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UP march into quarters

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A round-up of the third day’s action from the sixth round of the Ranji Trophy Super League

Cricinfo staff10-Dec-2009

Group B

Scorecard
Uttar Pradesh resumed the third day needing 183 to get with eight wickets in hand and lost five of them en route to a win that took them to the quarter-finals of the Ranji Trophy’s Super League. Mohammad Kaif, batting at No. 3, added 40 runs to his overnight score even as Shivakant Shukla added just one to his, dismissed in the first over of the day, but really aiding UP’s charge to victory was Parvinder Singh. Parvinder atoned for a first-innings duck with 62 from 95 balls, studded with ten boundaries, and added 93 with Kaif. The pair was dismissed in relative succession – within five overs and ten runs of each other – but handy cameos from Bhuvneshwar Kumar (29) and Piyush Chawla (21) helped UP chase their target of 236 with three wickets remaining. UP are now second in their group’s points table with 18, second to Karnataka’s 23. Bengal, after this defeat, sit at fifth place with eight points.
Scorecard
Five wickets from Pradeep Sangwan trumped a century from Ankit Bawne and ensured Delhi stayed on course for a crucial win – their second on the trot – at the Roshanara. Following in, Maharashtra resumed the third day on 32 for 1 and were 334 for 9 at stumps. It was an improved showing from the visitors, who were bowled out 163 in their first innings, but a 78-run lead at the close should not worry Delhi much. Leading the way was Bawne, with 118, and Rohit Motwani with a gritty 61. Sangwan was the hero with the ball, cutting through the top and middle order before Bawne and Motwani put on 107 for the fifth wicket. Once Motwani was removed by Parwinder Awana, Banwe added 105 with Digambar Waghmare (46) to take Maharashtra past 300. In successive deliveries, Sangwan dismissed Bawne and Jitendra Patil to give Delhi a final lift before the day ended.

Group A

Scorecard
A stunning collapse by Gujarat, at the hands of left-arm seamer Mohinder Sharma, set Himachal Pradesh up for a six-wicket win on day three in Surat. Gujarat held the edge coming in to the day, needing just to wickets to take a first-innings lead, and that they achieved with Siddharth Trivedi taking them to finish with a career-best 6 for 32. HP only added eight runs to their total, but what followed was stunning. Mohinder Sharma, sharing the new ball, dismissed the Gujarat openers inside four overs and, after Ashok Thakur nabbed No’s 3 and 4, proceeded to take a career-best haul. Gujarat were never allowed to gain momentum and folded for a paltry 87 in 42.4 overs, leaving HP to chase 140. That attempt began poorly as the debutant Tatsat Brahmbhatt took three wickets in his first three overs, but a 68-run stand between Hemant Dogra (42) and Mukesh Sharma (52*) resurrected the innings. It was HP’s first win of the tournament and put them at sixth on their pool’s points table.
Scorecard
Sanjay Bangar’s quick strikes on the third morning at the Uppal Stadium dented Hyderabad and gave Railways crucial first-innings points. Ambati Rayudu and the tail breathed life back into the innings and at the end of the day the likely result was a draw. From 99 for 2 overnight, Hyderabad slipped to 119 for 5, losing Anirudh Singh for 42, but Rayudu’s patient 73 led a fightback. Krishnakant Upadhyay, with four wickets, including that of VVS Laxman for 9, kept the pressure up but Hyderadad’s lower order rallied to get the score past the 300-run mark. Munagala Praneet Arjun (22), Alfred Absolem (29) and Mohammed Khader (34) each got stuck in to frustrate Railways. At stumps, Railways led by 20 with their openers together after nine overs at the crease.
Scorecard
An exciting day’s play in Chandigarh saw Orissa take the first-innings lead and add to that significantly against hosts Punjab. Basanth Mohanty added a couple more wickets go finish with 6 for 65 as Punjab managed to add 33 to their total, with Mayank Sidhana hitting his maiden half-century. Love Ablish tried hard to wrest back some momentum for Punjab, taking five wickets, but the opener Subhrajit Sahoo’s 62 proved crucial. Halhadar Das, the wicketkeeper, was unbeaten on 39 at stumps with Orissa leading by 302.Click here to read Nagraj Gollapudi’s bulletin of the third day’s play between Mumbai and Tamil Nadu.

