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As the ECB lurches ever deeper into the Zimbabwe crisis, their chief executive for the past eight years, Tim Lamb, is facing a vote of no-confidence from the chairmen of the 18 first-class counties. According to a report in today’s Sunday Times, the first significant steps towards Lamb’s removal may take place at the next meeting of the First Class Forum on May 11.”His position is very precarious and may become untenable over the next few weeks,” one senior source was reported to have said. “There have simply been too many mistakes on too many issues. We have been wrong-footed on Zimbabwe the whole way along.” David Morgan, the ECB’s chairman, was also singled out for criticism, with another source telling the paper: “I’m disappointed at the poor communication and the obvious mistakes made.”Although the government has made clear its position on the issue, Britain’s sporting interests remain detached from its politics, and so there is no prospect of the all-important ban that would enable the ECB to escape penalty from the International Cricket Council. But, much of the blame for the ECB’s situation is levelled at Lamb, who has been accused of “sleepwalking” into a crucial meeting in Auckland back in March, at which the prospect of suspension from international competition was first raised if England pulled out of the tour.Lamb has since referred to “11th-hour manoeuvring” by other ICC delegates, but he is understood to have backed a hardening of policy in earlier meetings. In addition, his position has been further undermined by the resignation of Des Wilson, whose consultation paper on Zimbabwe had suggested that the ECB would be moving towards a new moral stance on touring. Lamb and Morgan, however, have been retreating from that position ever since the threat of financial sanctions was raised.One of Britain’s leading lawyers, however, believes that the ICC threat could be illegal, and has called on Lamb to challenge the ruling. Robert Griffiths QC, who resigned from the MCC committee last week after it reversed a vote against England’s tour, said: “If you don’t put pressure on the other side, you don’t get to the negotiating table, and they’ve won. The ECB have got to tell the ICC that they have grave reservations whether the ICC can legitimately impose these heavy financial sanctions.”As if that was not enough reason for Lamb to fear for his position, he is also under fire on the domestic front as well. “What is the ECB for?” asked one county chief executive, after a proposal to merge the County Championship and the National League was rejected last week. “Why does it take six months to ask other people? [The ECB] works through committees and goes round in circles. The executive should stand or fall by its decision-making. A lot of people are frustrated. If most businesses were run like this, they would not be around.”

UAE might be languishing at second from bottom in the 2007-08 Intercontinental Cup, but they remain confident of reversing their fortunes ahead of their match against Namibia on Wednesday.In three matches, they have only won one match – an excellent 138-run win over Bermuda last November. And it was this win which inspired UAE, and their captain, Saqib Ali, to believe in themselves. UAE were dismissed for a lowly 143, conceding a first-innings deficit of 168, but fought back brilliantly on days three and four to win by 138 runs.”It was an unbelievable win for us,” Saqib said. “That victory really gave us the belief that we can do well in this competition. I think we have what it takes. We have plenty of experience with people like Khurram Khan and Arshad Ali and there is a good feeling in the squad.”In spite of their bullishness, UAE’s preparations for Wednesday’s match have been far from ideal, with heavy rains sweeping the region. “Also it is a new pitch at Sharjah Stadium,” Saqib said, “so we don’t really know how it is going to play.”Saqib took over the reins from Arshadfor the Bermuda match, and the new-found freedom paid immediate dividends for Arshad whose mammoth 185 set-up UAE’s matchwinning 449.”I decided that I wanted to play as just an ordinary player, not captain,” Arshad said. “It is easier for me that way and since I gave up the captaincy I have been doing very well, scoring runs and taking wickets.”Namibia, meanwhile, come into the match following an impressive eight-wicket win over Canada in October. Their win was set-up by a fine 163 from Bjorn Kotze, but neither his brother, Deon, or Louis Klazinga, who took 6 for 82 in the match, have made the trip. UAE, though, will not be underestimating Namibia.”We are wary of Namibia. We know they have a good side with plenty of experience and lots of batting,” Saqib said. “It will be very interesting. I am looking forward to it.”

Clare Connor has been taken on a new role alongside being the ECB’s chief executive – she has been appointed as the European representative to the ICC Women’s Committee. It’s the same role that her predecessor Gill McConway held.The committee, formed in 2005, has three main objectives: to govern and manage women’s cricket in conjunction with the ICC; provide leadership to the Regional Development Managers to assist them in developing women’s cricket in their region; and to make recommendations to the ICC Development Committee for future women’s cricket initiatives.Connor will join representatives from four other regions on the committee, which meets twice a year, including Carol Whilby-Maxwell (Americas), Catherine Campbell (East-Asia-Pacific), Kerri Laing (Africa) and Shubhangi Kulkarni (Asia). The Netherlands’ Betty Timmer is the committee’s chairwoman.Connor captained England for six years from 2000 until retiring. She was awarded the MBE in 2004 and the OBE in 2006. She said she was honoured by the appointment. “With so much international cricket on the horizon, and participation levels at an all-time high, it is an exciting time to be in a position to make an impact on the women’s game through association with ICC.”In particular, the women’s World Cup and the Twenty 20 World Championships, both in 2009, will be impressive showcase events to show how dynamic the women’s game has become in recent years.”

