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.”

Michael Vaughan will miss England’s one-day series against Pakistan to have knee surgery. The problem forced him out of the first Test, although he recovered to play in the last two matches of the series.The ECB’s chief medical officer, Dr Peter Gregory, explained: “This procedure will allow treatment of any problems identified and being done in the next few days should allow sufficient time for Michael to recover for the tour of India next year.”Vaughan has been suffering from pain since the recurrence of the injury to his right knee and he will now have an arthroscopy to investigate the problem. Dr Gregory is confident that Vaughan will recover in time for England’s tour of India which starts in February.”I’m bitterly disappointed to be missing the one-day matches against Pakistan,” said Vaughan, “but surgery really is the only option for me at the moment. Hopefully I can make a full recovery in time for the tour to India in the early stages of next year.”Marcus Trescothick will take over the captaincy duties, while Ian Bell will stay with the one-day squad for the five-match series which starts this Saturday at Lahore.

Virender Sehwag has been screened out as the main threat to the Pakistan team in the forthcoming series by Shahid Afridi, Pakistan’s indomitable allrounder. “To me Sehwag is a big threat — both in the Tests and the one-day internationals who can be so dangerous in such a short time. He is an excellent striker of the ball and very good at demoralising bowlers,” Afridi said.Afridi, who himself is feared by bowlers around the world and who currently holds the record for the fastest ODI hundred, said Sehwag was someone who had to be dismissed quickly. “Even on his bad days he can be destructive. Such a player has to be sent back quickly otherwise he takes the game away from you.”Afridi, who has played 20 Tests and 216 ODIs and who demolished the Indian bowlers with a breathtaking hundred in the Kanpur ODI last year, said he considered Rahul Dravid as India’s second biggest threat to Pakistan, saying, “He is a complete batsman; I’ve played against him and he is very calm and unruffled. I’ve learnt from experience that it’s useless trying to needle him because his focus on his game is very much complete when he is batting”.Afridi, who is certain to play the first Test against India at Lahore, said he was looking forward to the series, which would be an exciting one. “I think it’ll be very well contested because we’ve played against each other a lot of times in Tests and ODIs since they toured Pakistan in 2003-04. So basically we know each other’s game very well, which is why I rate Sehwag as dangerous as he is unpredictable.”When accepting that he was every bit as unpredictable as Sehwag, Afridi was quick to insist he was still not in Sehwag’s class, expressing, “The man (Sehwag) has got a triple hundred in Test cricket and I’m nowhere close to doing that”.Afridi, who has also developed into an accomplished leg-spinner, said this was a role he was paying a lot of attention to recently. “I think my bowling is very important to the team and as it’s I don’t like to remain out of the game for long. Being an allrounder means you are involved all the time. I’m working on my bowling as I want more success with the ball in the coming series.”Afridi, who was banned for one Test and two ODIs for scuffing the pitch during the second Test against England at Faisalabad in November, said he didn’t want to recall the episode, as it was all a bad dream. “India is always a special series. Where you normally give 100 percent against other teams against them you try to give 120 percent,” he stated.

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.

Muttiah Muralitharan has undergone another round of Tests at the University of Western Australia (UWA) to prove to the Australian crowds that his action is legitimate.”I’ve have gone to tests again … and still people are trying to bully me in a way,” said Murali. “Every time I bowl they shout it from the grounds, every time I go near the boundary line they say things, that means they are not accepting me. Sometimes you feel ‘Why do you want to come and play?'”The latest tests were done after local media reports suggested that Murali’s action was again under question because he was bowling more than 20kmph faster than when he was last tested at UWA. The tests showed that Murali’s average elbow extension while bowling the doosra at 86.5 kmph was 12.2 degrees and for the offbreak it was 12.9 degrees at 95 kmph, well within the stipulated ICC limit of 15 degrees.”There’s nothing more he could do,” said Bruce Elliot, a UWA scientist. “The latest testing shows, irrespective of whether he’s bowling a doosra or an off-break, all his deliveries were under 15 degrees, so none were illegal.” He said Muralitharan was bowling faster because of a shoulder surgery he underwent in 2004.Since he was first no-balled during the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne in 1995, Muralitharan’s action has been scrutinised and given the go-ahead four times by the UWA but the taunting at grounds across Australia have continued. He was unofficially reprimanded for making a gesture at a spectator who had painted his face black and had `no-ball’ written on his chest at Perth on January 31. “It happens mostly, you could say 99 percent in Australia rather than any other country I have been to,” he said. “Every country … England, South Africa, everywhere, people respect me. They enjoy my bowling and they enjoy the cricket. Here I don’t know what’s happening.”

