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Buoyed by the hugely successful tour by the Indian team to Pakistan earlier this year, the boards of both countries are planning further initiatives to ride on that momentum. According to a report in The Indian Express, the Pakistan board has proposed a match between the domestic champions of both countries, as well as one between the two top school teams.The report adds that the Indian board has agreed to the idea "in principle". Speaking to the daily, Shaharyar Khan, the PCB chairman, said: “I spoke to Mr Dalmiya about two-three months ago and also wrote to him regarding this idea. Now only the dates and venue has to be worked out.”If the plan is implemented, Mumbai, the Ranji Trophy champions, will clash against Faisalabad, the holders of the Quaid-E-Azam trophy, in the inaugural edition, which could be held within the next six weeks. Shaharyar indicated that Pakistan was willing to host the game: “Faisalabad, our champions, also have a Test centre, so we will be more than glad to host this match. We are looking for a sponsor but even if don’t get one we will go ahead with idea.”The report also quotes Ratnakar Shetty, the joint secretary of the BCCI and the Mumbai Cricket Association, as saying that he was looking forward to the contest. “I really hope, for the sake of Mumbai cricket, that this proposal comes through. I will be really happy if it does fructify. It will be an honour to undertake the trip and be the first team.”

England v South Africa, Old Trafford, Thursday, 1330GMT

After the disappointment of the rain at Headingley, it is ironic that the NatWest Series caravan now moves on to Old Trafford for a day/night match between England and South Africa. Manchester is not known for its droughts, and it must be hoped that the weather allows what promises to be a fascinating contest to run its full course.The no-result recorded at Headingley proved frustrating to both England and Zimbabwe, as both of them would have fancied their chances of a win. Zimbabwe had the confidence of beating England first time out, while England were buoyed by their own victory against South Africa.Now England must aim for back-to-back wins against South Africa, who themselves will be smarting from their defeat at The Oval. However, it is difficult to draw a form-line from the initial round of matches. What has become evident is that England’s middle order has shown a certain fragility, while South Africa’s bowling resources are somewhat thin.Both teams will be striving to amend those shortcomings, while building on the progress to which both can point. For South Africa, Jacques Kallis is in fine form, with the bat at least, while Andrew Hall has emerged as an allrounder of true international class. However, there is also a doubt about their youthful captain, Graeme Smith, who injured his left shoulder in the field at Canterbury on Sunday.England can point to Marcus Trescothick’s batting form, now in partnership with Vikram Solanki whose hundred at The Oval will not be forgotten quickly by anyone who saw it, and the continuing development of Jimmy Anderson.Add to that the progress of Chris Read, the return of Darren Gough and the growing authority of Michael Vaughan, and it is clear that the England selectors are making significant strides towards building a competitive one-day outfit.Whether it will be good enough to achieve that second successive win over South Africa remains to be seen. What is certain that England will be hoping to win the toss and bat, to be spared the problems usually associated with batting under lights, to say nothing of having the advantage of bowling in the twilight zone.England (probable) 1 Marcus Trescothick, 2 Vikram Solanki, 3 Michael Vaughan (capt), 4 Andrew Flintoff, 5 Anthony McGrath, 6 Jim Troughton, 7 Chris Read (wk), 8 Kabir Ali, 9 Richard Johnson, 10 Darren Gough, 11 James Anderson.South Africa (probable) 1 Graeme Smith (capt), 2 Herschelle Gibbs, 3 Jacques Kallis, 4 Jacques Rudolph, 5 Andrew Hall, 6 Mark Boucher (wk), 7 Martin van Jaarsveld, 8 Shaun Pollock, 9 Nicky Boje, 10 Alan Dawson, 11 Makhaya Ntini.

