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The scheduled series between West Indies and Australia immediately following the 2007 World Cup has been indefinitely postponed after the West Indies board expressed concern over hosting two major tournaments in such a short time.”The West Indies have concerns about having two marquee events back to back, they would prefer to spread them out, and frankly that makes sense,” Cricket Australia’s Peter Young said. However, he insisted the board was committed to its agreement to tour the Caribbean every five years.Rearranging the series could be more of a problem as Australia appear to have agreed to play India home and away every four years, and West Indies fixtures are not the draw they were a decade ago and could be shoved behind more fashionable and lucrative alternatives. The recently-concluded series in Australia was played at the start of the season and was downgraded to three Tests.The news will be a further blow to the ICC, whose Future Tours Programme is looking rather sickly. Last week the Indian board indicated that it might consider ditching the FTP, and it appears to have gone some way down that route by its deal with Cricket Australia. Today, the Indian board announced that its series against New Zealand scheduled for February 2007 had been postponed after discussions with its New Zealand counterparts.Earlier this week Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, was concerned enough to write to Niranjan Shah, the Indian board’s secretary, to remind him of his country’s responsibilities to the game.

ScorecardFile photo – Dinda struck four times in two overs to amplify Bengal’s advantage•PTI

Bengal took big strides towards securing their berth in the knockouts as Ashok Dinda struck four times in two overs after Bengal whipped up a total of 444.Dinda had Pallav Kumar Das caught behind off his first ball before having the other opener – Rahul Hazarika – lbw for 1. He followed it with another double-wicket maiden to dash Assam’s hopes of a fightback.Earlier, Shreevats Goswami and Pankaj Shaw built on the platform laid by Sayan Mondal and Sudip Chatterjee. While Goswami went on to strike his maiden first-class century in his 28th match, Shaw was pinned lbw for 99 by left-arm spinner Syed Mohammad. Aamir Gani’s 43-ball 33 pushed the total further before Manoj Tiwary declared the innings at 444 for 6 in 158 overs.
ScorecardResuming on an overnight 284 for 6, Vidarbha surged to 504 thanks to centuries from Ravi Jangid and Aditya Sarwate. The pair added 212 runs for the seventh wicket before Jangid was run out for 110 by Jayant Yadav. Sarwate stayed unbeaten on 103 as S Badrinath called the batsmen in at 504 for 7 in 155 overs. Haryana then began steadily, openers Nitin Saini and Chaitanya Bishnoi taking their side to 53 by stumps on the second day.
ScorecardWickets continued to tumble in Jaipur as Rajasthan were set a target of 230. Basant Mohanty and Alok Chandra Sahoo, who began by routing Rajasthan for 51, reduced the hosts to 7 for 2 in the fourth innings. However, Puneet Yadav launched a counterattack, making 56 out of Rajasthan’s 78.Mohanty and Alok carried on from where they had left off on the opening day as Rajasthan managed only 23 runs to their overnight score before they were rolled over in 27.2 overs. The innings contained four ducks and only three double-digit scores.Pankaj Singh and Aniket Choudhary then took over, sharing eight wickets between them to shoot Odisha out for 129. Ranjit Singh and Alok offered a semblance of resistance with 30s but a first-innings lead of 100 meant that Odisha were ahead on another 16-wicket day.
ScorecardKarnataka, who ended the first day in Pune at 50 for 1, collapsed to 180, right-arm pacer Anupam Sanklecha doing the bulk of the damage with figures of 4 for 58. He was backed up by Nikit Dhumal and Shrikant Mundhe who shared six wickets between them.Mayank Agarwal was the first to go on the second day when he was undone by Sanklecha. Robin Uthappa and Karun Nair both had starts but failed to build on it. Shreyas Gopal then managed 21 but Maharashtra took a first innings lead of 32.Karnataka, however, hit back through Vinay Kumar and S Aravind to reduce Maharashtra to 39 for 4 in 17.5 overs. Just as Karnataka looked to make further inroads, Rahul Tripathi and Kedar Jhadav steadied the innings with an unbroken 31-run partnership.

