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Dheeraj Jadhav carried his bat through Assam’s first innings, helping them to a lead of 113 on day three in Guwahati, before the bowlers took over. Jadhav came into the day on 102 and finished on 165 32 overs later when Assam were bowled out for 327. That top effort was then backed up by the home side bowlers who kept Andhra to 153 for 5 by stumps, a lead of just 40. Andhra were carried by Hemal Watekar’s 59 and an opening stand of 108 with Prasad Reddy. But then it all started to unravel as Assam their spinner Arlen Konwar and Sairaj Bahutule, shared five wickets. Reddy’s 40 encompassed 164 minutes and 121 deliveries and when he was snapped up by Konwar at 127 for 4, Andhra were slipping further towards defeat and relegation.
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Amit Mishra’s economical five-wicket haul handed Haryana a 72-run lead, and that had been extended to 260 by the close on day thee in Rohtak. Mishra continued from where he left off on day two, dismissing Debabrata Chowdhury and Subal Chowdhury to complete his 19th first-class bag of five or more. Tripura’s last three wickets did well to put on 56, but a 48-run opening stand allowed Haryana pile up the pressure and the lead. Nitin Saini, the wicketkeeper-batsman, struck 61 before he fell to Wilkin Mota, and by that time the lead was 196. Ankit Rawat and Sumeet Sharma extended that watchfully.

Shane Watson is fast learning that friendly fire isn’t always so friendly. Having spent the majority of his career pursuing a Test berth, Watson now finds himself in the uncharted waters of incumbent status entering an Australian summer – and the internal challengers are circling.From the moment he was crowned Australia’s new Test opener at Edgbaston earlier this year, Watson expected the likes of Phillip Hughes, Phil Jaques and Chris Rogers to launch campaigns to usurp the throne. What he hadn’t counted on was the overwhelming push from his adopted state’s media to see him replaced with Hughes, his New South Wales team-mate, for the opening Test against West Indies, beginning at the Gabba on Thursday.With anonymity no longer his ally, Watson is coming to terms with life with a bullseye on his back. Half-centuries in each of his first three Test innings as opener might have afforded him a degree of breathing space but, cast as “the other man” in a regional love-affair with the swashbuckling Hughes, the prevailing mood is that Watson is a man pursued.”That was definitely interesting,” Watson said of the pro-Hughes campaign. “I didn’t score as many runs as I would’ve liked during the Ashes, but I was able to make a pretty good fist of it. There has been a lot of pressure there from the media pushing Phil Hughes, but in the end I’ve got the opportunity. I’ve just got to be performing anyway, whether it’s Phil Hughes or Phil Jaques or any other batsman in Australia pushing me. But this is certainly all a new experience for me.”Watson’s place at the top of the order is not only a matter of debate in the nation’s newspapers. Andrew Hilditch and Ricky Ponting have in the past week offered contrasting forecasts of his long-term place in the side – Hilditch extolling his opening credentials, Ponting viewing him in a more traditional allrounder’s role.”Down the track, we all think that with Shane’s style of play, he would be suited down in the middle order and being able to give us 15 to 20 overs as well,” Ponting said. ”That’s the cricketer I always thought he would be. He can bat pretty much anywhere in the order which is terrific for us, but the difficulty that presents is how many overs are you going to push to get out of him knowing that he’s going to have to bat at the start of the second innings?”Ponting’s point is a salient one. Over the past two years the world has witnessed the disastrous effects modern cricket scheduling has had on the game’s leading allrounders – Andrew Flintoff, Dwayne Bravo and Jacob Oram have all spent extended periods on the sidelines with injury – and Australia would be reckless to expose Watson to a similar fate.Watson, of course, is all too aware of the physical demands placed upon allrounders. Back, shoulder and hamstring problems were among the litany of injuries that prevented him from realising his potential for much of the past decade, but a revised training regime has given him confidence that the worst might be behind him.Speaking at the Allan Border Field in Brisbane this week, Watson had ample opportunity to reflect upon the myriad twists his career has taken in recent years. It was at that facility three years ago that he sustained the Ashes-ending hamstring injury that jeopardised his international career. It is at the same practice field he now prepares to entrench himself as a first-picked member of the Test side, having survived and thrived through one of the most demanding years in the history of Australian cricket”I wasn’t in a great place there for a while,” he said. “I thought I was going to have to give up being an allrounder. For me to play for Australia, I thought it was going to take me a lot longer to get where I wanted to go. Being an allrounder gave me an opportunity to narrow the number of people you’re up against. I wasn’t really thinking about quitting cricket, because I knew I had my batting, but deep down I knew the things I could achieve as an allrounder.”I’ll have to be clever about how I go about things, there’s no doubt. Being an allrounder and seeing the unfortunate thing that’s happened to Freddie and other allrounders around the world, it just rams home the importance of getting my body just right. For me to be able to get through the last six months of cricket and to feel really good and fresh after it, it’s been very rewarding to know the things I’ve done especially over the last two years are paying big dividends. It puts my mind at ease because at a certain stage I was doubting whether I was ever going to get an opportunity to see how good I could be on the international stage.”And, so, to the next phase of his career. Having secured his place in the Test XI, Watson is now refining his technique to withstand the challenges posed by the game’s elite new-ball bowlers. His successes in England were tempered by a tendency to lose his wicket shortly after breaks in play – either trapped on the crease or playing around his front pad – and Watson is working to sharpen his footwork before his duels with Jerome Taylor, Dwayne Bravo and co.”It is such a big challenge opening the batting and just playing a lot of cricket back to back,” he said. “It definitely has been a work in progress to work on certain aspects of my game. Some have come along quicker than I expected, but a few other little things creep in like the mental side of switching on and switching off every ball and not coming back from a break and getting out. That’s the continual challenge and the thing I love about cricket. I feel that’s a step along the way to making me a better player.”

