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ScorecardPeter Handscomb put on 154 runs for the fifth wicket with Marcus Stoinis•BCCI

Temporarily ditching his fast-mediums to try his hand at offspin, Gurinder Sandhu picked up two late wickets to stall India A after a positive beginning to their second innings. Having secured a 33-run first-innings lead thanks to a five-wicket haul from Pragyan Ojha, India A’s top three had extended it to 143 before Sandhu struck to remove Abhinav Mukund. He then removed Cheteshwar Pujara in his next over for the addition of seven more runs. Both wickets came through extraordinary bits of fielding.The first was almost entirely unintentional. Rocking back to a short ball from Sandhu, Mukund slapped it hard but straight towards Cameron Bancroft at silly point. The fielder crouched to evade the ball and ended up holding it aloft after discovering it had lodged itself between his stomach and forearm. In Sandhu’s next over, Pujara whipped him firmly into the leg side, only for Peter Handscomb to throw himself to his left and pluck the ball out two-handed, at full stretch. Pujara stood motionless for a couple of seconds, stunned, before trudging off to the dressing room. Karun Nair and Shreyas Iyer saw India A through to stumps, their lead 154 with seven wickets in hand.Until Sandhu’s reintroduction in unexpected guise, India A were having little difficulty in their second innings. The two teams’ first-innings run rates – India A scored their runs at 2.62 an over, and Australia A at 2.69 – had indicated the difficulty of run-scoring on this slow Chepauk pitch, but with a small lead and a day and a half left, India A began cautiously – going to tea at 20 for 0 after 10 overs – and batted with urgency thereafter.KL Rahul came down the track and launched Steve O’Keefe over long-off in the third over of the final session, before getting out to another aggressive shot, pulling Travis Head hard and flat but too close to deep square leg. The dismissal didn’t dissuade the new man Pujara from playing the pull at every opportunity, as he jumped deep in his crease whenever the spinners dropped marginally short and looked for opportunities to attack them off the back foot.Pujara’s strike rate was in the 70s at one point, but Australia A took Head out of the attack and rotated the seamers from one end, with O’Keefe extracting turn and bounce from the other – he produced an edge from Pujara, on 23, that went quickly to Usman Khawaja and eluded his grasp at first slip – to bring India’s scoring rate back to the mean. With the result of the match perhaps less of a priority than competitive match practice, India A will probably try and push on for quick runs before having two sessions to bowl at Australia A. Sandhu’s late strikes may even have given the visitors a sniff of bowling India A out.In the morning session, Peter Handscomb became the second batsman out in the 90s in this match, after he had extended his fifth-wicket stand with Marcus Stoinis from 110 to 154. Stoinis was the more aggressive of the two early on, drilling Pragyan Ojha to the right of mid-off in the second over of the morning and lifting him over mid-off for another boundary to bring up his fifty two overs later.Umesh Yadav, who was bowling to a 5-4 leg-side field at the other end, gave Stoinis a bit of width to chop him away to the backward point boundary, but tightened his line thereafter and sent down successive maidens. Soon after, Amit Mishra came back into the attack to replace Ojha.All nine wickets credited to India A’s bowlers came from balls bowled from the Pattabiraman Gate End. From that end, the spinners had more of rough to bowl at, outside the left-handers’ off stump, and Ojha had dismissed three of them on the second day. Mishra had looked less effective then, bowling from the Pavilion End and finding minimal purchase. The change of ends, allied to a loopier trajectory, brought him success in only his second over.Flight enticed Handscomb out of his crease, but unlike all his previous forays down the track, this one didn’t end in a pleasing flick or drive. This time Mishra achieved dip and turn to beat Handscomb’s edge as he jabbed uncertainly at the ball, and Naman Ojha completed an easy stumping. Mishra struck again four overs later, dropping a legbreak on a perfect length to bring Matthew Wade halfway forward and spinning it out of the rough to produce a a bat-pad catch to short leg.Stoinis saw Australia A through to lunch in Sean Abbott’s company, but fell soon after the interval, going after Ojha but failing to clear long-off, stationed a fair distance in front of the boundary. Ojha then slipped one past a hoick from Sandhu before Mishra got the last man Andrew Fekete, who was caught at slip while trying to cut one that hurried off the pitch.