A pitch with something for everyone

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Finally, at the third time of asking in this series, the conditions provided the perfect backdrop for an engrossing contest

Cricinfo staff02-Dec-2009Finally, at the third time of asking in this series, the conditions provided the perfect backdrop for an engrossing contest. The pitch in Ahmedabad was a sleeping beauty that even Don Juan couldn’t have roused, while the one at Green Park in Kanpur was slow and low. On the opening day at this famous old venue, there was something for everyone. Zaheer Khan got the odd delivery to leap at the batsmen, Sreesanth troubled them with conventional and reverse swing, while Harbhajan Singh and Pragyan Ojha found both turn and spitting-cobra bounce.But by the day’s end, Sri Lanka still had 366 on the board, with Tillakaratne Dilshan’s rapid century curtailed by a poor decision and Angelo Mathews holding the Indians at bay with an unbeaten 86. There was a fluent half-century for Tharanga Paranavitana, and a stroke-filled 43 from Prasanna Jayawardene. Had the disgruntled Dilshan – “I would still be batting out there,” he said pointedly when asked if he would have preferred the referral system to be in place – not been sent packing with 24 overs still to be bowled in the day, Sri Lanka could conceivably have reached 400.With the slower bowlers likely to grow ever more influential as the match progresses, the fate of the Test probably hinges on India’s first innings. Harbhajan, who finished the day with 4 for 107, was quietly confident that India had the batsmen to handle whatever Muttiah Muralitharan and Rangana Herath conjure up on this surface. “I have got tremendous faith in our batsmen that they will come out and take this challenge and score a lot of runs because the wicket is still very good,” Harbhajan said. “Very true bounce, and you can score a lot of runs because the surface is so hard on the sides that once the ball gets out of the square, it is very difficult to stop.”It’s a high-scoring ground, so I won’t be surprised when Viru [Sehwag] gets going. When Dilshan or Viru plays till tea, then the scoreboard will keep rattling along. It’s very important to get this kind of people early. They [Sri Lanka] deserve the credit, they batted really well today.”Both Harbhajan and Ojha bowled beautifully at times, looping the ball and inducing plenty of false or uncertain strokes. In Harbhajan’s eyes though, the perception that he bowled better was a false one. “I was just bowling the way I have been bowling,” he said. “There was a bit of moisture in the morning session, the ball was gripping a bit and taking spin. There was enough to beat the bat. I knew that red soil also helps bounce and spin if you put enough effort.”The kind of wickets we’ve played on, it gets really difficult to even beat the bat. The Kanpur wicket was a tough one to bowl on. Lots of edges weren’t carrying to slips, lots of edges were going towards third man. It’s difficult to set fields for that. Ahmedabad, you all know what the story was. But I’m very happy the way I bowled today. It would have been a little better if I had conceded 15-20 runs less.Having leaked runs in the first hour, India were much better in the next three before a 33-over final session, in which Sri Lanka piled on 153. “We could have bowled a little better,” Harbhajan said. “I felt we gave away a lot of runs in the third session; the energy levels were a little low. Also, we could have fielded a little better. We have to be up for these kinds of challenges. We know that when there are partnerships, if we get one or two wickets and create pressure by bowling and fielding well, we could save 35 to 40 runs.”India’s problems were in part due to having just four specialist bowlers, on a day when the afternoon sun shone bright. Harbhajan and Ojha bowled 52 overs between them, and the only respite came in the shape of four overs from Yuvraj Singh. “You have to have an allrounder who can bowl 15 overs in a day and get you 50-odd runs with the bat,” said Harbhajan. “But unfortunately, we don’t have that someone in the team at the moment. But it would have been nice to have a fifth bowler who can give you another 15 overs. That will put less pressure on your main bowlers.”Murali has been a non-factor in the series so far, but Harbhajan was clearly wary of the impact that he might have as the match goes forward. “Obviously, Murali is the biggest match-winner ever in world cricket,” he said. “Playing him will be challenging, it has always been a challenge. I am sure he will be looking forward to bowling on this wicket but we have the batsmen who can handle him. Even in Galle, when it was spinning big, Viru got 200. It’s very important to get a good start, and I am sure [Murali] Vijay and Viru will give us a good start.”

