Category Uncategorized

The New Zealand allrounder has been ruled out of action for up to a month with a patella tendon tear

Cricinfo staff04-Mar-2010The New Zealand allrounder Jacob Oram has been ruled out of action for up to a month with a patella tendon tear, meaning he will take no further part in the home ODIs against Australia and that he could miss a sizeable duration of the IPL. The Central Districts medium-pacer Michael Mason has been named as Oram’s replacement in the New Zealand squad.”Jacob Oram suffered a partial tear of the patella tendon,” New Zealand team manager Dave Currie said in a statement. “It is expected that Jacob will recover in three or four weeks, however he will be out for the balance of the Australian series.”Oram, 31, sustained a knee injury during the first match in Napier. Oram’s injury means he will miss a significant amount, if not the entire duration, of the upcoming IPL starting March 12. He represents the Chennai Super Kings in the league on a lucrative contract worth US$675,000 a year.Oram suffered a variety of injuries over the past year and a half. He returned home mid-way through the tour of Bangladesh in 2008 and missed the Test series in Australia because of a back injury. A calf strain kept him out of the home Test series against West Indies and an Achilles injury cut short his participation in the one-day series that followed and the home Tests against India. He announced his retirement from Test cricket last October after the latest in that long list of injuries.Mason, 35, has played 25 ODIs, three Twenty20s and a solitary Test for his country. New Zealand’s selectors have only named a squad for the first two matches. The next match is in Auckland on Saturday.New Zealand are also awaiting a fitness report on their captain Daniel Vettori, who missed the Napier game with a stiff neck. “He’s feeling a bit more comfortable and he’ll hopefully be fine tomorrow,” said Currie. “He’s not 100 per cent certain [to play]. The neck was a bit stiff. We’re certainly hopeful and he’s hopeful, but again we’ll get through today and get more treatment and see how he wakes up in the morning.”

The chase became nervy but his 90-run partnership with Asalanka turned the tide in their favour

Madushka Balasuriya31-Aug-2025Where Zimbabwe had faltered on Friday, Sri Lanka followed through in consummate fashion. Set a target of 278 in the second and final ODI in Harare, the visitors tracked it down with five wickets and three deliveries to spare. And with it, they swept the series 2-0.Similar to the first ODI, this too went down to the wire, and like that game on Friday, the chasing side seemed in control right until the last. But here with wickets in hand, and a deep batting line-up, Sri Lanka held firm and saw the game through.That said, Sri Lanka perhaps made life more difficult for themselves than they needed to. They did not score a boundary in the final powerplay until the 48th over – two ended up coming off that one, to leave the equation at 12 needed off 12 – but it meant the game was heading for yet another final over finish.In the penultimate over, Charith Asalanka got a boundary after deep midwicket had misjudged a skier, but was caught a ball later, having scored a crucial 71 off 61. Then, Kamindu Mendis defied space and time to inside edge an attempted reverse lap sweep for four, off a pinpoint Ngarava yorker to bring the equation down to 6 off 2. After that, the rest was a formality.Nissanka found boundaries to keep the required rate in check•Zimbabwe Cricket

The scorecard might indicate that the game was closer than it might have been, but with the chase anchored around Pathum Nissanka’s seventh ODI hundred – as he shared successive stands of 48, 20, 78 and 90 with Nuwanidu Fernando, Kusal Mendis, Sadeera Samarawickrama and finally Asalanka – the visitors were always in control.It was in that final stand with Asalanka that Sri Lanka would say they broke the spine of the chase, with their partnership, at a touch over run-a-ball, ensuring the scoring was brisk through the middle overs.Indeed, this period was one of the main points of differentiation between the two sides. Where Zimbabwe scored 139 runs for the loss of four wickets between overs 15-40, Sri Lanka struck 27 more runs and lost one less wicket in the same period.It meant heading to the death overs, the scoreboard pressure was minimal for Sri Lanka, who were left needing just 67 off 60, with seven wickets in hand. Zimbabwe, by comparison, had scored 83 at the death just to push their total to competitive territory.Perhaps if a straightforward chance off Nissanka, when he was on 78, had not been spilled, Sri Lanka might have had a tougher time. In the end, however, they saw the game through to victory with minimal peril – even if ideally it should have been wrapped up sooner.Sikandar Raza was crucial to Zimbabwe’s batting effort•Zimbabwe Cricket