Lord Bill Morris, the former Trade Union Congress leader and director of the ECB, has called for a fresh review of English cricket’s position on cricketing relations with Zimbabwe, in particular whether Zimbabwe should be allowed to tour England in 2009.The thorny issue of Zimbabwe continues to stalk the ECB, largely because of the UK government’s failure to take any decisive action. Critics of sporting ties with Zimbabwe have been heartened by indications that Gordon Brown will be more hard-line towards Robert Mugabe than was the case when Tony Blair was prime minister.”The prime minister is on the record saying that in blunt terms he doesn’t want to be in the same room as Mugabe,” Morris told Inside Sport in The Daily Telegraph. “That raises the whole question of 2009 when Zimbabwe are due to share the tour with Australia.”If the PM doesn’t want to be in the same room as Mugabe, how fair is it to ask sportsmen and women to be on the same field of play with representatives from the regime?”Morris had been spoken of as a candidate for the vacant role of ECB chairman, but he declined to stand and earlier this week Giles Clarke won the backing of the first-class counties.

“That is one of the first issues [Clarke] will face and my concern is this is not going to be a private conversation between the ECB, the ICC and Zimbabwe cricket,” Morris said. “It will become more and more political as the regime becomes more and more oppressive and this will be one of the things the board will have to grapple with and the chairman will have to show leadership on.”Morris said that had he taken charge of the ECB then he would have implemented a comprehensive review of all the issues. “You have to take into account the ICC view because Zimbabwe are pretty close to returning to Test match cricket. But you cannot see the English situation in isolation. John Howard [Australia’s PM] has made his position clear, Zimbabwe will not be allowed to tour Australia. To argue that politics should be kept out of cricket is just a dream.”

