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Australia have more players in need of match practice than they can fit into the team for the tour match against a Sri Lankan Board XI, and the only certainty is that Phil Hughes will open

Daniel Brettig in Colombo24-Aug-2011Australia’s captain Michael Clarke is certain that Phil Hughes will open the batting in the three-day tour match against a Sri Lankan Board XI at Colombo’s P Sara Stadium from Thursday. Beyond that things get rather tricky.Because the match has been bestowed first-class status, the tourists may only pick 11 players, when they have more, particularly in the bowling department, in need of match practice. Apart from Mitchell Johnson and James Pattinson who were in the ODI team, each of Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle, Trent Copeland, Nathan Lyon and Michael Beer are yet to play on tour.Compounding the headache is that Clarke and the tour selectors Greg Chappell and Tim Nielsen are far from certain about the composition of their best XI for Galle, where the conditions are likely to assist spinners. However they are uncertain whether it would be assistance enough to have Australia play multiple specialist spinners for the first time since Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill – plus Dan Cullen in one Test – on the 2006 tour of Bangladesh.Shaun Marsh is expected to be given first look at the No. 6 batting spot, but his rival Usman Khawaja may find himself at the top of the order if it is decided to rest Shane Watson after his limited overs exertions.”I can say Hughesy will open the batting for us and then it would be between Usman [Khawaja] and Marshy to bat No. 6 I would say,” Clarke said. “Then we’ve got to work out do we pick two spinners, do we pick three quicks. Conditions in Galle will determine that one and it’s a hard one for selection for tomorrow as well, are we sure which three quicks, do we go for the three who we think are going to play, is it our best attack? There’s a lot of questions we need to answer.”Rain sent the Australians scurrying indoors for practice on match eve, and it was in this environment that Clarke got his first genuine sight of the offspinner Lyon’s bowling. It is thought that Lyon may be better prepared to adapt to Sri Lankan climes than his nominally senior spin partner Michael Beer, given how elastically Lyon has adapted to the different tactical demands of Twenty20, one-dayers and first-class cricket.”They’ve obviously played a bit of cricket in Zimbabwe which I think helped, they got some overs under their belts in pretty slow, turning conditions as well,” Clarke said of the pair. “They’ve been training hard since they got here and Tim’s been at every training session, Greg’s been at every training session, so if we pick two spinners tomorrow they get that opportunity, and if we only pick one it comes down to their preparation leading in, what they did in Zimbabwe.”Clarke denied that the choice of a single spinner for Colombo would dictate who played in Galle, as the amount of turn available would be the final arbiter on the number of spinners required.”We still have net preparation that is important, but I still think you need to go on conditions once you get to Galle,” he said. “It’s hard because you can only fit 11 in [for the tour match], so do we think we’re going to play three quicks or two spinners. If I look at the one-dayers, Steve Smith, Xavier Doherty and Dave Hussey played a big part in our success, but I think our fast bowlers statistically got the most wickets, so we need to work out what is the right combination as a bowling unit in the conditions.”Australia’s preparations have been punctuated by the release of the Argus review, and Clarke reiterated his happiness with how the team had taken on his message that the size of the distraction was dictated by the players themselves.”The one point I’ve tried to push is that in this business everybody has a job to do, and our job as players is to prepare well and perform well on the field,” Clarke said. “The other stuff, the administration, the selectors, all the other stuff that goes with our game which is very important, all of that will be taken care of and is out of our control really, so the size of the distraction is determined by us. If we make it a big distraction then it could affect the team.”But so far on tour, nobody has [made it a big distraction]. We know what we’re here to do, we know how important this tour is, and I was stoked the way we won that fourth one-day game of the series, I think it showed a lot of character. What I see in the review is we’re trying to make people accountable, we’re trying to have measures of performance and trying to make people accountable.”For us right now the players are accountable to our performances throughout this tour, the one-day tour we knew it was going to be tough cricket and we performed pretty well in quite different and tough conditions. The Test tour’s the same, we’re ranked 5th in Test cricket, so we need to improve. From the first camp we had up in Brisbane at the Centre of Excellence I think our preparation is outstanding. It’s easy to say ‘we’re going to wake up every day and try to get better’, but I know we have.”

