallace stressed that Tendulkar felt discomfort only while throwing and that the injury had little to do with his batting. “His batting was not affected and most of the shoulder does not take too much of the force when bowling. It’s a common injury in baseball pitchers and tennis players – anyone who is doing a lot of overhead throwing. The rim of the socket had become a little bit frayed so the ball was sliding out the back of the joint a little bit. It opened up a small tear in the labrum. A little bit of fluid was escaping through that tear and created a cyst.”He added: “The main reason for operating was that the cyst was slowly enlarging so we felt it was timely to do it now before we felt there was any danger.”Tendulkar also had his left elbow – a case of tennis elbow had confined him to the sidelines in recent times – examined as a precautionary measure, and Wallace confirmed that there were no worries on that front.

Click here for the wagon wheel depicting Ian Bell’s 71.

Ian Bell made his fourth half-century in nine innings this series, but once again failed to go on to a hundred, as England were made to struggle for their runs on the first day of the fifth Test at Sydney. He fell for 71 to Glenn McGrath, as England reached 4 for 234 on a weather-shortened day.”It has been a little bit frustrating,” admitted Bell afterwards, “but today I got a pretty decent delivery so I can’t grumble. McGrath and [Stuart] Clark bowled exceptionally today, and generally as a unit they put the ball in really good areas. It was really difficult out there.”On a pitch kept lively by early-morning rain and an overcast evening, run-scoring was no easy task. “The wicket had enough in it all day, and as a batter there was always a delivery that just beat the bat,” added Bell. “[Andrew Flintoff and Paul Collingwood] did well to bat through the last hour and get us into a decent position.”For Bell, it was another mini-milestone on the road to becoming a fully-fledged international cricketer, and he felt afterwards that he had improved “unbelievably” from the wide-eyed rookie who had made seven single-figure scores in ten innings in 2005, saying: “I can’t really compare myself to what I was last time.”Even so, it was McGrath once again who accounted for him, for the fifth time in eight Tests. “It’s just a matter of patience really,” said Bell. “I know what he’s trying to do to me. The ball that got me out was his delivery, the one he wants to bowl to me the majority of the time. He’s always trying to get my outside-edge or [bowl me] through the gate.”There was not a lot to hit out there,” he added. “It’s easy to say we weren’t scoring at a great rate, but unless the ball was right under your nose you couldn’t drive a lot. There was more bounce here than at Melbourne so leaving is easier, and a lot of balls you had to let go.” Though he was tempted to adopt Kevin Pietersen’s approach of disrupting the bowlers’ lengths, he added: “That’s not in my game as much as KP’s.”Nor does Bell enjoy the verbals quite as much either. “I don’t try and say anything to Warne at all,” he admitted. “He’s always going to have the last word in the way that bowlers do, by getting you out. But I enjoyed it out there, and I can take some positives from it. At times it wasn’t too pretty but sometimes you’re going to get runs when they don’t look great.”This is an important game for England,” Bell added. “We don’t want to go down 5-0. We are taking every game very seriously in the run-up to the next Ashes.”

Rest of South Africa 255 for 8 (Rudolph 72*, Morkel 57) beat Indians 218 (Dravid 79, Steyn 5-22) by 37 runs
Scorecard

