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Yorkshire and England legend passes away after long battle with esophageal cancer

ESPNcricinfo staff25-Dec-2021Ray Illingworth, England’s Ashes-winning former captain, head coach and chair of selectors, has died at the age of 89, following a battle with esophageal cancer.As an offspinning allrounder, Illingworth’s professional career spanned a remarkable 32 years, from his debut for Yorkshire in 1951 aged 19, via a decade at Leicestershire from 1969 to 1978, and ultimately to his final trophy-winning season as Yorkshire captain in 1983, when he guided the club to the Sunday League at the age of 51.In between whiles, he represented England in 61 Tests between 1958 and 1973, most memorably on the triumphant tour of Australia in 1970-71, where he led his side to a 2-0 series win in an uncompromising campaign that spanned seven scheduled Tests as well as the sport’s first ODI, in Melbourne in January 1971.After retirement, Illingworth remained a pivotal figure in English cricket, first as an uncompromising pundit on the BBC’s TV coverage, before rising to become national “supremo” in the mid-1990s, a position of unrivalled authority in which he served as coach and national selector.”We are deeply saddened to learn that Ray Illingworth has passed away,” wrote Yorkshire County Cricket Club on Twitter. “Our thoughts are with Ray’s family and the wider Yorkshire family who held Ray so dear to their hearts.”Aside from the tactical acumen with which he forged his reputation as a captain, Illingworth was a fine player in his own right, completing the 1000-run/100-wicket double in Test cricket, and finishing with 1,836 runs at 23.24 and 122 wickets at 31.20.Overall, he amassed 24,134 first-class runs and 2,072 wickets, and led Yorkshire to three successive County Championship victories from 1966 to 1968.ECB chief executive officer Tom Harrison said: “It’s always incredibly sad to lose a person who has given so much to the English game, and to the sport of cricket in general.”Ray was a superb cricketer, and his deep love, passion and knowledge for the game meant he continued to contribute long after his playing days had finished. We send our sympathy and warmest wishes to Ray’s friends and family at this difficult time.”In his final interview last month, Illingworth revealed his cancer diagnosis, and called for assisted dying to be legalised in the UK after witnessing the way his wife Shirley had suffered from the same disease.”I don’t want to have the last 12 months that my wife had,” Illingworth told the Telegraph. “She had a terrible time going from hospital to hospital and in pain. I don’t want that. I would rather go peacefully. I believe in assisted dying. The way my wife was, there was no pleasure in life in the last 12 months and I don’t see the point of living like that, to be honest.”

In the other semi-final, Tamil Nadu will be up against Saurashtra on December 24

Hemant Brar22-Dec-2021Services have qualified for their first-ever Vijay Hazare Trophy semi-final, thumping Kerala by seven wickets in Jaipur. The victory was set up by Diwesh Pathania, who picked up 3 for 19, and Ravi Chauhan, whose 95 off 90 balls ensured Services reached their target of 176 in just 30.5 overs.After electing to bowl, Pathania removed Mohammed Azharuddeen and Jalaj Saxena off successive balls to leave Kerala on 24 for 2 in the seventh over. Rohan Kunnummal and Vinoop Manoharan tried stabilising the innings by adding 81 in 105 balls before offspinner Pulkit Narang broke the stand by dismissing Manoharan for a 54-ball 41.Kunnummal took the side to 135 along with Sachin Baby, but once Baby fell, Kerala lost their last six wickets for 40 runs and were bowled out for a mere 175 in 40.4 overs. Only three of their batters could reach double digits, with Kunnummal top-scoring with 85 off 106 balls.Services didn’t have a great start either; Unnikrishnan Manukrishnan reduced them to 12 for 2 after two overs. But Ravi Chauhan and captain Rajat Paliwal dented any hopes of a Kerala comeback with a 154-run stand for the third wicket. By the time Chauhan got out, Services needed only ten more to the win, which they knocked off in the next six balls.The other quarter-final, between Saurashtra and Vidarbha, also followed a similar script. After being put in, Vidarbha were bowled out for 150 and Saurashtra chased that down in 29.5 overs with seven wickets in hand.Jaydev Unadkat and Chetan Sakariya’s new-ball spells had Vidarbha reeling at 9 for 3 in the eighth over. Faiz Fazal and Akshay Wadkar staged a brief recovery and took the side past 50. However, both Fazal and Wadkar fell in quick succession, and when Dharmendrasinh Jadeja dismissed Lalit Yadav and Yash Thakur off successive deliveries, the scoreboard read 86 for 8.That Vidarbha could still reach 150 was because of Apoorv Wankhade’s 72 off 69 balls, which included five fours and as many sixes. Along with Akshay Wakhare, Wankhede added 64 for the ninth wicket, in which Wakhare’s contribution was only 5. Legspinner Yuvraj Chudasama, though, picked up the last two wickets in the same over to deny Vidarbha a competitive total.It was not smooth sailing for Saurashtra, though. Aditya Thakare removed their openers Vishvaraj Jadeja and Harvik Desai cheaply, and when Sheldon Jackson, too, didn’t last long, making it 35 for 3 for his side, Saurashtra might have had some jitters.Prerak Mankad and Arpit Vasavada, however, allayed those fears with an unbroken 116-run stand to see the side home. Mankad struck 77 off 72 balls; he now has 339 runs in the tournament at an average of 113 and a strike rate of 114.91. Vasavada played the anchor’s role with a 66-ball 41.On Tuesday, Vinay Galetiya’s 3 for 19 rocked Uttar Pradesh before Prashant Chopra’s 99 anchored their 208-run chase to script a five-wicket win for Himachal Pradesh. In the second quarter-final, N Jagadeesan’s 102 and Shahrukh Khan’s unbeaten 79 off just 39 balls helped Tamil Nadu trounce Karnataka by 151 runs.Himachal Pradesh will now face Services in the first semi-final, while Tamil Nadu will be up against Saurashtra in the other. Both matches will be played in Jaipur on December 24.