India have been fined for maintaining a slow over-rate during their defeat to Sri Lanka in the tri-series final in Dambulla on Saturday

Cricinfo staff29-Aug-2010India have been fined for maintaining a slow over-rate during their defeat to Sri Lanka in the tri-series final in Dambulla on Saturday. The match referee, Alan Hurst, found the team to be two overs short of its target at the end of the Sri Lankan innings after taking the time allowances into consideration.The captain MS Dhoni was fined 40% of his match fee while the remaining players were docked 20% each. Batting first, Sri Lanka compiled 299, with big contributions from Tillakaratne Dilshan and Kumar Sangakkara. India, in reply, managed 225.Last December, Dhoni was slapped with a more severe penalty for a slow over-rate, when he was banned for two ODIs during Sri Lanka’s tour of India. He was found guilty during the Nagpur ODI and Virender Sehwag led the side in his absence. Back then, India were three overs short, which came under the “serious over-rate offence” category. Falling short by up to two overs in an ODI, and five in a Test day, is considered a “minor offence”, and merits a ban only if the offence is repeated twice in 12 months.

Mumbai finished the fourth day 274 runs in front with four second-innings wickets in hand

ESPNcricinfo staff04-Oct-2024Stumps The fourth day of the Irani Cup started with Rest of India well placed to challenge Mumbai’s first-innings score of 537, and overnight batters Abhimanyu Easwaran and Dhruv Jurel did well to begin with. Shams Mulani, however, sent them back in back-to-back overs to finish off the fight, and from 393 for 4, Rest of India collapsed to 416 all out. That gave Mumbai a handy lead of 121, which Prithvi Shaw has added to since, putting the team in a strong position to finish on top.Abhimanyu and Jurel were on 151 and 30 overnight, and Jurel was the quicker of the two on the fourth morning, scoring at 76.85 to get to 93 before Mulani sent him back gloving an attempted sweep through to wicketkeeper Hardik Tamore. That ended the fifth-wicket stand of 165, and one wicket led to another when Abhimanyu also fell to the sweep, sending the ball pitched in the rough outside leg stump to Tanush Kotian at short fine-leg. He fell for 191.No one from Rest of India reached double figures after that as Mulani and Kotian finished with three apiece.The Mumbai second innings was all about Shaw. As wickets fell at the other end, all courtesy spin – Saransh Jain the offspinner and Manav Suthar the leg-arm spinner – Shaw went about his job merrily, scoring 76 in 105 balls with eight fours and a six. Shaw, who had missed out in the first innings, scoring only 4, became the fifth Mumbai wicket to fall late in the day, to Jain, who has 4 for 67 to Suthar’s 2 for 40.Rest of India will hope to finish off the Mumbai innings quickly on the fifth morning and give themselves a chance of pulling off the chase, however steep and unlikely – seeing that spinners are very much in the game at this stage – but Mumbai will start the day feeling the better of the two camps.

