Division One

Warwickshire were indebted to a blitzkrieg knock of 76 from Timothy Groenewald and a more sedate, watchful fifty from Moeen Ali on the first day against Durham at Chester-le-Street. The visitors, moving along nicely at 139 for 2, lost a flurry of wickets and were stumbling precariously at 188 for 6 before Groenewald’s savage innings. In the space of 46 balls, he smashed 13 fours and cleared the boundary twice, as Warwickshire were eventually dismissed for 314. Buoyed by their late spurt of runs, their bowlers then nipped out three Durham wickets who went to stumps 261 runs behind.Nottinghamshire ended the first day on top against Kent owing to hundreds from Stephen Fleming and David Hussey who took the hosts to 381 for 5 at Trent Bridge. Nottinghamshire were in a spot of trouble after Fleming, the captain, chose to bat as Kent reduced them to 61 for 3. Fleming and Hussey were resolute, however, staging a fighting fourth-wicket partnership of 164. It was Hussey’s fourth hundred of the season, and he remains unbeaten on his highest score thus far, 156.

Division Two

A magnificent unbeaten 188 from HD Ackerman led the way for Leicestershire on the opening day at Northampton against Northamptonshire. Choosing to bat, Leicestershire soon lost both their openers and were struggling at 48 for 2. Enter Ackerman, who received excellent support from John Sadler (69), the 24-year-old left hander. The pair put on 180 for the third wicket before Monty Panesar removed Sadler and, four balls later, Darren Maddy too. Paul Nixon batted with his customary steadfastness, remaining unbeaten on 70 at the close as the visitors closed on 383 for 4.In a western encounter at Taunton, Gloucestershire restricted the hosts Somerset to 315 for 6 thanks to a couple of wickets apiece for Jon Lewis and Alex Gidman. Matthew Wood, the Somerset opener, was cruising along smoothly before Lewis made the breakthrough – quite literally, bowling him. And though there were contributions from the middle-order, most notably 71 from James Hildreth, no batsman could capitalise.

The Professional Cricketers’ Association, the body that supports players in England, is continuing to push for a reduction in the number of overs bowled in Championship matches.Players have given their full backing to the proposal to cut the amount of play in a Championship day from 104 to 96 overs, which would also reduce the length of playing time from six and half to six hours. There is also a move to allow the new ball to be taken at 80 overs, bringing the domestic game in line with Test cricket.These proposals have been discussed throughout the season and again at the PCA’s AGM, held at the Belfry on Monday.The standard of second eleven cricket was also debated and the players acknowledged that it was a vital part of the domestic game, providing a feeder system into the first-class arena. However, there is a serious concern about the level and standard of the matches with many second team games played on poor pitches and small outgrounds.Amongst other topics discussed were general employment concerns with regard to minimum wage levels and the implementation of a standard appraisal policy across all counties.A statement added: “The PCA will be working closely with the ECB on the future structure of our domestic game prior to the next broadcasting agreement, and all stakeholders on the issues discussed, to ensure our game continues to move forward positively and in order that our national team remain at the forefront of world cricket in all formats.”

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.”

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.

Following the sudden retirement of Nicky Boje, South Africa have included left-arm spinner Paul Harris in their squad for the remaining two Tests against India. He is the only newcomer in the 15-member squad and the second spinner, alongwith Paul Adams.Haroon Lorgat made the announcement in Johannesburg today shortly after South Africa suffered a 123-run defeat in the first Test at the Wanderers. He added that Morne Morkel, the fast bowler who impressed in the tour game against the Indians at Potchefstroom, had been kept on standy as both Dale Steyn and Andrew Hall have fitness concerns.”We did announce the squad for all three Test matches, but Nicky Boje announced his retirement and we were looking for a replacement,” Lorgat told reporters. “We’vedecided on Paul Harris to join the squad. We’ll probably ask Morkel to join the squad in Durban. This time of year, it’s always better to have people with you than allowing them to besomewhere on the beach.”Harris represented English county Warwickshire this year as a “Kolpak” player. Lorgat said he had considered another left-arm spinner, Claude Henderson, who played seven Tests for South Africa. Henderson is currently with English county Leicestershire as their overseas player.”With Paul [Adams] in the squad, and what’s happened with Nicky [Boje], I then went to Claude Henderson, who I thought would be a serious contender,” he added. “But unfortunately, myconversation with Claude indicated that he was not available. So the next best for us was Paul Harris.”Lorgat said the batting order would be discussed ahead of the Durban Test starting December 26, after the top three – Graeme Smith, Herschelle Gibbs and Hashim Amla – failed to get going in both innings at the Wanderers.When asked about Boje’s recent comments slamming the selection policies, Lorgat replied that it was rather unfortunate and his comments on South African spinners were misinterpreted.”It saddens me,” he added. “It’s not in my character to make statements that get people to react in that fashion. I thought I was speaking fact, that we don’t have a spinner who has really changed the course of a Test match for us. I spoke to Nicky for a long time before those remarks were made. But I haven’t been able to talk to him since then.”Squad Graeme Smith (capt), Jacques Kallis, Paul Adams, Hashim Amla, Mark Boucher, AB de Villiers, Herschelle Gibbs, Andrew Hall, Paul Harris, Andre Nel, Makhaya Ntini, Shaun Pollock, Ashwell Prince, Jacques Rudolph, Dale Steyn

