Tag Futebol

The Indian cricketers will play just two side games (both threedayers) apart from three Test matches during their two-month tour ofSouth Africa starting on October 1.The Indians will play a three-day game against President’s XI atKimberley from October 29-31 before the first Test at Bloemfontein(November 3-7) and against South Africa A at East London from November10 to 12, according to BCCI sources in Mumbai on Saturday.The visitors will play the other two Test matches at Port Elizabeth(Nov 16-20) and Centurion Park (Nov 24-28).The Indians will commence their campaign with a one-day match againstthe Nicky Oppenheimer XI at Randjedfontein on October 1 and atriangular series, with Kenya as the third team, will start on October5 with a day-night match between India and South Africa atJohannesburg, sources added.The Indian team’s itinerary:Oct 1 vs Nicky Oppenheimer XI at Randjedfontein.Oct 3 vs South Africa A (D/N) at Benoni.Oct 5: India vs South Africa (D/N) at Johannesburg.Oct 7: Kenya vs South Africa (day) at Benoni.Oct 10: India vs South Africa (D/N) at Centurion Park.Oct 12: India vs Kenya (D/N) at Bloemfontein.Oct 14: South Africa vs Kenya (day) at Kimberley.Oct 17: India vs Kenya (D/N) at Port Elizabeth.Oct 19: India vs South Africa (D/N) at East London.Oct 22: South Africa vs Kenya (D/N) at Cape Town.Oct 24: India vs Kenya (D/N) at Paarl.Oct 27: Final and Oct 28 reserve day.Oct 29-31: India vs President’s XI at Kimberley.Nov 3-7: First Test at Bloemfontein.Nov 10-12: India vs South Africa A at East London.Nov 16-20: Second Test at Port Elizabeth.Nov 24-28: Third and final Test at Centurion Park.

Teenager Andrew Puttick scored his maiden first-class century in just his third game, as Western Province got off to a useful start in their Supersport Series, top-of-the-table clash with Easterns at Newlands on Friday. Province closed on 273 for six, a good return on a pitch that never really favoured the batsmen.Puttick had to bat himself back into form after making way for both Gary Kirsten and Jacques Kallis two weeks ago, and took a while to find his timing. By stumps though, Puttick – who faced 317 balls over 386 minutes – had struck 18 boundaries to underline the clinical nature of his strokeplay, particularly through the off-side.It was a chanceless innings, but there was one flutter for the youngster on 98 when he struck a lofted shot through the midwicket region. Fortunately it beat the infield, but in his desperate bid to complete the two runs he needed, Puttick collided with batting partner Ashwell Prince and very nearly brought about the most catastrophic of demises. Fortunately the two of them recovered quickly to run two and allow Puttick to receive the acclaim of his team-mates and the tiny Newlands crowd.The innings could hardly have got off to a worse start as HerschelleGibbs found his feet in concrete and edged a good away-swinger from Andre Nel to be out for just one. His cheap dismissal will have annoyed Gibbs, who needs some heavy run-scoring over the next few weeks to impress the national selectors before his ban from international cricket is lifted at the end of the year.Easterns bowled with real discipline throughout, Kenny Benjamin returning with the second new ball to take the wickets of captain HD Ackerman, for 50, and Neil Johnson without scoring. If the visitors can make a couple of early breakthroughs on Saturday they will be very much in the game.

