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Bangladesh’s concern over the participation of West Indies in an ODI tri-series with Zimbabwe and Pakistan has boiled over, with the BCB director Jalal Yunus saying that the system of organising bilateral series had gone bad since the ICC stopped getting

Mohammad Isam29-Jun-2015Bangladesh’s concern over the participation of West Indies in an ODI tri-series with Zimbabwe and Pakistan has boiled over, with the BCB director Jalal Yunus saying that the system of organising bilateral series had “gone bad” since the ICC stopped getting involved in the Future Tours Programme.The WICB confirmed on Sunday that the tri-series would be held before the September 30 2015 cut-off date to qualify for the 2017 Champions Trophy.”I feel that the FTP that the ICC had was better,” Yunus said. “The system has gone bad from the day the ICC stopped doing the FTP and the matter has become a bilateral agreement. It has created a lot of opportunities and loopholes. I don’t support this. It is no longer a healthy competition.”Bangladesh are currently seventh with 93 points in the ICC ODI rankings, while West Indies are five points behind at eighth. Pakistan are currently ninth, but have a five-match series against Sri Lanka starting on July 11. Without knowing much about the make-up of the tri-series, there has been some concern over Bangladesh’s qualification for the Champions Trophy.Ahead of their ODI series against India, Bangladesh knew they had to win two out of their six scheduled ODIs against India and South Africa. After they took a 2-0 lead against India earlier this month, calculations from the ICC ODI rankings system confirmed that Bangladesh had qualified for the 2017 tournament. However, the calculations took into considerations only the remaining matches in July to be played by Bangladesh and Pakistan.Until Sunday’s confirmation, West Indies were not scheduled to play any ODIs before the September 30 deadline. Yunus, BCB’s media committee chairman, said that the new system left space for a lot of loopholes and manipulation. He added that West Indies’ participation in the tri-series, however, was within their right.”When the ICC has left the matter to the countries to organise series among them, it has left a lot of space to be manipulated. I don’t see it as a conspiracy. We still have a chance. Nothing is happening outside of the rules. Everyone has the right.”Yunus said Bangladesh can strengthen their position by doing well against South Africa, but there won’t be enough time between the end of the South Africa series and the September 30 deadline to organise more ODIs, as they are also scheduled to host two Tests against Australia in October.”We don’t have much to do about this. There is no ICC FTP these days so it is not in their hands or ours. We also have a chance, if we can do well against South Africa,” Yunus said.”There isn’t much time and other teams are busy too. We will finish the South Africa series in August and Australia will come in September. There’s not much chance of a new series.”

Andrew Gale has relinquished the Yorkshire captaincy for all limited-overs cricket with immediate effect in the wake of a poor Twenty20 campaign which saw the county finish bottom of the North Group.

ESPNcricinfo staff05-Aug-2015Andrew Gale has relinquished the Yorkshire captaincy for all limited-overs cricket with immediate effect in the wake of a poor Twenty20 campaign which saw the county finish bottom of the North Group.Gale, 31, who has missed the last three Royal London One-Day Cup matches because of a wrist injury, will continue to lead Yorkshire in the LV= Championship, but his continued presence in one-day cricket is far from guaranteed. Yorkshire’s media release merely stated that he “will be available for selection for all other cricket as a batsman going forward.”Alex Lees has been given a short-term opportunity to prove himself in the role, but Yorkshire have delayed their decision about Gale’s long-term successor as the transition, which had been seen as a growing possibility at the end of the season, took place sooner than expected.Gale cut a frustrated, and somewhat exhausted, figure during Yorkshire’s T20 campaign as the high-profile signing of Australians Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell failed to deliver expected results and the county’s death bowling, in particular, became a glaring weakness.”After nearly six seasons of being club captain across all formats, I now feel the time is right to step down as List A and T20 captain and solely concentrate on captaining the Championship team,” Gale said.”I feel it’s beneficial for a fresh voice and new ideas in the shorter format of the game and with the current demands of the schedule I need to manage my body in preparation for Championship cricket. I still hope to play a large part in the club’s future success with the bat in the shorter format.”I’ve enjoyed every minute in leading the team: participating in the Champions League in South Africa was a highlight, along with reaching a One-Day semi-final. I would like to wish Alex Lees all the best in the short-term and whoever the club appoint in the long-term.”Director of cricket, Martyn Moxon, added: “Andrew has developed into an outstanding captain of Yorkshire. He leads from the front and is a very passionate and proud leader. To relinquish the captaincy of our one-day teams, therefore, has been a very difficult decision for him to make. However, the physical demands of the shorter format of cricket eventually take its toll and consequently affects the energy you require to lead the team in all formats.”Andrew will continue to captain the side in the LV= County Championship and I believe this decision will enable him to fulfil this role for many years to come.”