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.”

John Bracewell, the New Zealand coach, is at a loss to explain his side’s disappointing batting in their opening two CB Series games. The team’s runs began to dry up at the Champions Trophy in October and since that time they have passed 250 only twice from ten matches.New Zealand lost their last seven wickets for 23 against Australia on Sunday as they crashed to be all out for 184 and two days later against England they managed to set a target of only 206. Their poor efforts came barely a week after they were dismissed for 73, their second-lowest ODI score, against Sri Lanka at Auckland.Bracewell said it was obvious the top order needed to stand up. “We are in what you would call a batting slump at the moment, collectively,” Bracewell told the . “I tell them to relax, go out there and play your game, rotate the strike, get off strike. All the things you can list down in a coaching manual or what a coach would say.”They are working hard, they are doing what appears to be physically all the right things. Mentally, they are looking at their game. You think that we are getting close, but we were 30 runs short [against England] on a wicket that suited us.”Bracewell said there was no simple solution that would get all the players back in form at the same time. “I can’t quite put my finger on it,” he said in the . “Form is a fickle thing and to suggest everyone’s lacking confidence is a bit simplistic.”Each guy will have a different issue. Some of them have technical issues, some may be lacking confidence but we can’t bracket them all together. It just so happens that a lot of them are out of form at the same time.”

VVS Laxman pulled out of the South Zone Ranji Trophy one-day tournament after being left out of India’s World Cup squad.Laxman, it was reported, sent a SMS message to the Hyderabad selectors informing them of his withdrawal from the final three matches. ”He did not give reasons,” Shivlal Yadav, secretary of Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA), told the .Laxman is apparently upset over his exclusion from the World Cup squad. This will be the third tournament he will be missing and it’s almost certain he won’t get another chance. His pull out here may work to his detriment, though, with the South Zone selectors in a dilemma over whether to pick him for the Deodhar Trophy tournament later this month. His absence certainly affected the Hyderabad team in their match against Andhra at Uppal, where they were routed by 92 runs.Laxman’s last one-day appearance for India was on their recent tour to South Africa, when he was out for a first-ball duck at Centurion Park. Before that, he last played an ODI in August 2005. He’s been involved in 86 ODIs overall and has managed six hundreds and ten fifties.

Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, insisted all is not lost for England, despite losing comprehensively to New Zealand in their opening match on Friday.After restricting England to a modest 209 for 7, New Zealand raced to the target with nine overs to spare, in spite of slipping to 19 for 3 earlier in their innings. “It was an important game for us,” Fletcher said. “We realise we had to win four out of the seven games to get to the World Cup semi-final and having lost that one we’ve now got four out of six which makes our task a little bit harder.”To get an early win is a huge advantage but everything is not lost yet. We’ve lost before and come back strongly.”England showed impressive character in Australia, to come back and win the Commonwealth Bank series, but their middle-order has shown a worrying fragility in the warm-ups – and particularly against New Zealand yesterday; they lost their big trio of Paul Collingwood, Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff in the space of seven balls.”It’s crucial we don’t lose the middle order, especially that experienced middle-order we’ve got,” Fletcher said. “The side has showed a lot of character before and hopefully they’ll do it again.”England face Canada on Sunday at the Beausejour Stadium in St Lucia.

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.