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Richard Scott has been named Middlesex’s new head coach with former England quick Richard Johnson his deputy and Australian Mark O’Neill joining as batting coach.Scott, who had a six-year county career with Hampshire and Gloucestershire as well as playing some second XI matches for Middlesex, took temporary charge of the club in 2009 after Toby Radford resigned midway through the season.”Following the unexpected resignation of Toby Radford in early July, Richard handled himself extremely well in testing circumstances,” said Angus Fraser, Middlesex’s managing director. “I enjoyed working with him and have been reassured and impressed with the way he works, coaches and treats people.”He has no ego, is extremely organised, efficient and gets things done. Unlike many modern coaches who like the sound of their own voice, believe everything they say is correct and want to be the star of the show, Richard sits back, listens and works quietly with a player. I believe he has the potential to become an excellent coach.”Johnson, who played three Tests for England, spent 10 seasons with Middlesex before moving to Somerset but returned to close out his career at Lord’s until retiring in 2007.”Most professional coaches are former batsmen but I wanted Middlesex’s assistant coach to have a fast bowling pedigree,” Fraser said. “Fast bowlers are the most consistent match-winners in cricket, but historically I believe they have not been given the support they deserve.”Having played with Richard for several years I know him extremely well and have been impressed with the way he has begun his post playing career. Despite moving to and playing for Somerset, he is a Middlesex boy, and everyone I have spoken to has been extremely complimentary about the progress he is making as a coach. I believe he will have a major impact on the young players at the club as they progress through the system.”O’Neill, meanwhile, comes with a strong pedigree as a batting coach after having worked with New Zealand along with New South Wales and Western Australia. Middlesex are also in the process of recruiting part-time spin-bowling and wicket-keeping coaches to supplement the staff during the 2010 season.

The coach David Williams is hoping the West Indians have blown out the rust and that the only way is up after three torrid days against Queensland. Their attack, which is missing the resting Jerome Taylor, was thrashed by the locals as they piled up 7 for 617 before the declaration, but the under-pressure tourists were boosted by their batsmen reaching 1 for 133 at stumps.Travis Dowlin and Adrian Barath both picked up useful half-centuries, although they still need 213 to make the Bulls bat again. “It was a tough two days in the field, but at the end of the day we have to expect these things and it was good to see these guys stick to the things we talked about,” Williams said. “It’s a good start in the second innings and we will look to capitalise on that.”The West Indians’ troubles started when they were dismissed for 271 on a good batting surface and only Kemar Roach’s athletic performance of 3 for 135 stood out when they bowled. Fielding was also an issue with a handful of catches going down to increase their frustration.”It’s been our problem,” Williams said. “We need to hold on to our crucial catches, so we hope to eradicate that as soon as possible and hopefully we go into the Test match with more confidence. The players have a fair idea where they went wrong and what they need to do, and it’s not about bashing anybody. But we set ourselves high standards and we want to try and maintain them as we go along.”Nathan Reardon was the main obstacle for the West Indians as he powered to 147, his first century for Queensland, and showed his state he could be a regular option in the Sheffield Shield side. Reardon, who hit seven sixes, has been seen mostly as a limited-overs player and is keen to add to his two first-class matches.”It’s good to finally get a go in the four-day arena and I was nervous coming into the game with people questioning whether I could play at the four-day level or not, so it was good to get some runs on the board,” he said. “It was good to get a few in the middle and a few over the ropes – the further they go the better they look.”