In a departure from hundreds of years of cricket tradition, there will be no mandatory toss in either division of the English County Championship in the 2016 season, after the ECB confirmed they were implementing an experiment to try to encourage the development of spin bowling.Instead of the toss, something that was recorded as taking place as far back as the 1700s, the visiting team will first have the choice of whether they want to field first. If they don’t wish to take up that option the toss will take place as it always has.There has been growing concern that the standard of pitches in county cricket – particularly in Division Two – is compromising the development of players. Specifically, the role of spinners has become marginalised on surfaces that sometimes provide extravagant help to medium-pace seamers while batsmen, fearful that they will receive an unplayable delivery sooner rather than later, have responded by playing more aggressively. As a result, some of the skills required to succeed in Test cricket – patience, discipline and consistency – have been lost.Initial reports about the move had centred on the trial being used only in Division Two of the Championship but, after a meeting of the ECB cricket committee at Lord’s on Thursday, it was decided to implement it across the board in four-day cricket.”By giving the away team the option of bowling first, we hope the home side will be encouraged to produce the best possible four-day pitch,” Peter Wright, the chairman of the cricket committee, said. “That will be good for cricket in general, and not only for spinners: batsmen should also benefit, from better pitches which will lead to them facing more spin bowling; and if pitches start drier, the ball may scuff up a bit more and produce more reverse swing.

Who is the ECB cricket committee?

Peter Wright (Chairman)
Alan Fordham (ECB Head of Cricket Operations)
Tom Harrison (ECB Chief Executive Officer)
Andrew Strauss (Director, England Cricket)
Angus Porter (Chief Executive – Professional Cricketers’ Association)
Rob Key (Kent captain)
David Leatherdale (Chief Executive – Worcestershire)
Mark Robinson (formerly Sussex’s Cricket Manager – recently appointed head coach of England Women)
Steve Garrett (First-Class umpire)
Andy Flower (ECB’s Technical Director of Elite Coaching) also attended at the committee’s invitation.

“It isn’t all about spin. There has been concern for some years about some Championship pitches. But it is fair to say that the plight of spin bowling in this country brought things into focus.”Of course counties want to win matches, and that generally means taking 20 wickets. That has to be a reason we have seen a lot of pitches that start a bit green and damp, and get better as the game goes on, rather than deteriorating to help the spinners. But another main function of the County Championship is to develop players for England. We don’t think it has been serving that purpose for spinners.”We did originally consider introducing this as a trial in one division only but, after further discussion and debate today, we have decided to extend this to both divisions of the County Championship. We believe this is an innovation which will be watched closely well beyond the County Championship. We will then need to assess how successful the trial has been at the end of the 2016 season before deciding whether to continue with this.”Peter Such, the ECB’s lead spin bowling coach, recently told ESPNcricinfo: “In overseas Test cricket somewhere between 46-48% of overs are bowled by spinners, but in county cricket that figure is around 20%.” At a couple of division two counties, that figure drops below 10% at home games.”The pitches tend to start damp, which makes them seam-bowler dominated and makes it very hard for spin bowlers to break through. We need to do more to encourage spin bowling.”

Points Table

Scorecard
East Zone salvaged some pride at the end of a disappointing Deodhar Trophy campaign with a high-voltage batting performance and hunted down a mammoth target of 347 at Rajkot. Mahendra Singh Dhoni got them off to a fantastic start with a fiery 87 off 67 balls before Rohan Gavaskar and Sanjib Sanyal carried on the momentum and took them closer to victory. Gavaskar’s unbeaten 89 piloted them towards the target and East stunningly got home with an over to spare. Earlier, Suresh Raina and Syed Abbas Ali had propelled Central Zone to the massive total with both notching up splendid centuries. They added an exact 200 for the fourth-wicket stand as Central gave themselves a great chance of staying in contention for the trophy. The defeat, though, meant thatthey had no chance of winning the title.
Scorecard
A fine allround batting effort saw North Zone register their second win of the tournament, with a bonus point to boot, and head the points table at the end of the penultimate round of matches. Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir and Ajay Jadeja produced half-centuries and a surge towards the end boosted North to a healthy 288 at the end of their innings. West Zone, who could have sealed the championship with a victory, began solidly as Parthiv Patel anchored the chase with a cheeky 56. But a middle-order collapse, when they slumped from 160 for 3 to 201 all out, thwarted their hopes and North snapped up the bonus point and sneaked to the top of the table.North now take on South Zone in the final league match on February 4 and a victory there will ensure them the title. West will need to beat Central on the same day at Rajkot and hope that North slip up in their encounter at Valsad. If West fail, though, South Zone could beat North and sneak the title through the back door.