Watson claims Gayle 'baited me'

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Shane Watson has justified his exuberant celebration of Chris Gayle’s dismissal in Perth by saying he was baited by the captain

Cricinfo staff22-Dec-2009Shane Watson has justified his exuberant celebration of Chris Gayle’s dismissal in Perth by saying he was baited by the captain. Watson was fined 15% of his match fee for his roaring celebration in the second-innings on Saturday and has been criticised for his behaviour, with Geoff Lawson likening it to a four-year-old’s tantrum.”There was a bit of build up to it, so it’s always nice to get Chris Gayle out, he’s obviously one of the most devastating batsmen in the world at the moment,” Watson told AAP. “He definitely let me know that he was keen for me to come on to bowl leading up to that, so it was very nice to get him out first ball.”That was the catalyst for me celebrating the way I did … I know there’s a line and I was extremely happy to get him out, I normally don’t celebrate to that extent when I get someone out. But when he baits me, talking about wanting me to come on to bowl to be able to take me down, it’s always very nice to get the upper hand.”Gayle said Watson over-reacted but was happy “to move on and let bygones be bygones”. “Watson didn’t actually say anything to me,” Gayle wrote in his Daily Telegraph column. “He just kept screaming in my direction.”He has a bit of a temper and is pretty emotional so he was probably just letting it all out. Each player is different and getting me out came at a crucial time in an important Test match. There is no doubt he over-reacted but I am prepared to move on and let bygones be bygones.”Watson did admit his antics were over the top and they added to a busy Test for the match referee Chris Broad. Sulieman Benn, the left-arm spinner, was banned for two ODIs for his exchanges with the fined Mitchell Johnson and Brad Haddin during Australia’s first innings.

Life in the fast lane for Abhimanyu Mithun

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Abhimanyu Mithun has leapfrogged to the national Test squad after just ten first-class matches

Siddarth Ravindran28-Jan-2010Abhimanyu Mithun
started to take his cricket seriously just three years ago, having only played with a tennis ball till then. By the end of 2007, he was harrying batsmen on the Under-19 circuit with his pace, scooping up 37 wickets in the Cooch Behar tournament, only one short of topping the charts. He was hoping that performance would pitchfork him into Virat Kohli’s side that won the U-19 World Cup in Malaysia in early 2008. He didn’t make the cut then, though, but two years on, Mithun has leapfrogged everyone on that victorious team to make the national Test squad.He’s done that largely on the strength of his favourite tactic: subjecting batsmen to an intense scrutiny of their technique against the short ball. He also likes slipping in yorkers but is generally a hit-the-deck kind of the bowler, whose usual delivery is the incutter to the right-hander.He hit the headlines early last year when the Royal Challengers Bangalore coach Ray Jennings talked him up as an express bowler, but a quiet IPL followed. The buzz was back once the Ranji Trophy started in November; he ripped through perennial title contenders Uttar Pradesh twice on first-class debut, which included a hat-trick.In two months, Mithun made the leap from near-anonymity to national selection. In that time, he became the highest wicket-taker in the Ranji season, snaring 47 and topping off the season with dazzling performances against UP in the semi-finals
and Mumbai in the finals.None of this would have been possible had his fledgling career as a discus thrower blossomed. He made it to the state-level as a teenager but couldn’t progress beyond that stage. Cricket was only a hobby till one of his friends suggested he join a cricket camp, where Mithun enjoyed the experience of bowling with the leather ball, setting in motion one of most dizzying climbs to the highest level.The son of a fitness instructor, he used to train regularly in his father’s gym in his teens which has given him the sinewy build and strength so useful for a fast bowler.Another of his strong points is the ability to send down the odd cracking delivery which surprises the batsmen even when he is not at his best. For example, in the Ranji final on a bowler-friendly track in Mysore, he was guilty of wasting the new ball by not making the Mumbai batsmen play enough, and was taken off after a four-over burst. Omkar Khanvilkar and Abhishek Nayar weren’t troubled much early in Mithun’s second spell either, but he snapped their resistance by bowling both with full, quick deliveries.Even after a barnstorming season, eyebrows are bound to be raised when someone reaches the Indian team barely ten weeks after his first-class debut. Karnataka coach Sanath Kumar is not one of those surprised by the call-up. “From day one we knew he had the potential,” he told Cricinfo. “He has the pace, bowling around 140kmh, and he has performed in every game, whether it is junior cricket or first-class cricket.”Mithun has been more of a shock bowler for Karnataka this season, rather than someone who nips batsmen out by pegging away in the channel outside off stump. “He has to start thinking about how he has to plan a batsman out,” Kumar said. “That will come with experience, and being with the likes of Zaheer Khan will teach him a lot.”Over the past decade, plenty of Indian quick bowlers have made their international debut in a cacophony of hype, only to drop their pace and turn in lacklustre performances after a couple of years. The relentless grind of the Indian team has affected the likes of Irfan Pathan and Munaf Patel, and Mithun needs to be wary of treading that route. “It is important to be focused, it is important to keep working on the fitness aspect of the game,” Venkatesh Prasad, the Karnataka seamer who was India’s fast bowling coach till recently, said. “There’s lot of distractions which come along your way when you are playing for the country but he should just keep doing what he’s been doing to be successful.”Kumar also has similar advice for Mithun. “Not only me, but Rahul [Dravid] also has said the same thing to him, ‘whatever you are it is because of cricket, cricket is the ultimate, focus on the game, all other things will come, but start focusing on other things and everything is over’, and he knows it well.”Mithun has taken the elevator to the top, but with Sreesanth likely to be fit for the second Test, the Karnataka bowler’s first stint with the national squad could be a short one. What should Mithun be looking to take away from this spell? “This should be a benchmark for him, that he’s capable of getting into the team, capable of playing for the country,” Prasad said. “He should take it as a motivational factor.”