The Indians’ tour of South Africa got off to an embarrassing start earlier this week when they were forced to set off without any official tour kit, and it hardly got any better when they lost their tour warm-up, going down to a Rest of South Africa side by 37 runs at Benoni.While the loss only three days before the opening match of the five-ODI series was not the ideal start, the real concern was the manner of the defeat. Only a face-saving seventh-wicket stand of 82 from 105 balls between Rahul Dravid and Irfan Pathan saved India from humiliation as they slid to 82 for 6 in reply to the home side’s 255 for 8.The damage was done by Dale Steyn, a fast bowler who the Indians are likely to see much more of before the tour is out, who took 5 for 22. Although he is earmarked as a Test specialist, he bowled at up to 150kph and sent a clear message to the selectors. In his first spell he removed Sachin Tendulkar and Wasim Jaffer – Jaffer only played in place of Virender Sehwag, who needed stitches in a hand after misjudging a catch in fielding practice shortly before the game.In his second two-over spell Steyn dimissed MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina in three balls and his pace was too much for both. He softened up Dhoni with a short ball then trapped him leg-before with a fuller delivery before Raina could only fend a lifting delivery to short leg. In his final spell Steyn bowled Dravid, who was ninth man out after a solid 99-ball 79.Steyn has played in only four one-day internationals and was dropped after the tour of Australia last season because he was too expensive. However, he conceded only 12 runs off the bat, with seven wides and three no-balls making up the rest of the runs against him.Apart from Dravid’s innings, there was encouragement for the Indians in the form of Anil Kumble and Zaheer Khan on their returns to the one-day team. Both were easily the most impressive Indian bowlers. Zaheer, whose most recent one-day international was against Pakistan in February, took 3 for 44 in ten overs. Kumble, who has been out of one-day international cricket since playing for Asia against Africa in South Africa in August 2005, took 2 for 31.

He grabbed two wickets with successive balls as the Rest slipped to 116 for 6 in the 31st over before Jacques Rudolph (72*) and Albie Morkel (57) lashed 96 off 100 balls for the seventh wicket. Morkel skied a catch off Zaheer, but Rudolph carried on hitting out as another 43 runs were scored off the final 19 balls of the innings.Morkel had been due to be 12th man for the Rest but got his chance to play when it was agreed before the match that both sides could use a dozen players, although only 11 could bat or be on the field at any time. The decision enabled the Indians to field an extra player to get match practice ahead of the ODI series. It meant that the match would not have official List A limited-overs status – and also enabled the home side to finish with a much better total than might have been the case.The Indian bowlers took some heavy punishment in the closing overs with Munaf Patel conceding 36 runs off his last two overs and Sreesanth being hit for 44 off his final four.Steyn ensured that India were never in with a realistic chance of winning, even though Dravid and Pathan gave them a glimmer of hope.”There are areas where we can get better,” Dravid said afterwards. “We’re a pretty young side. Some of the young batsmen and bowlers are learning. It’s not an easy place to play cricket, especially if you come straight from India. It is just the start of the tour and there will be better performances as the tour goes on.”Ashwell Prince, who led the Rest of South Africa, was delighted. “We wanted to give them a tough game,” he said. “They have found it tough touring here in the past and we wanted to make sure we didn’t give them any freebies early in the tour.”

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Cameron White’s brutal 141 went in vain for Somerset who were beaten by Worcestershire with an over to spare thanks to an equally destructive 97 from Graeme Hick at New Road. White’s hundred broke the Twenty20 record which he himself had previously held, jointly, with Hick. It took White just 55 balls to register his hundred with 11 fours and three mammoth sixes; the other five Somerset batsmen made just 55 out of their total of 198.Though Worcestershire continued to lose wickets, the start Hick and Vikram Solanki – who belted 33 from 12 balls – gave the home side ensured they were comfortable winners by three wickets.Click here for the report from Lancashire’s game against Nottinghamshire at Old Trafford.

Two of Mumbai’s home IPL matches – on May 14 and 16 – are likely to be shifted from the DY Patil Stadium to the Wankhede Stadium, following speculation that the Mumbai Indians were unhappy with the commute from the team hotel to the venue in addition to the practice pitches at the new ground.The DY Patil Stadium, located in Navi Mumbai, involves a commute of roughly 40 km from the team hotel. The venue, allotted five of the seven home matches, hosted its first match on April 27. However, the franchise owners, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), fell short of confirming the move.”We cannot confirm or deny the move at the moment,” Kaushik Roy, president, branding, at RIL, told Cricinfo. The decision will be jointly made by the franchise and the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA).A Mumbai team official has also pointed out that the standard of the practice wicket at DY Patil ground was not similar to the actual wicket, something that the team was not happy with. It could’ve been one of the reasons why the team chose to practise at the Bandra Kurla Grounds on Saturday, instead of the actual venue.The DY Patil Stadium will, however, host the clash against Delhi Daredevils tommorow and the forthcoming match against Rajasthan Royals on Wednesday.This could be the second instance of a venue change in Mumbai, after the Cricket Club of India (CCI) backed out as hosts. The CCI, which houses the Brabourne Stadium, were apparently unhappy with an agreement between the IPL authorities and franchise owners that meant the franchise would acquire 80% of all seats, including those in the clubhouse. A bulk of the matches then had to be shifted to the DY Patil Stadium, with the Wankhede Stadium hosted the opening match. Since the Wankhede is currently under renovation for 2011 World Cup, the MCA said the stadium was not in a position to host ten matches along with the two semi-finals and the final.