Liam Dawson half-century fails to overcome troubled start by visitors at Hove

ECB Reporters Network16-Jun-2023Sussex 183 for 6 (Carter 64) beat Hampshire 177 for 9 (Dawson 59, Currie 3-27) by six runsOli Carter and Bradley Currie were the unlikely heroes as Sussex Sharks upset Hampshire Hawks at Hove to claim only their third win in this season’s Vitality Blast.In quick-scoring conditions at the 1st Central County Ground the reigning champions dragged things back well after Carter (64) and skipper Ravi Bopara (30) took Sussex to 127 for 2 in the 12th over with a stand of 98 in nine overs. They departed in successive overs and although Sussex got to 183 for 6 it didn’t look enough.But by the second ball of the third over Hampshire had slumped to 15 for 3 and were soon 24 for 4. Although Liam Dawson made 59 off 34 balls and their lower-order batters kept swinging Sussex won by six runs.Debutant Currie started his first over with two wides but then had James Vince caught at deep mid-wicket before Toby Albert played on to the next ball. The hat-trick delivery was also a wide but Sussex were celebrating again when Ben McDermott was pinned in front of middle stump by Ari Karvelas at the start of the next over.The 24-year-old left-armer, who will be playing for Dorset in the National Counties Trophy against Wales on Sunday, took his third wicket in his second over when Ross Whiteley dragged on, leaving Hampshire 24 for 4.Joe Weatherley (33) and Dawson rebuilt in a stand of 51 and even after Weatherley fatally swung across the line to a straight ball from Bopara, Dawson didn’t give up.He reached his sixth fifty in the format and had just hit George Garton into the flats overlooking the ground for his fifth six when the left-armer hit the top of off stump with his next ball.But this was a night for Currie. He added to his three wickets with a sensational catch when he made ten yards to his left and dived full length on the mid-wicket boundary to take a two-handed grab and remove Howell. Even then, with 22 needed off the final over, Nathan Ellis scored 12 off the first three balls but was leg before to the fifth from Karvelas as Hampshire finished on 177 for 9.The unexpected star of the Sussex innings was 19-year-old Carter, who smashed 64 off just 33 balls in only his sixth game in the format. His previous highest score was 27 against Essex earlier this month but he made the most of his chance at No.3 to hit six fours and four sixes, including successive maximums off James Fuller to become only the third Sussex batter to lodge a fifty in this season’s Blast.Skipper Bopara has made two of them and when he and Carter were putting on 98 from 54 balls for the third wicket the holders looked a little rattled.But, as experienced sides tend to do, the Hawks held their nerve and Sussex struggled to regain the initiative after Bopara, who had just heaved the returning Howell over mid-wicket, played on trying to repeat the shot to the next ball.Carter played shots all around the wicket and demonstrated eye-catching improvisation, but he departed four balls later giving himself room to heave over cow corner only to pick out Ellis, who took a good catch, instead. That was in the 12th over and Sussex didn’t score another boundary until the 17th as Howell and Dawson, whose four overs cost just 21, kept things tight.

Bangladesh’s fast-bowling coach is the highest wicket taker at St George’s Park

Mohammad Isam06-Apr-2022Bangladesh’s spectacular batting collapse in the fourth innings in Durban, where they were bowled out for 53, largely overshadowed a wonderful bowling performance from their fast bowlers. It was only the fourth time Bangladesh took 20 wickets overseas, and the second time in the last three Tests when the fast bowlers have taken more than 10 wickets in the match.Khaled Ahmed led the fightback in the first innings after South Africa got off to a good start. Ebadot Hossain bowled decently in both innings, while Taskin Ahmed fought off a shoulder injury that would eventually send him home, to take two crucial wickets in the second innings.Related

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The fast bowlers’ improvement has been one of the eye-catching aspects of the Bangladesh team over the last couple of years. Allan Donald, their newest fast-bowling coach who is overseeing the South Africa tour as his first assignment, said that the Durban performance from the quicks was a formula for success for the second Test in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) too, which begins on April 8.”I think the Bangladesh seamers can be very proud of the way they conducted themselves in the first Test,” Donald said. “I think we were feeling our way into it a little bit. Once we settled down, it was very good. We spoke about bowling in partnerships. It was a fantastic performance from all the seamers. The way Khaled got into the team, the way Ebadot bowled.”It was even better in the second innings. I felt we bowled like a Test unit. The run-rate went down from 3.7 to 2.5. The way we took wickets at crucial times in that second innings to restrict South Africa to 273. I am very proud of the seamers. They kept coming all day long to keep the pressure up. If you are looking for a recipe for success, it doesn’t change here in St George’s Park.”Donald especially praised Taskin for braving the pain of his shoulder injury during the fourth day’s play in Durban. Taskin removed Dean Elgar who was looking dangerous on 64, before adding Keshav Maharaj as he bowled 11 overs.”We can’t speak highly enough of Taskin. I was so happy for him in the one-dayers at the way he led the bowling attack. He started getting a bit of niggle in his shoulder in the firs Test. It gradually got worse. He strapped it up in the second innings. He was willing to go even further and do the job for Bangladesh. We wish him well. We have Sri Lanka around the corner.”It is an absolute pleasure working with the young guy. He is a great listener. He wants to learn. He has a proper engine in him. He keeps going through all that pain. The three of them were outstanding, especially Taskin who was in a lot of pain. Tells you a lot about his character and also about how much he cares for this team where the stakes were at its highest. The pain was at its highest,” said Donald.As the highest wicket-taker at St George’s Park, Donald obviously knows enough about the venue to tell his bowlers what will – and what won’t – work here. “It is a ground where you have to be very creative as a bowler. As the innings goes on, the track will get flatter. From a fast bowling perspective, you must have something up your sleeve. You have to put your hand up and be brave. Try different things.”Dale Steyn showed here few years ago against Australia on a flat pitch, that when the ball starts reversing, you can take wickets here. It is going to be tough work for the bowlers,” he said.Donald also said that the afternoon wind can be disconcerting for the bowlers and fielders, and it is something that they are talking about and working on ahead of the second Test.”You have to contend with the severe winds in Port Elizabeth. It comes around 12:30 to two o’clock over the scoreboard. Late in the afternoon it gets up to about 40-45kph. It is like a wind tunnel from the scoreboard, and it keeps swirling. As a bowler you feel you are with it, and all of a sudden you are against it. Someone has to do the dirty work (to bowl) into the wind. It is not going to be tough work.”We have been talking about our fielding, high catching and getting into correct positions quickly. We have to do a lot of spiral catching. Long catching. High catching is a real skill here,” he said.