Wright keeps pressure on fighting Blues

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Damien Wright made life difficult for New South Wales on a tightly-contested opening day, but Peter Forrest helped ensure Victoria didn’t completely dominate play

Brydon Coverdale at the MCG12-Feb-2010

ScorecardPeter Forrest posted a half-century in his second match of the season•Getty Images

Damien Wright made life difficult for New South Wales on a tightly-contested opening day, but Peter Forrest helped ensure Victoria didn’t completely dominate play. Forrest, Dominic Thornely and Phil Jaques toiled hard to get the Blues to 6 for 215 at the close of a protracted day that began an hour late due to Melbourne’s stormy weather and ran until bad light stopped play at 7.10pm.Forrest and Thornely put on 79 for the fifth wicket and pushed New South Wales on to 4 for 173, which was a decent fightback after Wright left them at 2 for 26. In his second Sheffield Shield match of the summer after recovering from a calf injury, and having been Man of the Match in his only other appearance, Wright struck twice in an over to back David Hussey’s decision to send the Blues in.Phillip Hughes’ poor run of form continued when he was caught at slip off Wright for 14 and Simon Katich followed for a duck after a good offcutter clipped his edge and he was caught behind. Forrest, who was also playing his second game of the 2009-10 campaign, helped steady the innings with Jaques, who looked solid until a blow to the foot from a John Hastings yorker left him in need of a runner.Wright played a part in the dismissal of Jaques, who prodded at Darren Pattinson and was well snapped up for 47 by Wright diving forward at gully. Steve Smith will want to forget his tentative hook off Hastings that flicked the edge and was taken by Matthew Wade but the New South Wales resistance solidified after that lapse.Thornely and Forrest locked down and each scored at a strike-rate of 30 as they aimed primarily for crease occupation against a Victorian outfit for whom victory would make a home final a strong possibility. Hastings ended their stand with the old ball when Forrest was snaffled low to the ground by David Hussey at second slip for 58 from 188 deliveries.Thornely did manage one six – straight down the ground off Jon Holland – but misjudged a leave when Wright returned with the second new ball and was lbw for 44 off 143 balls. At stumps Victoria needed to finish off the lower order – Daniel Smith was on 15 and Steve O’Keefe also had 15 – and they were also hoping their star opener Chris Rogers would recover from a virus that kept him off the ground for the whole first day.

