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Tour match becomes three-day friendly with frontline bowlers at risk of no match practice before first Test

ESPNcricinfo staff19-Dec-2019England’s tour match against South Africa A starting on Friday has been downgraded from first-class status, due to the ongoing effects of illness in the touring party. Jofra Archer, Stuart Broad and Jack Leach all remain doubtful for the Benoni game, leaving England’s plans for next week’s Boxing Day Test in some disarray.All three players were forced to sit out the low-key tour opener against a South Africa Invitational XI earlier this week, after a bug swept through the England camp, and according to an ECB spokesman, their fitness for this weekend’s three-day fixture won’t be confirmed until the morning of the match.Unlike the opening match, the South Africa A game was due to be a first-class fixture, featuring a strong opposition including regular Test-squad members Temba Bavuma, Theunis de Bruyn and Andile Phehlukwayo. That would have meant England being unable to substitute the trio into the line-up should they recover later in the contest.However, the game will now be classified as a three-day friendly, with only 11 batting or fielding at any point in time, giving all squad members the opportunity for match practice in South African conditions ahead of the first Test in Centurion.Speaking at the conclusion of the two-day game on Wednesday, Chris Woakes acknowledged the sickness in the England camp.”A few guys have gone down a little bit ill, so obviously they’re back in the hotel trying to steer clear of everyone,” he said. “Hopefully it’s not too bad, hopefully it’ll be a couple of days out and they’ll be back on their feet.”While the timing of the illness is not ideal for the squad as a whole, it is particularly problematic for Leach, who was omitted from England’s most recent Test, against New Zealand in Hamilton last month, and then suffered a bout of gastroenteritis that would have ruled him out for much of the game anyway.In his absence, England gave an outing to the legspinner Matt Parkinson in their opening tour game in South Africa, but he endured some rough treatment as Joe Root emerged as the most economical spinner on the day.With a range of allrounders in England’s squad, including Ben Stokes, Sam Curran and Chris Woakes – all of whom are currently fit for selection – England could yet decide to take the field in Centurion without a frontline spinner for the second Test in a row, especially at a venue that has traditionally favoured seam bowling.Assuming he is fit in time for the Centurion Test, Archer seems guaranteed to take his place in England’s starting XI – even though he endured a tricky first taste of overseas Test cricket in New Zealand, claiming two wickets at 104.50 in the series.Broad, however, would doubtless benefit from time in the middle as he seeks to build on a decent display in New Zealand, where he was England’s most economical bowler on a flat deck in the first Test at Mount Maunganui. However, he had been omitted from three of England’s previous six overseas Tests in Sri Lanka and West Indies, amid doubts about his penetration with the Kookaburra ball.England also face a tricky decision over the fitness of James Anderson, who came through 11 overs unscathed in Benoni, but whose recent injury record invites caution at the start of a four-match series. He broke down after four overs of the first Test against Australia in August, and did not feature again in the series.

Welsh legend pays price for county’s flat-lining performances on all fronts

George Dobell17-Oct-2018Hugh Morris has described as “incredibly difficult” the decision to end Robert Croft’s 30-year career with Glamorgan.Morris, the club’s chief executive, acknowledged Croft’s “incredible contribution” to Glamorgan but conceded that, after a grim year, this was “the right time for a change”.Croft had been head coach at Glamorgan for the last three years. Despite seeing the side reach Finals Day in 2017 – the first time they had done so in 13 years – Croft was unable to improve their first-class form. They finished bottom of Division Two in the County Championship in 2018, won only one List A match, and failed to progress to the last eight in the T20 Blast. The departure of 21-year-old Aneurin Donald, one of the club’s brightest prospects, to Hampshire underlined the impression that, too often in the last few years, the club had relied too heavily on imports.Before his spell as head coach, Croft had enjoyed a long career with the club – he made his debut in 1989 and captained the side between 2003 and 2006 – and had a period as assistant coach. His departure leaves the club looking for both a new head coach and director of cricket following last week’s announcement which revealed Morris, who has had a dual role as chief executive and director of cricket since 2013, would be concentrating on the former position. It is likely the new director of cricket will be involved in the appointment of the next head coach.”On behalf of the club I would like to thank Robert for the incredible contribution he has made to Glamorgan, not just as head coach but also as a player, assistant coach and ambassador over the last 30 years,” Morris said.”He is one of our greatest players and the most successful player we have ever had at the club at international level and has done more than anyone to promote not just cricket in Wales, but Welsh cricket to the world.”During his tenure, he has developed a number of young players which Glamorgan will hopefully see the benefit of for years to come. He also oversaw the club reaching the quarter-finals of the Vitality Blast in two of his three years in charge, which culminated in our return to Finals Day last year.”It was an incredibly difficult decision for the board to make, but given our performances in the County Championship we feel it is the right time for a change. Robert is always welcome back at the club and we hope he will continue to act as an ambassador for Glamorgan and Welsh cricket.””After finishing my playing career it was one of my dreams to coach at this great club and I am pleased to have been able to fulfil that dream and play a part in developing the next generation of Welsh cricketers,” Croft said. “I leave knowing that Glamorgan has a number of extremely talented cricketers who can take the club forward.”Although our County Championship campaigns did not go as I would have liked, we were able to compete admirably in the shorter formats of the game with a small and young squad of players.”Glamorgan will always hold a big piece of my heart and I would like to wish the club and supporters well for the future.”Since they were relegated at the end of the 2005 season, Glamorgan have only finished in the top half of Division Two twice. In that period, they have failed to produce an England player. At one stage in 2018, they lost seven Championship games in succession.

