CRICKET NEWS

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Johnson's toe infection spreads to leg


Star Australian paceman Mitchell Johnson is having further problems with an infected toe which forced him out of this month's world Twenty20 tournament in Bangladesh.


Cricket Australia said Friday that the infection had spread to Johnson's right leg and required further treatment.


The infection began from a cut suffered during Australia's series-clinching third Test triumph over South Africa in Cape Town earlier this month.


“He is recovering from an infection that began in his right big toe, before affecting his right leg,” CA said in a statement.


“He is being managed by a team of medical specialists.


“Depending on how quickly he recovers, Johnson's next scheduled commitment is the 2014 Indian Premier League where he will represent Kings XI Punjab which finishes at the end of May.”


Johnson's place in the Australian T20 squad was filled by Doug Bollinger, who joined the side in Bangladesh this week ahead of Sunday's opening game with Pakistan.


It has been an arduous few months for Johnson, who spearheaded Australia's 5-0 Ashes Test whitewash of England and then the 2-1 victory over South Africa.

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Spinners did a good job, Umar was unbelievable: Hafeez


Pakistan skipper Mohammad Hafeez was pleased with the performance of his spinners on Sunday and was effusive in his praise for Umar Akmal for his match-winning 54-ball 94 which set up their 16-run victory over Australia in the ICC World Twenty20 here.


Put into bat, Umar on Sunday blasted a breathtaking 94 laced with nine boundaries and four sixes to power Pakistan to 191 for five in their stipulated 20 overs.


All-rounder Glenn Maxwell then conjured up hopes of a successful run-chase for Australia as he smashed a devastating 48-ball 74 but Pakistani spinners brought their team back into the game with some good bowling.


"There was moment in the match when Maxwell was batting brilliantly and at that stage the only thing I could tell my bowlers was just go there and keep attacking and I think they did a good job, especially spinners, like Zulfiqar Babar. Saeed Ajmal and Shahid Afridi did really well," said Hafeez after the match.


"The strength of Pakistan is we have too many match winners and anybody can win the match for us and today Umar Akmal showed a great talent. We always wanted him to express himself. He held his nerve very well. He attacked and that's what we wanted our boys to do. He has got great talent and he was simply unbelievable today," he added.


Australian captain, George Bailey also praised Pakistan spinners and was disappointed with his fielders.


"The start we had, 40 for 2 after seven overs, I'd have taken that. You just try and play your best bowlers and Pakistan's spinners bowled very very well and also Umar Gul in the death," he said.


"Batting and bowling go either way, but fielding was in our hands and we've set high standards and we didn't do well today. This is probably from our point of view the most disappointing aspect of our game today," he said.


Umar Akmal, adjudged Man of the Match, said he played his natural game and dedicated the award to his brother Kamran.


"I want to thank the management because they gave me a free hand. I played as positive as I could. They've trusted me to play at No.4 and I too prefer this position. I just played my natural game. I would like to continue building more innings," said Umar, who blasted nine boundaries and four sixes in his 70-ball innings.


"I would like to dedicate the award to my brother Kamran Akmal who is making a comeback in the team in the world cup," he added.

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Ruthless India whip West Indies in World T20
India's spinners wreaked havoc on the West Indies batting to rout the defending champions by seven wickets in the World Twenty20 Super-10 group two match in Dhaka on Sunday.


The West Indies, sent in to bat, managed only 129-7 as leg-spinner Amit Mishra claimed two for 18 in four overs, Ravindra Jadeja took three wickets and Ravichandran Ashwin picked up one.


India strolled past the modest target with two deliveries to spare as Virat Kohli made 54 off 41 balls and Rohit Sharma remained unbeaten on a fluent 62.


The pair put on 106 for the second wicket after left-hander Shikhar Dhawan was trapped leg-before by spinner Samuel Badree off the fifth ball of the innings.


Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men, who beat arch-rivals Pakistan on Friday, now need one more win from their remaining two matches against Australia and hosts Bangladesh to advance to the semi-finals.


Dhoni said his team was not looking at the semi-finals yet and still needed to work on some weak areas.


“Let's take it one game at a time,” he said. “There is no point thinking too far ahead. We could have finished it an over earlier but that was up to the batsmen in the middle.”