England director looks to Woakes, Wood to play leadership roles with the ball in West Indies

Andrew Miller09-Feb-2022Andrew Strauss, England’s interim director of cricket, believes that the absence of Stuart Broad and James Anderson in the Caribbean will encourage other members of England’s Test team to assume leadership roles, and thereby provide more “options” for the incoming regime, as and when a new head coach and permanent MD are appointed later this year.Speaking at Lord’s on Wednesday, following the unveiling of a new-look Test squad shorn of eight players who featured in this winter’s 4-0 Ashes defeat in Australia, Strauss denied that Broad and Anderson’s voices had become too powerful within the England dressing-room. However, he singled out Chris Woakes and Mark Wood as two members of the bowling attack whom he believed had the capacity to grow in their absence.”It’s hard to criticise either Jimmy Anderson or Stuart Broad in how they are on and off the field,” Strauss said. “They are exceptional performers on the field and they are very professional off it, which is why they have played for so long.”What I do think is it gives an opportunity at the moment for people to stand up and play leadership roles they haven’t previously. We need a good solid spine to that team moving forward. We need leaders, not just the captain, and this provides an opportunity for some of the players to do that.”Teams always need a number of influential voices to push the team forward. Everyone expects the captain to do that but anyone who has played for England knows that influential voices behind the captain are important. In the bowling attack, we’re looking at the likes of Wood and Woakes to play more of that role. Expect a lot from Stokes and Bairstow as well. They have the chance to pull out the stops and help Joe Root.”Wood was England’s stand-out performer in the Ashes, claiming 17 wickets at 26.64 including a career-best 6 for 37 in the fifth Test at Hobart, but the retention of Woakes is a more contentious pick. His six Ashes wickets came at 55.33, and further exacerbated a split between his world-class record in home Tests (94 wickets at 22.63) and his unconvincing stats abroad (31 wickets at 52.38).However, the fact that the Tests in the Caribbean will be using a Dukes ball may have played to Woakes’ favour – as well as the fact that he can be relied upon to pitch the ball up and attempt to make it swing, an issue that was an apparent bone of contention between Root and his senior pairing after the second-Test defeat, when England’s captain publicly criticised the defensive lengths that they had bowled under the Adelaide floodlights.While Strauss did not directly address that apparent cause of disquiet, he acknowledged that the vagaries of the Kookaburra ball demand a certain ruthlessness when the window of opportunity opens. With that in mind, he hinted that England would once again be looking to develop the horses-for-courses, home-and-away stable of bowlers that had been a feature of Ed Smith’s tenure as national selector, prior to his removal from the set-up by Strauss’s predecessor, Ashley Giles, last year.Mark Wood was the stand-out performer for England in Australia•Getty Images