The USA Cricket Association has again stated its desire to stage international matches in the wake of comments from an Indian government official that the US could be an ideal place to stage India against Pakistan games.”We are keen to have both the top teams of the subcontinent and we welcome India’s proposal in this regard,” said Nabeel Ahmad, USACA’s senior vice-president, told AAP. “It’s a very good proposal because everyone related to cricket wants Pakistan and India to resume their cricket as such events are always thrilling and entertaining.”Critics have claimed that USACA needs to walk before it can run, adding that it has no experience of hosting major cricket. “We have an 8,000-capacity ICC-approved stadium in Florida which can accommodate nearly 25,000 spectators with makeshift arrangements by erecting extra stands,” Ahmed countered.”Cricket is gaining rapid popularity in the US, specially Twenty20 cricket, and the youth is taking keen interest in it,” he said. “More and more players are joining the game and we see a bright cricket future in the US because [the] market is full of sponsors. We plan to build more international cricket stadiums with the passage of time in other parts of the US.”We are capable of hosting a full-fledged series. If Abu Dhabi or Dubai can host successive matches, why can’t we?”

Scott Walter, the left-arm fast man, is set to make his FR Cup debut on Wednesday for a Queensland outfit hit by injuries to their key bowlers. Walter is fresh from a productive Sheffield Shield appearance last week, when he picked up six wickets against Western Australia.Walter has been included in Queensland’s 12-man squad for their one-day game against South Australia at the Gabba this week. The Bulls will be without Grant Sullivan (hamstring), Ben Laughlin (stomach muscle), Chris Swan (groin) and Ryan Harris (knee).Queensland lost their opening match of the FR Cup season to the Warriors while the Redbacks were beaten on Sunday by Tasmania. South Australia have made no changes to their 12-man group for the Gabba clash.Queensland squad Ryan Broad, Nathan Reardon, Lee Carseldine, Glen Batticciotto, Wade Townsend, Craig Philipson, Chris Simpson (capt), Chris Hartley (wk), Ben Cutting, Nathan Rimmington, Alister McDermott, Scott Walter.South Australia squad Daniel Harris, James Smith, Michael Klinger, Mark Cosgrove, Tom Cooper, Cameron Borgas, Daniel Christian, Graham Manou (capt, wk), Aaron O’Brien, Jake Haberfield, Peter George, Shaun Tait.

Somerset have signed Murali Kartik, the India left-arm spinner, as their overseas player for next season following the retirement of Justin Langer.Kartik is currently at Middlesex, but has opted for a move to what will be his third county having also played for Lancashire.”It’s a new challenge for a player like me who has been playing first-class cricket in England for the last five seasons,” Kartik told the Somerset website. “I know it is not an Old Trafford or Lord’s wicket because I’ve played here before and it is a different challenge to me. As an international spinner when you have been playing for a long time you like to challenge yourself on wickets like that.”Somerset have been vying for honours for the last two years [and] I think I probably add a new dimension to their attack. I love the challenge of playing county cricket and coming out and playing on different sorts of wickets.”Kartik will have his work cut out on the flat Taunton surfaces, but his recruitment will add depth to Somerset’s bowling attack. Their spin options have been in the hands of Omari Banks, Arul Suppiah and young legspinner Max Waller and they have struggled to consistently trouble batsmen.”The key for me has been looking at the way our cricket has gone over the last two to three years,” Brian Rose, the director of cricket, said. “We have come up from the second division into the first and been very competitive but in terms of winning the Championship we need to have really good all-round bowlers.”Particularly bowling at Taunton you must have variety and several times over the last couple of years we have reached the end game in two and a half days and spent the rest of the time trying to bowl sides out purely with seam.”

Dirk Nannes, the Australian fast bowler, has opted to play for the Delhi Daredevils in the inaugural Champions League instead of his home team Victoria. This makes Nannes the only player to pick his IPL team over the other possible side he could have represented in the Twenty20 tournament.Delhi will have to pay Victoria US$200,000 for Nannes’ services in the 12-team event. Nannes, who regularly bowls in the high 140kph region, had kept Glenn McGrath out of Delhi’s XI with a string of impressive performances in this year’s IPL, and was instrumental in Victoria’s third successive domestic Twenty20 victory in 2007-08.Nannes had also spearheaded Netherlands’ bowling during the World Twenty20 in June, and has since been selected by Australia for two Twenty20 games against England next month.The other players who were eligible for multiple teams in the Champions League will compete for their ‘home’ teams in the tournament, while Dwayne Smith – considered an ‘away’ player for both Deccan and Sussex – will represent his English team.