“We are playing well, but we still don't have a bowler who can bowl the 18th and the 20th overs. We are trying out various combinations to see who is better suited to the job.”


Dhoni said he was happy to see Sharma get runs under his belt.


“It was important for Rohit to bat through the innings. He will take plenty of confidence from this game.”


West Indies captain Darren Sammy said India deserved to win, but remained confident his defending champions would make the knock-out rounds.

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Broad questions ICC after New Zealand loss


An unhappy England captain Stuart Broad is seeking clear rules on when the weather should stop play after his team's World Twenty20 defeat against New Zealand.


On-field umpires Aleem Dar of Pakistan and Paul Rieffel of Australia failed to stop the game despite thunder when New Zealand were chasing a 173-run target set by England in a Group One Super-10 stage match in Chittagong on Saturday.


The umpires waited until heavy rain fell. Even after a 25-minute delay the match could not be resumed.


New Zealand benefited from the decision. At 52-1 after 5.2 overs -- nine runs ahead of what they needed under the Duckworth-Lewis method, a formula used to calculate the winner in rained-off matches -- they were declared to have won.


Broad felt aggrieved because had play been stopped before completion of the fifth over it would not have counted as a complete match, resulting in one point for each team.


He said the umpires' decision cost his team the match.


"To be as polite as I possibly can be, I think it was distinctly average decision-making, keeping us on after the first lightning strike at the start of the fifth over, keeping us on throughout that," Broad said in his post-match comments.


Ironically, it was Broad who was hit for 16 runs by his counterpart, Brendan McCullum of New Zealand, which lifted New Zealand well clear of the required target on the Duckworth/Lewis method.


"That over has obviously given us a loss," said Broad, whose team next face Sri Lanka on Thursday.


Broad called for clarity on the decision from the International Cricket Council (ICC).


"I think you should have an umpire in here for some clarity, to be honest," he said.


"There are some questions that need asking to the ICC.


"I mean it's all very well wanting to finish a game so you can tick a box, etc, but players' health and safety and actually crowd safety is very important and that to me felt like very threatening lightning."


Broad said the umpires denied they had seen the lightning.


"I asked the umpires for a bit of clarity on the decision-making at the end of the game, and they said they didn't see the lightning and didn't think it was a threat.


"You can guarantee from our team we felt like it was a threat, and with a batsman pulling away from a delivery after 4.2 overs I think the batsman saw it as well," said Broad of McCullum pulling away after the first lightning strike.


"At the end of the day it's a game of cricket so I wouldn't be putting the crowd and players' safety under threat.


"It's not sour grapes because I think both sides were uncomfortable being out there in such heavy lightning being around," said Broad.


But New Zealand paceman Kyle Mills backed the umpires' decision.


"If Stuart was on the other end of it, he would be more than happy with the decision," said Mills.


"In cricket you win some and you lose some. The umpires are trying to make the decisions to the best of their ability. They want to get a full game of cricket on, a judgement call as they see it, and it just so happened that we got another over in the game."


New Zealand next meet South Africa in Chittagong on Monday.

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Sri Lanka hold nerve to beat South Africa








Lasith Malinga and Nuwan Kulasekara held their nerve in the death overs with miserly fast bowling as Sri Lanka beat South Africa by five runs in their World Twenty20 opener at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chittagong on Saturday.


South Africa had the upper hand chasing 166 for victory in their Group One super 10 match and needed 19 runs off the last two overs with five wickets in hand.


But Kulasekara gave away just four runs and picked up the wicket of Farhaan Behardien (five) to leave South Africa needing 15 runs off limited-overs specialist Malinga's final over.


Dale Steyn (zero) and the dangerous David Miller (19) were run out off the first two deliveries and although Imran Tahir (eight not out) managed a last-ball six, the chase had already gone out of South Africa's reach.


JP Duminy (39) top-scored for the Proteas, who ended on 160 for eight, and off-spinner Sachithra Senanayake was the most successful Sri Lankan bowler with figures of two for 22.


Opener Kusal Perera's assault gave Sri Lanka the tempo at the start of their innings and Angelo Mathews provided the late fireworks to lift them to 165 for seven after their captain Dinesh Chandimal had won the toss.