With the Champions League T20 discontinued due to limited public following, ESPNcricinfo takes a look at how the cancellation of the tournament will affect participating countries and their respective revenue systems

Firdose Moonda17-Jul-2015Why was the CLT20 culled and what is the most significant impact?
The CLT20 was cancelled because of the lack of viability from a broadcaster’s perspective. An IPL insider revealed that the tournament was worth almost a billion dollars over ten years but the broadcasters failed to recover even a tenth of that.The biggest impact following the cancellation of the CLT20 will be felt by non-Indian domestic teams, who have lost out on a three-way income stream. Non-Indian teams in the tournament received participation fees of US$500,000 per team, prize money and US$150,000 per player who chose to turn out for his IPL team instead of his domestic team, in the event that both qualified.”The CLT20 was a cash cow for international teams,” the source told ESPNcricinfo. “For a team like T&T, when a Samuel Badree or Dwayne Bravo is playing for other teams, the money they receive from them would change things immediately. The CLT20 was a game-changer for other teams around the world given the sheer amount of money.”

Impact on respective boards

BCCI
Of the three stakeholders – the BCCI, CA and CSA – the Indian board and its teams are the best off. The BCCI will receive US$190 million – more than half the $330 million settlement between the three boards and the broadcaster Star India – and the IPL teams will no longer have to spend thousands of dollars for retaining overseas players for the CLT20. “For Indian franchises, most of the amount would be spent towards retaining the services of a Pollard or de Villiers,” the source said.Cricket Australia
CA is the next biggest beneficiary. It will receive US$80 million following the closure of CLT20 and has a television rights deal to cushion it against other loss. Cricket Australia made somewhere in the region of US$25 million in each edition of the Champions League, and in the early seasons of the Big Bash League, it was this money that allowed the BBL project head Mike McKenna to say “domestic Twenty20 operations” were running at a profit.The broadcast networks, Channel Nine and Channel Ten, alleviated CA’s reliance on this revenue in 2013. The deal with Channel Ten for the BBL alone is worth $20 million per season, while Nine’s investment of $500 million over five years also strengthened the board’s position and the funds that could be doled out to the states and their BBL teams.Cricket South Africa
The South African board will receive US$60 million from the settlement but its franchises, who operate as separate companies to the national body, are concerned about their own affairs. CSA will split the participation fees of the two teams who took part in the tournament between all six of their franchises, who received R350,000 (US$28.778) a year.Several franchise CEOs described the funds coming in from CLT20 as “essential”, because the income-earning opportunities for South African franchises are limited. “The participation money from the CLT20 is worth more than we get in prize money for winning a domestic tournament,” Nabeal Dien, CEO of Cobras, said. For turning up in the CLT20, teams receive the equivalent of R2.4 million (US$200,000). In comparison, South Africa’s first-class competition carries a total prize money of R2 million (US 166,666).West Indies Cricket Board
The West Indies Cricket Board loses between $300,000 and 400,000 as a whole from the tournament being cancelled. A major portion, over 65% of the money they would earn from the CLT20 was channelled towards development in the territories with the remainder retained by the board.The WICB was also concerned about the impact on domestic teams. “It’s what funds the region will be devoid of, not the board. Everything does not just go in the WICB coffers as that money has to be shared,” Michael Muirhead, CEO of WICB said. “You can’t just say what money the board will be missing out on.”
He estimated that the funds that “the region” would no longer be privy to could be around “a couple hundreds of thousands of US Dollars.”Sri Lanka Cricket
For Sri Lanka, where the board owns all the franchises, the effect will be felt at national level. The SLC received the US$500,000 participation fee plus the amounts from players retained by IPL franchises. Around 5% of this money went into operational costs, another 5% to the players and the remaining 90% into SLC coffers.