Batsman stars in new role at No.4 as Eoin Morgan credits England for victory despite ‘average’ day

George Dobell27-Nov-2020Jonny Bairstow insists he doesn’t mind where he bats for England, as long as he has a role in the team.Bairstow hit an unbeaten 86 from 48 balls – his highest score in T20I cricket – to carry England to a narrow victory with four balls of the game remaining in the first match of the series against South Africa in Cape TownBut he did it from No. 4 in the batting line-up having been demoted after England opted for Jos Buttler and Jason Roy as their openers and Dawid Malan as their No. 3. That left Bairstow – who is the only England player in the top 10 of the ODI batting rankings – batting outside the top three for the first time in more than two years and potentially facing a fight for his position with the likes of Joe Root and Sam Billings, neither of whom are in the team at present.Given that this rejig came after he had lost both his place in the Test side and his full central contract, as well as being dropped by Sunrisers Hyderabad for the final rounds of the IPL, Bairstow could have been forgiven for expressing some disappointment. Instead, he said he is determined to use his experiences in a constructive manner.”I think you’ve two choices,” Bairstow, who made his maiden Test century on the same ground in 2016, said. “You can be disgruntled or you can use the experiences you’ve had previously – whether for England or at the IPL – and utilise them in the best way possible. I’m really happy with where my game is at. The calmness and composure was really pleasing. Seeing England over the line is important.”I want to be playing cricket for England. I don’t mind [where I bat]. As long as I’m contributing and putting in match-winning performances, so be it.”I was really pleased with how I played tonight. It’s a different role to what I’ve played previously, so going out and gaining confidence and contributing to winning the match is what it’s all about. I was delighted with the pace in which we structured the innings. To win with three or four balls left… I’m really happy.”ALSO READ: A victory for England, a victory for the IPLHowever, aside from Bairstow and a couple of colleagues – notably Sam Curran – England were not at their best. With 25 deliveries of the match remaining, they still required 55 runs and knew that, with Kagiso Rabada to deliver one of those overs, their chances were diminishing by the moment.But then Beuran Hendricks bowled a horrible over – the 17th of the England innings – which occupied nine balls and cost 28 runs. Without it, England may have struggled to overcome what Eoin Morgan, England’s captain, termed “an above-par score” set by South Africa.Jonny Bairstow sealed victory with a six•Getty Images

For while Morgan declared himself “very pleased” with the victory, he was not allowing it to mask a performance he admitted was “pretty average”.”I thought we were pretty average apart from two or three guys,” Morgan told Sky Sports. “And when you win games of cricket like that when you don’t play your best cricket, it is very pleasing.”There are areas with the ball that we missed; we were a tad too full in certain periods of the game. And then with the bat we were three-down early and did not build partnerships. But Jonny has had an unbelievably good day out on a wicket that was two-paced.”When you win games like that and you’ve a lot [of improvement] to make up in all three facets [of the game] you can be pleased. I would imagine the more time we spend together and the more we play, the more we will get used to roles that we play and start to gel like we have in 50-over cricket. It is not doom and gloom but hopefully we will improve and progress in the next couple of games.”