The West Indies Cricket Board has confirmed that the five-ODI tour of Zimbabwe at the end of the month will proceed after a report for an independent security firm gave them the all clear.The side will arrive in Zimbabwe on November 27 and remain there until December 10, playing five one-day internationals before heading on to a full tour of South Africa. The Zimbabwe board had hoped that West Indies would play two four-day matches but it appears that this will not happen.A statement said that the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) and West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) have agreed that the tour should proceed but will continually monitor the situation in Zimbabwe from the perspective of safety, security and food integrity.It is not clear where Dinanath Ramnarine, the CEO of WIPA, stands on the trip. In July he was against the A-team tour to Zimbabwe and that trip was subsequently cancelled after the board struggled to find enough players to go. But Ramnarine has now been co-opted onto the board and as such it seems inconceivable that he could oppose the tour with his WIPA hat on while being on the WICB executive that approved it. It seems unlikely that the security situation has changed between July and now given that at the time the WICB insisted that they had been given the all clear to tour.

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Peter English – Remember the artist
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Archive – Saving Grace
Almanack – Cricketer of the Year 2002
Stats – An all-weather operator
Timeline – A career of highs and lows

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Australia put the seal on the most dominant campaign in World Cup history, securing their fourth title and their third in a row since 1999 thanks to Adam Gilchrist’s scintillating 149 from 104 balls. But that, sadly, is not what the final of the ICC World Cup West Indies 2007 (to give it its full and fully deserved title) will be remembered for. In a display of cack-handedness that heaped new levels of farce upon a farcical seven weeks, the final overs of a broken contest were played out in near-darkness, penetrated only by the glow of the pavilion lights and the bewildered blinking of 20,000 flash bulbs.Whatever went on in those overs is anyone’s guess. It was too dark for the fielders to see anything, let alone any of the fans in the stadium or the press in the gantry, and besides, the Australians had already celebrated their moment of victory. That came after the sixth ball of the 33rd over, when the Sri Lankans – to all intents and purposes – accepted an offer for bad light, and appeared to have conceded the game with an improbable requirement of 63 from 18 balls.What happened next will doubtless be the subject of blame-games, buck-passing and recriminations. Australia’s celebratory huddle was broken up by a tap on the shoulder from the umpire Aleem Dar; the groundstaff who had been unpegging the onfield logos were told to nail them back down and reposition the pitch markers, and out trooped the players to block their way into the twilight. It was asinine, undignified, and entirely appropriate for a tournament that long since detached itself from the origins of sporting contests.But let’s concentrate on the onfield action, because – surprising as it may seem amid such a torrent of embarrassment – there was some pretty good cricket on display until officialdom stepped in to wreck everyone’s memories. For all the romantic notions that Sri Lanka brought to their second final appearance in four tournaments – the mysteries of their bowling attack and the impishness of their batsmen – Australia’s ruthlessness was absolute, as they extended their unbeaten run in World Cup matches to 29 since May 1999.And it was Gilchrist who stormed to the fore, demonstrating an eye for the big occasion that is the preserve of few. This was his third scene-stealer in consecutive World Cup finals. Against Pakistan at Lord’s in 1999, he cracked 54 from 36 balls; four years later against India at Johannesburg, he made 57 from 48. But nothing quite compared to this. Once the sun had come out and Gilchrist had gauged the pace and bounce of a rock-hard and true surface, there was no reining him – or Australia – in.Gilchrist’s innings was the highest ever made in a World Cup final, beating the mark of 140 set by his captain, Ricky Ponting, four years ago, and it was launched in a stand of 172 for the first wicket with Matthew Hayden, who made 38 from 55 balls before picking out Mahela Jayawardene in the covers.Hayden’s innings took his tournament tally to an incredible 659 runs at 73.22 – second only to Sachin Tendulkar’s 671 in the 2003 World Cup – but today he was as anonymous as at any time in the past seven weeks. It did not matter a jot, for his performance as a quick-sprinting second fiddle was second-to-none. By the time of Hayden’s dismissal, Gilchrist was already sitting pretty on 119, having faced almost five more overs than his partner.Adam Gilchrist might have had a quiet tournament until the final, but when it really mattered he smoked 149 of the best runs•Getty Images