Western Warriors coach Michael Veletta will seek guidance from Australian cricket selectors before deciding where Test opener Justin Langer bats this season.Langer grinded out a gutsy century when recalled to the Australian side for the fifth Ashes Test as an opener and is now locked in a battle with the discarded Michael Slater for the one unsettled position in Australia’s top order.He has already approached Veletta about opening for WA in the early Pura Cup and ING Cup matches in a bid to impress selectors ahead of the first Test against New Zealand in Brisbane on November 8.”He’s obviously very keen because he’s done well at international level,” said Veletta, who replaced Wayne Clark at the end of last season.Veletta is determined the Warriors’ star-studded batting line-up doesn’t underachieve as it did last year and has warned reputations would count for nothing at the selection table.But the 37-year-old, who used to open for WA himself, admits he will seek guidance from Australian selectors in their plans for Langer.”This side has an obligation to develop cricketers for Australia and we also have an obligation to develop cricketers for Western Australia to make our side a success,” he said.”We’ve got to be in a position to make a judgement call as to which is most important to us.”And if it is to develop cricketers for Australia, which is very important to us, and Justin’s role with Australia is as an opener, then I would suggest we would have to support that.”The Warriors have plenty of batting talent to choose from with Ryan Campbell, former Zimbabwe international Murray Goodwin, Marcus North, Adam Gilchrist and Scott Meuleman all touted as possible partners for regular opener Mike Hussey.One thing working in Langer’s favour is WA management’s reluctance to unsettle Simon Katich from first drop after his stellar 1,009 run Pura Cup season last summer.Veletta said today he considered the choice of an opening combination the most important state selectors would make ahead of the team’s opening Pura Cup match against Queensland starting on October 17 at the Gabba.”Call me old fashion, but a lot of our success has been generated on the success of our openers which has made our middle orders a lot better for it,” Veletta said.”At the moment we are in the enviable position of having a lot of players who can step up to the ranks of opening.”Usually you get to this stage of a season and everyone is ducking for cover to try and bat in the middle order.”But we’ve got a number of guys who’ve put their hand up to lead the batting for WA.”

Trevor Barber, the New Zealand batsman who played one Test match at the Basin Reserve in 1956, has died in Christchurch at the age of 90. Barber had been New Zealand’s oldest living Test cricketer; the oldest now is his former Wellington team-mate and the man who captained Barber in his only Test match, the 87-year-old John Reid.A dashing batsman who liked playing his shots, Barber was called up for the third Test against West Indies in 1956 when Bert Sutcliffe was unavailable due to ill-health. West Indies batted first and Barber had the distinction of catching out Garry Sobers while fielding at gully, in what was the first wicket of the match.”It was going past and I threw the hands up – I was a bit of a show-off,” Barber told ESPNcricinfo earlier this year. “John Reid was bowling and he said ‘that’s a nice way to start your career’.”However, with the bat he was unable to have a great enough impact to retain his place in the side, and was out to Sonny Ramadhin in both innings, for 12 and 5. Barber’s attacking approach to batting would perhaps have suited the modern game, but against West Indies it brought his downfall in both innings of his Test match.”Today I might have got away with it,” Barber said. “But I went for sweeps to the leg side off short balls in both innings. My understanding as a captain and also as a batsman was that the first thing you’d do when you go out there is dominate the bowlers. Don’t let the bowlers get on top of you. Get behind the line of flight, bat straight, and when they bowl one off the wicket, give it a go. I did that and I got bloody caught at square leg.”Barber was 30 at the time of his Test appearance, and was captain of Wellington in the Plunket Shield competition. His first-class career began in 1945-46 and finished in 1959-60, but it brought him only one century, and 2002 runs at an average of 23.01. Contemporary reports described him as “a swashbuckler” who, especially early in his career, was more concerned with the joy of batsmanship than playing long innings.”A cricketer more of the pre-war era always on the lookout to thrash the bowling with off-drives, lofted shots to the boundary, pulls to square-leg and square-cuts which often caused fieldsmen to wince when trying to stop them, Barber was always scoring runs attractively, but also losing his wicket rather easily,” a article said in 1957.Barber captained Wellington to the Plunket Shield title in 1956-57 and also led Central Districts later in his career. A part-time wicketkeeper who enjoyed assessing a batsman’s weaknesses, Barber said captaincy was one of the parts of the game he found most satisfying.”It’s lovely to have some control of the game, and also the players,” he said. “I used to have quite a number of discussions with the players before we’d go out and play. I’d say this player has a weakness here, I want you Bob Blair to bowl on a length just outside his leg stumps, and I reckon we can get him.”I always remember on one occasion down at Dunedin, I said to John Reid, who was bowling to Sutcliffe, I said ‘I think he’s got a weakness on the leg glance, I’m going to field at leg gully and you bowl down leg’. We got him for a duck! It’s those little things.”Born in Otaki in 1925, Barber was raised on a dairy farm and learnt the game from his father.”I remember in the backyard he used to put out a kerosene tin,” he said. “I used to have a bat and he’d throw the ball to me. He’d say ‘go on, hit it over my head’. He made me very keen.”After his playing career ended, Barber worked with the Shell oil company and was responsible for its sponsorship of sporting events including the New Zealand Golf Open and the domestic cricket competition, which became known as the Shell Trophy. It continued a lifelong love of cricket.”I still follow it with interest,” Barber said earlier this year. “It’s just amazing how much the game has changed from my time. We only played Test cricket and Plunket Shield. Now there’s T20 and 50-over, it’s bash and slash. It might have suited me. When you see blokes like McCullum and Williamson doing so well, it’s marvellous.”