Nottinghamshire’s season has been transformed since Peter Moores joined the coaching staff and trust in homegrown pace bowlers has played a large part in that

Jon Culley at Trent Bridge23-Aug-2015
ScorecardJake Ball – proof that Nottinghamshire can produce their own•Getty Images

With a third of the third day lost to rain and a forecast for more interruptions on day four, Nottinghamshire may be thwarted in their attempt to secure a fourth win in five in the Championship. Nonetheless, the transformation in their fortunes since late June has been notable.Since they were thrashed by an innings by Yorkshire at Headingley in June, Nottinghamshire have recorded a remarkable 11 wins from 14 completed matches across the three formats. Talk of relegation was in the air in the aftermath of the Leeds defeat; now there is a reasonable prospect of finishing second in the Championship, while a home quarter-final in the Royal London Cup on Tuesday offers the chance to move within one step of a second Lord’s final in three years.Much will be made of the improvement coinciding with the addition of Peter Moores to the coaching staff as a consultant. The future of the former England head coach beyond next month has yet to be determined. There will be a clamour, no doubt, among the members for him to stay.There are other factors at play, though, one of which is the emergence of a youthfully enthusiastic bowling attack, who are rising to the challenge presented by the two gaping holes left behind by Andre Adams and, latterly, Peter Siddle, and threatening finally to quieten the constant snipe that Nottinghamshire cannot produce their own players.Jake Ball, Brett Hutton and Luke Wood, who have shared seven wickets in this match so far and 74 between them for the Championship season, are all local boys. Ball is from Mansfield, while Hutton and Wood, although born in Doncaster and Sheffield respectively, played their club cricket in Nottinghamshire and developed through the county’s academy system.Although Wood is a relative newcomer, Ball and Hutton have had to wait several years for the opportunity to be regulars in the four-day side. Now they have made the breakthrough, they are finding that taking the field with trust behind them makes all the difference.”It is massive to have that,” Ball said after finishing with 3 for 35 after going for under two runs per over. “It is hard as a bowler when you go out there under pressure, thinking you must take wickets, because then you can strive too hard, bowl a bit fuller and go for a lot of runs.”It is nice to have that confidence, so you can just settle into a spell knowing you have a period of time in the team and that if you persevere with bowling the ball in the right areas then wickets will come.”There have been situations in the year when they could have left people out but they have stuck with us and it has given us the confidence to go out there are express ourselves and be positive.”Ball puts his own strides forward down both to that sense of security and a winter spent in the gym, working on his strength and fitness.”I was established in the one-day and Twenty20 teams but I wanted this to be a breakthrough season in the Championship,” he said.”I was meant to go to Sydney last winter but I took a decision to spend the winter working in the gym with the aim of getting stronger and it has paid off in that I’ve probably added a yard of pace.”I’ve only missed a couple of four-day games and the experience of playing at this level regularly has helped me improve.”I think we are all learning as a unit. Over the last couple of years we have lost some really experienced bowlers in Andre Adams and Darren Pattinson and last year Peter Siddle. This year we have had people coming in and out and found ourselves in situations where the youngsters have needed to play.”But we have come in and done a good job. I feel the younger bowlers are in on merit and that’s good to see. We would like to think we can develop as the Notts bowling attack for the future.”Ball’s bowling of Laurie Evans off an inside edge was an important early breakthrough after Warwickshire resumed on 100 for four, after which two wickets for Hutton and a second of the innings for Harry Gurney reduced Warwickshire to 171 for 8, Keith Barker and Chris Wright shoring things up with a stand of 65 before Barker perished reverse sweeping Samit Patel for an entertaining 71.