Though Jayawardene had prevaricated at the toss, admitting he had been in two minds as to what he’d have done if he had won, Australia were in no doubt whatsoever. Five times in this tournament they had batted first and posted scores in excess of 300, and that would have been six in a row in a full-length contest. Gilchrist set the tone by clubbing Chaminda Vaas for four and six in the second over, while Lasith Malinga – the deadliest weapon in the Sri Lankan armoury – opted for accuracy over explosiveness.Malinga went for just six runs in his first spell of four overs, but he was clocking an average of 84 mph, a good 10mph slower than in his devastating semi-final performance. It meant that the early breakthrough Sri Lanka so needed never materialised, especially when Dilhara Fernando – who began tidily enough from round the wicket – dropped a sharp return chance down by his shins when Gilchrist had made a run-a-ball 31.The moment was lost and with it went Sri Lanka’s best hope of controlling the tempo of the match that had been reduced to 38 overs by early rain. Fernando was a broken man after that – his next three deliveries were clubbed for four, four and six, the last of which very nearly took out the fire engine next to the 3Ws stand at long-on. It can only have been there to douse the ardour of Australia’s batsmen, because Gilchrist was absolutely smoking. He brought up his 15th ODI hundred from just 72 balls with a drilled four over long-off, and thereafter heaved through the line with impunity, trusting his eye, the surface and the fact that the fight had gone out of his opponents.Sri Lanka’s batsmen did their best in the face of a spiralling run-rate, swinging the blade with gusto even as the cameras in the crowd betrayed the fading of both the light and their hopes. While Kumar Sangakkara and Sanath Jayasuriya were adding 116 for the second wicket, the contest was alive, but Sangakkara miscued Brad Hogg to Ponting at midwicket, before Jayasuriya, in the final appearance of a competition he has graced since 1992, was bowled by a flatter, faster delivery from the part-time spin of Michael Clarke.Glenn McGrath, another man making his final bow, then seized another segment of the limelight by striking with his penultimate delivery in international cricket. It was not his greatest ball by any means – a legside full-toss that Russel Arnold (another retiree) popped off his hip to a diving Gilchrist. But it took his tournament tally to 26 wickets – a record – and his overall World Cup tally to 71 – another record.Australia were the deserved winners of this contest, and in truth Sri Lanka were worthy runners-up – they plugged away with composure in the face of overwhelming odds, and the margin of Australia’s victory was their slimmest in both the tournament and in their three latest World Cup wins. But the manner in which the victory was signed and sealed will continue to grate long after the teams have flown home. Such is the nature of the modern-day game of cricket.

ScorecardJacob Martin, Baroda’s captain, crafted a responsible 69 and steered them to a fine four-wicket win against Haryana at Vadodara. Resuming on 129 for 5, Baroda lost the wicket of Ajit Bhoite early but Martin and Pinal Shah, the wicketkeeper, added 79 for the unbroken seventh-wicket stand to take Baroda home. With 13 points from five games, Baroda now stand a great chance of qualifying for the knockout stage.
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On course for a win Uttar Pradesh came calamitously close to defeat, eventually forcing a draw and earning just two points against Tamil Nadu at Chennai. Chasing 129 for victory, in 25 overs, UP were motoring along at 72 for 2 in 13.1 overs when Ravichandran Ashwin, the offspinner, triggered a collapse. UP lost five wickets for the addition of just 17 – all to Ashwin who finished with 5 for 23 – and ended up battling for a draw in the final moments. Earlier Praveen Kumar, the medium-pacer, snared five wickets and restricted Tamil Nadu to 223 in the second dig. Anirudha Srikkanth top-scored with 86 but it was the crucial 33-run partnership between Vijayakumar Yo Mahesh and Ashwin that ate up valuable time. Eventually it proved to be the difference between a UP win and draw and the two teams may now have to battle relegation in the final rounds.
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Saurashtra wrapped up a thumping ten-wicket win, with a bonus point to boot, in their encounter against Delhi at Rajkot. Delhi, following on in the second innings, didn’t fare much better with the bat, with only captain Mithun Manhas’s 86 helping them to avert an innings defeat. Rakesh Dhruv, the left-arm spinner, ended with impressive figures of 5 for 67. Saurashtra were left with a meager target of 10 and their openers duly knocked it off without the loss of any wickets.
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Uday Kaul’s maiden first-class hundred ensured that Punjab gained two points from a drawn encounter against Rajasthan at Jaipur. Kaul, on 71 overnight, ground his way to his century, in an innings that spanned close to eight hours and included seven fours and a six. His captain Pankaj Dharmani, on 151 last evening, added another 16 to his score before Rajesh Sharma and Luv Ablish provided Kaul with valuable support. Rajasthan pottered around for 42 overs in the second innings as the game meandered to a draw.
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Hrishikesh Kanitkar managed an unbeaten 151 but Maharashtra had already conceded two first-innings points to Bengal at Kolkata. With the fate of the match decided, Maharashtra gained some batting practice on the final day with Kanitkar leading the way with a 266-ball knock. Yogesh Takawale supported him with a dogged 75 as the game petered out to a tame draw.
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Half-centuries from Robin Uthappa and Thilak Naidu, complemented by a plucky 42 from captain Yere Goud, helped Karnataka stave off defeat on the final day against Andhra at Anantpur. Karnataka were struggling at 94 for 5 before Naidu led the repair operation. His 49-run stand with Goud started the fightback before his obdurate stands with Stuart Binny and Sunil Joshi sealed the issue. Joshi spent 104 minutes in the middle for his 11 as Karnataka kept their semi-final chances alive.