The Australia coach insisted Steven Smith was right to resume his innings although said he may have to reconsider his use of stem guards after the sickening blow from Jofra Archer

Daniel Brettig at Lord's17-Aug-2019Australia’s coach Justin Langer has revealed how Steven Smith came to be batting again in the Lord’s Test, less than an hour after he had retired hurt with a sickening blow to the back of the neck from a scorching bouncer delivered by Jofra Archer, protesting that he needed to be given the chance to make a century at the home of cricket.On 80 when he was hit by Archer and left prostrate on the ground, Smith took time to regather himself and was initially withdrawn by the team doctor Richard Saw for precautionary concussion testing. There was widespread surprise when Smith re-emerged at the fall of Peter Siddle’s wicket, and what followed was a skittish innings ended when he shouldered arms to a straight ball from Chris Woakes. But Langer insisted that Smith had passed all the tests required and also headed off multiple reassurances from the coach and others that he was okay to bat.ALSO READ: Steven Smith blow brings cricket to a standstill“Because he was hit in the neck and not in the helmet or in the head maybe that had a bit of an impact, it was like getting a soft tissue injury,” Langer said. “He got hit on the arm as well and then hit on the neck. But as soon as he got up in the medical room, it was like ‘nah I’m going okay’, then he had the concussion testing and the doctor came through and said ‘he’s passed all that and he’s pretty good’. By the time he walked back in the dressing room he just couldn’t wait to get back out there again.”I was saying ‘mate are you sure you’re okay’, these are like my sons right, so you’re never going to put them in harm’s way, even though you’re always in harm’s way with Test cricket. But he’s going ‘mate, I’ve got to get out there, I can’t get on the honour board unless I’m out batting’. That’s what he says, that’s what he thinks. He was determined. All he was worried about was that he wasn’t going to be able to play his forward defence because it was hurting with his top hand grip.”We can look into it, but honestly he wouldn’t have gone out there unless we thought [he was okay]. We asked him over and over. I asked him privately, I asked him behind closed doors two or three times, I asked him in front of the group, he just goes ‘all good, all good coach, I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go’. What else do you do? The medicos cleared him, he wanted to get out there, we were looking after him, and he said ‘honestly I’m ready to go, my arm’s a bit sore’. That’s why he went out there.”Steven Smith is struck by a Jofra Archer bouncer•Getty Images

The Australian team was visibly shaken by the episode, with its parallels to the death of Phillip Hughes when hit in a similar part of the neck at the SCG in November 2014. “You never like seeing your players get hit like that, no doubt about that,” Langer said. “It was obviously some pretty rough memories of a blow like that, so there’s no fun in it.”With that in mind, Langer reckoned that Smith would have to rethink his reluctance to wear a stem guard on the back of his helmet, of the kind widely introduced in the wake of Hughes’ death. The blow he suffered from Archer at Lord’s may well have been softened or at least partly deflected by the extra protection, which is optional rather than mandatory under the game’s regulations.”Very good question,” Langer said when asked whether he thought the guards should be mandatory. “I didn’t realise, it might be my error but I didn’t realise they weren’t mandatory until today. I think Steve wrote in his book he just doesn’t like or feel comfortable [with a stem guard]. He’s got all these idiosyncrasies everyone’s talking about – he doesn’t like having shoelaces he can see, doesn’t like his shoes being dirty, so it’s the same, it just doesn’t feel right.”I’m sure after today it’ll get talked about again, I know they came in after the tragedy of Hughesy. So I’m sure it’ll get talked about, and he might rethink it now after seeing what happened today, but you’d have to ask him that. At the moment the players have a choice, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they become mandatory in the future.”As for how the blow and Archer’s brutish spell might influence Smith and the remainder of the series, Langer admitted that it had to have some effect on the former captain’s mentality, but was equally adamant that Smith would find a way to deliver his own riposte later in the series. Smith was cleared of any fracture for the earlier blow to the arm, and will undergo subsequent concussion testing before play on the final day.”I can only go from experience. When you get hit, it’s always in the back of your mind, no doubt. Any batsman who tells you it’s not is a liar,” Langer said. “But he is also the sort of person who will do everything from now until the next time he bats, whether mentally or visualising or practising, to be right. He loves batting, we saw that masterclass the other day – no one is going to stop him batting, so he’ll practice it, work it out, and hopefully he’ll get back into it.”