The pair are likely to be the first batsmen to attempt filling the gap left by Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan’s retirements in the upcoming Tests against Sr Lanka, even as Pakistan have bolstered their bowling with the inclusion of uncapped fast bowler Mir

Umar Farooq23-Sep-2017Haris Sohail, who last played first-class cricket in 2014, and Usman Salahuddin have inherited the hardest jobs in Test cricket – to follow in the footsteps of Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan. The pair are likely to be the first to attempt filling those giant shoes, as Pakistan named their first Test squad in the post-MisYou era, to take on Sri Lanka in the UAE.

Pakistan Test squad

Azhar Ali, Shan Masood, Sami Aslam, Babar Azam, Asad Shafiq, Haris Sohail, Usman Salahuddin, Sarfraz Ahmed (capt), Yasir Shah, Mohammad Asghar, Bilal Asif, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Amir, Hasan Ali, Mohammad Abbas, Wahab Riaz

Pakistan, led by Sarfraz Ahmed now, have also picked uncapped fast bowler Mir Hamza and allrounder Bilal Asif in a 16-man squad for the Test series, which starts with the first Test in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. Ahmed Shehzad and Mohammad Rizwan were the two exclusions from the list of probables that went through a five-day conditioning camp in Lahore recently.Much of the early focus will be on Sohail and Salahuddin, as Pakistan look to make up for losing over 15000 Test runs and nearly 200 Tests worth of experience in the middle order. Both are uncapped in Tests, but have represented Pakistan. Salahuddin played two ODIs for Pakistan in 2011, but Sohail was, for a while after his debut in July 2013, a near-fixture in the ODI side.Yasir Shah and Azhar Ali have both made it into the squad as well, and though both ordinarily would’ve been automatic selections, there was some doubt about their participation in the run-up to the announcement. Azhar, Pakistan’s most successful Test batsman over the last year or so, was in doubt with a knee problem and he sat out a two-day practice match at the camp. He has, however, been receiving treatment, according to chief selector Inzamam ul Haq, and a speedy recovery would enable him to be available for both of the Test matches. Pakistan will need, more than anything, his experience.Yasir, on the other hand, was on the verge of becoming the biggest victim of the new fitness drive coach Mickey Arthur and the management have implemented since their arrival. Already, the push to make Pakistan fitter has claimed victims in Sami Aslam and, most famously, Umar Akmal. Yasir’s fitness levels were said to have been a major concern over the last five days, but he has, apparently, pulled through and proved his fitness. Since 2014, he has been Pakistan’s most successful Test bowler.The squad was meant to be announced on Friday but was pushed until Saturday morning, allowing Yasir to undergo another fitness test to reach a value acceptable for a player to be selected. He was the Player of the Series in Pakistan’s last Test assignment in the West Indies earlier this year with 25 wickets in three Tests.”We want to maintain our standard on fitness and we told Yasir to make it or it would be impossible for us to select him,” said Inzamam. “Yasir’s success over the last three-four years has been great but we don’t want to create an exception on fitness. So we waited a day, and that is why we are announcing the team today, on the day of the team’s departure. Yasir is cleared now, having scored a value of 17.5. Azhar has a cyst in his knee and doctors have recommended he can play after taking injections to the knee. So he is fine now and available for selection, and hopefully he will remain fine all the way.”Aslam, the opener, has also been called back into the squad, suggesting the management is happier with his fitness.The two Tests will be the first time Pakistan step onto a field without both Misbah and Younis in seven years, the previous such instance coming at Lord’s in 2010. Both were the backbone of the Test squad that saw Pakistan reach the No.1 Test ranking last year. Inzamam picked Salahuddin and Sohail as prospective replacements.”I have been thinking of both Usman and Haris over the last few series, envisaging the situation after seniors [retired]. Both have done well. Usman has done well as a middle-order batsman while Harris could have made it into the side in 2015 but was injured. So the idea is to give our youngsters an opportunity in our own conditions rather than playing them in away series. This will increase their confidence and both have the potential to fill in for Younis and Misbah. But it does not mean the door is shut on other players making it into the side. Performances will obviously be considered and, if a player is good enough, he can definitely be selected.”Pakistan named five fast bowlers and three specialist spinners, a move Inzamam said was aimed at managing the workload of the bowlers who are better on flat tracks in the UAE.”We all understand that pitches in the UAE are a batting paradise, and there is a big opportunity for batsmen to score runs. It’s really a big challenge to get any team out twice so we have to strengthen our bowling. That’s why we have five fast bowlers with three spinners in our squad. Since the temperature will be around 40 degrees Celsius, we probably have to consider rotating our fast bowlers as well.”