Shane Warne has decided not to play in any of Victoria’s one-day games this season mainly because of the Ashes schedule.”As has been well documented, I haven’t had international aspirations in the one-day game for some time,” Warne said. “While managing my workload ahead of the Ashes is also a consideration, I feel it’s appropriate to step aside at state level and allow another Victorian to play and push for higher honours.”Greg Shipperd, the Victoria coach, confirmed that missing the one-day games was Warne’s suggestion. “But I should add if exceptional circumstance arose, such as last year when Cameron White and Brad Hodge were on international duty, Shane [Warne] would step in for a one-off as he did last season,” Shipperd told the , a Melbourne-based daily.Shipperd added that if White, the Victoria captain, was called up for national duty then Hodge was likely to take over captaincy of the state team. “He has grown into a leadership role and is now sharing his knowledge with the team,” Shipperd said. I’d be very comfortable with Brad leading the side.”Warne and Hodge though will be looking for some practice ahead of the Ashes as Victoria named a 15-member squad for their one-day and four-day matches against Western Australia (WA). With injury sidelining at least four players, Rob Quiney, an uncontracted left-hand batsman, has also been given the chance to play in Victoria’s opening matches of the season.”There’s been a massive build-up to this season, so we’re all raring to go,” said Hodge. “WA have a number of stars in their line-up, so it’s going to be great challenge for us. But we’ve put in the work and are confident of picking up valuable early points and paving the way for a top season.”Victoria’s opening fixture is a Ford Ranger One-Day Cup match on October 13 after which they meet Western Australia in the four-day Pura Cup encounter on October 15.While Warne will not feature in the one-day game on October 13, he will play one this weekend for St Kilda, his local Melbourne club. “This weekend Cricket Australia is promoting Long Live Club Cricket, which is an initiative I’m passionate about, so I’ll return to my grass roots and play for St Kilda, which is something I rarely get the chance to do,” said Warne.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) today brokered what is being widely perceived as an uneasy truce between Greg Chappell, the Indian coach and Sourav Ganguly, the Indian captain, following a high profile, closed-door meeting of the committee that lasted four hours.The committee on Tuesday deliberated the standoff between the pair and finally decided that they must bury their differences “in the interests of Indian cricket”. This brings the curtain down – at least publicly – on more than two weeks of mutual recrimination between coach and captain, beginning with Ganguly’s disclosure to the media about Chappell wanting him to quit as captain, and the latter’s subsequent response in the form of a damning email.Addressing a chaotic, and often comical, press conference after the meeting, Ranbir Singh Mahendra, the board’s president, announced that Chappell and Ganguly had agreed to work together. He said: “Indian cricket must go forward”.There was major relief for Ganguly in Mahendra’s announcement that the committee had found no truth in the allegation that he had faked an injury in Zimbabwe. Mahendra sought to explain it away as a “miscommunication”. And there was a hint of support for Chappell in Mahendra’s assertion that players will be henceforth judged on the basis of performance.The other significant announcement by Mahendra was a ban on everybody involved – coach, captain and players – from speaking to the media on this issue. He warned players speaking out of turn of serious consequences.”The committee has heard Chappell, Amitabh Choudhury [the team manager] and Ganguly,” Mahendra told reporters. “After hearing them, the committee has discussed everything in detail and was of the view that cricket is to go forward. Both coach and captain have to work out mutually and a professional working relationship to be maintained, and for this performance will be the criterion. This applies to the captain, it applies to the coach and the players.”Even before the review committee met this afternoon at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai it was quite clear that tough decisions involving a change of captain or, alternatively, some kind of cautioning of Chappell was not on the cards. For one, the review committee comprising of the three former captains Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Srinivas Venkatraghavan as well as Mahendra, S K Nair, the board’s secretary and, of course, the ubiquitous Jagmohan Dalmiya, had only advisory powers. Second, the board itself is in the throes of an identity crisis, with the courts having had to intervene to decide when its annual elections are to be held.At the meeting both Chappell and Ganguly made their cases separately and then sat together for the final session. Mahendra later said both coach and captain are happy with the outcome and the committee was confident they would get along well. “We cannot presume that there is no trust. They [Chappell and Ganguly] are confident that they will do it,” is how Mahendra phrased it.Early signs had pointed to a showdown between the two principals. Ganguly apparently arrived armed with fitness certificates and detailed notes to make a point-by-point rebuttal on the scathing remarks Chappell had made about him in the email. And John Gloster, the team’s physio, was asked to be on stand-by to provide the necessary documentation to attest the coach’s claims about the captain’s reluctance to conform to tough training regimens.At the press conference Mahendra, embarrassingly evasive and bumbling in the way he fielded questions, seemed to come to life on the question of Ganguly’s faked injuries. “It was due to some miscommunication” was his curt comment, and if the force with which he said it was meant to preclude further questions it did just that.”Cricket should go forward,” was the discovery that Mahendra seemed to have made following the committee meeting, and it was the repeated rejoinder with which he sought to disarm the more trenchant questioners in the assembled media. “We have demarcated the difference in roles between the captain and coach. The captain has to control the game. The coach has to do his own job,” was all he would offer by way of further detail.Finally, Mahendra capped the hatchet job that the board had done on transparency by announcing a blanket ban on the players speaking to the media on the issue.The temporary reprieve that the board has engineered will help the team concentrate on the forthcoming home series against Sri Lanka, from October 25 to November 12, and South Africa, from November 16 to 28. Ganguly’s failing to come good in these games could well re-open the whole issue. This could also happen if the elections to the BCCI, scheduled to be held within two months, throws up a dispensation not controlled by Dalmiya, who has all along been the Indian captain’s guardian deity.