It might not have been of great significance in the overall context of the World Cup, but for Namibia and the Netherlands this match represented the summit of their ambitions to return from South Africa with a victory of which to boast. It was the Dutch who proved to be just a little bit too strong and they claimed their first one-day international victory by 64 runs.Having lost their captain, Roland Lefebvre to injury, the Dutch won the toss and batted first on a belter. After an early wicket, it became evident that the bowlers had had their confidence battered by battles against the bigger nations. The batsmen, on the other hand, were finding life against Gerrie Snyman and Burton van Rooi rather easier than facing Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar as they had earlier in the competition. That is no disrespect to the Namibian bowlers, but a fact of life in this hardest of cricketing schools.A second wicket partnership between Feiko Kloppenburg and Klaas-Jan van Noortwijk worth 228 scored at a shade under six an over established a position of Dutch supremacy.Kloppenburg was the first to reach his hundred and so became the first Dutchman to attain that score in a one-day international. He passed the milestone with what was a dangerous run that could have seen him out for 99, but the ball missed the stumps at the non-striker’s end and Kloppenburg began a celebration that involved swinging his bat around as if it was the sail of a windmill. It was not an altogether inappropriate gesture from a Dutchman.Van Noortwijk soon followed him. He was on the point of exhaustion, dropping to one knee and gasping for breath as his score matched the number on his shirt – 99. However, pushing the ball out on the off-side he raced to the other end although he too might have struggled had the shy at the stumps hit.Kloppenburg eventually fell to a tired shot of his own, top-edging an intended slash through the off-side to the wicket-keeper. He was out for 121 from 142 balls with four sixes and six fours.His demise preceded something of a collapse to give the Namibians some sort of reward for their efforts. Bas Zuiderent, the one professional in the Dutch side, has endured a poor World Cup. He came in after a long partnership and went out again after facing seven balls.Louis Burger returned to the attack to bowl Zuiderent and then inflict the same fate on Tim de Leede first ball. The hat-trick ball was a poor one – a leg-side wide. Burger then suffered as Luuk van Troost and van Noortwijk, almost immobile with cramp, plundered runs aplenty off the final overs.Van Noortwijk was undefeated on 134 from 129 balls with 11 fours and three sixes as the Netherlands reached the second highest total in this tournament by putting 314 for four on the board. The words `Dutch’ and `mountain’ rarely appear in the same sentence, but the Namibians certainly had a mountain to climb in pursuit of such a large Dutch total.Nevertheless, they set off bravely in pursuit with an opening partnership betweenJB Burger and Morne Karg keeping the required rate within their sights. Burger already had a big score in the tournament when he embarrassed the English bowling, while Karg had only one previous innings when he was not alone in falling to Glenn McGrath. Both batted with the belief here that they could win and it was looking good until the 14th over when the score had reached 76.That was when Kloppenburg came into the attack, fresh – if that is the right word – from his hundred. Burger tried to lift his fourth ball over mid-wicket and got the height if not the distance. He found substitute fielder Ruud Nijman on the boundary and was out for 41.Karg followed when his score reached 41 and also fell to a catch by Nijman. This time it was a very good one as the batsman lashed de Leede high over the infield and Nijman came racing in from the cover boundary to slide under the ball right at the end of its travel.After a period of reappraisal following the fall of those two wickets, Daniel Keulder and Gavin Murgatroyd began to take Namibia back towards the required rate with some sensible batting and the occasional lusty blow. Their third wicket partnership realised 92 in 18 overs and was beginning to cause the Dutch serious concern whenKloppenburg returned to bowl Keulder.Keulder had scored 52 when he went, and so too had Murgatroyd when he lofted an intended big hit to Zuiderent at mid-off off the bowling of Hendrik-Jan Mol. That was virtually the end of the challenge that had lasted for a creditable 35 overs.Kloppenburg claimed the wickets of Louis Burger and Snyman to be on a hat-trick, but finished his ten over allocation before he could claim a fifth wicket. Adeel Raja had Sarel Burger stumped by the impressive Jeroen Smits and bowled Melt van Schoor before claiming the last wicket to seal the win.Van Noortwijk had to sit out the second half of the match as the exertions of his innings had caused him to suffer dehydration. He watched from the cool of the pavilion on a saline drip as his colleagues clinched the win. He could have been refreshed by going out onto the field, for midway through the Namibian innings an automatic sprinkler suddenly popped up out of the ground to give a cooling spray to anyone within range.Wicket-keeper Smits looked on as the groundsman rushed to the middle while waving frantically to the control room to have the system switched off. The Dutch, however, have years of experience when it comes to dealing with water where they do not want it. Smits simply trod on the sprinkler head and it obligingly went back into the ground.