Struggling Ashraful confident of fulfilling promise

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Mohammad Ashraful epitomises all the promise and frustration of Bangladesh cricket. When he’s in form, he bats with a fluency that few in the world can match

Andrew Miller in Chittagong06-Mar-2010After an ODI series that was perhaps closer than the 3-0 scoreline suggests, the general consensus is that Bangladesh cricket is slowly reaching the standard required to compete on equal terms with the bigger nations in world cricket. But “slowly”, unfortunately, is the operative word, and in Chittagong on Sunday, one of the slowest developers of them all returns to centre stage.Mohammad Ashraful epitomises all the promise and frustration of Bangladesh cricket. When he’s in form, he bats with a fluency that few in the world can match – never more thrillingly than during his century on debut against Sri Lanka in September 2001, when he was a carefree whippersnapper of 16, which encapsulated the richness of talent that the country seemed set to produce.Unfortunately, of late, Ashraful’s career has hit the buffers. A wretched tour of New Zealand realised 62 runs in six innings, in all three forms of the game, and followed a threadbare series of performances against India and Sri Lanka, in which he managed one half-century in eight innings.With the blessing of the board, Ashraful sat out the three ODIs in a bid to clear his mind ahead of next week’s Test series, but even that policy didn’t quite pay the dividends he’d hoped. In four first-class innings for Dhaka Division, he mustered 21 runs including three ducks, to leave his hopes of a recall resting rather heavily on his performance against England in the forthcoming three-day warm-up.”In the last couple of months I have not been batting well,” Ashraful told Cricinfo. “In the nets I am batting well, but in the middle I get out very early, so that’s why I feel I needed a bit of a break from international cricket. But tomorrow is a three-day game, and if I bat well there, I can play Test cricket again.”In Ashraful’s absence, Bangladesh have made decent progress against England, particularly in the batting where Tamim Iqbal, Imrul Kayes, Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim have formed a promising core of young and motivated prospects. But there’s no question in the minds of either the selectors or the coaching staff that a confident and focussed Ashraful would transform the dynamic of their team, by slotting in at No. 3 or 4, and providing a touch of class to an otherwise functional middle-order.”I still think that he is one of our best players for Bangladesh,” Akram Khan, a member of the selection committee, told Cricinfo. “He’s played a lot of good innings for us, and so there’s no confusion about how good he is. But the last six or seven months, he has not been in good shape, so we are praying that he can finally come good. If he plays well, he can make the difference for Bangladesh, and we are ready for that.”Unfortunately, Ashraful’s single biggest problem is the fact that these expectations have already been looming over him for nigh on a decade, and with every new failure, a new solution is thrust into the mix. He was feeling the burden during England’s last tour in 2003, when Dav Whatmore dropped him from the Test series in a bid to shield him from the pressures, and his desperation to avoid a repetition of that scenario was one of the main reasons why he sat out the one-dayers.”Everyone has been talking with me, and giving me advice, so I just needed to go away and work it out for myself,” Ashraful said. “I think I have a problem with my gameplan. My batting is okay, but some days I’m very attacking and some days I’m very defensive. That’s why I’m scoring only every four or five games.”I needed to think more, and come up with one solid gameplan, and now I am thinking ball-by-ball and playing positive cricket,” he added. “I just haven’t scored enough runs recently, but I believe in myself, and if I feel good, Insh’allah they will select me.”The selectors are, by and large, sympathetic to Ashraful’s plight. “It happens,” Akram said. “When good players play for a long time, they go through periods when their form is not quite there. I think this was the right time [for Ashraful] to get out from there. I know he is trying very hard, and I hope he can come back soon. The boys played very well without him, but we need some experience and he has played a lot of long innings. If he comes back, it can only be good for the Test team.”For all the problems that Ashraful has endured of late, the chance to slot into a team in which his personal performance is no longer the decisive factor can only be a good thing. “In the past there was big pressure on me, but now we have a lot of match-winners,” he said. “Now I am just one of the players who has to perform. When we beat the big teams I sometimes play brilliant cricket, but now we have four or five guys who can do that, so I need to step up again.”It is good for Bangladesh,” he added. “When Jamie [Siddons, the coach] came here two years ago, he said he needed more players like me. Now we have a lot of players performing good cricket. They are very confident, and they are not scared anymore. Last year we won 14 games, and even though ten of those were against Zimbabwe, it still shows that we are improving.”As for Ashraful’s personal ambitions, he hopes that the coming year can prove to be a watershed in his career. Having given up the captaincy and reassessed his game away from the spotlight, he still believes he is young enough, and sufficiently motivated, to transform an international record that does no justice whatsoever to his talent.”Scoring in domestic cricket isn’t the same as doing it in Test cricket, so it was just good for me to get away,” he said. “I definitely see this as a new start. I’m only 26, so if I’m fit enough I can play ten years or more. For the last nine years, I have been up and down, so now I need to perform regularly. My best time is still to come, I think.”