John Wright has been retained as India’s coach for a further year. Wright, 50, has held the job for four years and his extension lasts until September 2005. India have put in some good performances during Wright’s tenure, beating Australia in a home Test series in 2001 and drawing with them in Australia earlier this year, as well as reaching the World Cup finals in South Africa in 2003, and beating Pakistan in the first Test series between the two for 14 years.The extension to Wright’s contract was widely expected, but is surprisingly short-term. Jagmohan Dalmiya, the Indian board president, explained why this was the case: “It all depends on whether the coach wants to continue and if the players are comfortable.”Two other members of the coaching staff, Andrew Leipus, the team physio, and trainer Greg King have had their contracts extended until the end of the 2007 World Cup in West Indies.The national team left India today (August 16) for their European tour, which starts with the Videocon triangular one-day tournament in the Netherlands, involving Australia and Pakistan, followed by the NatWest Challenge against England, and the ICC Champions Trophy in September.

India A kick off their six-week tour of England with a one-day match against a combined British Universities XI at Durham today. Speaking to the press, coach Sandeep Patil said that the tour was an opportunity for many players to get a look-in into the national side, and that “it is up to these players to grab these opportunities”.Patil also stated that, except for Aavishkar Salvi’s torn webbing, all the players were fit and raring to go. “Even Salvi is also fit to play the first match, but we will take a decision on the day of the match.””I started my cricketing career here in 1979. Now I am here in a different capacity. It is a good challenge and good opportunity for all the 16 players,” said Patil. “We have a very talented and experienced team and 12 members have already played for the country in one-dayers or Test matches.”

The first semi-final of the Red Stripe Bowl competition, between Guyana and Jamaica, produced a thrilling tie. Batting first, Jamaica made 191 for 9 in their 50 overs. Guyana replied with 191 for 9 but go through to the final by virtue of having more wins in the qualifying stages of the tournament.Guyana won the toss and, not surprisingly on a moist pitch, bowled first. Jamaica lost two early wickets to Reon King. Captain Robert Samuels steadied the collapse with a half-century and he found a valuable partner in Gareth Breese to pull the innings round from 75 for 5.Breese had to retire hurt when on 15, struck a painful blow in the box when facing fast bowler Colin Stuart, returned to blast King for 14 in the final over of the innings before being run out for 42. That assault damaged King’s figures and he ended with 3 for 51 from 9 overs.In reply, Guyana lost opener Andrew Gonsalves for 3 in the second over and slipped to 58 for 3 when Shivnarine Chanderpaul was stumped for 12 after consultation with the third umpire.Guyana’s captain Carl Hooper with 31 and Ramnaresh Sarwan (35) pulled the innings round so that at 114 for 3 Guyana appeared to be coasting to victory. They looked to be coasting to defeat when both batsmen were out by the 35th over, but Neil McGarrell, batting at number 8, revived things with 24 not out from just 15 balls.The final over, bowled by Marlon Samuels, was a classic of the genre. 11 runs were needed for victory and, with the aid of some indifferent fielding and a missed stumping opportunity, the batsmen managed to level the scores with one ball remaining. Stuart was on 14 and went for the run that would have given his side the win but, for once, the fielders were up to their task and Stuart was run out leaving the match as a tie.The place in the final had to be decided by a count-back to wins in the preliminary stages of the competition – a calculation that came out in Guyana’s favour by 3 matches to 2. They will play the winners of today’s clash between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.