Zimbabwe will be searching for their first ODI series win at home for more than two years, but they will have to get past an Irish side who have built a reputation for never-say-die cricket

The Preview by Liam Brickhill in Harare10-Oct-2015

Match facts

Sunday, October 11
Start time 0930 local (0730 GMT)With conditions likely to suit spinners, young Wellington Masakadza will play a key role for Zimbabwe•ICC/Getty

Big picture

Zimbabwe and Ireland were neck and neck for 98.5 overs before the hosts’ No. 10, Tinashe Panyangara sealed the result of the first ODI with a gutsy hit down the ground. The second match will likely produce much the same sort of cricket as these teams match each other strength for strength. Zimbabwe will be searching for their first ODI series win at home for more than two years, but they will have to get past an Irish side who have built a reputation for never-say-die cricket. This could really go either way.The pivotal battle will be between the batsmen and spinners on either side. Despite the home side’s desire for faster tracks, the sheer amount of cricket played at Harare Sports Club over the last few months has sapped the freshness out of the square. Extraordinarily high temperatures in the lead-up to the second match will bake the pitches even further, and spin will be the method of control for both sides. Indeed, there were only 40 overs of seam bowled in the first match, and this number is likely to get even smaller.The batsmen who found success in the first ODI – Ed Joyce and Gary Wilson from Ireland, Craig Ervine and Sikandar Raza from Zimbabwe – all played in a generally similar manner, keeping the ball along the ground, aiming for the gaps and biding their time before going on the attack. Raza, who is usually more attacking in nature, was the only man playing out of character. This sort of attritional cricket, and the ability to manoeuvre the ball 360 degrees will be vital to the setting of a defendable total.Conditions are only likely to get more challenging for the batsmen as a heatwave hits the country over the weekend. With a larger crowd hopeful for a series win expected for this game Ireland will feel a long way from home when the temperatures soar on Sunday. Yet one wouldn’t put it past them to secure a series-leveling win.

Form guide

(last five completed matches, most recent first)
Zimbabwe WLWLL
Ireland LLLLW

In the spotlight

Zimbabwe has a strong history of cricketing families. The Flowers, the Strangs, the Rennies, the Whittalls, the Ervines, and the Masakadzas have graced Zimbabwean XIs. Wellington Masakadza, Hamilton and Shingi’s younger brother, debuted on Friday and impressed in all areas, pocketing two sharp catches at point and two wickets with his left-arm spin. He also shared in a vital 38-run partnership with Raza that steered Zimbabwe towards victory.Ireland have a pretty impressive left-arm spinner of their own. George Dockrell is only a year older than Masakadza at 23, but he’s vastly more experienced – Friday marked his 50th ODI for Ireland. He played a leading role in choking Zimbabwe’s middle order with a miserly 2 for 29, and might have had three if he had been able to hold on to a sharp return catch from Masakadza.

Team news

Zimbabwe are usually loathe to change a winning XI, and they will probably go with the same team. Perhaps the only question mark is over the place of Malcolm Waller, who didn’t have a great day in the field or with the bat on Friday and looked out of sorts. Yet dropping Waller after a bad day out would do nothing for his confidence, and would also necessitate tinkering unnecessarily with the batting order.Zimbabwe (possible): 1 Chamu Chibhabha, 2 Richmond Mutumbami (wk), 3 Craig Ervine, 4 Sean Williams, 5 Elton Chigumbura (capt), 6 Sikandar Raza, 7 Malcolm Waller, 8 Luke Jongwe, 9 Wellington Masakadza, 10 Tinashe Panyangara, 11 John NyumbuIreland probably won’t want to fiddle with the side that came so close to victory in the first match, but they need a win to keep the series alive and that will take some street-fighting spirit. With that in mind, they may draft Niall O’Brien in for Stuart Thompson, given the former’s grit and experience.Ireland (possible): 1 William Porterfield (capt), 2 Paul Stirling, 3 Ed Joyce, 4 Andrew Balbirnie, 5 Niall O’Brien, 6 Gary Wilson (wk), 7 Kevin O’Brien, 8 John Mooney, 9 Andrew McBrine, 10 George Dockrell, 11 Tim Murtagh

Pitch and conditions

The Met Department has issued a statement saying that daytime temperatures all over the country are expected to range between 35˚C and 43˚C, peaking as high as 45˚C in low-lying areas. Harare will likely be at the lower end of that spectrum, but the fiercely hot weather will undoubtedly be a factor. Expect a similar sort of pitch, suited to spin and hardworking batsmen.