Anderson still in the dark over knee problem

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James Anderson still has no idea what caused his knee problem that has plagued him during the winter

Cricinfo staff25-Mar-2010James Anderson still has no idea what caused the knee problem that plagued him during the winter, but is confident of being ready for the start of the English season and a return to England colours.Anderson was rested for the tour of Bangladesh after suffering with his knee during the trip to South Africa where he had a total of four injections to get him through the one-day and Test series.He has been back training with Lancashire during pre-season, although skipped the club’s tour to Barbados, and resumed bowling a couple of weeks ago. His first outing is due to be against Durham UCCE on April 3 before Lancashire’s opening Championship match, against Warwickshire, on April 15.”The knee is good; the rehab has been going well,” Anderson told the . “I don’t know exactly what the problem was. I went to see a surgeon in London, and he didn’t know what it was.”All the doctors I have seen didn’t have a clue, so we just spread a bit of cortisone around where I pointed at, where the pain was, and we left it for three weeks. We injected it at the start of the tour of South Africa, and had three more injections on that trip.””It can be quite difficult to decipher what is a niggle and what can cause you problems – because as a bowler you are never really 100% fit. You always have a niggle or two. This one started as a niggle and just got worse and worse.”England name their 15-man squad for the World Twenty20 next Tuesday and Anderson will be expected to lead the attack at that tournament in West Indies, but first he wants to get through his first few outings of the season.”The aim is to play against Durham University and then play it by ear,” he said. “Lancashire have a few more warm-up games, but we will take it day by day and see how the knee pulls up. I had three weeks off when I got back from South Africa and have been gradually building up from there. I started bowling a couple of weeks ago and am bowling at about three-quarters pace at the moment.”Anderson’s absence in Bangladesh, coupled with injuries to Ryan Sidebottom and Graham Onions, meant England fielded a new-look pace attack in the Tests and one-dayers. Tim Bresnan, the Yorkshire allrounder, took his chance with some impressive displays while Steven Finn also made a promising start to his Test career after a late call-up.

Karthik helps Delhi crush Rajasthan

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Dinesh Karthik hit a delightful half-century on a slow difficult pitch to charge Delhi Daredevils to a facile win against Rajasthan Royals at the Feroz Shah Kotl

The Bulletin by Sriram Veera31-Mar-2010
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
How they were outDinesh Karthik was key to Delhi’s recovery and their thumping win•Indian Premier League

