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Cameron Bancroft, the player to actually tamper with the ball during the Cape Town Test, has been banned for nine months, as the fall-out of the scandal rumbles on

Daniel Brettig in Johannesburg28-Mar-2018Steven Smith and David Warner, formerly captain and vice-captain of Australia, have been banned from playing international and domestic cricket for 12 months by Cricket Australia for their roles in the pre-meditated plan to tamper with the ball during the Cape Town Test. Warner is banned from captaincy for life, and Smith for 12 months after the completion of his ban. Cameron Bancroft, the player caught tampering with the ball, was banned from playing for nine months and from captaincy for 12 months after the completion of his ban.CA has said that the plan was devised by Warner, the foreign object used was sandpaper, and that Bancroft and Smith lied publicly in their post-match press conference in referring to it as adhesive tape. The full charge sheet confirms a raft of misdeeds by the trio, under which they have been charged with conduct contrary to the spirit of the game, conduct unbecoming, conduct harmful to the interests of cricket, and conduct bringing the game into disrepute. The basis for these charges includes the following:Warner developed the plan to alter the condition of the ball, instructed Bancroft in how to do it including making a demonstration of technique with sandpaper, and the misled the umpires by helping to conceal the plan.Smith had prior knowledge of the plan and did not stop it, directed the plan’s concealment on the field once it became apparent that the team had been caught out on the big screen, and then made “misleading” public comments about the “nature, extent and participants” in the plan.Bancroft had knowledge of the plan, took instruction as to its carrying out and then did so, before seeking to conceal the evidence and then to mislead the umpires as to what had taken place, and then joined Smith in making misleading public comments about what he had done.All three players were told of their bans in person by the CA chief executive James Sutherland at the team hotel in Johannesburg on Wednesday morning. Smith left the team hotel to fly home soon afterwards. All players will have the right to challenge the verdicts and also the duration of their penalties via a CA code of behaviour hearing with an independent commissioner, who can also choose whether the hearing is public or private. Players at the hearing are permitted to call as many witnesses as they like and also to have legal representation.Warner, who has been singled out as the architect of the plan and given the harshest penalty of the three, is expected to challenge the verdict and take the matter to a code of conduct hearing. It is not known what Smith and Bancroft intend to do – all three players have seven days to consider the charges and their intent to accept or challenge. All three players have been replaced in the squad ahead of the fourth Test against South Africa in Johannesburg.”The sanctions we have announced are significant for the individuals involved. That is why the process has had to be thorough to ensure that all relevant issues have been examined,” Sutherland said. “I am satisfied that the sanctions in this case properly reflect a balance between the need to protect the integrity and reputation of the game, and the need to maintain the possibility of redemption for the individuals involved, all of whom have learned difficult lessons through these events.”The CA chairman David Peever said that the Board had chosen to take a path that still allowed the players to eventually rebuild their careers. “The CA Board understands and shares the anger of fans and the broader Australian community about these events,” he said. “They go to the integrity and reputation of Australian cricket and Australian sport and the penalties must reflect that. These are significant penalties for professional players and the Board does not impose them lightly. It is hoped that following a period of suspension, the players will be able to return to playing the game they love and eventually rebuild their careers.”While banned from international and first-class cricket, Smith, Warner and Bancroft are all permitted to play club cricket for the period of their bans “to maintain links with the cricket community”, and at the same time will be required to commit to 100 hours of voluntary service in community cricket.The ball-tampering incident took place during the afternoon session on day three at Newlands and was picked up on by TV cameras. A small, yellow object was seen in Bancroft’s hands after he had worked on the ball, which he later claimed to be adhesive tape with soil particles on it. He was also captured taking the object from his pocket and placing it down his trousers.The footage showed Bancroft rubbing the rough side of the ball, the opposite side to which he would usually be trying to shine on his trousers. He put the object down his pants after being spoken to by the substitute Peter Handscomb, who had come on to the field after speaking to Australia coach Darren Lehmann over a walkie talkie. Lehmann seemed to speak to Handscomb after footage of Bancroft working on the ball was shown on the TV screens at the ground.The on-field umpires Nigel Llong and Richard Illingworth were then seen speaking with Bancroft, though they did not choose to change the ball or penalise the Australians five runs – the statutory on-field penalty for illegally changing the condition of the ball. When Bancroft spoke to the umpires, he was shown holding a bigger, black cloth rather than the small yellow object he had earlier seemed to place down his trousers.Smith and Bancroft owned up to the offence at the press conference after play on the third day. Smith and Warner were stood down as Australia’s captain and vice-captain during the Newlands Test, and both players took the field on the fourth day under wicketkeeper Tim Paine’s leadership.The ICC had already suspended Smith – who was fined 100% of his match fee and given four demerit points – from the fourth Test against South Africa, while Bancroft was given three demerit points and fined 75% of his match fee. There was no ICC sanction against Warner.Smith and Warner had already stepped down from their positions as captains of the IPL franchises Rajasthan Royals and Sunrisers Hyderabad, and have subsequently been banned from playing in the tournament.