The Ashes decider at The Oval may well be the most eagerly anticipatedcontest in recent memory, for fans, media and the players themselves. Butthe fifth Test will have a lot more riding on it than just the destinationof the famous urn or bragging rights for the next couple of years.Informed estimates suggest that punters around the world may have stakedwell over US$70 million on the result of the Test – and thus the series -beginning today.The sheer volume of money at stake would also explain why an Australian player was approached by a bookie after the Lord’s Test, as revealed by Cricinfo.Betfair, the leading P2P (person to person) betting exchange based in theUK, had already matched bets worth US$4.8 million by Wednesday afternoon.Given that Betfair generally accounts for nearly half of the total volume logged inthe UK, the total betting on the winner of the Ashes series will farexceed the figure of US$10 million by the time the first ball is bowled atthe Oval. And though cricket may not yet have taken off on the continent,betting on it is surprisingly energetic, with approximately US$3 millionplaced on the result.However, these figures are dwarfed by those coming out of the illegal betting market in India, as befits the financial centre of the game. It is estimated that each of the preceding four Ashes Tests has seen between US$30 million and US$41 million (Rs 150-200 crore) wagered on the result. For the series win (called ‘cup betting’ in India), those figures increaseto between US$50-61 million (Rs 250-300 crore). Indianbookies, like their English counterparts, have sensed the series shift inmomentum towards Australia; on Wednesday afternoon, the odds on Australiawinning at The Oval on the Indian market were 2.40, England winning it 4to 1 and a draw at 1.25. Betfair (on Thursday, hours before the start),offered odds of an Australian win at 2.42, England 5.2 and a draw 2.5.These amounts are restricted only to match and series winner, however, andonce the Test begins much more will be wagered. For most in India, thepopular bets are on the result, and about 95% of the estimated 1.5 millionregular punters place their money on this. However, some bookies and verybig punters bet huge amounts between themselves on what is called “fancysauda”. This can be on anything, from estimating innings scores, topscorers or wicket-takers and staking from Rs 100-10,000 per runagainst the difference in team totals. It can take in small details, suchas who will bowl the next over from which end and how many runs will bescored in an over, or off the next delivery. Putting a realistic figure onthese transactions is difficult and though there are very few puntersinvolved in this, the stakes can often be very high.Bookmakers, such as Ladbrokes and William Hill, used to stop taking betsafter the toss in any match. But once they discovered how bookies from thesubcontinent actually made more money after matches had begun, on fancysauda, they too embraced the system. Thus ‘In Play’ betting – placing betswhen the Test begins, where odds are re-worked with every ball bowled,every run scored – now accounts for the largest chunk of betting on anycontest.Though the figures for the last Test seem impressive, the decider isactually thought to be a low-volume contest in India. There are tworeasons for this. One, this is a decider, so the winner (if it does notend in a draw) of this Test and the series is going to be the same, andsince there are bets already riding on the series winner category, it doesnot make much sense for them to increase the ante. Two, New Zealand’sseries with Sri Lanka has diverted the hearts and wallets of punters notonly in the subcontinent, but also to an extent in Europe, where bets overUS$5 million had already been placed by the second day of the Test. InIndia, sources estimate that nearly US$80 million (Rs400 crore) arealready placed on the first Test, and nearly US$60 million (Rs300 crore)on the series winner.