Stats and trivia

• Sunday’s game will be Ireland’s 100th ODI. It will also be the 125th ODI to be held at Harare Sports Club – it is one of five grounds to have hosted more than 100 ODIs
• The average first-innings score in ODIs for sides batting first at Harare Sports Club this year is 253
• George Dockrell needs two more to become the leading wicket-taker in ODIs between Ireland and Zimbabwe

Quotes

“We need to be aware that there are players here who can take a game away from you if you drop the ball – literally.”
“This will work in mysterious ways, especially in the change room. We will perform better when we find ourselves in difficult situations.”

James Taylor will resume his Test career in Sharjah but Jos Buttler has experienced the contrasting feeling of being dropped

Andrew McGlashan in Sharjah31-Oct-2015The contrast in emotions was stark. In one corner you have James Taylor, finally about to resume his Test career after a gap of three years, and in the other Jos Buttler, a wonderkid of English cricket, who has endured the first major setback of his international career.It is a slightly curious situation that the demotion of a player in a very specific role – the wicketkeeper – has opened the door for the return of a specialist batsman, but Taylor can be thankful for the presence of Jonny Bairstow in the middle order.He has bided his time for three years but occasionally hasn’t hid his frustration at being continually overlooked since those two Tests against South Africa in 2012. Alastair Cook admitted he probably had some ill-feeling over the length of his wait for a second chance and said that he could not have done more to earn a recall.”He came in in 2012, had a couple of games and didn’t make the next tour. I’m sure he feels he was harshly treated, sometimes that’s the way of selection – it can work for you and against you,” Cook said. “He’s gone away over the last three years and he’s a much different player than what I remember him as. We saw that in the summer, the way he played the quick bowling in the one-day series against Australia in particular, that hundred, he looked a fantastic player. He’s come on tour and continued that.”So far in the series England have just the one hundred – Cook’s monumental 263 in Abu Dhabi – compared to four from Pakistan. In Dubai they paid the price for batsmen failing to convert fifties, especially in the first innings when Cook and Joe Root fell for 65 and 88 respectively while Bairstow made 46, and Taylor’s domestic conversion rate of hundreds into ‘daddy hundreds’ is something that has stood out.James Taylor will return to the Test side after a gap of more than three years•Getty Images

Six of Taylor’s 20 first-class hundreds have been doubles (although one against Loughborough MCCU does not carry the same weight as the others), his most recent being a career-best 291 against Sussex last season, while he has also made an unbeaten 242 for England Lions in Sri Lanka. As a comparison, three of Cook’s 50 first-class hundreds have been doubles (albeit all in Test cricket), four of Ian Bell’s 50 centuries have been doubles and three of Joe Root’s 15.”He’s itching to play and you don’t average 47-48 in first-class cricket without being a fine player,” Cook said. “One of his very strong points is that when he gets in he goes on to get big scores. We know how important first-innings runs are to set the game up.”Yet while Cook has been able to hand out good news to Taylor, the flip side is he has had to tell Buttler that, for the time being, his Test career is halted. Buttler’s form since the start of the Ashes – an average of 13.00 – had become too much for the middle order to carry and retaining him in the side could have done more harm than good to his keeping as well.It may be that he does not return until he has been able to put together a run of first-class matches for Lancashire at the start of next season, although he is still likely to feature for England in one-day and T20 cricket over the next six months, which includes the World T20 in India. Cook said Buttler needed to work out the way he wanted to play in Test cricket, but picked out Joe Root as an example of how a player can quickly turn their fortunes around.Root was left out of the final Ashes Test in 2013-14 at Sydney but returned five months later with a double-hundred against Sri Lanka, at Lord’s, since when he has averaged 76.11 with 2055 runs in 19 matches and risen to No. 1 in the rankings. In a recent interview with his mentor, Michael Vaughan, in the , Root cited being dropped in Australia as the turning point for him and Cook hopes similar will happen for Buttler.”He’ll have to go away and be really clear on how he wants to play in Test cricket,” Cook said. “He knows his game really well in T20 and one-day cricket, but he probably knows it less well Test cricket. It’s about finding his ideal method and sticking by that.”We all know the amount of talent he has got, you see him play an innings that everyone around the world says is amazing, but he’s not the first person who has come in, done pretty well then had a tough patch, been left out and come back stronger.”He only has to look at Joe Root, getting left out of that Sydney game and using it as motivation to be clear on how he wanted to play in every situation. He’s come back as a far better player because of it.”The other confirmed changed for England is the enforced one of a replacement for Mark Wood. Cook said it would be a late call on whether his spot would be taken by Liam Plunkett or a third spinner in Samit Patel on a surface that is expected to start very dry. However, Cook confirmed he had never expected Wood to play the entire series.”It’s a shame for him, but it’s part of his management process of his ankle,” Cook said. “I was told by medics that he wasn’t fit to play. It’s part and parcel of how much he can play on his ankle. He bowled really well in Dubai but we didn’t expect him to play all three games.”