Nissanka’s innings of 122 off 136 was exactly what was required in a chase of this variety. It earned him both the Player of the Match and Player of the Series awards. His frequent boundaries during the opening powerplay ensured the lack of strike rotation was not as keenly felt, and then, through the middle overs, his ability to find boundaries to punctuate lulls in play meant Sri Lanka never let the required rate get out of hand.Once Asalanka joined him, the boundary scoring burden was alleviated somewhat, with the Sri Lanka skipper willing to up the ante when required – most notably, with a trio of boundaries in the 40th over off Blessing Muzarabani.The target, however, had always seemed a touch below par on a fresh surface that was expected to suit the batters. Zimbabwe, having been put in to bat, did reasonably well at the start and end of their innings, but Sri Lanka controlled the middle overs to restrict the hosts to 277 for 7.That they got even that much was down to an unbeaten 59 off 55 from Sikandar Raza, as part of 76-run sixth-wicket stand with Clive Madande (36 off 36), and then smaller stands with the tail-enders.Ben Curran top-scored for Zimbabwe•Zimbabwe Cricket

Ben Curran top-scored in the innings with a 95-ball 79, but unlike Nissanka later in the day, he was unable to be around for the final overs. Where the Zimbabwe innings lost their way was losing wickets at crucial points through the middle overs.After Zimbabwe’s fast start – scoring 55 inside the opening powerplay – the entry of a rusty Brendan Taylor allowed Sri Lanka to apply the brakes on the scoring. Taylor and Curran put on a stand of 61, but since it came off 84 deliveries, it allowed Asalanka to sneak in several overs of the fifth-bowler quota.Taylor laboured to 20 off 37 during this period, while Asalanka snuck four of his own overs in for just 17 runs. With six more fifth-bowler overs remaining, Asalanka brought on Janith Liyanage, who dismissed Taylor in his second over, as the experienced batter mistimed a scoop to short fine while seeking to up the scoring.Sean Williams then entered, and all it took was one monster strike down the ground for Liyanage to be removed from the attack. With Williams generally looking to attack, both Maheesh Theekshana and Dushmantha Chameera kept things tight during this period.Dushmantha Chameera was the pick of the bowlers•Zimbabwe Cricket

Curran had done well up until this point, but his nine boundaries had come early on. His rhythm too had been interrupted by the lack of strike rotation during his partnership with Taylor – something perhaps impacted by a seeming hamstring niggle Taylor picked up during the innings.With the pressure building, the expensive Asitha Fernando was brought back and he delivered instantly, bookending his over with the wickets of Curran and Williams – both succumbing to short deliveries, with the former top edging one and the latter a delivery dragging on to the stumps.At 155 for 4, this shifted the momentum decisively in Sri Lanka’s favour. Liyanage was allowed to bowl a few more cheap overs to complete the fifth over quota, and while both Raza and Tony Munyonga struck boundaries following a couple of overs of consolidation, Madushanka returned to dismiss the latter.It was at this point that Raza took the lead, setting the tone with a pair of boundaries – the first a deft late dab, the second of inside out lofted cover drive – to signal Zimbabwe’s late charge.While boundaries weren’t as frequent in the following overs, the running between the wickets – a highlight of Zimbabwe’s chase in the first game – was once more exemplary. Despite scoring just six fours and a six in the final ten, they managed to score at beyond eight an over in the death overs, and with it, put up a fighting total. In the end, however, it wasn’t enough.

The India left-arm spinner has had a quietly devastating series and proved to be the difference once more in Dharamsala

Andrew Miller07-Mar-2024India 135 for 1 (Jaiswal 57, Rohit 52*, Gill 26*) trail England 218 (Crawley 79, Kuldeep 5-72, Ashwin 4-51) by 83 runsIf, in a nutshell, England’s batting approach on this India tour has been to rack up their runs before they get a ball with their name on it, then in Kuldeep Yadav, they have encountered an opponent whose methods could not be more perfectly tailored to confound them.Few spin bowlers in history have served up a greater frequency of wicket-taking deliveries than Kuldeep has now managed, for in rushing through to his first five-wicket haul of a quietly devastating campaign, he brought up his 50th Test wicket from just 1871 deliveries – faster than any spinner since Jonny Briggs in the 19th Century, and more than 55 overs more brisk than India’s next quickest to the mark, Axar Patel, the man who tormented England on their last tour in 2021.He has 17 wickets from exactly 100 overs in the series now, but nine of those have come in his last 30. Just as he had unpicked England’s batting in the crucial third innings in Ranchi, so it was on his watch that they disintegrated yet again, in tough but tenable batting conditions.After winning what ought to have been a crucial toss, Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett endured a tough first hour in swinging conditions to lift England to 64 for 0 with their seventh 45-plus stand in nine partnerships in this series. That scoreline, however, was 175 for 6 by the time Ben Stokes had become Kuldeep’s fifth and final scalp, and ultimately 218 all out, once R Ashwin had marked his 100th Test with a four-wicket docking of the tail.By the close, England’s sense of a missed opportunity had been comprehensively rubbed in by another free-wheeling century stand between India’s captain, Rohit Sharma, who endured to the close on 52 not out, and the Boy Wonder, Yashasvi Jaiswal, who charmed his way to a 56-ball fifty, including three sixes in four balls off Shoaib Bashir to lift his series tally to a scarcely credible 26.Fewest innings to reach 1000 Test runs for India•ESPNcricinfo Ltd