The diminutive Perera made clear his intentions with two fours and a six in three deliveries off Steyn's opening over and brought up his fifty off just 29 balls.


He made with 61 off 40 balls, including six fours and three sixes, before falling to leg-spinner Tahir, who stemmed the run flow and picked up three wickets for 26 runs.


Mathews was bowled by Steyn in the final over of the Sri Lanka innings but not before the test and 50-over captain had compiled 43 off 32 balls.

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World T20 great opportunity for Associate members




The ICC World Twenty20 gives a wonderful opportunity for the associate members to rub shoulders with the Test playing nations and assess where they stand as well as the areas that they need to improve upon.


There is also the competition among the associates themselves to show that they are the ones who belong to the top rung. Bangladesh qualified from one group, and from the other group Netherlands won an incredible game to qualify for the Super Ten stage.


There was a bit of controversy about the Netherlands team when one of the squad members came out with an allegation that he was sent back as injured only to accommodate a player from Australia as a replacement in his place.


It is a serious allegation which needs to be checked by ICC, for one of the most important things is to ensure the integrity of the tournament and not allow teams and players to tinker around with the qualifying criteria only to be eligible to play in an ICC tournament.


We have already seen the story of Dirk Nannes who played for Netherlands in the 2009 ICC World Twenty20 and a few months later was pulling on the Australia cap for a T20 international.


The situation currently is the same with another player residing and playing in Australia who because of some criteria is eligible and so playing for Netherlands.


The Ireland team also is one where players come and go to England. Whenever England needs a player, they snatch him from Ireland and as soon as that player finds that international cricket at the highest level is far different than playing at the associates level, he is back playing for Ireland.


The ICC would do well to block out such loopholes that are palpably unfair to those players who are playing day in day out for the associate but have to make way when someone from the major countries finds that he is not good enough to play for the Test country but has some eligibility criteria that gets him to play in the ICC tournament.


Bangladesh had to get over a major hurdle when they began the event with a match against Afghanistan. They had lost to the associate country in the just concluded Asia Cup and had to put it across them in their first match.


They won quite easily with their top player Shakib Al Hasan doing brilliantly. Shakib will once again be the man that Bangladesh will depend on to progress in the tournament. Because of the passion that there is in Bangladesh, it is hoped that the team will do better than it did in the Asia Cup.


Shakib Al Hasan, for his deeds over the qualifying games, is the Ceat International cricketer of the week.

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Windies rout Bangladesh to stay alive in World T20
Dwayne Smith smashed 72 off 43 balls before spinner Samuel Badree claimed 4-15 as the West Indies thrashed hosts Bangladesh by 73 runs in a key World Twenty20 match in Dhaka on Tuesday. The defending champions, who needed a win to stay in contention for the semi-finals after losing to India on Sunday, piled up 171-7 and then bowled out Bangladesh for a paltry 98 in the Super-10 group-two match.
Chris Gayle hit a run-a-ball 48 in an impressive batting display by the West Indies after the hosts won the toss and elected to field before a sell-out crowd of 25,000 at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium. Bangladesh, playing their first match in the Super-10s after qualifying along with the Netherlands from the first round, faltered against pace and spin in the one-sided contest. Left-arm seamer Krishmar Santokie claimed two wickets off successive balls, including the vital one of Shakib Al Hasan, to reduce Bangladesh to 16-3 by the fourth over.
Badree, who had begun the slide by removing opener Tamim Iqbal for five, sliced through the middle order with three wickets in his final over, the 11 of the innings. Bangladesh captain Mushfiqur Rahim top-scored with 22 and tailender Mashrafe Mortaza made 19, but six batsmen failed to enter double figures in a poor batting display by the home team. Smith dominated an opening stand of 97 by slamming 10 boundaries and three sixes, outscoring the unusually dour Gayle, whose contribution in the partnership was 19. Smith reached his half-century off 33 balls in the 10th over with a fourth consecutive boundary off spinner Sohag Gazi.
The West Indies lost two wickets for one run as Smith top-edged a sweep off Mohammad Mahmudullah, and new batsman Lendl Simmons was stumped off a wide from Shakib. Gayle opened out after Smith’s dismissal and hit two sixes and three fours before holing out in the deep off Ziaur Rahman in the 19th over. The West Indies plundered 44 runs from the 17th to the 19th overs to move to 167-3, before losing four wickets in the final over bowled by seamer Al Amin Hossain.