The Gauteng Cricket Board (GCB) has come out strongly in response to Cricket South Africa president Mtutuzeli Nyoka’s statement on the issue of mismanagement of the 2009 IPL, saying he did not touch upon several key issues raised by the GCB. It also said there were no grounds for it to apologise to the BCCI and IPL, as sought by Nyoka, as it had not referred to either body in its allegations.The GCB statement said it would formally reply to Nyoka’s statement after it received a response from the board’s Audit and Risk Committee to a letter sent on June 4.”In that letter we stated that, on the basis of information that was known to us and available to us at that time, we believed that CSA had been exposed to material financial risk by the manner in which CSA had conducted contractual negotiations with the IPL,” Barry Skjoldhammer, the GCB chairman, said in a statement.Nyoka’s statement, he said, did not address issues raised by the GCB’s letter to the Audit and Risk Committee such as CSA’s refusal to “to make details of its contract with the IPL known to GCB” and its non-participation “in negotiations between GCB and the IPL, notwithstanding that CSA was the only party with knowledge of the contract under which the IPL claimed to have acquired rights from CSA over the Wanderers Stadium, all commercial and media rights to which are controlled by GCB.”The Wanderers stadium in Johannesburg was suspended from holding international matches under the auspices of CSA and the national board said the ban would be lifted only after the GCB apologised for its allegations and accepted the terms and conditions for hosting games. The GCB, however, said it had made no reference to the BCCI or made any “any evaluation of or comment on the IPL’s behaviour” in their letter.The GCB and CSA had several differences over the running of the IPL; the issues ranged from the sharing of VIP suites to the price of alcohol. At one point there was a doubt that the semi-finals and final would be held at the Wanderers as scheduled and after the tournament the GCB investigated the possibility of counterfeit tickets being sold at the final.Skjoldhammer’s statement said the GCB had been trying to negotiate the terms and conditions for hosting matches at the Wanderers for seven years but CSA had “persistently declined or failed to engage GCB in any form of direct discussions”. He added that if the GCB accepted the terms and conditions, in their current form, CSA was trying to impose, it would “destroy the financial viability” of the Wanderers Stadium.”The proposed CSA model would also undermine GCB’s viability as a provincial cricket union that serves the interests of amateur cricket through hundreds of club league teams and many thousands of players, as well as hundreds of schools and development programmes reaching many thousand children,” the GCB statement said. It concluded by saying that it was not in the interests of anyone for Wanderers to be stripped of its international status and the board would “exercise its rights as an affiliated member of CSA to ensure that CSA observes its own corporate governance procedures relative to such decisions.”

Andrew Strauss has faith in his squad to prevail in the most intense moments over the next two months and believes the team’s courage and character will lead England to Ashes glory. England won the major battles during the gripping 2005 series but lost them throughout the 5-0 defeat in Australia in 2006-07.England’s squad contains eight players who were on that demoralising tour, but Strauss has seen enough of his men during back-to-back series against West Indies to know they can cope with anything from Australia. “The key to this series is how you handle those pressure moments and there are going to be plenty of them,” he said.”They will be a test of character and a bit of a test of courage and a bit of test of technique. You’ve got to be prepared for that and mentally switched on and off to come out the other side and apply the pressure on the opposition.”Strauss, who was part of both the previous Ashes series, said he was very confident of success in the five-match series and his men were ready “to put the Aussies under pressure”. “I’m very happy with the characters we’ve got in the side, all 11 of them have shown before they can handle those situations,” he said.”An Ashes series is slightly different, we’ve only had probably half our team play an Ashes series before, but for the guys coming in there is an opportunity to show they can do it. I’ve got very few concerns in my own head that there are any weak links there and that’s encouraging.”While England’s preparation for the series has gone smoothly, their opponents have lost Brett Lee for the opening two Tests with a stomach strain. Lee was outstanding during the tour game last week with his high-speed reverse-swing and Strauss said one of Australia’s attacking options had been disabled.”No-one likes to see people injured and I’m sure he’ll be mortified,” Strauss said. “I feel for him. Also, when you play a team you want to play their strongest XI. In that respect I feel for him, but at this stage of our preparation we don’t want to worry what is happening in their camp.”Lee’s injury means that whatever combination Australia go with, they will not have a specialist bowler with Ashes experience in England. Strauss said it could be a disadvantage for the tourists.”English conditions are very different to Australian conditions and that’s one of the big pluses going for us,” he said. “Neither side has played here before and maybe that’s negated it to a certain extent. But in our conditions, that’s a big advantage.”Australia also have a couple of batsmen who have missed out in the tour games, with Ricky Ponting scoring 1 and 15 in Worcester and Phillip Hughes falling twice to Steve Harmison bouncers. “It’s always good when opposition batsmen are searching for form, you have an opportunity,” Strauss said.He expected Ponting to hit back and was pleased that Hughes, who he watched make a century with Middlesex earlier in the season, would be distracted by his problems with the short ball. “Steve Harmison has got the ability to do that to most batsmen so it didn’t overly surprise me,” he said of Hughes’ dismissals against the England Lions.”It’s a good thing that he’s thinking about it over these days, but good players are able to make adjustments and I’m sure he’s been working hard on it. It’s obviously an area we can look to exploit but there are other areas we can look to exploit as well.”