In the course of his innings, Jaiswal rushed past Virat Kohli’s previous record for most runs in a Test series against England (655). Having crossed the 700-mark en route to his fifty, he had Sunil Gavaskar’s legendary tally of 774 in the Caribbean in 1970-71, the most by an India batter in any series, very much in sight too. But then, in a rush of blood, he charged past a wide one from Bashir, having slapped his previous two deliveries for four, to be stumped for 57, and with a third century of the series at his mercy.Mercy, however, was in broadly short supply on a dismal day for England. The tale of the tape was a sorry one, no matter how thinly you sliced their latest batting collapse. They lost all ten wickets for 154 after Kuldeep’s first-over googly had foxed a free-flowing Duckett; they lost their last nine for 118 after a skittish Ollie Pope had run past another googly to be stumped, rather gruesomely, on the stroke of lunch.Worst of all, however, was their mid-afternoon meltdown – five wickets for eight runs between overs 44 and 50, including – surely uniquely – three elite batters with a century of caps each, and not a run added between them in the space of ten balls, as Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root and Ben Stokes came and went with the sort of whimper that England’s no-consequences mindset had been intended to banish.Bairstow, in his 100th Test, at least produced the innings of raw emotion that his pre-match comments had telegraphed – but, as has been the case throughout a frustratingly unfulfilled campaign, his blazing start gave way to a limp departure. After resolving to climb through anything in his arc, and mixing two sixes off Kuldeep with a fierce caught-and-bowled opportunity in a wild knock of 29 from 18, he stepped into a loose drive with the ball just outside his eyeline, and burnt a review as Dhruv Jurel snaffled the thin edge.Root, by this stage, had quietly nudged along to 26 not out – precisely the sort of stealthy progress that has habitually been his calling card. But his equilibrium hasn’t been all that on this tour, the Ranchi century notwithstanding, and in Ravindra Jadeja’s subsequent over, he was nobbled by a classic two-card trick – a bit ripper to beat his outside edge, followed by the slider into the middle of his knee-roll.Root too decided, belatedly and a touch desperately, to seek a second opinion before HawkEye gave him the bad news, and if that was further evidence of England’s scrambled minds, then Stokes confirmed it by the time Kuldeep’s next over was done. England’s captain has cut a subdued figure with the bat all series long – his tendency to hang back in the crease to gauge the challenge before taking it on has, inadvertently, come to epitomise precisely the sort of fatalistic batting that his team would otherwise profess to avoid.2:31

Manjrekar: This is Kuldeep’s pinnacle till now

And so, just as he was attracting Jasprit Bumrah magic balls at the top end of the series, so he invited Kuldeep to attack him on his own terms here. A huge ripping legbreak past his outside edge was followed by an inch-perfect googly, which pinned Stokes on the crease as he flapped reactively across the line. A six-ball duck, and his third single-figure score in quick succession, left England too deep in the mire for salvation.Ben Foakes at least learned the lessons of his purposeless graft at Ranchi, as he resolved with Shoaib Bashir to counterattack briefly after tea, but as Ashwin picked apart the remainder of the innings – before indulging in a cute game of “you first, no you first” as he handed Kuldeep the honour of leading the team off the field – it was self-evident that England had blown their best chance of retreating from this tough tour with pride intact.Once again, England’s best performer was Crawley at the very top of the order. For the ninth time out of nine, he reached double-figures with more composure than the early-morning conditions might have warranted, with his sublime reach on the cover drive yet again the stand-out feature of his innings. But, once again, he failed to convert a formidable start – falling this time for a series-best 79, his fourth half-century and the highest of three 70-plus scores.Kuldeep, inevitably, was the man who prised him out, and it was a magnificent delivery to be fair – a tossed-up legbreak, high above the eyeline, that dipped, ripped and took out the leg stump as Crawley was lured into yet another of his cover drives, only to be carved open in the process.But he had already ridden a fair bit of luck by that stage – including a tough caught-and-bowled chance in Jadeja’s first over, and a strangle down the leg side off Kuldeep moments after lunch that Sarfaraz Khan at short leg was rightly adamant should have been reviewed. He also survived, on 29, a leg-stump umpire’s call lbw shout off Mohammad Siraj, precisely the sort of dismissal that had been going against him earlier in the series.At that stage, India’s quicks had been extracting 2.4 degrees of swing, compared to less than a degree in the previous four Tests. In short, England had weathered the storm, and should have been capable of cashing in on a surface that India have subsequently proven to be full of runs. Kuldeep’s methods, however, don’t allow for such bedding-down. You don’t imagine there’ll be any let-up from hereon in.