Surrey have signed Usman Afzaal on a three-year contract. Ufzaal, 30, left Northamptonshire by mutual consent last week.Afzaal started his career at Nottinghamshire, making three England appearances during the 2001 Ashes. He moved to Northamptonshire in 2004 where he was consistent, and this season he scored 570 runs at 35.62 in eight Championship matches.”I want to continue to learn more about myself and my game and feel a new challenge, in a new environment will help me achieve this,” Afzaal said. “To learn from and play with the likes of Alan and Mark Butcher and Mark Ramprakash will be an honour and something I’m looking forward to.”My dream is to play more cricket for England and I see this move to Surrey – where I will be under pressure to prove myself in a quality side – as a stepping stone to being recognised by the English selectors once more.”Alan Butcher, Surrey’s cricket manager, welcomed the addition to his squad. “With some of our top batsmen nearing the end of their careers, it was important for us to acquire a proven and experienced player approaching his prime. I believe Usman to be ambitious, both for himself and for the club and think that he has vital parts to play as the rebuilding of the team continues.”

Sajid Mahmood believes Kevin Pietersen’s new ranking as the world’s No. 1 ODI batsman will lift England during the Super Eights. Pietersen became the third England player, after Marcus Trescothick and Allan Lamb, to hold the top spot when he deposed Michael Hussey following the World Cup group matches.”It’s a big lift knowing we have the No. 1 batsman in the world in our side, and hopefully the other guys can feed off that,” Mahmood told . “He’s a fantastic player and I think he deserves to be in the top spot. The way he’s performed has been brilliant and his average speaks for itself.”Pietersen averages 56.76 from his 45 ODIs and his good form continued in England’s opening games at St Lucia, when he made 60 against New Zealand and 56 not out against Kenya. Mahmood said Pietersen was a remarkable batsman and could destroy any attack.”It’s difficult bowling at him in the nets because he has these really strange shots which he pulls out of nowhere, and you think to yourself ‘how has he hit that, I’ve never been hit like that before’,” he said. “But I’m fortunate I don’t play against him in a match situation – he’s a lot more relaxed in the nets than he is during a game so I’m happy to bowl at him then, rather than in the middle.”Mahmood, who played only in the Kenya match, when he took 1 for 39, said he hoped to have a bigger role as the tournament progressed. “I would have liked to get a couple more wickets, but I haven’t really played for a month or so now, so to get into a rhythm and bowl a few overs and feel the atmosphere is a good thing,” he said.”I’ve been working really hard in the nets, so pretty much everything was there already, the only thing that wasn’t was the match pressure I had to face. It was good to get out there before the Super Eights to get used to the conditions though, and hopefully I can get a few more games in that part of the competition and do well.”

Bermuda’s allrounder Saleem Mukuddem announced his retirement from international cricket following his country’s disappointing World Cup campaign.Mukuddem was one of the few players to emerge with credit, taking 3 for 19 in the final match against Bangladesh. He finished with five wickets at 13.80.But in an email to the Royal Gazette and Gus Logie, the coach, he explained his decision was brought about by the decision to suspend him for the second match of the competition after he reportedly missed a social engagement.”The handling of a recent off-field event has convinced me that this is the right time for my decision,” he wrote. “I have lived the dream and have enjoyed most of it valuing the friendships I have made along the way the most. Like most journeys I have reached my destination and I look forward to new challenges. I am looking forward to spending more time with my family and resuming my professional career.”Dean Minors has also hinted that he will retire and it is expected he will confirm this to the Royal Gazette shortly.