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Sri Lanka thrash Netherlands by nine wickets
Sri Lanka skittled qualifiers Netherlands for 39, a record low total in Twenty20 Internationals, to romp to a nine-wicket win and close in on a semi-final place at the World Twenty20 on Monday. Paceman Angelo Mathews blew the Dutch top order away with a three-wicket burst while spinner Ajantha Mendis mowed down the lower order as Netherlands folded in 10.3 overs. Sri Lanka lost Kusal Perera (14) but chased down the target in five overs to top Group One with four points after their second successive victory in the tournament. It was also the biggest victory in Twenty20 Internationals in terms of balls to spare.
Put into bat at Chittagong’s Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, the Dutch, who stunned Ireland in their previous match to qualify for the super 10 stage, offered little resistance to a Sri Lankan side eyeing their maiden World Twenty20 title. Nuwan Kulasekara dismissed Stephan Myburg with his third delivery before the sorry Dutch could open their account and Mathews came up with a three-wicket burst to reduce the minnows to nine for four in four overs. The Dutch gloom was reflected in a partial floodlight malfunction in the second over that held up play for a short while.
Lasith Malinga’s double strikes further pegged back the Dutch before Mendis (3-12) wrecked the lower order to complete the rout. For Netherlands, only Tom Cooper (16) reached double figures while five of his teammates were out for a duck. Kenya’s 56 all out in 18.4 overs against Afghanistan in Sharjah last year was the previous lowest score in Twenty20 Internationals

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BCCI top brass may have to rethink about ICC nominee




There was an eerie silence among the who’s who of cricket administration regarding what will be the fate of BCCI president N. Srinivasan and the board after the Supreme Court gave its observation on Tuesday.


With the apex court asking Mr. Srinivasan to step down for a fair probe into the IPL fixing scandal, questions are being raised about whether the Tamil Nadu strongman can indeed become the chairman of the ICC’s all-powerful executive board.


“Let’s wait and watch. It will be very wrong to make any comments on Supreme Court observations. We should better wait till March 27 when the verdict will come out as then we will get a clearer picture,” a senior BCCI official said.


Even the ICC officials are tight-lipped about the proceedings although the bigwigs of the parent body are certainly keeping a close watch on the proceedings.


“Although, the new Executive Board of the ICC would take over in June but as per the norm, there is no such hurdle in becoming the Chairman of the ICC Executive Board even if he steps down as the BCCI chairman,” the official said.


“As far as the ICC constitution goes, Mr. Srinivasan is a BCCI nominee. The first chairman would be from BCCI, whether it is Mr. Srinivasan or someone else. Now it will be an interesting situation if he is no longer the BCCI president. May be the members will have to do a re-think,” the member added.


Meanwhile, Indian cricketers had an off-day and they kept to themselves.


India will resume training on Wednesday but the media has been sent a release that there will be no press conference.

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Super Steyn gives South Africa thrilling win over New Zealand
Dale Steyn produced a memorable display of fast bowling to help South Africa secure a two-run win over New Zealand on Monday in the World Twenty20.


Steyn returned with figures of 4-17 as South Africa restricted New Zealand to 168-8 after they scored 170-6.


Needing seven runs to win the last over, New Zealand could score only four runs against Steyn. Ross Taylor was the highest scorer with 62, while Kane Williamson made 51. Imran Tahir finished 2-27 for South Africa.


Earlier, JP Duminy hit 86 not out for South Africa and Hashim Amal scored 41. Corey Anderson and Tim Southee claimed two wickets apiece.


Scores: South Africa 170-6 in 20 overs (JP Duminy 86 not out, Hashim Amla 41; Corey Anderson 2-28, Tim Southee 2-46) v New Zealand 168-8 in 20 overs (Ross Taylor 62, Kane Williamson 51; Dale Steyn 4-17, Imran Tahir 2-27)