Ashton Agar has said Australia have “no choice” other than to believe they can defeat England in the final ODI at Old Trafford

Melinda Farrell23-Jun-20181:44

No choice but to believe we can win – Agar

Ashton Agar has said Australia have “no choice” other than to believe they can defeat England in the final ODI at Old Trafford. If England continue their domination of Australia it will be their first whitewash over the old enemy in any format.But Agar insisted the Australia players weren’t feeling pressure to avoid the whitewash and instead were focusing on improving all facets of their game.”It’s going to be tough,” Agar said. “But I absolutely believe we can beat them: we have no choice [but] to believe that we can beat them.”But we need to play our very best cricket against a side that’s played really well four games in a row now. We have to bring our absolute best. We have plenty to gain out of tomorrow, plenty to gain, to just put things into practice and just let it all out there.”Agar scored 40 and 46 in the first two ODIs and, while the bowling figures of some of his team-mates have suffered dreadfully at the hands of England’s brutal batting, Agar has been the pick of Australia’s attack during this series. He took 2 for 48 at Chester-le-Street and conceded 7 runs per over during England’s record innings of 481 at Trent Bridge. He believes that, while it has been a difficult series for AJ Tye and Jhye Richardson in particular, the experience could be positive in the long term.”I guess Trent Bridge is one that would highlight that for some young bowlers, and we have a quite young bowling attack,” said Agar. “To feel what that’s like — JL [Justin Langer] referred to it as the ‘jungle’, that’s international cricket, playing against good players on good wickets and sometimes small grounds.”That was pretty difficult. It’s good to experience that now and not in a World Cup, learn from that now and then know what to do when you face that situation again.””They definitely would have been hurt after Trent Bridge. Everyone was. That was pretty incredible, it was a world record and unfortunately we were on the receiving end of that. But we have to keep learning from those experiences and it’s good to experience that now and not in a World Cup. Learn now, improve now. We can move forward instantly.”Ashton Agar played a solid innings•Getty Images

Langer, Australia’s coach, may decide to tinker with his line-up once more in an effort to find the best balance but, with England unlikely to change what is a red-hot top and middle order, Agar doesn’t expect any easing of pressure.”England are a very good side, an experienced side and they gel really well,” Agar said. “They’ve got beautiful balance in their team and I think we are working towards that.”Their confidence, their self-belief: they ooze it out there, no doubt. They are playing like a team where everyone knows their role and they back themselves and each other to just go and do it. They’ve set the benchmark.”We are not where they are yet but I think tomorrow is just another opportunity to try to win and try and do really well. It’s the last game [of the series], you go 100% every game but I think it means more to us now to go as hard as we can and just leave nothing out there.”

Eighteen wickets fell on the first day at Old Trafford but it was contrasting half-centuries from Liam Livingston and Dean Elgar that will live in the memory