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.”

Mark Boucher will have to wait a while longer to discover his fate after Cricket South Africa (CSA) adjourned his disciplinary hearing to a date that is yet to be confirmed.Boucher appeared before CSA’s Disciplinary Commissioner, Michael Kuper SC, at a hearing on Friday after allegations by the board that he had breached the players’ code of conduct on five occasions in the course of comments attributed to him in an article published in earlier in the week.In the article, Boucher supported Jacques Kallis, who resigned as vice-captain of South Africa after he was excluded from the squad for the Twenty20 World Championship to be staged in South Africa in September.Boucher was quoted by the newspaper as suggesting there were ulterior motives for his omission: “It is either those who have an issue with him, and have a chip on their shoulders, or those who have ulterior motives.” He did not elaborate.

Anil Kumble and Sreesanth, the fast bowler, have been left out of the Champions Trophy squad. RP Singh, on the back of his recent performance for India A in Australia, has been included in the 14-man squad. The ODI squad for both the Champions Trophy and for the Malaysia tri-series were announced in Mumbai today.Sreesanth’s exclusion has raised a few eyebrows as he was in the forefront of the action when India last toured West Indies, starring in the Tests as well as three of the five one-dayers. He has been expensive in one-dayers, something that could have gone against him when the selectors had to prune the 15-man squad for the Malaysia tri-series to 14 for the Champions Trophy.”Sreesanth definitely figures in our scheme of things but we need to give pacemen like Rudra Pratap Singh enough chances as he has been looking good recently,” Kiran More, the chairman of selectors, said. For the Malaysia tri-series, which precedes the Champions Trophy, the 15-man squad that toured Sri Lanka for the aborted series has been retained.RP Singh will consider himself lucky to make the cut ahead of Sreesanth, as he has not quite been in the thick of action of late. He played in just one ODI in the West Indies, bowling seven wicketless overs for 45 runs. Before that he played three matches against England, and failed to pick up a wicket in any. What’s more, his economy rate for the last four matches is an unflattering 6.5. It has been suggested that RP Singh got the nod because he bowls left-handed, and that this would add variety. In that case, however, it’s not clear why Zaheer Khan, who is performing well in county cricket, was not given a look in.Kumble’s exclusion is more straightforward. He is recovering from an injury, and although in the process of rehabilitation, the selectors thought it wise not to rush him back into the side, especially with India having a busy season ahead.”According to the report from physio John Gloster, Kumble was likely to be fit for the tournament but we were not sure and hence decided not to select him,” More said. Further, once India announced a final squad to the ICC there would be no opportunity to make changes should Kumble break down. “We have other series coming up and are looking at his long-term rehabilitation,” More added.Sourav Ganguly, the former captain, who had been included in the 30 probables for the Champions Trophy also couldn’t make it to the squad. The Malaysia tri-series starts on September 12 in Kuala Lumpur and include Australia and West Indies. The Champions Trophy will start with the qualifiers on October 7.India, who have been placed in group A along with world champions Australia, England and one of the qualifying teams, take on England in their first match at Jaipur on October 15.Group B comprises Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand and the other qualifier from the qualifying league in which the West Indies, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe will fight it out.Squad for Champions Trophy
Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, Munaf Patel, RP Singh, Ramesh Powar, Harbhajan Singh, Dinesh Mongia.Squad for Malaysia tri-series
Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, Munaf Patel, RP Singh, Ramesh Powar, Harbhajan Singh, Dinesh Mongia, Sreesanth.