In body, if not in spirit, New Zealand’s cricketers last night arrived in England for the start of their three-Test series. Ordinarily, such a tour would represent one of the biggest challenges that any of these players could hope to face – last month, their former captain, Stephen Fleming, recalled his team’s 2-1 victory in 1999 as the proudest moment of an illustrious career. But times they are a-changing, and when the coach, John Bracewell, and the stand-in captain, Jamie How, faced the media at Lord’s on Thursday afternoon, neither man could quite pretend that they are entirely focused on the job.Even allowing for the jet-lag, their distraction was hardly surprising. New Zealand’s five finest players are scattered to the four corners of the subcontinent, earning life-changing sums of money in the Indian Premier League, and with that in mind, Bracewell seemed more intent on flirting with his former county, Gloucestershire, than discussing his squad’s strategy for the summer. How, meanwhile, looked as quizzical as his surname would suggest, as he tried to fathom whether it was an honour or an insult to be lumped with the leadership of such a threadbare unit.”It’s not ideal, but this is the reality of the landscape we live in,” said Bracewell. His players take on an MCC side captained by Chris Cairns at Arundel, on Sunday, and then decamp to Canterbury for a three-day match against Kent. Only then will their superstars deign to make an appearance – one of whom, Brendon McCullum, has now officially entered the big-time following last week’s incredible 158 not out from 73 balls in Bangalore.Since time immemorial, the success of a touring side has had a direct correlation with the cohesiveness of the players in the squad, but on the face of it, this situation is as divisive as they come. Bracewell, however, insisted his players were mature enough to adapt to cricket’s changing world. “All things have the potential to cause friction, but our group understands it,” he said. “For us, it’s a glass-half-full situation. This brings us into line with New Zealand’s rugby players in terms of salaries, and the bottom line is it’s our best players who get invited, so it’s an incentive-based scheme.”There was a distinct them-and-us vibe in the air, however. “I think everyone wishes they were in India at some point,” said How, a touch more candidly than you might expect of a brand-new international captain. His words harboured no pretence as to the importance of his current role, however. Of New Zealand’s first-choice eleven from last month’s series, two batsmen (Matthew Bell and Mathew Sinclair) have been dropped, another (Fleming) has retired, while five have gone to a higher calling. In fact, of the 13 players in the country, only How, Tim Southee and Chris Martin can realistically expect a place at Lord’s on May 15.No wonder Bracewell wasn’t about to get too bombastic with his series predictions. “We’re the underdogs,” he said. “It’ll be hard work for us given our experience, or lack of. We’re rebuilding and setting some lines to get over as a team, but in Test cricket England are way ahead of us, and we’ll have to work extremely hard to beat them.”When asked if he thought New Zealand play enough Test cricket, Bracewell was unequivocal in his answer. “No,” he declared, and he has a point. New Zealand have played just seven Tests in the last 18 months, and two of those came against Bangladesh. “It’s an administration thing, in terms of the Future Tours Programme,” he said. “We recognise we don’t play enough, but we are trying to get more.”But with the advent of the IPL, and the general shake-up that the game is currently undergoing, it’s a vain hope. Bracewell cited McCullum’s international career as an example of how under-exposed his players are. McCullum has been ever-present in New Zealand’s Test side since making his debut in March 2004, yet he has played only 32 matches, which is 14 fewer than Andrew Strauss’s tally – in spite of the fact that Strauss’s debut came two months later, and that he has, on occasions, missed matches for England.New Zealand’s situation is hardly aided by the amount of learning-on-the-hoof that their players are forced to undergo. “Domestic cricket in New Zealand is not that strong, so our players have got to develop at international level,” said Bracewell. “We think the ones we’ve picked are form players domestically, and they have earned their opportunity. But now we need to see whether they can become not just Black Caps, but great Black Caps. To do that, they need to make some tough sacrifices.”In particular, Bracewell was talking about the Otago batsman, Aaron Redmond, who comes into the reckoning as a replacement for Bell. There are few environments more hostile to a debutant opener that England in May, although Bracewell felt that New Zealanders come better prepared than most. “There’s not a heck of a difference,” he said. “We’re used to playing on wickets that do a bit, and we produce similar sorts of bowlers. We just need to get our skills up, because we can’t keep throwing our bowlers out there after only 60-70 overs’ rest. They have got to have enough fuel in the tank to get through, and in the last series, they ran out.”On one level at least, Bracewell was clearly looking forward to the tour, but it was perhaps not for the reasons that his team might have hoped. “I really enjoyed the time I had here,” he said, recalling his days as Gloucestershire’s coach in the early 2000s. “There’s a great lifestyle and environment for cricket here, and yes, I’d like to return to county cricket at some stage. There are a lot of options out there for coaches, as well as players, with the opening-up of world cricket.” Everyone’s eyes seem averted from the immediate task at the moment, but in Bracewell’s case, he’s not simply gazing towards the IPL.

The Indian board has re-started the process of searching for a national coach, according to a report in . The national daily reported that three new candidates had applied for the job following Graham Ford’s refusal, on June 11, to be the next Indian coach.The report says John Dyson, the former Sri Lanka coach, Terry Oliver, the Queensland coach, and Dave Nosworthy, the Canterbury coach, have sent in their applications to the BCCI.Oliver, who had also applied for the Sri Lanka job only to lose out to Trevor Bayliss, told the newspaper that though he was comfortable where he was he also had more ambitions. Nosworthy, currently coaching New Zealand A for the Emerging Players tournament in Australia in July, applied for the job through his agent and said that if there was anything more to do with the job, his agent would handle it. “Dave is doing well with Canterbury but he is open to international jobs,” his agent, Paul Carrick, was quoted as saying.The newspaper also lists names of those who have expressed no interest in coaching India. Steve Rixon, the former New Zealand coach who turned down the offer to coach Pakistan, said he was not going to pitch for anything. “I do not want to be in a situation where there are five of us,” Rixon said. Martyn Moxon and Mark Greatbatch, the directors of cricket at Yorkshire and Warwickshire respectively, said they were happy where they were coaching.