Unfit? Check. Arrogant? Check. Unfocussed? Check. Robin Uthappa has learnt life’s lessons, and is ready to do anything for what he once took for granted – big-time cricket

Sriram Veera04-Sep-2010It was 2007. They said he didn’t look fit. They said he had been reduced to two shots – a paddle scoop and a desperate walk down the track. They said he was arrogant, that he had got ahead of himself. That Robin Uthappa was over. Aged 21.Uthappa grew up with such accusations directed at him: unfit, over-confident, arrogant, a front-foot thumper. The stories were familiar. Everyone had heard the one about his mother suggesting he ask Rahul Dravid for an autograph, only to have her son reply, “I want to give, not take autographs.”The one about his weight, however, is not so well known. At the age of 10, an attack of epilepsy meant he had to take steroid medication for three-and-a-half years. It slowed his metabolism and made him susceptible to putting on weight, leading to a life-long battle against the bulge.Things haven’t changed much. Uthappa is still battling the same perceptions.”I need not only to be fit but also to fit,” he says. “If I don’t train for a week, I put on four kilos. You can imagine what happens if I don’t train for a month. Post-IPL I was 85kgs. I went into surgery [for a shoulder injury] at 89 kilos.” After surgery he didn’t train for 21 days. He started rehab at 95 kilos.It has to be depressing. “It’s like hitting a wall,” he says. “Day in, day out you hit the gym and work really hard but you feel like you are not getting any results.” After the surgery Uthappa checked his weight every week. No movement on the scale. Still the after-effects of the old battle with epilepsy. Uthappa looks fit now, but he knows it’s a never-ending struggle.Arrogance, the second sin, shadowed him for long and he admits as much. When he played the first IPL, just on the heels of a World Twenty20 triumph, the familiar traps followed: money, fame and narcissism. “I was 21-22, we had just won the World Cup, and I thought I could get away with murder, man,” Uthappa says.It’s the burden of his generation, and it looks like Uthappa’s story is repeated in a dozen youngsters around. The system and its “benefits” can leave a young cricketer vulnerable to temptation and unaware of how to handle fame and fortune.He says it wasn’t the usual distractions like parties and late nights that had bothered him. “I stopped working as hard as I used to. My work ethics definitely suffered. I would rather stay in the room rather than get some work done in the gym. I would rather hit 20 balls less than 40 more, like I used to do in the past.””Fame does funny things,” Sadanand Viswanath, an eighties star who burnt out early, once said. “The adoration from fans is indescribable. You have to be there to understand it.” Uthappa does. “Money, certainly, is a factor,” he says. “When you are suddenly earning so much, you get ahead of yourself.”An entourage mushrooms around you, of the kind of people a young athlete ends up attracting. “You get people who tell you what you want to hear, you slack off,” Uthappa adds, “Worse, you don’t even know you are slacking. It happens more and more, especially with the kind of money that’s come into the game now.”