“When the odds are in your favour in Test cricket, you have the opportunity to really put pressure on the opposition and dominate those sessions,” Strauss said. “I think Australia did that exceptionally well against us and we weren’t good enough against their bowling. I don’t think it is a case of criticising our bowlers, I just feel like when you are learning to win as a team, you have to identify those sessions and you have to win them well.”When you are looking at selecting teams you need to make a distinction between England teams at home and away, because I think they are different things. Then, secondly, you are always looking at it strategically. What are our needs now between winning today and tomorrow and what are our best resources to do that?”What you want is variety in your bowling attack. When you look at the team we’ve selected, we’ve got Mark Wood who gives us that X-Factor of extra pace, and we’re looking at Saqib Mahmood as someone who can develop into that kind of bowler. Then you want the tall, hit-the-deck bowlers and ones who are able to swing the ball. We’re trying to have that variety in the attack, so whatever the conditions we can exploit this.”Despite the clarity of his decision-making, the timing of Anderson and Broad’s removal from the set-up has come under fire, not least from the former England captain Michael Atherton, who wrote in The Times that it was an “odd moment” to make such a call.England have won one Test series in the Caribbean since 1968 (coincidentally it came in 2004, the last time that neither man featured in an England Test squad), and Strauss was at the helm for the chaotic campaign in 2009, when he and Andy Flower came together as an emergency captain-coach partnership following the sacking of Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores.”I’ve been to the West Indies a number of times and it’s not an easy place to go and win, and England’s record there is not good,” Strauss said. “We definitely have to take that into account. When you’re selecting teams you’re always trying to balance winning today with winning tomorrow, and you’re trying to do both, quite frankly.”Thinking back to 2009 – and history doesn’t repeat itself, so you have to be careful not to draw those parallels – but one of the things we did early in that tour was just have a frank and honest conversation about where we were as a team, and that’s the sort of thing that will happen out there on the ground in the West Indies.Related

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• Anderson, Broad dropped from England Test squad for West Indies

• Lees, Fisher, Mahmood: Who are the England's new faces?

• 'Not the end of the road' for Stuart Broad and James Anderson – Andrew Strauss

• Do James Anderson and Stuart Broad really have the hunger for the rebuild? We're about to find out

“We need to get better. And there have been all sorts of reasons why you could mitigate our performance recently, around workload and bubbles and all that sort of stuff. But we’re looking forward here. No one likes to see English Test cricket where it is currently. That’s the players’ responsibility, the coaches’ responsibility and we need a degree of honesty and humility as well for us to move forward.”We feel like we’ve selected a team that is capable of winning out in the West Indies and that is absolutely the intention,” Strauss added. “But of course we’ve got half an eye on tomorrow – it’s the start of the new cycle and it would be remiss of us not to do it. My job is really to give that new director of cricket and coach options to choose from going forward and we’ve got that opportunity right at the moment.”When Strauss last came on board as England’s director of cricket, in the spring of 2015, he made a similarly big call about a big personality by finally ending speculation about Pietersen’s potential recall to the Test team – a decision that subsequently helped the incoming head coach, Trevor Bayliss, to start his tenure with a clean slate.However, Strauss insisted that to describe Anderson and Broad’s longevity as an “issue” that needed similar resolution did a disservice to their outstanding contributions to the Test team.”I don’t see it as an issue to be ‘dealt with’,” Strauss said. “I think that’s very harsh on James Anderson and Stuart Broad. They’ve given everything to England cricket over a long period of time. The new director of cricket and coach will have their own strategic ideas and that’s absolutely right for them to go in the direction they feel is fit. What I’m trying to do is just create options for them.”After speculation that Alec Stewart and Richard Dawson might be drafted in as England’s stand-in coach for the Caribbean tour, Strauss eventually opted for Paul Collingwood, Silverwood’s deputy, to provide continuity. He will be backed up by Marcus Trescothick, Jon Lewis, Jeetan Patel and Carl Hopkinson for the series and, like Flower before him in 2009, Strauss acknowledged that Collingwood had a big opportunity to stake his claim for the role in the long term.”It’s a five week tour, and it feels like there’s a distinct advantage of having someone who has been part of that set-up already,” Strauss said. “Paul Collingwood obviously deputised for Chris Silverwood out in the West Indies with the T20 team and had done a very good job out there by all accounts.”He is definitely one we should have an eye on moving forward for the head coach’s role. It’s an opportunity for him to understand what that job entails and to start this process with the red-ball reset as well. He’s the right sort of character to do that. He’s enthusiastic, he’s got bundles of energy, he’s very clear on how he sees the England Test team playing.”

Heartbroken batter wants to stay with the team and play their final Ranji Trophy league match on March 3