Chris Cairns, Chris Harris, Nathan Astle, Hamish Marshall, Darren Maddy and Azhar Mahmood have become the latest international cricketers to sign with the Indian Cricket League. Of these six cricketers only Maddy is still actively playing cricket at the highest level, with the others having either retired or fallen out of favour with their respective selectors.Marshall refused a contract from New Zealand Cricket recently as he wished to pursue a career playing county cricket in England, qualifying as a Kolpak player. Cairns, Harris and Astle have not been in the New Zealand team for some time now, while Mahmood has figured in just four matches for Pakistan since 2004.Announcing their latest signings, Kapil Dev, the chairman of the executive board of the ICL, said, “We are extremely pleased to welcome these players to the ICL family. These talented experienced cricketers will definitely be a great source of learning for the youngsters who will play with them. Under their guidance, the Indian Cricket League players will develop skills comparable to the best of international cricketing talent.””These signings are in line with our objective of providing the best platform for young cricketers from all corners of India to play alongside the superstars of international cricket, learn the tricks of the trade from them and gain confidence to excel.”The ICL also officially announced the signing of twelve Indian domestic cricketers. Although some of these names were already on the ICL radar and in the news, it was announced on Friday that Abu Nachem, Amit Uniyal, Aniruddh Singh, Gaurav Gupta, Love Ablish, Mihir Diwakar, Rakesh Patel, Abid Nabi, Kiran Powar, Pritam Das and former India internationals S Sriram and Nilesh Kulkarni, had signed on the dotted line.The domestic players who have already signed with the ICL are currently participating in a training camp in Chennai at the Mayajaal ground on the outskirts of the city. It has been suggested that the ICL is targeting to play its first Twenty20 matches in mid-November although it is as yet unclear where these matches will be held.

Mahela Jayawardene, Sri Lanka’s captain for the tour of England, has expressed his pleasure at his side’s impressive start to the English summer. Though Sri Lanka failed to press for a win against the British Universities at Fenner’s yesterday, Jayawardene said he was determined to build on the experience later this week.Speaking to PA Sport, he said he expected his young side to benefit from their early exposure to English conditions. “Two guys got hundreds, and the bowlers all had a decent outing and kept asking questions by putting it in the right place. A couple of the other guys got starts and didn’t finish off,” he said. “But that is the main thing you must do in England, because you definitely can get a good ball any time. The guys learned that here, and it was a good lesson for them. It was seaming, and the weather was typically English – so it was the best practice we could get.”Jayawardene, who failed to get going in the match, said he would put in the hard yards. “I was feeling pretty good out there in the middle when I went in, but it was one of those things – sometimes you get a really good ball. If it gets you out you just have to forget about it and make sure you do the hard work out there next time you get in.”He also hoped that Muttiah Muralitharan, one of a few key players to be rationed ahead of the bigger games, would play in Sri Lanka’s next match against Derbyshire, beginning on Saturday. “Guys like Murali have been playing a lot of cricket, so it is always good to give them a break,” Jayawardene said. “We just need to be very sensible in how we manage the players.”Sri Lanka play three Tests and five one-day internationals against England.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
How they were out

On a cold and overcast day at Southampton, England turned in a heart-warming performance with both bat and ball to thrash India by 104 runs – their third-biggest margin of victory against them – in the first of seven one-day internationals. Alastair Cook and Ian Bell set up the comprehensive victory with outstanding maiden centuries and a 178-run second-wicket stand to push England to 288 for 2, while James Anderson shut off all escape routes for the Indians with a decisive new-ball spell of 3 for 19 in eight magnificent overs – he eventually finished with career-best figures of 4 for 23.India had started the ODI series as favourites, but the only thing that went right for them today was the toss – Rahul Dravid won it and chose to field, deciding that the overcast conditions would help his fast bowlers, and that the ball would come nicely on to the bat later in the evening.Neither hunch turned out to be correct: there was little swing or seam on offer in the afternoon, while the extra zip later in the evening proved too much for India’s batsmen to handle as Anderson nailed both Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh in one over to effectively seal the contest.England’s decision to play both Cook and Bell – and drop Owais Shah – was a bit of a surprise, but it turned out to be an inspired move. India did reasonably well in the early part of the innings, allowing England just 40 in the first ten overs and 88 in the first 20, but that was when Cook and Bell decided to turn it on, putting together the second-highest partnership for England in all ODIs against India.