I can’t be a Rahul Dravid. I can’t be a grafter. I don’t have the flexibility of Sachin. I am someone whose strength is aggression. I am more in the mould of Hayden, Sehwag or Dhoni. I have decided that’s how I am going to play from now on

Some cricketers never realise they have derailed. It struck Uthappa just before the CB Series in Australia two years ago. “We were playing Pakistan in India and I realised I had already done a lot of damage to my career,” he says. “I realised I had to make changes and do it quickly. I tried to do it in the CB Series, but after the new selection committee came in. The Asia Cup in 2008 was the last game I played. I had no real role in that tournament, and Suresh Raina came really good, and they had to leave me out.”It took a while for me to adjust, but I am really happy that I realised by myself that I was going off track and realised pretty quickly. I remember thinking, ‘S**t, I’m getting ahead of myself and should hold back.’ Even then I guess it was a little late to realise.”He is 24 now. He reflects on that phase of his life and talks about what youngsters need in times like the ones he went through. “I think one has to have a guide, a mentor they can talk to, trust, and blindly believe what they say,” he says. “It could be a fellow player, a coach or parents. If that other person says you are crap right now, you close your eyes and believe that is so. Thankfully due to my education and upbringing, I realised soon that I was heading the wrong way. I have understood that there are lines a player can and cannot cross and I have mended my ways.”If that indeed is true – and there is no reason not to believe him – it’s only the beginning of the battle. Uthappa started his campaign to return to the Indian team on the domestic circuit. He had a reasonable 2009 season, but flopped in that year’s IPL. The domestic season that followed wasn’t great, but the IPL 2010 was. His power-packed cameos put him back on the map. It also helped him understand the path ahead.”I can’t be a Rahul Dravid. I can’t be a grafter,” Uthappa says. “I don’t have the flexibility of Sachin, who can graft and attack at his own will. I am someone whose strength is aggression. I am more in the mould of Hayden, Sehwag or Dhoni. I have decided that’s how I am going to play from now on.”The Champions League is the first step in his attempt to return to international cricket. Since the 2009 World Twenty20, many young Indian batsmen have floundered against short-pitched deliveries. Uthappa sees the Champions League as an opportunity to showcase his skill. “I grew up on matting wickets, and pull shots come naturally to me. The South African pitches will offer bounce and should be ideal for such shots.”He has said he will concentrate on his keeping, and now aims to fill that role for India in the limited-overs formats. He also says he has relinquished the opening slot, and will seek a role in the middle order. It’s not going to be easy. He still has a long way to go. The good news is, Uthappa knows it and is ready for the long haul.

It will precede Australia’s three-T20I series against Pakistan starting October 24

ESPNcricinfo staff18-Oct-2018UAE will play their first T20I against Australia, by hosting them in Abu Dhabi on October 22. It precedes Australia’s three-T20I series against Pakistan in the UAE that starts from October 24.The game was handed T20I status after both Cricket Australia and the Pakistan Cricket Board sanctioned the move. It will start at 2pm local time at the Abu Dhabi Zayed Cricket Stadium (Oval 1) ground, with free entry to the ground.”We are delighted to be in a position to announce this fixture and we are extremely grateful to the ICC for their support in accrediting the Abu Dhabi Oval for T20 international cricket at such short notice,” Zayed Abbas, Emirates Cricket Board spokesperson said. “Our thanks also goes out to to Cricket Australia for approaching this opportunity so positively, and especially to the Pakistan Cricket Board for permitting this match during their home tour in the UAE with Australia. It has been an incredible effort from all parties to bring this match to fruition.”Waleed Bukhatir, UAE chief selector, said: “This match will provide an exceptionally good test for our players. We need them to be put under pressure and for them to focus more intently by being challenged by higher ranked, leading teams within our game. To do so it is vitally important for the Full member countries, and the ICC to support and provide the Associates with such opportunities.”UAE have played 26 T20 internationals with nine wins and 17 losses. Their last T20I assignment was against PNG at home in April 2017, when they swept the series 3-0.

Handscomb is set to take Carey’s place behind the stumps, while Renshaw is on track for selection after having missed the first match with a hamstring strain