Nagraj Gollapudi28-Feb-2022Baroda batter Vishnu Solanki has decided to carry on playing the Ranji Trophy despite the heartbreaking loss of his father and his day-old daughter in a span of two weeks.On February 11, while in quarantine in Cuttack with the rest of Baroda squad, Solanki received the news that his wife had given birth to a girl. Being a first-time parent Solanki, 29, was ecstatic. The batter had made headlines in the 2020-21 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy when he hit 16 runs off the final three balls of the quarter-final to stun Haryana in a photo finish. He was ready for the Ranji Trophy, which had returned after a hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.However, on February 12, Solanki was woken up close to midnight by the Baroda team manager Dharmendra Arothe, who told the player that his day-old daughter had died. The next day, a distraught Solanki packed his bags and flew back home. He missed Baroda’s first match of league phase, against Bengal, which was played between February 16 and 19.Solanki returned to Cuttack on February 17 to prepare for Baroda’s second match, against Chandigarh. Having swallowed the pain of his newborn’s death, Solanki showed even greater powers of resilience by scoring an unbeaten 103 at the end of the second day of the match.”He said he had dedicated the century to his daughter,” team manager Arothe told ESPNcricinfo on February 25. Solanki did not even get to hold his little girl while she was alive.Then, on Sunday morning, Solanki was once again struck by tragedy. Around 8.40am, Arothe received a call that said the player’s father had died. With the match, in its final day, starting at 8.45am, Arothe relayed the information initially to Baroda captain Kedar Devdhar via Ninad Rathwa, the 12th man. Rathwa, who is a good friend of Solanki, then told him the news and watched him leave the field. According to Arothe, Solanki’s dad, who was 75, was ailing for a while and in hospital for about two months.Chandigarh and Baroda wore black arm bands on Sunday. The match referee Amit Pathak also gave Solanki permission to use the phone in the dressing room to talk with his family. “He saw the funeral of his dad virtually from the dressing room,” Arothe said. Both teams along with the match officials also observed two minutes’ silence in the memory of two family members Solanki had lost.The Baroda Cricket Association has promised him all the help he might need, including flying him back home, but Solanki informed the team management he wants to stay and play their last league game of the season, against Hyderabad, starting on March 3.Former Mumbai captain and current BCA chief Shishir Hattangadi paid tribute to Solanki, tweeting, “A story of a cricketer who lost his new born daughter a few days ago. He attends the funeral and gets back to represent his team to get a hundred. His name may not make social media ‘likes’, but for me #vishnoosolanki is a real life hero. An inspiration!”

The first-class competition will resume after the IPL in a bio-bubble, with the final scheduled for June 20-24

ESPNcricinfo staff28-Apr-2022Bengaluru will host the Ranji Trophy knockouts from June 4, with the final scheduled to run from June 20-24, in a bio-bubble.It is understood that there will be no mandatory quarantine, but all teams will have to arrive with a negative RT-PCR test.Forty-one-time Ranji champions Mumbai will face Uttarakhand while Karnataka are pitted against Uttar Pradesh. Bengal will face Jharkhand and Punjab will run into Madhya Pradesh in the other two quarter-finals. Both the semi-finals are then scheduled for June 12-16 following three days of rest.The first phase of the Ranji Trophy, which consisted of the league phase and one pre-quarter final, was held before the start of IPL 2022. The Ranji Trophy was shelved in 2020-21 because of the pandemic. It was the first time that India’s premier first-class competition had not featured in the calendar since its inception in the 1934-35 season.

Ranji knockouts schedule

June 4-8, First quarter-final: Bengal vs Jharkhand
June 4-8, Second quarter-final: Mumbai vs Uttarakhand
June 4-8, Third quarter-final: Karnataka vs UP

June 4-8, Fourth quarter-final: Punjab vs MP
June 12-16, First semi: Winner of QF1 vs QF4
June 12-16, Second semi: Winner of QF2 vs QF3
June 20-24: Final

On Thursday, the opener will face Sunrisers Hyderabad for the first time since leaving the franchise

ESPNcricinfo staff04-May-2022David Warner has emphasised the need for the top three to contribute big runs as Delhi Capitals look to escape the lower half of the table and secure a playoffs spot in IPL 2022. Capitals are currently seventh among the ten teams with eight points from nine matches, but could move up as far as fourth, potentially, if they beat Sunrisers Hyderabad on Thursday.Given the sheer number of teams still in contention to finish among the top four, Warner believes Capitals may have to win all their remaining games to qualify.”Moving forward from where we are, we’ve obviously got to win every game to make it to the finals,” Warner said in an official Delhi Capitals release. “There’s strong competition, two teams we have got to come up against – Punjab Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad, who are pretty much similar points to us.”We could get that upper hand if we beat Sunrisers. We then go into the top four, but obviously, we need RCB [Royal Challengers Bangalore, who face Chennai Super Kings on Wednesday night] to start losing as well. It’s quite a congested table, but exciting for the rest of the tournament.”Warner is Capitals’ highest run-getter this season, with 264 runs at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 156.21. His opening partner Prithvi Shaw is just behind him, with 259 runs at 28.77 and 159.87. Both fell for single-digit scores in Capitals’ last match, a narrow defeat to Lucknow Super Giants.”We’ve got off to a good start,” Warner said of his partnership with Shaw. “In the last match, we’ve fallen cheaply, both of us, and that can happen in this game because we have to play that high-level brand of cricket in the power play.”He emphasised, however, that he, Shaw and No. 3 Mitchell Marsh would need to make big scores and win games for Capitals.”I think the most important thing is myself or him [Shaw] or Mitch scoring an 80 or 90 or even a hundred if we can, to post good totals or chase down big totals, and that’s the key,” Warner said. “I think that’s the focus for every other team. The teams who are doing well are scoring big runs at the top of the order. And, two players are actually scoring big in the games, they are the ones that you really need to shine to win these games.”Thursday’s match will be Warner’s first against Sunrisers since leaving the franchise at the end of a difficult 2021 season. Warner remains Sunrisers’ highest run-getter in the IPL, with 4014 runs in 95 matches at 49.55 and 142.59, with two hundreds and a whopping 40 fifties.”My thoughts are like every other game,” Warner said, “just keep going through your processes till you have to do it, training and just get ready for the game.”