Tim May, the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA) chief executive, has warned that international players may be forced to resort to performance-enhancing drugs to cope with the demands of too many games. The ICC’s new schedule for international cricket has been labelled “a disaster” that would leave the world’s leading players exhausted and harm the integrity of the game.Speaking to , May cautioned against the punishing year-round commitment that players face: “The FTP is a disaster because it puts no upper limit on the amount of cricket that can be scheduled. There are five or six guys in the five leading sides in the world who play Tests and ODIs and they are being flogged. You only have to look at the doping record in baseball to see that recovery, not enhanced power, is the motivation for most drug misuse. The more we push players the more they might look at options.”May, a former Australia offspinner, referred to the FTP as a “play-travel-play-travel-play-fall over” schedule that didn’t consider the players. “They [cricketers] are the ones who make the difference between a 10,000 crowd and a sell-out; they are the ones who the broadcasters and commercial partners pay for,” he said. “They are exhausted and they are not going to take much more.”Jacques Kallis, the South African allrounder, has endorsed May’s harsh criticisms. “The amount of cricket we play is way too much,” he told the website SuperCricket.com. “They need to cut down the Future Tours Programme, otherwise teams are going to end up resting their top players if it stays the way it is. But the public want to see the best players, so it’s a big problem.”Kallis pointed out that allrounders were particularly over-worked. “For allrounders its definitely too hard a schedule. It’s killing them,” he said. “And young players won’t want to be an all-rounder if they see how quickly you get worn out. It would be better to go the route of being a specialist batsman or bowler. We need scientific research on how many matches would be ideal. There needs to be a balance and I’m sure we need less cricket. It’s overkill – the public are already saying that.”Click here to send us your views. Are the players being asked to do too much, or is the ICC handling the international calendar as it should?

The International Cricket Council ruled out cancelling New Zealand’s tour to Zimbabwe next month but said it accepted the New Zealand government could stop it going ahead. The New Zealand government has opposed the tour because of alleged human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. But it has ruled out legislating a ban on the tour or directing New Zealand cricket to cancel it.Ehsan Mani, the International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman, has said in a letter that the ICC had rejected the New Zealand government’s request to alter its tour schedule. However the letter conceded that the ICC recognised the reality that governments could apply sporting sanctions. “Our members accept and respect that where this clear directive is given by a national government, the obligations of the future tours programme will not apply.”A spokesman for New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff said clarification was being sought from the ICC on what would constitute a clear directive. “We want to clarify whether a parliamentary motion saying New Zealand Cricket should not tour would be sufficient to give New Zealand Cricket a release,” the spokesman said.Unless New Zealand cricket can win a release from its tour obligations, it faces a fine of at least US$2million and claims from Zimbabwe for lost revenue. Opposition to the tour has grown in New Zealand as Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s government presses ahead with a campaign to demolish shacks and other illegal homes and businesses, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.Zimbabwe’s first black Test cricketer Henry Olonga arrived in New Zealand Tuesday to support the campaign to cancel the tour, saying the situation in his former country could be likened to apartheid in South Africa.

ScorecardToday was a pleasing performance for Middlesex, who triumphed with the bat on a day that began so gloomily that most of the MCC members had retreated into thelong room, taking full advantage of their brand new see-through sightscreen.They finished with a first innings lead of 21, and five wickets still inhand.There was much unintentional comedy in the morning as bad light and drizzleplayed merry hell with the over count. At 11.45am the players and umpiresemerged from the pavilion, got as far as the gates, poked their headstentatively out from under the balcony then disappeared back inside. At12.40 they made it all the way to the middle, and Glen Chapple even bowledtwo balls before they beat another retreat; then at 2.25pm play restartedwith a wicket from Chapple’s fourth delivery, and the games began.The afternoon revolved around an ongoing confrontation between AndrewStrauss and the short ball. Chapple and Dominic Cork both dug the ball in to get themaximum effect out of the damp pitch and Strauss, perhaps still under theinfluence of the Caribbean, or the Caribbean rum, was keen to show off hispulling technique. Unfortunately it wasn’t much to shout about and Corkforced several miscues, none of which, unfortunately for him, went anywherenear a fielder.Still, Strauss proved that he is a master of the cut, slicing anything thatsat up outside off stump. And with Paul Weekes, his partner-in-arms, heneatly evaded the snorters of Sajid Mahmood et al; he even took a six off GaryKeedy over long-on and a century seemed certain, had it not been for thatdratted bad light. Chapple and Cork had to be content with only threewickets in return for their afternoon’s hostilities, Owais Shah defending poorly, Ed Joyce driving loosely, and Weekes pulling out of a hook shot prematurely, giving Carl Hooper the chance to show off his sprint with a running, diving catch behind the slips.