Earlier this week, Surrey knocked Middlesex out of the Royal London One-Day Cup at Lord’s. Now, with Middlesex at the summit of the Championship, Jason Roy has left Surrey bent on another act of sabotage

Tim Wigmore at Lord's04-Aug-2016
ScorecardJason Roy transferred his white-ball form with aplomb•Getty Images

Three weeks ago, Lord’s played host to Pakistan toppling England in one of the great Test matches of recent years. Now the legions of seats, which had been so enthralled by Misbah-ul-Haq’s press-ups and Yasir Shah’s legspin, lay mostly vacant, even with Middlesex eyeing up their first title since 1993.Yet there was much to admire in the opening day of the London Derby, and much of the best of it came from the bat of Jason Roy. A little after tea, as the clouds were beginning to dominate the sky above Lord’s, Roy unfurled consecutive off-drives against Toby Roland-Jones. The first went a little to mid-off’s right, the second a little to his left. Both were pristine shots that went all along the ground for four. Any of the thousands of batsmen who have played first-class cricket at Lord’s would have been proud to claim them as their own.The same was true of this entire innings: 110 runs, made at a sprightly rate but without recourse to slogging, that served as a magnificent riposte to those that imagine him merely a brawny limited-overs specialist. Roy has the technique and range of shots to be so much more, all of which makes his recent run of first-class innings – single-figure scores in six of his previous seven innings, including a pair of ducks in his last two – all the more infuriating.”I’ve found it hard to switch between the three formats this year, but I know I’m not the only one,” Roy said. “Your mindset’s completely different. I’ve tried to keep my movements the same and that’s the hardest thing.”After all the changes, it is to the continuity in his method that Roy credits his success. Last Friday night he made a rollicking 120 not out in a T20 game against Kent at a sold-out Oval. On Monday, only incessant rain denied him the chance to convert his unbeaten 93 against Glamorgan in the one-day cup into another century. After such success, a duck against Middlesex in the one-day cup on Tuesday notwithstanding, it made no sense to reinvent his game for red-ball cricket. Had the rain just come a few minutes later against Glamorgan, Roy would have made a trio of centuries in three different formats in a week, believed to be an unprecedented achievement in professional cricket.”My method is now very similar – it never used to be,” he said. “It was tough going in with a different mindset and different way of batting: it was pretty silly. I just went in and treated it like a 50-over game and got myself in. You’re allowed a bit more time in Championship cricket so if they bowled a maiden at me I wasn’t under pressure. That was the only difference.”I almost enjoy it more in the longer format because I’m not under that pressure to score at six, seven, eight, nine an over: I can just bat. Maybe putting myself under too much pressure, expecting myself to score a million runs is something that I’ve tried to deal with.”Even if this was only Roy’s first first-class century of the summer, and just the seventh of his career, England are excited by the prospect of his transferring his penchant for limited overs destruction into the Test arena.Trevor Bayliss has said he could envisage Roy soon playing Tests. “He’s spoken to me and told me to score as many runs as I can. Obviously volume of runs speaks louder than anything. Unfortunately I haven’t got the volume that I’d have liked but this is a start.”Indeed it is. And to all those who enjoyed a dreamy flick to square leg off Tim Murtagh, immediately followed by a gun-barrel straight drive, both for four – like a salsa dancer, Roy’s best work was done in pairs – the possibilities in England whites seemed tantalising. England are hardly short of middle-order aggressors but Roy in this vein loses nothing by comparison to Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler or Ben Stokes.If his first-class returns in 2016 remain underwhelming – 440 runs at 31.42 apiece do not immediately speak of a Test player – he might soon be a test case for whether Bayliss is willing, as he claims, to pick players for Test cricket largely on their ODI form. His last 11 ODI innings have included three exuberant hundreds.Yet there was much more to Surrey’s resolve than Roy. Rory Burns displayed skill to withstand Murtagh with the new ball, and then gave notice of his own expanded game. The compactness he is always associated with was all on display, but the drives, cuts and nudges to the leg side were timed so serenely that his pace lost little by comparison with Roy.And Ben Foakes, unobtrusive and playing unusually straight – three drives passed only a few inches to the umpire’s right before reaching the ropes – ensured that Surrey ended the day not shy of 400, a commendable effort on a pitch with more life than for some of Middlesex’s early season games here.Earlier this week, Surrey knocked Middlesex out of the Royal London One-Day Cup at Lord’s. Now, with Middlesex at the summit of the Championship, Roy has left Surrey bent on another act of sabotage.