Ricky PontingOn the pitch
Disappointing. It’s fair to say that the wicket was nowhere near even being close to Test-match standard: that’s pretty obvious given what we’ve seen over the last two days. 40 wickets falling in just over two days of a Test is pretty much unheard of. It’s disappointing that the series has ended this way. It’s been such a fantastic series, from the first ball bowled till the start of this match. It puts a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.On whether the ICC will have an enquiry over the pitch
I’m not sure if there’ll be an enquiry, but I know that lots of questions will be asked and lots of reports will be written. I guess the match referee will write a report about this wicket, and obviously that’ll be sent to the ICC. Let’s hope there is an enquiry, just because it’s so disappointing. As a player you want to be tested under different conditions and in different countries, but that’s just going a little bit too far. We have played in three venues other than this one in this Test series, and the conditions have been different in each one, which is the beauty of playing cricket in India. But in all the matches other than Nagpur the match was going into a fifth day, which is what you want. Unfortunately this one didn’t even finish two.On whether they relaxed a bit in this match
I think we’ve tried extremely hard in this game. We’ve come 14 runs short, but if you take a look at the faces of the guys during the presentation you could understand that this game meant a lot to us. Unfortunately we weren’t good enough today. India played very well, particularly the way they batted. Sachin [Tendulkar] and [VVS] Laxman played very well, and I think there was a five-over period which cost 58 runs – looking back it’s a pretty big number considering the margin of the game. Full credit to the way they played. Full credit to us as well – we fought till the last ball but we weren’t good enough today. We were pretty confident that we’d chase 107 today. We knew if we put a couple of partnerships together we’d have a very good chance. But I don’t think you can say anything against any batsman who had to bat out there today. Michael Clarke, a part-time spinner, took 6 for 9 on that surface. That would suggest that it’s not a great wicket.On his return from injury
It was a disappointing return for me. Having missed the first three Tests, I was looking forward to coming to Mumbai, playing a good long five-day Test, and hoping that I would personally score some runs and the team would perform in the same vein as they did throughout the series. That didn’t work out at all. It was a disappointing way for the tour to end for us.On losing Shane Warne
Losing Shane was a blow for us. It would have been very interesting to see him bowl on that wicket. Being such a big spinner of the ball, even on wickets that don’t turn much, it would have been interesting to see what he would have done here. However, that would have meant one of the fast bowlers would have missed out, and the fast bowlers did a pretty good job for us here.On VVS Laxman’s return to form
I think it was very important for his career. He hadn’t made a lot of runs in this series, and there were murmurs that he was going to be dropped. But they showed some faith in him and promoted him to No. 3, and I thought he played really well. He was a little scratchy early on, but every batsman was on that wicket. Once he got in he looked like the VVS of old, and I’m sure he’ll make some runs in the series against South Africa.Rahul DravidOn winning the Test
It was very satisfying. To go out and defend only 107 in the last innings against probably the best batting side in the world was a great effort.On the pitch
It’s probably one of the toughest wickets I’ve played a match on. It was interesting and it produced a great Test match. I’ll admit it’s not an ideal Test match, but it was a fantastic game of cricket, on what was definitely not an ideal Test wicket.On what he told the team before they came out to defend 107
I just spoke about believing in ourselves. I knew that if we got a couple of wickets early we could put them under pressure. I couldn’t be prouder of the guys – they showed some amazing fight and they just kept going. I couldn’t have asked for more, right from the morning. Not only when we bowled, but also the kind of gumption we showed when we batted in the morning. You don’t win many Test matches against any opposition, leave alone Australia, when you get bowled out on any wicket for around 100 in the first innings.On his tactic of using Murali Kartik early in the innings
I just bowled him according the situation – the way the wicket was, the batsmen at the crease. We knew Kartik would be a handful on this wicket – if he hit the deck the ball was always going to spin. Watching Michael Clarke bowl and get the kind of spin he did when he hit the deck gave me a fair idea of what Kartik could achieve, especially when the ball was hard. Zaheer Khan did a great job getting an early wicket so that we could get the right-handers in early, and Kartik did the job for us when the right-handers came in. A quality bowler like Anil Kumble didn’t get a bowl till the opposition had scored around 70, but I just played it according to what I saw at that point of time, and who I felt should be bowling to which batsman.On the decision to promote VVS Laxman to No. 3
After I finished batting in the first innings and when we were fielding I decided that I’d send Laxman at No. 3 simply because when the ball is hard it’s the best time to be batting. VVS is a positive player. He’s been going through a tough time but he showed why we must always back quality. The partnership between him and [Sachin] Tendulkar in difficult conditions was a great exhibition of quality batsmanship.On the gains and losses from the series
Zaheer Khan coming back was a great gain for us, Kartik bowled well. All the spinners have bowled really well, Virender Sehwag’s been good with the bat, and we’ve shown a bit of fight right towards the end of the series. The loss, obviously, is the series. The Australians came well prepared: we must give them credit. They played some tough cricket and were deserving winners.