Brian Lara has given his support to the captain Chris Gayle and called for an end to the debate over who should lead West Indies. Gayle was in charge before the players’ strike and was reappointed for the tour of Australia, which begins with a game against Queensland on Wednesday.While Viv Richards said Gayle would have to show a different attitude Down Under, Lara, another former captain, believes Gayle is the right man for the job. “Obviously we have to gather our support and put it behind Chris,” Lara told CMC Sports. “There is no reason to debate or go on about it.”He’s the one heading to Australia, we’re going to be playing against one of the best teams in the world, obviously losing the Ashes they are going to come looking for revenge on anyone, and we don’t need to be mulling over the fact of who should be captain or who shouldn’t be captain. Chris Gayle is going to get my support and I hope he’s going to get everyone’s support.”Lara said Gayle, who has led the side in 14 Tests, has achieved some good things while in charge, including winning a Test in South Africa. However, Gayle has been criticised in the Caribbean for his view towards Test cricket, which began when he said it wouldn’t be so sad if the format died.”Obviously there are some statements that he made or maybe what he’s done over the last year or so but I wouldn’t get into that part of it,” Lara said. “I still believe when a decision is made [you support that decision].”

Chris Nevin, the former New Zealand wicketkeeper-batsman, is poised to become only the fourth Wellington player to reach 100 first-class games. The landmark will come in Wellington’s Plunket Shield season opener against Canterbury at home tomorrow.The three Wellington players to have played more than 100 first-class games are Evan Gray (120), Robert Vance (119) and Ervin McSweenery (102). “They are all big names in Wellington cricket, so to be up there having played a similar number of games to three of the legends is a great feeling,” Nevin said.”I’ve got my family coming up from Christchurch to watch the game and I’m really looking forward to it.”Nevin has scored 4579 runs at 36.05 for Wellington, with four centuries, and has taken 271 dismissals. Having made his state debut in a 50-over match at the Basin Reserve on New Year’s Day in 1996, Nevin began his first-class career a few weeks later against Northern Districts. “We played very good cricket for three days and we set them about 440 to win on a wearing Basin wicket and they chased it down on the last day,” he recalled. “So it was an incredible game of cricket and certainly a very exciting start to my career.”He also remembered a memorable match against Canterbury during the victorious 2000-01 season. “We got a good first innings total and then took a long time to bowl them out. In the second innings we batted for about 25 overs, declared and then won with about three or four overs to spare,” he said.”That was an amazing game of cricket and one that sort of summed up that whole [Championship winning] season.”We were just so determined to win that it didn’t matter whether it was the last ball of the game or the first we were in the contest the whole time.”Nevin, 34, suffered a spate of injuries during his international years which to an extent limited his appearances to 37 one-day internationals. He made his international debut against Australia in March 2000 opening the innings and after scoring 74 at Eden Park he seemed the ideal opening partner for Nathan Astle. However, an injury at the end of the season denied him a chance to tour with New Zealand A in England and shortly before a national tour to Zimbabwe he suffered a lower abdominal hernia. Injuries and indifferent form hampered his prospects further. He played his last ODI in 2003.