“Maybe Rahul temperamentally is not suited to take the responsibility where he is the man who has got to get the job done,” says former India batter

ESPNcricinfo staff26-May-20224:28

Vettori: Coaches need to ‘destigmatise risk’ in KL Rahul’s mind

Lucknow Super Giants captain KL Rahul should bat “quicker rather than longer”, “take the game on”, and have “fun” while batting instead of trying to make his team win on his own, according to ESPNcricinfo’s experts Sanjay Manjrekar and Daniel Vettori.On Wednesday, Rahul scored 79 off 58 balls against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Eliminator of IPL 2022, but failed to take Lucknow Super Giants home in a 208-run chase. Manjrekar said Rahul is “temperamentally not suited” for the responsibility of being the main batter in the side, especially when he is the captain in the IPL.Related

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Speaking on ESPNcricinfo’s show T20 Time:Out, Manjrekar said: “We’ve seen enough of KL Rahul to now know that when he becomes this player, the captain, the key player of the side… I mean Virat Kohli loves that kind of responsibility. Dhoni loved it. I think Rohit Sharma, barring this season, generally likes that kind of responsibility. Maybe KL Rahul temperamentally is not suited to take this kind of responsibility where he is the man who has got to get the job done. They are just made of different mettle and maybe KL Rahul isn’t.”As a coach, I would drill that into his head to tell him that I’m not expecting you to win the game. You just go and have fun, and funnily enough, you’ll see the results start coming and that’s why I believe he has a much better strike rate at the international level rather than at the IPL level because he’s just one of the many batters. He’s playing alongside Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma and the others, so he just goes out there and expresses himself.”Manjrekar called Rahul’s knock a “third-gear innings”. In the last few years at the IPL, Rahul has batted more like an anchor than the aggressor he is when playing for India. His strike rate in the last four IPL seasons has been 134.53 whereas at international level he scores at 142.49 overall.”KL Rahul’s innings is something that we’ve seen before when he was captaining Punjab Kings, for example, [and they] would fall short of a run-chase,” he said. “The scenario would be the same. You’ll have KL Rahul batting right till the very end, they would have lost three or four wickets and people like [Nicholas] Pooran would come in like Evin Lewis came in the last two overs and Krunal [Pandya] in the last, [Marcus] Stoinis in the last three. So [for them], it’s a bit working with the crumbs that are left. You’ve got to come in and try to make up for the lack of pace that the innings had.1:48

KL Rahul: Our fielding let us down really badly in this game

“KL Rahul himself has the ability to do that. You see every time he decided to play the big shot, it came off. He played a couple of terrific shots against [Josh] Hazelwood. He can do it when he wants to but he just has this very deep-rooted belief, or an attitude, or an approach, that he wants to bat longer rather than quicker.”If I was his coach, I would just take that decision out of his hand even if he’s the captain, for we’ve seen a lot of games where the teams would benefit immensely if KL Rahul just batted quicker rather than longer.”This was a strange season for Rahul. When batting first, he scored 425 runs in eight innings at an average of 85.00 and a strike rate of 148.60. But while chasing, those numbers dropped to 191 runs in seven knocks at an average of 27.28 and a strike rate of 113.01.”I did focus on my stats that this season I didn’t score many runs in the second innings,” Rahul said after the match, “but this was a big game and when you come to a big game, you forget whatever you did in the last 14 games. You try to play this game as a fresh game and you try to give your best. I tried the same even today.”Yeah, I didn’t score too many runs in the second innings this season but in other seasons I have really done well, and I enjoy chasing. Sometimes you are not as successful. But it’s a team game and the team really stepped up when we were chasing. We won a few games but generally overall in this season, we didn’t do well while chasing, so it’s something we need to learn from.”1:09