Mark Cosgrove staved off the threat of a follow-on to protect Leicestershire in a rain-wrecked but eventful day limited to 24 overs

PA/ECB19-May-2015
ScorecardMark Cosgrove staved off the threat of a follow-on to protect Leicestershire in a rain-wrecked but eventful day limited to 24 overs. In that time, 103 runs were scored and six wickets taken, leaving Lancashire in a position of control, leading by 158 runs with eight second innings wickets remaining at the end of the third day.When Leicestershire lost Tom Wells, leg before on the back foot to Kyle Jarvis, they were still 16 short of saving the follow-on, but skipper Cosgrove was joined by Clint McKay and the Australians took Leicestershire past the follow-on before another shower saw the players head for an early lunch.Only four overs were possible in the afternoon session, but Lancashire made the most of them by picking up two more wickets. First to go was Cosgrove, who had battled his way to 79 before a Nathan Buck inswinger saw him dismissed leg before wicket. There had been no further addition to the score when McKay, who had hit four fours in going to 26, edged a Jarvis outswinger to wicket-keeper Alex Davies.Further rain kept the players off until 5.45pm, but Lancashire needed only one more ball to finish the Leicestershire innings, Jarvis seaming one back in to Charlie Shreck to win another leg before shout, and finish with 5 for 69.Looking to bat positively to give themselves enough time to bowl Leicestershire out on the final day, Lancashire quickly lost Paul Horton run out. He called Karl Brown through for a single, was sent back by Brown, who had slipped, and did not make it.Brown himself followed soon afterwards, edging a Shreck out-swinger to Niall O’Brien behind the stumps, and it should have been three when Alviro Petersen edged the last ball of the day, bowled by Ben Raine, to Wells at third slip, only for the young all-rounder to failed to hold the chance – the fifth time Leicestershire have dropped a good chance in the slips in this match.

Justin Langer’s first day as Western Australia’s Sheffield Shield coach could hardly have gone worse as Jackson Bird led a Tasmanian destruction of the Warriors batting order in Hobart

ESPNcricinfo staff25-Nov-2012
Scorecard
Justin Langer’s first day as Western Australia’s Sheffield Shield coach could hardly have gone worse as Jackson Bird led a Tasmanian destruction of the Warriors batting order in Hobart. Western Australia were skittled for 67 and to make matters worse for the visitors, the Tigers proceeded to pass their total with only one wicket down and went to stumps in a commanding position.Tasmania finished the day at 2 for 201, with Ben Dunk unbeaten on 71 and George Bailey on 42, and their lead had already ballooned to 134 runs. Michael Beer picked up both wickets, Mark Cosgrove and Alex Doolan each for 42, and Mitchell Johnson didn’t do his Test prospects much good with 0 for 50 from 12 overs on a pitch that Bird had enjoyed working on earlier in the day.Bird took a career-best 6 for 25 as the Western Australia batting order failed completely. Marcus Harris (21) and the recalled Shaun Marsh (11) were the only men to make double figures and it continued the trend of sides struggling on the first day at Bellerive Oval – in the three matches there so far this season, the teams batting first have made 112, 95 and 67.