South Africa and Sri Lanka practice and media arrangements ahead of Monday’s match

South AfricaFriday 28thFrom 16h00 Practice at KingsmeadPlayer may be available after practiceSaturday 1stFrom 10h00 Practice at KingsmeadPlayer may be available after practiceSunday 2nd09h00 Media conference at Elangeni Hotel10h00 Practice at Kingsmead CLOSED TO MEDIASri LankaSaturday 1st14h00 – 17h00 Practice at KingsmeadSunday 2nd14h00 – 17h00 Practice at KingsmeadCaptain and coach available after practice

Contacts:Sue Miles – Media liaison 083 222 5211
Gerald de Kock – SA media manager 083 299 5920
Ajit – Sri Lankan team manager 072 621 9224

Javagal Srinath said he would quit all forms of cricket if his knee injury rules him out of the tour of Australia, which starts in three weeks. “If I don’t go to Australia, I will retire from cricket,” Srinath said on Thursday.The 33-year-old retired from Test cricket after the West Indies tour last year. He did play in the World Cup, where his incisive spells helped India reach the final.Srinath said that he would play in a local game next week to assess his knee. “I am keen to go if my knee is completely healed. But I am not 23 or 24. The healing is slow, but there is improvement,” he was reported as saying on the BBC’s website.India’s tour of Australia, which begins on November 25, will include four Tests and a one-day tri-series also featuring Zimbabwe. The first Test in Brisbane starts on December 4.

Australia Women 3 for 241 (Clark 120, Rolton 80*) beat New Zealand Women 8 for 158 by 83 runs
ScorecardAustralia took an unbeatable 3-0 lead over New Zealand in the Rose Bowl series with an 83-run win at Westpac Park.Australia racked up a formidable 3 for 241 in 50 overs – one of the best scores at the Park this summer – then restricted New Zealand to 8 for 158.Australian captain Belinda Clark scored a stylish century after New Zealand had won the toss. It was a confident, aggressive knock by Clark, who was finally caught at deep square-leg in the second to last over for 120. She faced just 148 balls and hit 13 fours in her fifth one-day international hundred.Clark received great support from Karen Rolton, with whom she established a new Australian second-wicket record partnership of 194 as they scored at will against a soft New Zealand attack. Rolton finished unbeaten on 80 off 100 balls. Beth McNeill, who had earlier secured her first international wicket with a caught-and-bowled dismissal of Lisa Keightley also picked up the scalp of Melanie Jones in the final over as Australia flung the bat. It was only the ninth Australian wicket to fall in the three matches to date.In reply New Zealand made a wretched start when opener Maria Fahey played on in the first over. Emily Drumm looked solid early on, but was bowled by Rolton for 28 – including three fours – when she was forced to adapt her approach to address New Zealand’s flagging run rate.Haidee Tiffen made her second successive duck of the series when she was bowled by Rolton in the 20th over and New Zealand were down and out at 6 for 86 by the 30th over.The next match in the six-game series is at Sydney on Saturday.

Shane Bond is aiming to return to international cricket in New Zealand’s home series against Australia in March. He is recovering from a stress fracture to his lower vertebrae at New Zealand Cricket’s High Performance Centre.Bond, 29, is working on his action, the cause of the problem, under theguidance of Ashley Ross and Dayle Hadlee. “I’ve really gone back to thedrawing board, and have broken things down,” he told . “You realise that some things, like a fault in your deliverystride, can stem way back to the start of your run-up.”Using the same bio-mechanic technology that helped to scrutinise MuttiahMuralitharan’s action, Ross and Hadlee have focused on four aspects ofBond’s action that need tweaking. “It’s a matter of getting comfortablewith those changes and I’m pretty close to that now.” Bond added. “Thehardest thing to do [is] getting the changes ingrained so they becomesecond nature. I’m probably about 90% there and it’s coming out allright, so I’m reasonably pleased.”One of the main changes is to remove his tendency to dive in late to thebowling crease. “I need to eliminate that as much as I can,” he said. “Therest of it is basically trying to get my hips and shoulders workingtogether so everything is working on one plane.”Bond hasn’t avoided matches altogether, and has been playing as a batsmanfor his club team in Christchurch, High School Old Boys-Collegians.Bowling will have to wait for the moment, though. “It’s up to me to get fit andstrong. I’ve trained really hard and if it doesn’t work out, then I canlive with that.” Ideally, he hopes to return as a bowler in a fewcompetitive games for Canterbury in January in a late bid for the homeseries against Australia. “If things go perfectly, I’d like to be available forthat series.”New Zealand could use a fully-fit Bond, especially after they werewhitewashed in the recently concluded two-Test series against Australia.