Varun Shetty06-Sep-2018Australia A vice-captain Alex Carey is set to miss the second unofficial Test against India A starting Saturday as he has returned home for the birth of his child. Peter Handscomb will keep wicket in his place. Meanwhile, opening batsman Matt Renshaw is on track for selection for the second Test, having missed the first with a hamstring strain.Carey had an impressive outing behind the stumps during the first match in Bengaluru, and although his two catches in the game don’t tell that story, Carey was reliable on a low and slow pitch, particularly as it deteriorated on the last day.With Australia likely to rotate the squad around to bring in two spinners – Ashton Agar and Mitchell Swepson – Handscomb’s job as stand-in keeper will be particularly challenging. While Handscomb is no stranger to wicketkeeping, having done the job for Victoria, Melbourne Stars and Yorkshire before, it has largely been restricted to limited-overs cricket.According to ESPNcricinfo’s records, Handscomb last started a first-class match as designated wicketkeeper in December 2015, when he kept for Victoria in Melbourne during the Sheffield Shield.Handscomb has kept in India before, in an ODI in Indore last year, but the rigours of a four-day game will be markedly different.It will also add extra pressure in what will be Handscomb’s final push for a spot in the senior Test squad for their series against Pakistan in the UAE next month. Handscomb’s last first-class century came in February this year, but in the seven innings since – including two in the Johannesburg Test against South Africa – Handscomb has managed to get into double-figures on only one occasion. Handscomb had a poor quadrangular series last month as well, managing only four runs in two innings, and is on something of a remodelling phase, having admitted that bowlers had worked him out.Handscomb still remains a strong contender for Test selection, particularly for his skills against spin. With the additional responsibility of wicketkeeping, he could be pushed down the order, presumably to No. 6 where his said skills will be more prominently on display. It could allow him both time and freedom to get himself in, unlike in Bengaluru where in both innings at No. 4, he was at the centre of middle-order collapses. Should that be the case, Queensland’s Marnus Labuschagne could be pushed up the order. Labuschagne, who had stayed back with the Test squad for the first Test as a reserve for the injured Renshaw, will now remain with the squad for the second game as well.Australia A squad for the second Test: Usman Khawaja, Matthew Renshaw, Kurtis Patterson, Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh (capt), Peter Handscomb (wk), Marnus Labuschagne, Ashton Agar, Brendan Doggett, Jon Holland, Michael Neser, Joel Paris, Mitchell Swepson, Chris Tremain

Sixteen years after he steered India to the historic tri-series final win at Lord’s, the former India batsman called time on his playing career

ESPNcricinfo staff13-Jul-2018Mohammad Kaif, 37, retired from all forms of cricket on Friday, 16 years after he steered India to one of their most memorable victories in ODI history – beating England by chasing down 325 at Lord’s in the NatWest Series final.Kaif ended a two-decade long first-class career that began in 1997-98. He played 13 Tests and 125 ODIs in an international career that spanned six years (2000-2006), his last game for India coming more than 12 years ago, during the tour of South Africa in 2006. He also captained India to their first Under-19 World Cup win, in 2000.”I am retiring today as it’s been 16 years since the historic Natwest Trophy win in which I was glad to play my part, and I’d like to remember that as I bow out,” he wrote in a letter to the BCCI. “I am grateful for the opportunity to have worn the India cap, and to have gone on to play 125 ODIs and 13 Tests for India, and for several other moments.”A domestic stalwart who played for three sides, Kaif’s association with his home state Uttar Pradesh was the most prominent, having led them to a maiden Ranji Trophy title by beating Bengal in 2005-06. Renowned for being a gritty batsman and an excellent fielder, Kaif finished with 10,229 runs in 186 first-class matches at an average of 38.60.Kaif quit Uttar Pradesh in 2014-15 and moved to Andhra as a professional for two seasons. In 2016-17, he led new entrants Chhattisgarh in their maiden Ranji Trophy season. He continued to play a key role as a member of their support staff the following season, even though his appearances as a player were sporadic.Post-retirement, Kaif hoped to be involved in a coaching or mentoring role. He was assistant coach of the now erstwhile Gujarat Lions in the IPL and wants to play a similar role in domestic cricket. Apart from short-term coaching assignments, Kaif is also keen to pursue media interests and hindi cricket commentary.

Leach felt soreness during the Royal London Cup match against Warwickshire last week and subsequent scans revealed the injury