Dinesh Karthik hit a delightful half-century on a slow pitch to charge Delhi Daredevils to a facile win against Rajasthan Royals at the Feroz Shah Kotla. Delhi were wobbling on 67 for 4 but Karthik added 79 with Gautam Gambhir to stabilise the innings before he exploded in style to provide the perfect finish. The target proved too stiff for Rajasthan, who never got going in the chase, and Delhi moved to second position in the points table.On a pitch that was never going to get easier to bat on, it needed a special effort from Rajasthan, and Yusuf Pathan in particular, to overhaul this target. The entire chase revolved around Pathan. Rajasthan kept him back for the middle overs, for the battle against spin, but he was forced to come in early after Farveez Maharoof toppled the top order with his slow legcutters.Yusuf hit a couple of sixes but when he lofted a slow, loopy legbreak from Amit Mishra to long-on, the chase derailed entirely. The packed house had more moments to cherish as David Warner took four catches and affected a run out to play a hand in five dismissals.Rajasthan’s troubles in the chase highlighted the value of Karthik’s innings. He looked in touch right from the start and never allowed a run-scoring opportunity to go waste. What stood out was how well he paced his innings, and the thought he put into it. He played Shane Warne with caution, realising he could always take chances against the other bowlers. He blasted Tait to the straight boundary and unfurled a pick-up shot over square leg against Trivedi, but it was in the 17th over that he really shifted gears. He swung Sumit Narwal for a straight six on bent knee and followed up with a six over long-on next ball.Karthik reserved his best for Tait, hitting a hat-trick of fours in the 18th over – a drilled straight boundary, a whipped on-drive and a deliciously-timed cover drive. And he wasn’t done yet. In the final over, he pulled Tait for a six before holing out to long-on off the last delivery. By then, Karthik had done his job.Delhi seemed to have entered the game with a plan. Since the dry pitch was getting slower, they wanted to cash in against the new ball. They went hard at it – with Virender Sehwag, David Warner and even Paul Collingwood, going for their shots. Sehwag struck the first few blows, swinging Yusuf Pathan for a six over wide long on and carving Adam Voges repeatedly over the off-side field.Warne tried to take the pace off by using two spinners in the Powerplay but it was his medium-pacer Narwal who struck with the new ball, removing the explosive duo of Sehwag and Warner. Narwal saw Warner being reprieved by Trivedi at mid-on but struck almost immediately with a yorker. He then bowled a short delivery outside off to Sehwag, who edged the pull shot to the deep square-leg fielder.Collingwood started with a flamboyant short-arm pulled six against Tait before he cut the bowler to the point boundary. However, he was run out by Voges, who dived full stretch to his left at point to intercept a square drive from Gambhir, and threw quickly to catch Collingwood short of the crease. Delhi went from 50 for 3 to 67 for 4 when Warne lured Kedar Jadhav into holing out to long-on in the ninth over.It could have gone either way at this point but Gambhir found support from Karthik and they slowly, but assuredly, pushed Delhi towards a competitive total. The challenges were plenty: the ball started to stop a bit, Warne bowled a testing spell, Trivedi slipped in his cutters and Tait tried to beat them with pace in the air.It was a little risk-free leg glance that settled Gambhir, who had started shakily, and got him going. Thereafter he used his feet to tackle the threat of Warne and rotated the strike with Karthik, who provided the much-needed momentum with an innings of character.

Allround Kent too strong for Gloucestershire

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Kent cruised to a 36-run Friends Provident t20 victory over Gloucestershire at Gloucester after posting an imposing 217 all out – their highest Twenty20 score

13-Jun-2010

ScorecardKent cruised to a 36-run Friends Provident t20 victory over Gloucestershire at Gloucester after posting an imposing 217 all out – their highest Twenty20 score.The Spitfires made the most of the short boundaries at Archdeacon Meadow to hammer the highest score in the South Division this season, with Rob Key (44), Joe Denly (48) and Alex Blake (33) the main contributors. Will Porterfield’s bright 43 gave Gloucestershire hope, but they collapsed from 62 for 1 to 94 for 6 as Simon Cook took three wickets for 22 runs. The hosts were eventually bowled out for 181, despite Chris Taylor’s defiant 67 off 36 balls.Kent were given the perfect start by Key and Denly, who plundered 65 off the six-over powerplay against bowling that erred on the short side. There were 87 runs on the board in the ninth over when Key was bowled off stump attempting to pull a James Franklin delivery.The Spitfires skipper had hit eight fours in facing 25 balls, but Denly lost nothing by comparison and had smacked seven fours and a six when he was stumped advancing to drive the part-time off-spin of Kadeer Ali. By then it was 101 for 2 and Kent were going along at more than 10 an over. Martin van Jaarsveld added a breezy 26, but the most impressive hitting of their innings came from 21-year-old Blake, who twice profited from missed stumpings by Steve Snell.The left-hander blasted four sixes in his 17-ball innings, one of them cut over point off Jon Lewis, before being yorked by Franklin. At 168 for 5 in the 15th over, Kent looked capable of an even bigger score. But a brilliant boundary catch by Hamish Marshall and a couple of run-outs prevented them becoming the highest scorers in the competition this season.Gloucestershire overcame the early loss of Franklin to score 58 from their powerplay overs. But Cook then instigated a collapse and, although Taylor reached a half-century with two sixes in an over from Matt Coles, Kent always had things under control.Ian Butler also used the long handle to good effect in his 28, but the Gladiators needed 86 off the last five overs and, for all Taylor’s heroics in hitting four sixes and six fours, it proved too much.