Before this game Cook had only played five ODIs, while Bell was more experienced only in relative terms, but both batsmen paced their innings as if they were veterans in this form of the game. On a big ground and a slow outfield, they placed the ball in the gaps, ran hard to take all the twos and threes on offer, and thoroughly exposed the woefully sluggish Indian effort in the field.Cook’s was the more deliberate innings, but his calm and unflappable approach at the start was just what England needed after Matt Prior’s dismissal in the 11th over. He never strayed far from the orthodox approach, worked hard for his runs – there were only eight fours in his knock – and paced his innings quite superbly: his first 50 took 74 deliveries, but his next 52 came at a run a ball, and included a couple of meaty blows to the midwicket boundary off the fast bowlers late in the innings.Bell, on the other hand, was all silken touch right from the get-go: his third scoring stroke was an on-the-rise drive through the covers off RP Singh, and that set the tone for the rest of his innings. Against the fast bowlers, he cut, drove and flicked with exquisite timing, while Piyush Chawla was dismantled with twinkle-toed footwork, one straight six over the bowler’s head being the stand-out shot.Both batsmen took full toll of the fifth bowler’s quota – Tendulkar, Yuvraj and Sourav Ganguly leaked 79 in 13 overs – and built the momentum perfectly. Kevin Pietersen chipped in with a cameo effort at the end as England finished just 12 short of 300.A daunting target of 289 needed a solid start from Tendulkar and Ganguly, but they lasted just 15 deliveries before Ganguly threw it away with a sloppy piece of cricket that typified India’s performance today: Tendulkar drove Stuart Broad for a single to mid-off, but Ganguly set off for a second run that was never on, and failed to beat a flighted but accurate throw from Monty Panesar.

With the breakthrough gifted away by India, Anderson charged in and shut out any chance of an Indian fightback with three quick strikes. Bowling at around 140 kph, he varied his length cleverly and asked questions of all the Indian batsmen. Gautam Gambhir flashed a drive and nicked to the keeper, while Tendulkar and Yuvraj fell within five deliveries of each other.Tendulkar might have fallen even earlier, but escaped being bowled when the ball brushed the stumps off his pads but failed to dislodge the bails. His luck ran out, though, when he flicked a half-volley on leg stump straight to short midwicket. Four balls later, when Yuvraj poked outside off and edged to gully, India had slumped to 34 for 4.From there, it was only a matter of damage control for India. Dravid hung around to score 46 without ever suggesting that the knock would do anything other than delay the inevitable. With Mahendra Singh Dhoni, he added 68 for the fifth wicket before Dhoni fell to an inspired Andrew Flintoff. Playing his first international match in exactly four months, he charged in, bowled consistently at around 145 kph, beat the bat, induced edges, and finally got Dhoni to glove a pull to the wicketkeeper for a painstaking 60-ball 19. Dinesh Karthik added a spunky unbeaten 44, but was also involved in two shambolic run-outs as England completed an utter rout.

Though disappointed that the winning streak was brought to an end in Bangalore, Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, said his team still hopes to become the first South African squad to win a one-day international series on Indian soil.”We were disappointed to lose after 20 games,” Smith said on the eve of the fourth one-dayer at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Friday. “But our main target is to win the series. We want to be the first South African team to win a ODI series here.”Undeterred by India’s valiant comeback into the series at Bangalore, Smith said, “I don’t think the momentum is with India. Tomorrow’s game is a fresh call. Our confidence is still way up there. Hopefully, we will be able to win the match.”He added that “winning the toss would be crucial” at Kolkata. The pitch, he said, looked different from that of Bangalore, where the ball turned too much and the pitch was not conducive for an international one-dayer. “The wicket looks good. There is a little more grass than expected. If the wicket behaves well, it will be a really good game.”Asked if there would be any special strategy for in-form youngsters Irfan Pathan and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Smith replied: “In a team of 12, you can’t take anyone for granted. No one is more important than others. For us, every guy is equally important. We are just going to concentrate on our own game.”The super-substitute rule, he felt, gave additional advantage to the team winning the toss. “You need to rethink on that so that the super-sub can be chosen after the toss to balance the advantage to either side.”With Kolkata holding a special place for South Africa as it marked a re-birth of their cricket in the post-apartheid era in the 1991 series, Smith said, “It’s always a good occasion to play here. It’s going to be a massive experience for our youngsters. This is a rainbow team, part of a new culture. Hopefully we will be able to win here tomorrow.”