ESPNcricinfo staff14-Jun-2018Worcestershire captain Joe Leach has been ruled out for the remainder of the season after being diagnosed with a stress fracture of the back.Leach felt soreness during the Royal London Cup match against Warwickshire last week and subsequent scans revealed the injury.”Joe felt some soreness during the Warwickshire game and an MRI scan on Friday showed inflammation around the l5 region of the lumbar spine,” Worcestershire head of sports science and medicine, Ben Davies, said”He then had a CT scan on Tuesday which unfortunately showed a stress fracture in that region and he will miss the rest of the season. It will now be a case of resting and then rehab for Joe with the aim of making a complete recovery.”Leach has taken almost 200 Championship wickets between 2015 and 2017 and this season had claimed 23 wickets at 22.08 but Worcestershire will now have to cope without their attack leader. They face a relegation battle in the Championship and the T20 Blast starts next month alongside their quest to reach a Lord’s final in Royal London.Head coach Kevin Sharp said: “It is a big blow and Joe is gutted and quite upset at the minute. He has played such a major part for the club over the last few years.”It is life. Bowling is a very physical job. Joe has had very few injuries but very rarely do bowlers go through their career without some sort of injury.”We now have to regroup a bit. We have lost our captain for the rest of the season and we will have a think about things and sort that out over the next week.”The lads will also be gutted but there is a great spirit in this squad and they will want to do it for Joe on Sunday.”It means there will be an opening for others that might not have had an opportunity. We want the lads to stand up and be counted – and I’m sure they will.”

New Zealand battled their own nerves, and a domineering onslaught from West Indies’ Kyshona Knight, to claim a hard-earned victory in the first ODI in Lincoln

ESPNcricinfo staff04-Mar-2018
Scorecard0:43

Devine ton sets up NZ women’s one-run win

New Zealand battled their own nerves, and a domineering onslaught from West Indies’ Kyshona Knight , to claim a hard-earned, one-run victory in the first ODI in Lincoln.Sophie Devine’s century had given the hosts 278 to defend. But when offspinner Leigh Kasperek stepped up for the final over, there were only 10 runs in the bank. The action began with two nervy singles. Then came Tremayne Smartt’s dismissal which lifted New Zealand’s chances. Kyshona thrust West Indies ahead with a timely boundary. But she couldn’t haul in the remaining five runs that the visitors still needed off the final two deliveries.Until those final few moments, West Indies had been well placed, led by Stafanie Taylor’s 90 off 93 balls. She struck eight fours and a six and played a key role in two fifty-run partnerships that ushered the score to 152 for 3 in the 35th over.New Zealand hit back through 17-year old legspinner Amelia Kerr as she took a spectacular diving catch to dismiss the dangerous Deandra Dottin and bowled Britney Cooper in consecutive overs. When Taylor herself fell, West Indies were 215 for 6 in the 43rd over.Kyshona took charge of the chase subsequently as she plundered three fours and a six in her 44 off 31 balls. West Indies nudged ever closer to their target until Kerr and Kasperek conceded a combined nine runs off the 47th an 48th overs to bring the equation down to 22 off 12. A costly 11-run penultimate over from Sophie Devine, however, tipped the scales back in the visitors’ favour but not quite enough as it turned out.Earlier, West Indies’ decision to field backfired as three solid stands worth 76, 60 and 63 took New Zealand to 199 for 3 inside 35 overs. Devine was the major contributor as her third ODI century – which featured eight fours and two sixes – took New Zealand towards a comfortable position even though she was one of only two batsmen who could manage a score above 27.West Indies’ spinners Taylor (3 for 54), Afy Fletcher (3 for 55) and Hayley Matthews (2 for 68) picked up eight wickets between them. But in a game of small margins, an unbeaten tenth-wicket stand of 27 off 19 between Kasperek and Huddleston ensured New Zealand had just enough on the board.New Zealand now have a 1-0 lead in the three-match series which is part of the second cycle of the Women’s ODI championship.

The Championship-winning Lancashire coach is always upbeat, full of ideas, forever analysing, in love with the nitty gritty of his job