His last assignment will be the two Tests in Australia which start late next month

ESPNcricinfo staff24-Oct-20221:41

Phil Simmons: Batters did not show up and need to look at themselves

Phil Simmons has resigned as West Indies coach after his team crashed out in the first round of the T20 World Cup in Australia, an outcome he described as “unfathomable”.West Indies were eliminated after finishing bottom of their group in Hobart, beating Zimbabwe in their second game but losing to Scotland and Ireland either side.”I acknowledge that it’s not just the team that is hurting but the proud nations we represent as well,” Simmons said in a statement released by CWI on Monday night. “It’s disappointing and heart-wrenching but we just didn’t turn up.”We weren’t good enough and we now have to watch a tournament play-out without our involvement. It’s unfathomable and for that I deeply apologise to our fans and followers.”Related

• Daren Sammy appointed West Indies white-ball coach; Andre Coley to take charge of Test team

• West Indies coach Phil Simmons hopes to finish tenure on a high

• 'We bowled well but luck didn't go our way' – Phil Simmons

• Brian Lara, Mickey Arthur part of panel to review West Indies' T20 World Cup performance

• CWI considers hiring interim head coach for SA tour after Simmons leaves

Simmons’ second spell in the job started in October 2019, after an initial 18-month tenure in which he helped steer West Indies to the 2016 T20 World Cup, uniting a squad of big personalities and encouraging a pioneering batting approach focused on six-hitting.The Test team’s results have gradually improved during that time, with series wins over England and Bangladesh earlier this year. But T20Is have been a different story and they have suffered early exits at the last two World Cups, losing four games out of five in 2021 and two out of three in Australia last week.Phil Simmons will finish with the two Tests against Australia•Peter Della Penna

Simmons will remain in charge for the upcoming two-Test series against Australia, which starts on November 30 at Optus Stadium in Perth. He said that he would also participate in CWI’s postmortem into the World Cup exit.Simmons added that he had been considering his position before the tournament. “From a personal perspective this is not a knee-jerk reaction, but a move I have been considering for some time, he said. “Now is the time to make public that I will step down as West Indies head coach at the end of the Test series against Australia.”It is earlier than hoped for, but I will now focus my energies in Australia on continuing to build on the excellent progress the Test team has made. Of course, as the president has pointed out, we will also carry out the necessary review into our World Cup campaign.”I must say I have enjoyed aspects of the unique challenge that being West Indies head coach provides and the unwavering support of my management team. There remain some exceptional individuals within CWI who I firmly believe will continue to work in the best interests of West Indies cricket.”Ricky Skerritt, the president of CWI, said: “On behalf of CWI, I want to thank Phil for his hard work and dedication to West Indies cricket, most recently in his role as head coach. Phil is a proud West Indian, with high ideals and has never lacked motivation in guiding our younger players on and off the field of play.”He brought valuable experience and stability at a very important period of transformation, including the most challenging environment of the Covid-19 pandemic. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”

England batter doubtful for Sri Lanka T20Is after leaving ground in moon boot with coach fearing ligament damage

George Dobell16-Jun-2021The saying used to be ‘beware a limping Gordon Greenidge’, but on this evidence, it should be updated to warn about the dangers of a lame Jonny Bairstow.When Bairstow collapsed with a scream of pain in completing his 56th run, it seemed for all the world as if his evening was over. But, after a delay of around 10 minutes for treatment on his right ankle, he was able to continue with Adam Lyth as his runner.That was a surprise. Not only had Bairstow’s original collapse looked ominous, but he is expected to report for England duty at the weekend. Fitness permitting, he would be certain to play in the first T20I against Sri Lanka a week today.He was subsequently unable to keep wicket with the gloves instead taken by Tom Kohler-Cadmore. Bairstow is due to undergo a scan which will reveal if he is likely to be fit next week but the fact that he left the ground in a moon boot was not especially promising. “His ankle has blown up,” Andrew Gale, Yorkshire’s coach, said. “Hopefully it’s not ligament damage.”But the injury didn’t appear to inhibit Bairstow’s strokemaking. After the injury, he struck 56 more runs from his next 17 deliveries, reaching his third T20 century (two for Yorkshire and one for Sunrisers Hyderabad) from 48 balls. His stand of 146 in 12 overs with Kohler-Cadmore was Yorkshire’s second highest stand in the history of T20 cricket.It sustained Bairstow’s outstanding form in the Vitality Blast season. He has top-scored in all four of the games in which he has played, is the top-scorer in the competition, and looks in the finest of form. He is currently averaging 73.75 in the Blast this season at a strike-rate of 175.59.