Manjrekar: No point in having depth if one batter bats through

In a match where Rajat Patidar scored 112 not out off just 54 balls, Rahul’s knock was much slower, though both were playing different roles for their respective sides. Vettori, though, was of the opinion that Rahul is good enough to score as quickly without taking as many risks.”If you tell him, ‘You being more aggressive at the top is not risky because you’re such a good player, there’s no reason for you to want to bat this long, there’s no reason for you to want to bat in the style because you’re good enough to bat any way you want.’ And you’re not asking for anything that he can’t do and I think that’s the key to it that.”Like Patidar today took risks. KL Rahul can take half as many risks as Patidar did and still be incredibly successful. So I think it’s just what I said at the start, destigmatising risk. This is not a risky style of play for you. Just take the game on. That will lead to more wins than trying to manage or navigate a way through a chase.”So if you think about this, a couple of more risks through the powerplay and all of a sudden that [becomes] 60 off 42, [which] looks so much better. And it takes so much pressure off the likes of Deepak Hooda because when we got to that back end, it was just like ‘I’ve got to go after every ball.’ That means the bowlers know exactly what you’re doing, whereas early on, the bowlers are still trying to guess your intent, and I think you [Super Giants] let them get away with that at that stage.A lot of times, a weak middle order is cited as the reason behind Rahul’s conservative approach, but Vettori felt Rahul needed to trust his team-mates more.”Quinton de Kock has proved it enough, Deepak Hooda has proved it enough. You’ve got other players that you could give more opportunities to, Stoinis, [Jason] Holder, Evin Lewis. It’s Sanjay’s point around, go out there have some fun. Pretend almost like you’re playing for India and then trust everyone around you. It’s not all on you. Whatever you contribute will be good enough.”

The matches will also be shown on ICC TV free of cost

Mohammad Isam21-Jun-2022Local channel has bagged the broadcasting rights for the remainder of Bangladesh’s tour of West Indies, starting with the St Lucia Test from June 24. The channel’s chief executive Ishtiaque Sadeque confirmed the good news for the fans in Bangladesh. Later, the ICC also confirmed to the BCB that they will show the rest of the West Indies-Bangladesh series free of cost on ICC TV.The latest developments will come as a relief to Bangladesh fans following a TV blackout of the first Test in Antigua, as none of the Bangladeshi channels picked up the West Indies tour. It was the first time since 2001 that a Test match involving Bangladesh wasn’t shown on TV in the country.Negotiations between the rights-holders, Total Sports Management, and Bangladesh’s TV networks had failed to agree on a deal. The Antigua Test was at first only available on the ICC streaming channel for a subscription fee, before the BCB showed the match on days three and four on their Facebook and YouTube channels only for Bangladeshi viewers.It had reached this point after or , incidentally the two channels that have been showing Bangladesh’s international matches in recent years, didn’t land a deal with TSM. Both channels have reportedly bought the BCB’s broadcasting rights for 2021-23 from , who had initially bought it from the board for $19.07 million last year.The possibility of a TV blackout had always been likely from earlier this year when the Bangladesh broadcasting rights were only picked up a week from the start of the New Zealand-Bangladesh Test series in January. Last year, the Bangladesh-Australia T20I series wasn’t aired in Australia due to a lack of interest. The last time a Bangladesh Test wasn’t shown on TV was back in 2001, during the Asian Test Championship.After the second Test in St Lucia, Bangladesh will play West Indies in three T20Is on July 2, 3 and 7, and three ODIs on July 10, 13 and 16.

England spinners share six wickets as SA’s spirited chase is undone with room to spare

Firdose Moonda18-Jul-2022England completed a clean sweep over South Africa after scoring their fifth-highest ODI total and out-spinning the visiting line-up. Tammy Beaumont led the batting effort, with her ninth ODI century, in a perfect riposte to being left out of the Commonwealth Games squad, while Charlie Dean and Emma Lamb took six wickets between them.That means a target over 300 has still yet to be chased in women’s ODIs but, if it’s any consolation to them, South Africa put on their best batting performance of the series. Laura Wolvaardt scored her 29th ODI half-century, Marizanne Kapp her 11th and Chloe Tryon her 10th, but no South African batter managed three figures. England had centurions in all three matches, which was ultimately the difference between the two teams.In scorching weather, with the mercury hitting 35 degrees in parts of the country, Sune Luus chose to field first but whether the heat led to the lethargy in South Africa’s effort is debatable. With controversy over Lizelle Lee’s retirement still stalking the squad, South Africa struggled to focus in the field and were unable to maintain consistent lines and lengths.As has been the case throughout the series, they offered too much width and were ill-disciplined, sending down four no-balls and 15 wides in total and conceding 47 fours and three sixes – 206 runs in boundaries. For comparison, England’s attack were hit for 30 fours and four sixes – 144 runs.Perhaps even the best efforts of South Africa’s attack would not have been able to stop Beaumont, who was a casualty of England’s youth-first policy for the forthcoming T20Is but showed the value she adds with an innings of authority. Beaumont and opening partner Lamb brought out the cut and the expansive drive to bring up England’s fifty in the ninth over and finish the Powerplay on 66 without loss.South Africa had the opportunity to get rid of both them relatively early on. Lamb was on 34 when left-arm spinner Nonkululeko Mlaba induced an edge but Trisha Chetty could not hold on. Three overs later, Lamb and Beaumont brought up their century stand, to mark the first time England have had consecutive three-figure opening partnerships, and then South Africa’s wheels truly came off.Danielle Wyatt played a neat cameo of 33 off just 14 balls•Getty Images