Tanya Aldred09-May-2012It is May Day, and a bitterly cold wind chases through the Old Trafford building site. Peter Moores waits politely – zipped and fleeced from chin to ankle. He smiles, and for a moment looks disarmingly like Dolph Lundgren. He offers tea or coffee, and a choice of toast – white or brown – then disappears off to make them.Moores is entering his fourth season as Lancashire coach. Last year was the golden one – the long-cherished Championship-winning dream. This season has been more morose, after three defeats in four games Lancashire wallow around the bottom of the table: the archetypal difficult second novel.And things could be about to become even more interesting. Lancashire have just announced the signing of Ajmal Shahzad from over the Pennines. Shahzad is a maverick who has resisted Yorkshire’s straitjacket of bowling discipline. He is undeniably talented but believes he is at his best when allowed to become a freer thinker, to act on impulse and to innovate more. That he has chosen to come to Lancashire suggests that Moores has offered him more freedom. And that, in turn, suggests that Moores is not as two-dimensional and inflexible a coach as his detractors have claimed. What an irresistible challenge it must be to get Shahzad bowling back up to international standard.Moores know about challenges. He has filled up a tankard full of pressure in the 14 years since he swapped playing for coaching at Sussex. He coached them to their first Championship in 2003. He was put in charge of the England Academy after Rod Marsh left. And in April 2007, with Duncan Fletcher gone, he was appointed England coach, the pinnacle of his professional life. The results were mixed, and less than two years after being appointed he and captain Kevin Pietersen lost their jobs over an soap-opera of claims and leaks and an “irretrievable breakdown” in their relationship. Five weeks later, he was Lancashire’s new head coach.Coaching is what he loves: the nitty-gritty analysis, the planning, the constant thinking, the scritch scratch scritch of winkling out what makes people tick. You can see the cogs whirring as he gets going. “There are times when I have to get up at night and get something really important down,” he says, “though that doesn’t happen as much now. I’m not some kind of nutty professor with pieces of paper everywhere, but I do write down a lot.”It is often drivel but when I think something is really important, I write that in a journal. If you’re watching a Test and then you see a player who has played brilliantly in practice fail in the middle, you might write down, ‘The most important thing is being able to handle the pressure in the main arena, and the focus has to be to help players do that.’ The fact of writing down helps you remember.”I have always liked talking about the game. I came through during the old-fashioned era, when you went to the pub. Norman Gifford, my coach at Sussex, was great to talk cricket to. I learnt a great deal from Phil Carrick. I went on an MCC tour with him and we did laps of the boundary together. I’m an avid reader… if I’m asking players to grow and develop, it would be pretty hypocritical if I’m not doing it myself.”There must be a terrible temptation to process the family. Do the kids – Natalie and Thomas – object? “All the time. They say, ‘Dad, don’t say anything, I know.'”

“It probably helped that I got this job so soon afterwards. When something happens quick like that, you’re in and then you’re out. You look back and think, ‘Where’s that come from?'”Moores on losing the England coach’s job in 2009

Yet who lies beneath the coaching talk and the tracksuit? Moores is kind and courteous and far too clever to give much away. But every now and then the curtain lifts and there is a glimpse of the private man, the one singing along to U2 songs in his hotel room as he strums his acoustic guitar.Moores is the seventh of eight children, a scrapper fighting his corner with a brother just above and a brother just below, all brought up in a house near the big Catholic church on Chester Road in Macclesfield.”The whole big family thing definitely influenced me a lot, in that you have to learn to share,” he says. “The values that were in our family, I’ve carried through. My mum is absolutely straight and was always saying, ‘Be honest, be fair’, and that was how she operated. Those things help you a lot, because, are sports teams like families? Yeah, they are to a degree. They’re different because in a team you have a collective goal of winning something and in families, sometimes, the collective goal is to get through. But there are definitely times when you have to give a bit for the collective – that could be giving up the front room because your sister has got exams coming, or you want to go this way but the team wants to go the other.”Little Peter was always competitive – at primary school he was frog-marched into the debating society and at senior school he was a good rugby player as well as an outstanding cricketer. He was made of stern stuff – he was the first team wicketkeeper as an Under-14, and to the great amusement of the older boys, used to appeal in a squeaky voice that hadn’t broken yet. By the lower sixth, he was a leader of men.The family lives in a village outside Loughborough. When Moores got the Lancashire job, he and his wife, Karen, decided that they didn’t want to move the kids again, so they bought a place in Knutsford, where he stays when based at Old Trafford.In what little he has of spare time, he is teaching himself the guitar, “inspired by the legend that is Mark Chilton”. He takes it on away trips as a bit of a distraction, but never, ever, plays to the dressing room.”I was originally going to learn the year Natalie was born. I had a bit of a strum. She was born a month later, I put it in the corner and that was that. Last February Karen bought me another one. I sing along badly, quietly, in a dark room. Natalie loves singing, and if she hears me she slaughters me.”There is only one blot on his career – the England thing. But Moores is sanguine about the experience. “It has never consumed me – it probably helped that I got this job so soon afterwards. When something happens quick like that, you’re in and then you’re out. You look back and think, ‘Where’s that come from?'”He has had the satisfaction of seeing the men he brought in, Andy Flower, Mushtaq Ahmed, amongst others, succeed. “To see all that fit together has been nice. The changes we made have come through and have worked. We turned the academy into a performance centre.”You look back and think you’d have done that a bit different, but the intentions were right. Would you have jiggled things to maybe change how you got the message across? A bit, yeah, you probably would. I was trying to drive things on, but like most things, you need time. I’m disappointed, but you crack on. And in many ways I’m a bit of a fatalist. I’ve really loved my coaching here; it has been some of the most enjoyable I’ve had in all my time.”And then he is off, ideas charging wildly around his head. He’s determinedly upbeat, even as Lancashire falter. Never criticising, always analysing, fronting up for the press conferences that no one else wants to do.Moores was one of many men to find the England job a poisoned chalice, but he was the first to coach two different teams to the County Championship. If there is a lesson in that, he’ll have found it.