If the sky is a reflection of mood, then the spirit in the South African camp should have lifted significantly lifted this weekend

Firdose Moonda in Nagpur22-Nov-2015If the sky is a reflection of mood, then the spirit in the South African camp should have lifted significantly this weekend. The drab damp they experienced in Bangalore was replaced by brilliant and bright blue in Nagpur. They could train without dodging drizzle, think sans the sound of soft splatter and see clearly. Even if they only thing they were looking at was themselves.”The guys have admitted to the fact that we made a few errors, especially in that first Test. We’d like to rectify it going forward,” JP Duminy said.South Africa’s mistakes have stemmed from their method. In Mohali, they allowed the pre-match talk to overwhelm them and played conservatively in conditions they had imagined to be much worse than they were. To compensate for that in Bangalore, they did the opposite. They attacked to try and establish some authority. Both times, they failed.Given that South Africa know the change in overhead conditions is unlikely to change things on the surface – as Duminy put it, “the expectancy is that it will turn,” – and given that their premeditation has proved faulty, the only thing left for South Africa to do is play as normally as possible. They have approached Nagpur with that cliché of it being “just another game,” knowing it is not just another game but a must-win if they are to pull off the ultimate coup and beat India on home soil.To do that, South Africa have to practice what they have been preaching for the last few years: that, as a batting group, they have improved against spin. There is already evidence that the likes of AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla, Faf du Plessis and JP Duminy can negotiate R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, but only de Villiers has done so in this series.Last year, Dean Elgar’s century in Galle showed that he could deal with sluggish, spinner-friendly surfaces and he has managed the same here, but calmness abandons him at crucial moments while Stiaan van Zyl and Dane Vilas remain raw and this is a new challenge for them. If South Africa are to prevail, collectively the batting will have to come together.”We understand that their strength lies in their spin and there’s no point in trying to deny that. It’s about having a game plan against it,” Duminy said. Part of that game plan has to involve allowing themselves to improvise on the day and play in the moment. “Not to play the person but to play the ball,” is how Duminy described it, talking specifically about Ashwin although that should apply to Jadeja too. India’s spin twins have had equal amounts of success with 12 wickets a piece.There’s no question they are South Africa’s biggest challenge and Duminy has promised South Africa are ready to meet it head on. “We always knew there would come a time when we would be challenged quite a bit. It’s how you come back from those challenges that is going to make us as a team. We pride ourselves on that – that we’re a resilient team, that we never back down from a challenge. We know it’s a tough challenge for us but we also know we have the capability of facing those challenges. We’ve done it before. We’ve come here and played well in all formats.”South Africa have never come from 1-0 down to win a series away from home before, but they have fought back to draw level, most recently in the UAE where they won in Dubai after being defeated in Abu Dhabi. They have also won several series in the subcontinent, including a Test and ODI series in Sri Lanka, to support Duminy’s theory. On this visit to India, they have already claimed two trophies. On their last visit, they won in Nagpur. So if memory is a reflection of mood, South Africa are more upbeat than the scoreline suggests they should be.