Lamb was on 54 when she launched Mlaba to long-on, where Andrie Steyn put down a simple catch. Off the next delivery Beaumont, having just reached fifty, offered Mlaba a return catch, which was dropped. And at the end of that over, Chetty fluffed a simple run-out chance when Lamb set off for a single that wasn’t there, Wolvaardt fired in a flat throw and Chetty did not collect cleanly. If that didn’t hurt enough, England rubbed it in as they took 26 runs off the next two overs including Beaumont hitting Tryon over the sightscreen for six.South Africa had some joy when Lamb tried to lap Shabnim Ismail and instead lost her off stump, to fall for 65 and finish as the series’ leading run-scorer with 234 at 78.00. The dismissal did nothing to slow Beaumont down, however – she flicked, drove and pulled Ismail for three successive boundaries to get England to 172 for 1 at halfway.Beaumont brought up a century off 93 balls with a single off Mlaba. By then, Sophia Dunkley had settled in too and the pair shared in a stand of 87 for the second wicket, with Dunkley going on to her fourth ODI fifty. Danni Wyatt’s cameo of 33 runs off 14 balls included 24 runs off Nadine de Klerk’s seventh over to leave her with match figures of 1 for 87 in eight overs. England scored 97 runs in the last 10 overs to leave South Africa with a mountain to climb.Getty Images

Wolvaardt started the reply strongly and was the major contributor in a 61-run opening stand with Andrie Steyn. Dean bowled Steyn to make the first breakthrough but South Africa ended the Powerplay on 69 for 1, with Wolvaardt well set. She brought up fifty with her 10th boundary, a cracking cover-drive, but her poor conversation rate suffered another blow when she was trapped on the pad, playing the sweep against Dean too early.Luus had the opposite problem and was too late to play a shot when she cleared the front pad to hit Lamb to the leg side and was also out lbw, and when Lara Goodall chipped Alice Davidson-Richards to mid-on, South Africa’s chase was all but up.Kapp and Tryon kept them in it with a 110-run fifth-wicket stand and England may just have been getting worried at 219 for 4 in the 36th over when Lamb offered width, Kapp went for a big stroke and sent a catch straight to point. South Africa lost their last six wickets for 43 runs and were bowled out with 4.2 overs remaining.

Hales, Vince, Topley, Potts, Carse, Parkinson, Gregory, Mills, Gleeson and Pope have also nominated themselves

Alex Malcolm27-Jul-2022Liam Livingstone looks likely to be a Platinum pick in the upcoming BBL overseas draft as the headline act of 70 Englishmen who have nominated themselves, but availability will be a key consideration for teams, with a number of players likely to head to other leagues halfway through the tournament.Livingstone is set to be the most sought-after English player among a group that includes Alex Hales, James Vince, Tymal Mills, Reece Topley, Matthew Potts, Brydon Carse, Lewis Gregory, Matt Parkinson, Richard Gleeson and Ollie Pope.The nominees who are also involved in England’s current white-ball set-up are notionally available for the whole tournament, given England do not have any international limited-overs games scheduled in either December 2022 or January 2023, with their first series of the new year set to be an ODI series in South Africa that is likely to be played in February after the new South Africa T20 league is completed.England have a Test series in Pakistan set for early December meaning that the likes of Pope, Potts and possibly Parkinson could be late arrivals to the BBL if all three tour Pakistan.But of greater concern for the BBL is the fact that a number of English players, including Livingstone and Hales, are likely to leave the BBL halfway through to play in the proposed UAE T20 league in January, given they are likely to earn substantially higher wages for a shorter commitment there.Related