Paul Edwards at Old Trafford21-Apr-2017
Scorecard1:42

County Championship Round-up: England hopefuls make their case

Recollections of a grey and rather heavy Manchester day on which 18 wickets fell should, one would think, be dominated by the exploits of bowlers. To be specific, we should laud the achievement of the Somerset seamers in dismissing Lancashire for a plainly inadequate 109 and then offer our congratulations to the home attack in limiting Somerset’s lead to a mere 44 runs, albeit that the visitors have two wickets in hand and the excellent Dean Elgar still at the crease.Yet while both sets of pace bowlers performed nobly on a testing pitch which nevertheless scarcely justified the fall of wickets with a frequency matched only by Italian governments, it will, perhaps, be two contrasting innings which spectators will remember when they reflect on a manic day at Emirates Old Trafford. The first of these was played by Lancashire’s stand-in skipper Liam Livingstone, who batted with exemplary responsibility when partnered by established batsmen before lunch and then glorious freedom when accompanied by the tail in the afternoon.Mind you, not too many of the top order hung around for long to admire their leader’s discipline. When Livingstone arrived at the wicket in the fourth over both Haseeb Hameed and Alex Davies had already been dismissed for ducks by fine balls from Josh Davey, Hameed edging the fifth delivery of the match to the wicketkeeper, Steven Davies, and Alex Davies being taken by Marcus Trescothick at slip.Nor was there any prolonged halt to the grisly procession of Lancashire batsmen. Having threatened to post inadequate first-innings totals in their previous two matches only to think better of it and mount remarkable recoveries instead, Lancashire finally did the job properly on the opening day of this game. As if to justify the darkest fears of their supporters, many of whom were watching their first cricket of 2017, Livingstone’s side put together their miserable total in 41.4 overs, less than a session and a half’s cricket.That said, Somerset’s attack offered a tough examination on a pitch which seemed to retain early moisture. Craig Overton bowled with pace and proper aggression to remove Luke Procter, Rob Jones and Dane Vilas in successive overs and when Ryan McLaren nicked Tim Groenewald to Elgar at slip the home side were 42 for 6. Time to check the record books and visit Old Trafford’s black museum, some thought, but Livingstone and Jordan Clark stopped the worst of the rot by adding 22 runs in 45 minutes of self-denial before lunch.After the interval, though, the tumble resumed, Clark miscuing Overton to Tom Abell at extra cover and Parry giving one of Instow’s finest his fifth wicket with a tame return catch. At which point Livingstone moved his batting up from second gear to fifth and he did so with a rapidity befitting one of cricket’s classiest young marques. Having used the wreckage of his team’s innings to show that there is far more to his game than short-form salvos, Livingstone tore into the Somerset bowling wherever possible scoring 40 runs off 32 balls in the afternoon session.Liam Livingstone played some acrobatic shots in his 68•Getty Images

Moreover, it might be noted that this innings of two halves against Somerset was watched by the national selector, James Whitaker. Livingstone is taking the careful plan of progression drawn up for him and tearing it up, a task he is achieving as much by his cricketing intelligence as by raw ability. It was thrilling to see him come down the wicket and smack Overton onto the first balcony of the Old Trafford pavilion; and it was remarkable to observe his ability to move from orthodoxy and the coaching book to ramps, scoops and other such exotica, albeit that by the time he was the last man out, caught at deep square leg by Jack Leach, Lancashire had not achieved a par total.Elgar’s effort, though, was quite as praiseworthy as Livngstone’s. The Somerset opener lost his partner when Trescothick had edged a fine ball from McLaren to the wicketkeeper but Elgar remained for the rest of the day, facing 151 balls and taking 214 minutes over his 66 not out.The South African excepted, Somerset’s batsmen found batting a tortuous business, especially against McLaren, who ran in with an obvious will and made the most of any help offered by the pitch. Lancashire’s overseas allrounder removed Tom Abell for a single and later accounted for both Peter Trego and Craig Overton in an evening session which seemed at one stage to offer the prospect of the home side batting again.Trego’s 52-run stand for the fifth wicket with Elgar had seemed to avert that possibility only for Procter to revive it by taking the wickets of Lewis Gregory and Davey with successive deliveries. When Overton’s wicket was taken by McLaren, seven overs were left in the day but Leach partnered Elgar calmly to close of play, when both players and spectators probably welcomed the chance to draw breath.