The IPL final could have gone either way but Andrew Symonds’ back-to-back strikes tilted the balance in favour of Deccan Chargers, according to captain Adam Gilchrist and his Bangalore counterpart Anil Kumble.Chasing a modest 144, Bangalore looked on course for victory until Symonds struck twice in the 15th over, removing both Ross Taylor and Virat Kohli with the second and third deliveries respectively. Gilchrist believed the match was evenly poised until then and congratulated Bangalore on making it a great contest. “I think for us, Pragyan Ojha did really well claiming three crucial wickets but those two wickets in two balls, that really hurts especially when a team is chasing,” Gilchrist said.Kumble agreed that over was the turning point. “On this track, chasing 144 was not a big task and we needed seven runs an over. But losing Taylor and Kohli in two balls hurt,” Kumble said. “Earlier, we lost Rahul [Dravid] and that put the brakes on. We didn’t have partnerships and still were one hit away from a win.”They were also plenty of positives for both captains to dwell on. Gilchrist, who was adjudged the Player of the Tournament, was delighted with the performance of the youngsters in the team and he singled out Harmeet Singh, who took two wickets and a stunning catch, for special praise.”We have a number of youngsters in the side and all of them are eager to learn and grow,” Gilchrist said. “It was amazing to see Harmeet tonight, the way he bowled and then took that amazing catch.”Kumble credited his team-mates for the incredible turnaround in the tournament, having finished second from bottom last season. “Two weeks ago, after the match against Mumbai, we said it was tough to win five in a row and reach the final. I credit my teammates for doing just that and coming so far,” Kumble said. “Of course it was so near and yet so far but it was a good game of cricket today.”He also pointed out that it was a deliberate ploy to open the bowling, since he wanted to get rid of the hard-hitting Gilchrist at the earliest. “If you let someone like Gilchrist get away, he would run away with the match. It was for me to put up my hand and bowl. Fortunately it worked well,” Kumble said.Life came a full circle for Gilchrist and his team following a spectacular reversal of fortunes from the previous season, when they finished at the bottom of the table. Gilchrist felt the lack of pressure had a positive effect on his side.”I really encouraged our team to try to play everything down and fly under the radar if you like, because we were happy with that, without having any expectations on us,” Gilchrist said. “This is only the cricket I play now, so given what we went through last year, this is just a really tremendous effort from the whole franchise to turn it around. It’s just been a great experience.”The first thing I said at the start of our first meeting was, ‘Guys, we’re all in it together’. That was my first line of our first team meeting and yeah, we’re all going to enjoy this together.”He was also full of praise for the way Bangalore scripted a very similar revival against the odds. “I’m thrilled for him (Kumble) and their franchise, the way they turned it around,” Gilchrist said. “They experienced a lot of the pain and disappointment that we went through last year.”