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An all-round bowling display in the field secured Sri Lanka Under-19s a six-wicket win over Australia Under-19s at the Marrara Cricket Ground, and more importantly, clinched the series in the final match.This match was won in the first innings, after Australia opted to bat and managed to put up only 122 in 37.3 overs. Australia had made decent progress after Chathura Peiris removed the opener Tom Beaton for a 23-ball 4, reaching 43 for 1 in the 11th over. But then Peiris struck to get rid of Nic Maddinson who had eased his way to 24 from 27 balls.From here Australia slipped against Rushan Jaleel’s offspin and Lahiru Jayarathne’s medium-pace. Jaleel ripped through the middle order with 3 for 36 while Jayarathne bowled an extremely tidy spell of 7-4-9-2 to throttle the lower order. Nadeera Rajaguru, bowling his variation of legbreaks, skittled the tail with 3 for 3 on debut.Set 123 to take the series, Sri Lanka lost six wickets, mostly due to their urgency to chase like a locomotive. Despite the loss of the wicketkeeper-batsman Andri Berenger for 1 in the second over, No. 3 Bhanuka Rajapaksa slammed 33 from 16 balls before he was bowled by Jason Floros. Floros’, an off-break bowler, picked up three wickets but Rumesh Buddika’s unbeaten 37 sealed the win in the 24th over.

Sri Lankan opener Tharanga Paranavitana has been fined 50% of his match fees for violating ICC’s Code of Conduct during the second Test against New Zealand in Colombo.Paranavitana was found guilty of breaching Level 2 of the code that states players must at all times “conduct play within the spirit of the game as well as within the Laws of Cricket”, when he claimed and celebrated a catch to dismiss Iain O’Brien in the 105th over of New Zealand’s second innings. Though replays suggested the ball had bounced before Paranavitana caught it, he continued to appeal vigorously even as the umpires conferred.However, match referee Andy Pycroft reduced the charge to a Level 1 offence – which cannot be appealed against – after taking into account Paranavitana’s previous clean track record and his apology at the hearing. “Although replays showed that the ball hit the ground before it reached Tharanga, I am satisfied that he did not know this at the time and was not attempting to deceive the umpires in that regard,” Pycroft said. “But the fact of the matter is you can’t celebrate by throwing the ball in the air and cross the pitch while continuing to appeal as the umpires are conferring with each other.”It is not the sort of example that players should be setting at any time, especially given the message his action sends out to the millions of people watching at the ground and on television. Therefore his behaviour merited some form of action.”The Sri Lanka team manager Brendon Kuruppu, on-field umpires Daryl Harper and Nigel Llong, and third umpire Kumar Dharmasena also attended the hearing.

The mediator in the protracted dispute between the West Indies board and the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) has expressed his disappointment at the slow progress in the first phase of negotiations.Sridath Ramphal, the former Commonwealth secretary-general, who has been given the responsibility of brokering a deal in the stand-off over payments and contracts, had his first meeting with the two parties on July 27. He told on Sunday that he was disappointed “more agreement had not been reached during the first phase ofdiscussions” though he was happy that both sides “wished to continue” the mediation process.Ramphal had earlier been optimistic that the dispute would be settled in August, but now feels the mediation process will extend beyond this month.CARICOM, the Caribbean trading bloc, which appointed Ramphal after being approached by WIPA to intervene in the impasse, said 25 hours of “intense discussion” had taken place though a solution could not be reached.Talks will resume on August 27 before which both parties will have formal written statements that will help find a way forward. “In the second phase, which begins immediately, the Parties will, in the light of the discussions, prepare written submissions with a view to exploring a comprehensive settlement based on the principle of partnership,” CARICOM said in a press release.”These submissions will be exchanged no later than 20 August and discussions on them will resume on 27 August and continue for as long as necessary between then and the end of the first week of September.”West Indies’ leading players had boycotted last month’s series against Bangladesh, forcing the WICB to field a weakened squad. Bangladesh swept both the Test and one-day series against opponents whom they had not beaten previously in either Tests or one-dayers.In another jolt to the WICB , one of its constituent members, the Trindad & Tobago Cricket Board, had announced it would the stay away from the WICB’s annual general meeting on Sunday in Antigua.

As had been widely expected for some time, Shahid Afridi has been named Pakistan captain for the Twenty20 game against Sri Lanka next month. He takes over from Younis Khan, who retired from the format after leading Pakistan to the World Twenty20 title last month.Afridi was instrumental in that triumph, turning in Man-of-the-Match performances in both the semi-final and the final. Since Younis’s retirement Afridi has been the leading candidate to take over, even as chairman Ijaz Butt initially said he would try and convince Younis to reconsider. Presently, he has only been appointed for the one game against Sri Lanka, but a more permanent decision is expected sooner rather than later.It will be the first time Afridi will lead the national team in any format of the game, getting his chance nearly 13 years after making his Pakistan debut. The last five years have been the most productive of Afridi’s career, where despite brief patches of indifference, he has established himself as a fixture in Pakistan’s limited-overs set-up. His form has been particularly good this year, with impressive performances in the ODI series and Twenty20 against Australia in Dubai in May. That culminated with his critical role in leading Pakistan to the World Twenty20 title. Allied to his player-of-the-tournament contributions in the 2007 version, another indicator of his suitability to this format, his ascension became inevitable.Whenever there has been a captaincy change over the last couple of years, Afridi’s name has figured prominently among the contenders. He has plenty of captaincy experience at the domestic level, having been at the helm of Habib Bank Limited, Sind and Karachi Dolphins over the past few years.