Middlesex batsman Fran Wilson has been called up to the England women’s squad of 14 for the standalone Ashes Test next week in Canterbury. Wilson’s inclusion, in place of wicketkeeper-batsman Amy Jones, is the only change from the ODI squad that lost to Australia 2-1.Wilson was rewarded for her back-to-back fifties, 55 and 64, for England Academy Women in the warm-up matches against Australia. “Fran has been in excellent form with the bat for club and county this summer, and in particular has put in a couple of notable performances for the England Women’s Academy against the Australians during the 50-over and 2-day warm up matches,” ECB’s head of England Women’s Performance, Paul Shaw, said.Jones was dropped after producing scores of 0 and 15 in the two ODIs she played and her score of 18 in the two-day match against Australia in Loughborough last weekend. Wilson, uncapped in the Test format, has played two ODIs and five T20Is so far since her debut against Sri Lanka in 2010, but hasn’t scored any runs in the one-day format yet.Australia currently lead the Ashes four points to two. The Test, which carries four points for a win and two each for a draw, will be followed by three T20Is at the end of the month.England Women Squad: Charlotte Edwards (captain), Heather Knight (vice-captain), Katherine Brunt, Kathryn Cross, Georgia Elwiss, Lydia Greenway, Rebecca Grundy, Jenny Gunn, Laura Marsh, Natalie Sciver, Anya Shrubsole, Sarah Taylor, Fran Wilson, Lauren Winfield.

Griqualand West opening batsman Pieter Koortzen walked away with theman-of-the-match prize after scoring an undefeated 107 in his team’s 66-runwin over the Highveld Strikers.It was Koortzen’s second century in as many innings in this competition,following on his 123 against North West seven days previously, and it cameoff 113 balls and included 12 fours.Koortzen and Loots Bosman set the tone with an opening stand of 169 thattormented the Strikers until the 24th over, when Bosman was bowled by CliveEksteen, the only visiting bowler to leave in one piece with figures of twofor 33 off his nine overs.Bosman crashed his imperious 89 off 78 balls with 10 fours and two sixes -one driven straight off Ottis Gibson, the other cut square off DavidTerbrugge.Both strokes were nothing short of breathtaking in their sheer audacity, andit will not help the restoration of the Gautengers’ sense of humour thatBosman hit them after he had been dropped on four by Andrew Hall in theslips off Gibson.If much of this sounds familiar, it could be because a similar whirlwindtore through Kimberley when North West came, saw and were conquered. BesidesKoortzen’s effort, Bosman scored 86 and Griquas totalled 318 for six.So no records were set against the Strikers, except that the 306 for fourwas Griquas’ highest total against the not so mellow yellows.The home side couldn’t get much wrong after the start given them by Koortzenand Bosman, but they suffered a significant wobble when, with Eksteenbowling immaculately, Bosman, Grant Elliott and Brett Tucker were sentpacking in the space of 18 balls.Only for Martin Gidley to join Koortzen at the crease and graft 69 runs off59 balls, hitting six fours and two sixes along the way, in a fourth-wicketstand of 111 that ended in the 43rd over when Gidley was bowled byTerbrugge.The Strikers’ reply had a tired look about it from the start, and their onlybatting of consequence was delivered by Nic Pothas and Zander de Bruyn, whoscored 71 and 72 respectively and shared a partnership of 88 for the fifthwicket.By then, however, the writing was on the wall in two-metre-high neonletters.

ScorecardGloucestershire pulled themselves away from the Pro40 relegation zone with a 71-run win against Essex, who are now facing the drop. Steve Kirby took four wickets after Alex Gidman’s aggressive 80 put Gloucestershire on course for a strong total.Essex’s run-chase floundered from the start with openers Varun Chopra and Mark Pettini gone with five runs on the board. Grant Flower soon became Kirby’s second victim as Essex fell to 20 for 3. James Foster (49) and Ryan ten Doeschate (42) pulled Essex back into the contest with a stand of 68, but when Foster was run-out by Ian Fisher the last six wickets fell for 31.Gidman had earlier blazed the ball to all parts during his 67-ball 80, 56 of which came in boundaries. Craig Spearman was equally destructive in his 63 which took 55 deliveries.Danish Kaneria, who bowled intelligently for his three wickets, finally trapped Gidman on the back foot, while ten Doeschate also bagged three to haul in the run-rate. Ultimately, though, Gloucestershire had plenty.