Victoria’s coach David Saker has mounted an impassioned defence of the Sheffield Shield final, saying he would be “shattered” if CA excised the pinnacle of a domestic competition

Daniel Brettig24-Mar-2016Victoria’s coach David Saker has mounted an impassioned defence of the Sheffield Shield final, saying he would be “shattered” if Cricket Australia excised the pinnacle of a domestic competition he rates comfortably ahead of the County Championship after his years as an assistant coach with England.The Bushrangers flew into Adelaide on Thursday ahead of a meeting with South Australia that reflects the increasingly marginalised state of the Shield decider – played at Glenelg rather than Adelaide Oval, clashing with the opening round of the AFL season and broadcast only through a streaming service by CA’s website.Saker, however, argued the Shield final should be cherished as an Australian strength relative to the English game, in that a leaner domestic tournament was taken to an even higher pitch of intensity and therefore learning by staging a play-off match.”It is very important to Australian cricket,” Saker told ESPNcricinfo. “If you take away the Sheffield Shield final you’re taking importance away from the game of Sheffield Shield cricket and if you ask any of the players what they think about it and what they strive to do it is to play in a Sheffield Shield final.”It’s as close to a Test match as some of them will ever get, and the day they scrap that would be a poor day for Australian cricket in my opinion. The people making those decisions are more qualified than me, but I’ve been in the first-class system for a long time and I’d be shattered if that was the case, if we lost the Shield final.”There is a sense of ambivalence at CA about the final, summed up by the former chairman Wally Edwards at last year’s AGM: “I don’t think it plays any real part in our season. When I played Shield cricket, we didn’t have a Shield final. The Shield final, over many years, has proved itself to be a bit of a non-event, to be honest.”The chief executive James Sutherland has said the final could make way for an expanded Big Bash League schedule. Neither Sutherland, nor Edwards’ successor David Peever, will be present for this year’s final, as they will be in India for meetings around the World Twenty20 tournament.More broadly, Saker judged the Shield to be the superior competition to the County Championship, pointing to the number of dead fixtures played out over the lengthy English season. The high volume of matches has been a valuable tool for many players learning their craft, but Saker said the greater intensity of Shield contests was his preference.”I still think the Shield system is as good as you get,” he said. “It’s so competitive and that’s been shown again this year in the last three or four weeks of the competition, so tight and so hard to compete. That’s the one thing we’ve got over the English system with so many dead games in the County system. Since it’s become first and second division it has got better, but the Sheffield Shield is still the pinnacle of first-class cricket in the world.”At the end of his first season back in Victoria after a largely successful stint as mentor to England’s pace bowlers, Saker reflected on a role that has occasionally brought him into conflict with CA. Most notably, he was rebuked by the national team coach Darren Lehmann for taking issue with the handling of James Pattinson at the start of the summer, an experience that left Saker somewhat chastened. He counselled the game’s custodians against hubris.”It has had some hiccups because obviously I’ve said some things in the press that maybe I shouldn’t have said,” Saker said. “Most of the time I’m just trying to support the players in my team and what I think is best for the Victorian team. Not at any stage have I said things to downgrade the Australian team or the system. I think it’s a good system, I think they still need to tinker with some things to a degree.”What you have to be aware of no matter what organisation you’re in, you should never think your organisation does it better than someone else. I think you should always be open-minded to how others do things, and that’s not just in cricket, that’s in life and business. You’ve got to be open-minded enough to take some ideas from other teams and countries and use them, and make sure you’re not blinkered.”A source of tension in recent times has been the introduction of a strategy for CA and the states called One Team, which takes the view that all should be moving in the same direction with the same goals. While Saker agreed with the overall concept, he argued that states should still be allowed to develop their own coaching philosophies and approaches in a truly competitive environment, rather than turning the Shield into a mere greenhouse for emerging talent.”I’m all for this One Team idea, but I also think we should be trying to have our own ideas from our states, so if we want to have our own coaching philosophies or ways of going about it that should be encouraged,” Saker said. “If you have six teams coached in the same way and trying to coach the same way, I can’t see that being a good thing.”One of the beauties of the Shield system is it is usually coaches having control of the team and coming up with their own ideas of how to coach and how to train. Sometimes in my brief time so far back in Australia we’re getting taught how to coach, instead of letting the coaches coach. Of course we want to come together and share our ideas, but in the Shield system and the way we’ve produced players across all the states, they should get a free rein on how they run their system.”I’m sure they [CA] understand that, and I think we’ll eventually get to that stage, but it’s just in its infancy at the moment with One Team so I’m sure it’ll get to that.”