Saturday, March 15, 2003:::
“I think I’ve got a bit better (tactically). A lot of that comes with talking to other senior guys in the side. You can learn from your mates and you can learn from watching games on telly or watching what opposition captains do at different times,” Ricky Ponting
Source: The Age, Australia
“As for that dropped chance by Brendon (McCullum), I could not really see it because I had tears in my eyes,” Stephen Fleming, while talking about the let-off that Rahul Dravid had early in his innings
Source: Outlook, India
“He’s been a great servant of Zimbabwe cricket and the rock in our side for a number of years,” Heath Streak on Andy Flower
Source: BBC, UK
Wednesday, March 12, 2003:::
“His attitude has always been outstanding whether he has been playing or not. He gives his absolute best all the time whether with bat or ball and it has come off for him twice here,” Australain skipper Ricky Ponting, on Andy Bichel
Source: Ananova, UK
“We are ashamed on our bad performance and know that the nation is very much disappointed. So we seek pardon from the nation,” Waqar Younis, addressing a press-conference after returning to Pakistan
Source: Cricmania.com, USA
“I know I am a performer and have a record as good as anyone around. I just stick to my game. The rest of the things do not bother me,” Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly
Source: PTI, India

The selectors are likely to pick only a 15-member squad on Aug 2 forIndia’s three-Test series against Sri Lanka later next month, keepinga slot vacant for Sachin Tendulkar, whose fitness will be known by Aug10.According to Indian Cricket Board sources, the five-member nationalselection committee headed by Chandu Borde has suggested picking a 15-member squad for the Test series to be played between August 14 andSept 2.In case, Tendulkar, nursing a hairline fracture to his right toe, wasunavailable even after Aug 10, when he is to go in for a second bonescan, a replacement would be named then, the sources said.The master blaster, who skipped the on-going triangular one-day seriesin Sri Lanka, is said to be feeling better now.However, the committee would discuss Tendulkar’s fitness with sportsmedicine expert Anant Joshi, before meeting in Mumbai to pick theteam, the sources said."If the star batsman is confirmed fit by Aug 2, Tendulkar wouldstraightaway be included for the tour. If not, the 16th slot would bekept vacant at least till Aug 10 and another player will be named incase he is ruled out for the tour," the sources said.According to the sources, three members of the team playing in theongoing tri-series – VVS Laxman, Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra areunlikely to find a place in the Test team as they are suffering frominjuries.BCCI executive secretary Sharad Diwadkar had on Thursday said thatfour to five changes are likely from the team which is playing in theone-day series presently.

Tamil Nadu roared to a 203 run thumping of Goa on the final day oftheir South Zone Ranji Trophy tie at Margao today. Set 315 forvictory, the Goans crumbled in the face of a disciplined Tamil Naduattack led by skipper Sridharan Sriram and Rajat Bhatia. The visitorscollected eight points for their toils to go top of the table.Bhatia struck the early blows, removing wicketkeeper A Bhagwath andTamil Nadu exiles Satyajit Medappa and Tanvir Jabbar, to have Goareeling at 42/3. Sriram’s left arm spinners then mesmerised the middleorder, three wickets falling to him in the space of seven balls, allat the score of 68. The prize victim was rival captain Pravin Amre,bowled for 14.The remaining four wickets were grabbed by the four other bowlersused. Sriram’s fellow tweakers Balaji Rao and Kapoor snapped up oneapiece before Mahesh and Kumaran returned to polish off the tail.Kapoor’s return catch had accounted for opener V Kolambkar the mostobdurate Goan batsman who had grafted for 175 deliveries to compile48. The next highest was extras with 16, which included five byes whena Bhatia delivery struck the helmet behind the keeper. Goas’s effortwas terminated at 111 in the 70th over, Sriram’s unchanged spell of8-3-6-3 being the most attractive figures.