Yorkshire in charge after Lyth hundred

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

Adam Lyth and Jacques Rudolph helped Yorkshire reach 379 for 8 against Lancashire at Old Trafford

Jon Culley at Old Trafford28-Jun-2010

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Neville Cardus would recall Roses matches played in such curmudgeonly attitude that the cross-Pennine rivals would deliberately score slowly just to frustrate their opponents, the Lancashire captain, Harry Makepeace, adopting a first-day mantra of “no fours before lunch” if he won the toss and the wicket was good.This historical mean-spiritedness was clearly lost on stand-in captain, Jacques Rudolph, as Yorkshire won the toss in Manchester. He and Adam Lyth, his opening partner, gathered boundaries with almost carefree abandon as Yorkshire responded to the opportunity to bat first on a dry, flat wicket to reach 126 without loss in the opening session.Lyth, the left-hander, is enjoying a prolific season at the top of the order, in contrast to last summer, when he was required to step aside to make way for Michael Vaughan and seemed unsure of his future. Here he reached 100 off 122 balls in a continuation of a marvellous run of scores interrupted only by a first-ball duck when these teams met at Headingley a month ago.Prior to that, he had scored 84, 85, 47, 142, 93, 133 and 98 off the reel and seemed to have a real chance, even at long-odds, of reaching 1,000 runs before the end of May. That duck and weather fit for ducks denied him the opportunity with the last day washed out completely, so perhaps there was an element of ridding himself of that disappointment in the exuberant celebration that followed as he moved from 99 to 100 with a legside single after his 17th boundary had taken him to 99. And, for a committed Yorkshire cricketer, there is nothing more satisfying than a century against the old enemy. This was Lyth’s first.Lyth, who has represented his country only at Under-19 level, must be close to a Lions call-up, at least. Disappointingly, he could not add to his hundred, though, glancing a ball from Tom Smith into wicketkeeper Luke Sutton’s gloves.The Whitby-born player still may be the first in the country to reach 1,000 first-class runs for the season, although Mark Ramprakash – out for 99 at Chesterfield – is running him close. The former England batsman has 959 to Lyth’s 953.Yorkshire lost their first wicket at 166 but continued to build, their workrate certainly more impressive than the team undertaking to dismantle the temporary stand from Sunday’s one-day international, the presence of which caused chaos before the start as cars poured into the ground in search of parking spaces that did not exist.Rudolph, willing at first to play second fiddle to Lyth with 31 runs to his partner’s 84 at lunch, became more expansive in time and reached 83 before following a lifting ball from Daren Powell to be second out, caught at second slip.Anthony McGrath, looking robustly prosperous without the cares of captaincy, had 61 to his name before playing on to the same bowler. Jonathan Bairstow, promoted to four in the batting with regular skipper Andrew Gale away with the England Lions, looked set to be the fourth half-centurion before a leading edge off Tom Smith flew to extra cover, where Simon Katich took a fine, diving catch.Gerard Brophy clinched the fourth Yorkshire batting point before a Glen Chapple inswinger trapped him in front. That wicket prompted a late comeback by Lancashire as Chapple found good movement in the air, his four wickets in the space of 26 balls including a breathtaking catch at point by Steven Croft off a sliced drive by Adil Rashid.Chapple and Smith were the pick of the Lancashire bowlers, left-arm spinner Simon Kerrigan toiling long for scant reward. They missed Sajid Mahmood, another chosen for a triangular one-day tournament of questionable value involving England Lions, India A and West Indies A.Martyn Moxon, Yorkshire’s director of cricket and a man not inclined towards reckless forecasting, believes Yorkshire are serious contenders for the title and on this evidence it appears to be a reasonable evaluation.