Sahara One has bagged the satellite rights for the upcoming series against England. It will telecast all three Tests and seven one-day internationals. This follows the signing of an agreement with Nimbus which owns the global media rights for cricket matches to be played in India till 2010.The agreement was signed late last night, Sahara spokesman Abhijeet Sarkar told PTI. Sarkar said that Sahara was continuing talks with Nimbus to acquire the rights for a four-year period. He, however, refused to divulge the financial details of the deal.Announcing the deal, Shailendra Singh, head of Sahara One Media And Entertainment Limited, said, “We are delighted to partner with Nimbus and Indian cricket in this new strategic initiative to take Indian cricket to the next level. Sahara India Pariwar has deep commitment to cricket and we are sure that our massive reach in cable homes will ensure that this exciting series achieves record-breaking ratings.”Incidentally, Sahara One is free-to-air channel. Commenting on the deal, Akash Khurana, MD & CEO, Nimbus, said “Our choice of the Sahara One platform was dictated by the fact that the channel has near 100% distribution in cable homes compared to sports channels that barely reach 50% of cable homes; and by the amazing commitment and vision for cricket of the Sahara India Pariwar.”

Shoaib Akhtar is likely to start bowling again, possibly this week, the first time he will do so following the surgery he underwent on his knee injury, in Australia.Writing in his column for BigStarcricket.com on April 2, Shoaib revealed, “I’m pleased to say that since my knee surgery, everything has been going well and I will be bowling again after another week. I won’t be charging in off like my usual run-up straight away, as I need to build up gradually. I don’t know how long it will take but I know it won’t be long. I just have to be patient.”Shoaib added that he had been doing extensive gym work since the surgery. “I’m feeling strong as I’ve been doing gym work five to six days a week, not every day as the body needs a day or two to recover from all the workouts. I don’t want to overdo it.”If everything goes according to schedule, he aims to regain full fitness by the end of April. “That would mean that I would be in peak condition by the time the England tour comes around, which has always been my main target.”There have been reports in the local press that Shoaib has not been following the rehabilitation programme devised by the PCB following his surgery and that he has missed considerable training over the last week. Although he didn’t answer the charge directly, he disclosed that he has been in constant touch with Dr David Young, the surgeon who operated on him in Melbourne last month.”He is pretty pleased with the way things are going with my recovery so that’s another plus point. Nobody knows my body better than him after he scanned me all over so it’s good to hear him being confident about my fitness.”Shoaib’s knee injury was thought originally to be a potentially career-ending one and it came on the back of an ankle injury that plagued him through the India series and ruled him out of the ODI series.

Michael Hussey has said that it would be detrimental for England if they over-analysed their game and became too intense in preparation for this year’s Ashes.”I think it’s dangerous for them to get caught up in every ball and become too intense with it,” Hussey told , a Melbourne-based daily. “If you make it too complicated, it can have an adverse effect on your performance. I’ve been down that road, I had three years where I went to the nth degree, trained too hard and put too much pressure on myself and it definitely had a negative effect on my game.”Hussey’s comments came after the England Cricket Board (ECB) had revealed their new video data-capture project which would make every ball bowled in first-class and one-day cricket available on the internet for coaches to analyse. They will be able to look at the shots played and dismissals of batsmen to in order to focus on the strengths and weaknesses in their technique.”I think it would be a dangerous ploy by England to take it too seriously,” said Hussey. “At the end of the day, what happens out in the middle is a battle between two players, a batter and a bowler, and whoever has got the will to finish on top generally does.”Hussey added that he does not use video footage as much now to improve his game. “I used to, but I feel very comfortable … with what my plans are and where my game is at. I look every now and then to make sure certain technical aspects are still in place, but generally I don’t use it a helluva lot.”He had stints at Durham, Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire and felt that his familiarity of England’s bowlers would work to his advantage. “It’s a bit of a blessing for me because I have already seen their bowlers; I’ve played against them a lot so I have already devised some plans in my head. The flipside of it is that they have seen me, but I hope the plans that I have against them will be better than what they’ve got planned for me.”

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.

Duncan Fletcher, England’s coach, has admitted that Monty Panesar “knows he is under a lot of pressure” to improve the quality of his fielding.Panesar has been dreadful in the field, spilling a simple chance at Edgbaston and looking so uncertain that crowds have cheered whenever he has managed to even stop the ball. While many regard Panesar as a cult figure, there is serious concern that he could be mentally shredded if the Australian crowds get on his back this winter.”We can’t afford for anybody to drop any catches,” Fletcher admitted. “No one tries to drop them so we’ve got to make sure they work at their game and improve their game. We’ve only been working with Monty for a very short period of time.”He’s got to make sure he improves his batting and fielding, but he’s well aware of that,” Fletcher continued. “He’s always calling a coach across to work on certain aspects of it, but it’s also crucial he does have some breaks just as all the other players do.”We are working hard to try and improve his game and as long as he’s trying his damnedest and he’s working hard at his game, that’s the main thing. We’ve picked him as a spinner and he’s picked to play as a spinner and do his job as a spinner and as long as he’s trying there’s nothing more you can ask of an individual.”Even though Panesar’s bowling has impressed, Fletcher hinted that his place was by no means certain. “You have to look at what is best for England at the moment. We’ve lost a lot of experienced players and we need a spinner and you have to work out who’s going to do the best job.”Panesar was included in an unchanged squad for the final Test against Sri Lanka which begins at Trent Bridge on Friday.