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The BBL is scheduled to run from December 13 to February 4, but South Africa and UAE leagues are set to start in January. The UAE league is proposed to run from January 6 to February 12. Both Ricky Ponting and Usman Khawaja raised concerns last week about overseas players only nominating for the first half of the BBL, leaving themselves open to joining the other leagues and leaving the BBL short on star overseas players.The BBL is offering AUD340,000 (roughly £196,000) to a select group of Platinum picks, while those who have nominated themselves in the Gold category are set to earn approximately AUD260,000 (roughly £150,000). Those are guaranteed wages no matter how many games the players have nominated themselves for.The challenge for BBL clubs is to evaluate if the likes of Livingstone and Hales are worth selecting in the draft at those prices if they are only available for the first half of the tournament, with a large portion of each wage to count in the AUD 1.9 million salary cap.Livingstone played in the BBL two seasons ago with Perth Scorchers and has expressed an interest in playing there again. Scorchers are also interested in having him back but they can’t use a retention pick because he did not play last year and they have pick No. 6 in the draft order, which means Livingstone could well be snapped up in the first five picks.Alex Hales could be a retention pick for Sydney Thunder•Getty Images

Sydney Thunder can use their retention pick to retain Hales given he did play for them last season. They have already lost one half of one of the most successful opening duos in BBL history with Khawaja joining Brisbane Heat. If Hales is only available for the first half of the tournament, Thunder will need to find not one but two openers to fill the gap.There are a number of other English players who are eligible for a retention pick. Evans and Mills could be retained by Scorchers. Vince could be a retention pick with Sydney Sixers having had a very successful relationship with that club in recent years. Topley (Melbourne Renegades), Joe Clarke (Melbourne Stars), Jordan Cox (Hobart Hurricanes), Iain Cockbain (Adelaide Strikers) and George Garton (Adelaide Strikers) could also be retention picks for clubs having all played last season. But clubs only get one retention pick, with Strikers likely to take Rashid Khan.Like Livingstone, Jake Ball (Sydney Sixers), Danny Briggs (Adelaide Strikers), Benny Howell (Melbourne Renegades), Gleeson (Melbourne Renegades) and Gregory (Brisbane Heat) have all played in the BBL previously but are ineligible for a retention pick because they did not play last season.There are 98 players in total who have nominated themselves for the draft so far. Livingstone looks set to join Faf du Plessis, Kieron Pollard and Rashid among the Platinum picks, which are to be decided by the BBL.There are likely to be a host of Pakistan players nominating themselves in the coming weeks although there is some doubt about the availability of some of them due to international commitments. Pakistan host a Test series against England in early December and then two Tests and three ODIs against New Zealand, which are likely to run into the third week in January and will also be part of the World Cup Super League. The PSL is set for February meaning it would be virtually impossible for Pakistan’s multi-format players to come to the BBL, although those not involved in the Test matches could be available for the first half of the tournament.

All current draft nominations

Afghanistan: Rashid Khan, Qais Ahmad, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Waqarullah Ishaq, Izharulhaq Naveed, Naveen-ul-Haq, Hazratullah ZazaiEngland: Colin Ackermann (also Netherlands), Rehan Ahmed, Martin Andersson, Gus Atkinson, Josh Baker, Sonny Baker, Jake Ball, James Bracey, Danny Briggs, Henry Brookes, Brydon Carse, Matthew Carter, Jordan Clark, Joe Clarke, Josh Cobb, Ian Cockbain, Jordan Cox, Mason Crane, Matt Critchley, Liam Dawson, Brett D’Oliveira, Ben Duckett, Jacobus Leus Du Plooy, Stephen Eskinazi, Laurie Evans, Matt Fisher, James Fuller, George Garton, Richard Gleeson, Lewis Gregory, Sam Hain, Alex Hales, Miles Hammond, Tom Hartley, Jack Haynes, Freddie Heldreich, Tom Helm, Ryan Higgins, Max Holden, Benny Howell, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Danny Lamb, Jack Leaning, Jake Lintott, Liam Livingstone, Lewis McManus, Ben Mike, Tymal Mills, Daniel Mousley, Steven Mullaney, Callum Parkinson, Matt Parkinson, David Payne, Michael Pepper, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Ben Raine, Adam Rossington, George Scrimshaw, John Simpson, Prem Sisodiya, Olly Stone, Tommy Taylor, Reece Topley, Liam Trevaskis, James Vince, Joe Weatherley, Ross Whiteley, Chris Wood, Luke Wood, Saif ZaibNew Zealand: Colin Munro, Todd AstleSouth Africa: Faf du Plessis, Marchant de Lange, Rilee Rossouw, David Wiese (also Namibia)West Indies: Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, Sheldon Cottrell, Chemar Holder, Akeal Hosein, Evin Lewis, Anderson Phillip, Khary Pierre, Ravi Rampaul, Sherfane Rutherford, Jayden Seales, Kevin Sinclair, Tion Webster, Nyeem Young