Shoaib Akhtar has been named among Pakistan’s probables for the Asia Cup, while Shahid Afridi has been sidelined, it was reported today. The News quoted unnamed board sources saying that Shoaib’s inclusion in the side will depend on his fitness.The move comes after Shoaib had publicly admitted that he had “lost the urge” to play in the Asia Cup, and it would be a while before he represented Pakistan again. He expressed disappointment over the manner in which the board had treated him after the ribcage injury he sustained in the series against India. Shoaib’s comments sent the board into a tizzy, and they asked him to clarify his position.Interestingly, it was reported that the PCB had earlier told the selectors not to select Shoaib for the tournament on medical grounds. “We acted on the basis of a letter sent to us by Durham, who informed us that he needed periods of rest between matches to recover completely from his injury,” said Rameez Raja, the chief executive of the PCB. “We have told Shoaib clearly that if he claims he is fit he has to come down and undergo a stringent fitness test; only then will he be considered,” he added.Alarmed by the signals, Shoaib asserted that he was fit and ready to play, and that his rib injury had healed after he had taken a two-week rest. “I don’t know why they don’t trust me,” he said. “I am playing for my county Durham and performing well. If I am not fit would they play me?Shoaib had hurt his ribcage while bowling during the third Test against India earlier this year, but confounded the management by batting unhindered later in the game. His performance added fuel to rumours of attitude problems, as well as differences between him and Inzamam-ul-Haq about strategy. A medical inquiry was called for by the PCB – which had questioned the seriousness of the injury when Shoaib played for Durham shortly after – but the medical team confirmed Shoaib’s damaged ribcage. To complicate matters further, Shoaib aggravated the injury during a county game and was advised to rest until the injury had healed completely. Since then, counter to the PCB’s advice to rest, he has bowled for Durham.The selectors have sent the probables list to the PCB, which will release it shortly.

The last of the round-robin matches in the NatWest Series, between SouthAfrica and Zimbabwe, could well have been one of those dreadful dead-rubberevents when one team has qualified for the final and the other is out of thetournament. It’s often a case of going through the motions to honour thefixture list – but this one is not like that any more.There are two reasons for the sudden change. One was the heavy defeat ofSouth Africa by England at Edgbaston. If a margin of four wickets does notappear to be too wide a margin, the reality was that South Africa were fortunate to get as close as that, helped by two late wickets when the match was as good as over. The other factor that will result in this match being anything but a non-event is that Hampshire’s Rose Bowl is staging international cricket for the first time. Throw in the fact that Zimbabwe always enjoy an opportunity to have a crack at their neighbours, and there is every reason to believe that nobody concerned will be going through the motions.South Africa’s captain Graeme Smith said before the Edgbaston game that he was hoping to inflict some mental scars before the final and the Test series to come. The first over, when he personally took 19 off James Anderson, showed that he meant business. However, any scars seemed to heal pretty quickly as Anderson came back to claim four wickets, and it was South Africa’s confidence that ended the evening more disfigured.Smith might have been hoping to rest some of his key players in Southampton, in advance of a final for which his team has already qualified, but now he will probably need to play them all in the hope that they can regain form and self-belief.Paul Adams will be one of those hoping to get a chance to repair the Edgbaston damage. After the injury to Nicky Boje – a fractured tibia and ankle-ligament damage that will require surgery – Adams is the only specialist spinner available for selection at Lord’s. But his 1 for 44 from six overs against England means there is plenty of room for improvement.Meanwhile, Zimbabwe can go into this match with no fear. They are expectedto lose, but will not want to miss out on the opportunity to leave Englandwith a decent result, to say nothing of being able to further bloody thoseSouth African noses. Zimbabwe’s captain, Heath Streak, has striven manfully to make something of his understrength team throughout this tour, and he is sure to be welcomed back warmly to Hampshire, where he played a few years ago.The Rose Bowl deserves a proper contest as it makes its first appearance onthe international scene. To move away from cosy little Northlands Road,Hampshire had to make a great leap of faith, utilise tremendous imagination,and pour in vast amounts of money and resources. This match represents thefirst repayment on that vision. The venue has made an important improvementto the infrastructure of English cricket, and if a near-capacity crowd caninspire Zimbabwe to inflict another defeat on South Africa prior to the Lord’s final, they could be doing even more for the health of the English game.South Africa (probable) 1 Herschelle Gibbs, 2 Graeme Smith (capt), 3 Jacques Kallis, 4 Jacques Rudolph, 5 Martin van Jaarsveld, 6 Andrew Hall, 7 Mark Boucher (wk), 8 Shaun Pollock, 9 Paul Adams, 10 Dewald Pretorius, 11 Makhaya Ntini.Zimbabwe 1 Dion Ebrahim, 2 Grant Flower, 3 Stuart Matsikenyeri, 4 Tatentda Taibu (wk) 5 Richard Sims, 6 Travis Friend, 7 Heath Streak (capt), 8 Andy Blignaut, 9 Sean Ervine, 10 Raymond Price, 11 Douglas Hondo.