Sidharth Monga presents the Plays of the day for Pakistan v Bangladesh, Super Four, Asia Cup, Karachi, July 4, 2008

Sidharth Monga in Karachi04-Jul-2008

Transformer of the day
The National Stadium pitch finally answered the call. It could have something to do with the overcast conditions and the breeze today, because till now the bowlers have found that getting any assistance here is akin to milking stones. Today, though, Abdur Rauf and Rao Iftikhar Anjum got consistent sideways movement to go with the genuine bounce they got in the match against India. Even the spinners managed to surprise with the bounce they managed to extract.Shot of the day … followed by ball of the day
Dismissive to the core, Mohammad Ashraful stood still, and deposited a gentle length ball from Rauf to the midwicket fence with a violent slash. It was not the aesthetics, but the condescending attitude towards the ball that made the shot stand out. But the next ball was the Revenge of Rauf, a nasty lifter directed at Ashraful’s body. Ashraful tried to fend it off, but all he could do was edge it to point. Remember the saying – it takes only one good ball.Comeback of the day
After being hit for three boundaries in his first over by Alok Kapali, Anjum made the comeback of our times. His next nine overs featured six maidens, and went for just seven runs. Only Phil Simmons has bowled more maidens in a 10-over spell than Anjum’s six; Simmons’s figures in the legendary spell against Pakistan in Sydney were 10-8-3-4.

تحدث رونالد أراوخو مدافع برشلونة، بعد فوز فريقه على بارباسترو في بطولة كأس ملك إسبانيا لموسم 2024/25.

وحل برشلونة ضيفًا على بارباسترو، ضمن منافسات دور الـ32 من كأس ملك إسبانيا، وقد حقق الفوز برباعية دون رد.

وقال أراوخو: “سعداء بالفوز، وأيضًا على المستوى الشخصي لأنني عدت للعب 90 دقيقة، سعيد لأن الفريق قدم مباراة جيدة، المباريات الأولى دائمًا تكون صعبة، دخلنا المباراة بتركيز عالٍ وتمكنا من حسمها”.

وأضاف في تصريحاته التي نشرتها صحيفة “ماركا” الإسبانية: “المدرب كان يسألني إذا كنت أشعر بحالة جيدة، ومن المهم أن أضيف دقائق لعب”.

اقرأ أيضًا | أراوخو يوضح مستجدات محادثات تجديد عقده مع برشلونة

وواصل أراوخو: “كنا نعلم أن التوقف (أيام العطلة) سيكون مفيدًا لنا، الآن علينا الاستمرار في العمل”.

وعن زميله توني فرنانديز، أفاد: “توني لديه موهبة رائعة، ما تفعله أكاديمية لا ماسيا مذهل، وهو أمر مهم جدًا للنادي”.

وبشأن أزمة تسجيل زميليه داني أولمو وباو فيكتور، بعد رفض رابطة الليجا والاتحاد الإسباني، أتم: “شعور سيء من أجل زملائنا، نأمل أن يتمكن النادي من حل موضوع أولمو وباو فيكتور، نأمل أن يتمكنا من حل الأمر، بينما نحن نفكر الآن في كأس السوبر الإسباني”.