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After winning five one-day games on the trot, South Africa Emerging Players continued their domination in the Twenty20 format as well, making light work of the Australian Institute of Sports (AIS) at the Albury Oval. They restricted the hosts to 132, and then rode on a superb batting display by Henry Davids to win with nine balls to spare.The AIS innings never took off after they opted to bat, as Thandi Tshabalala and Basheeru-Deen Walters dealt important blows at the top of the order. A 46-run partnership between Tom Cooper and Kane Richardson for the fifth wicket helped AIS save face. Cooper was in control during his 30-ball stay, hitting four fours and two sixes, and when he fell with the score on 83, Richardson ensured AIS finished with a reasonably competitive total.Davids provided a rousing start to the chase as he smashed the AIS bowlers to all parts during his 47-ball knock, which included six fours and four sixes. He was well supported by Dean Elgar as the two put on 80 for the second wicket. Richardson picked up two wickets towards the end, but it was too late for a comeback.
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An efficient all-round display from New Zealand Emerging Players helped them overcome India Emerging Players in the first Twenty20 match at the Albury Oval. Hamish Bennett, the right-arm fast bowler, starred with the ball, while Colin de Grandhomme scored a sparkling half-century to take New Zealand home in the penultimate over.Peter Fulton’s decision to field first paid off as the Indian batsmen floundered against Bennett, who removed three top-order batsmen – Ajinkya Rahane, S Badrinath and Virat Kohli – as New Zealand took the early honours. But Manoj Tiwary’s 51 off 32 balls and a brave knock from Abhishek Nayar helped them wrest back the advantage. Naman Ojha’s 15-ball 26 helped them go past 150.Martin Guptill and de Grandhomme made an excellent start to the run-chase, scoring freely off the Indian seamers. de Grandhomme hit six fours and a six during his 45-ball 60. R Ashwin, the right-arm offspinner, struck two quick blows to keep India in the hunt, but crucial knocks from wicketkeeper Reece Young and Kane Williamson lower down the order were enough to secure the win.

Steve Harmison does not expect to be lining up in Cardiff on Wednesday despite heaping doubt on the opener Phillip Hughes and picking up six Australian wickets in Worcester. Harmison removed Hughes for the second time in the match with a lifting delivery at his body and also snuffed Ricky Ponting’s hopes of a long warm-up when he was caught driving for 15.However, he believes he won’t fit into England’s plans for the first Test and predicts the selectors will go with two spinners. “I’ve made it difficult for [Hughes], I made it difficult for everybody,” he said after taking 2 for 36. “I made it difficult for the selectors, to pick me for Cardiff. I don’t think they will pick me, it seems they are going to play two spinners. To pick me, I just don’t fit in.”He is prepared to head back to Durham and keep pounding away in the hope of being recalled for the second match. “If I don’t get in for Lord’s I try to get in whenever they need me,” he said. “They know I’m fit, they know I’m back and cause Australia problems. They know what I’m about, it’s up to them if they want to pick me. If they don’t pick me, they are winning the series.”England now start the Ashes having seen a serious flaw in the short-ball play of Hughes, the 20-year-old opener with three Tests’ experience. Harmison worked Hughes out over the wicket on the opening day and on Friday forced him to glove to second slip in an ugly manner from around the wicket.”I have put loads of doubt in him [Hughes], I imagine I’ve put doubt in a lot of the batsmen’s minds,” he said. “But it don’t count for anything come next Wednesday.”I imagine you’ll see Phillip Hughes testing himself against the bowling machine, trying to put things right that haven’t gone for him this game. He’s not a mug, he’s a good player. England have to not get carried away and bowl too many short balls at him. There’s a difference between me bowling short balls and other people bowling short balls because the lengths do vary.”Harmison said the Australians were not as confident as in previous series and he believes England will be too strong over the next two months. “This side is good enough to win the Ashes,” he said. “On paper what happened here doesn’t count for anything, it’s what happens in the next 30-odd days of Ashes cricket. Who really wants it the most and who can handle the pressure the most. That will be the side that wins the Ashes.”