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Rahul Dravid will watch from the sidelines as the Indians take on Rest ofSouth Africa in a four-day game at Potchefstroom that starts on Thursday, and he’ll haveplenty to assess from beyond the boundary as his team bids to inject somelife into a tour that has been an utter nightmare so far. Speaking to themedia ahead of the game, Dravid made no attempt to play down theimportance of the game, and expressed his disappointment at having to missout.”It’s good that it’s a four-day game,” he said. “Hopefully, there’ll betwo chances for us to bat, and the guys will get some time in the middle.The bowlers will also need to show intensity during long spells, and getinto Test-match mode.”I can’t fault the effort. As a group, we just haven’t played the bouncewell. It has a lot to do with the fact that we’ve come here with guys whoare out of form. That has accentuated the struggle.”Despite the heavy defeats in the one-day games – three drubbings by morethan 80 runs, and one nine-wicket defeat – Dravid insisted that the tourwas far from a lost cause. “We’ve got to remain positive,” he said. “Wehope this game will be the start of that. We know we can play much bettercricket than we showed in the ODIs. We won our last Test series in theWest Indies, and we’ll take some confidence from that. If the experiencedplayers get runs, we can put pressure on them and take 20 wickets.”Along with Dravid, Anil Kumble, Dinesh Karthik and Munaf Patel are restedfor the game, and the team management will choose between Gautam Gambhirand Irfan Pathan on the morning of the game. Sachin Tendulkar hasrecovered fairly well after Andre Nel caused bruising in a forearm boneduring the last ODI at Centurion, but there’s understandable concern atMunaf’s failure to recover in time from his ankle troubles.”It wasn’t progressing as well as it should,” said Dravid, when askedabout Munaf. “The surgeon in Cape Town had suggested that he might beready to play this game, but now we’ve sent him to Johannesburg foranother check-up. Anil [Kumble] has gone with him since he’s been herebefore for treatment. Hopefully, he’ll be ready for the first Test.There’s a whole week to go.”There were no worries about his own broken finger. “I’ve been knockingaround a little in the nets,” he said, “and I’m hopeful that I’ll play thefirst Test. Fielding in the slips will be a challenge, but Sachin’s beencatching beautifully there, and [VVS] Laxman will take his usual place at secondslip. I’ll start batting in the nets in a couple of days.”According to Dravid, the final composition of the XI for the tour gamewould be decided by the captain for the game, Laxman. “Wasim Jaffer and[Virender] Sehwag will open,” he said, when pressed about the opening positions. Andwhen asked where that left Gambhir, Dravid said: “If we play theextra batsman, he may play at No.3, unless Laxman wants to bat there.We’ll take a look tomorrow morning and then decide.”Dravid didn’t read too much into Sehwag being replaced as vice-captain,but talked of how he and Laxman would gel well together. “He has a goodhead on his shoulders,” he said. “We go back a long way. We can be frankwith each other, and he won’t be shy of telling me what to do.”Though the debate continues to rage on the subject, Dravid flat-batted away aquestion on the need for a bowling coach or consultant. “The batsmen wehave here have played in these conditions before. We know what lengths andlines to bowl. We’re clear about that. Zaheer [Khan] has been here before, andwe’ll tap into his experience. Anil has bowled all around the world, andwe’ll make use of his knowledge too.”India last sent an Under-19 or A team to these parts nearly five yearsago, and Dravid admitted that other international sides had stolen a marchover India in that regard. “Even if they don’t send A teams, mostcountries send players to MRF [Pace Foundation, Chennai] or to the CCI-runWorld Cricket Academy. Alastair Cook is a good example of a guy who hadplayed in India before coming out for the last Test tour. They’ve gotacclimatised to the conditions in the subcontinent, and there’s a case forlooking into such tours for young players. You can work up tie-ups withteams. Even a Ranji Trophy side could work out a reciprocal arrangementwith local associations elsewhere.”As expected, he was asked a question about Sourav Ganguly’s return to thefold. “We hope he’ll make runs for us,” said Dravid. “He has theexperience of these conditions to play match-winning innings for us.”It will take more than one man though to halt India’s slide on this tour.

A senior Indian politician, Digvijay Singh, has requested Sharad Pawar, the Indian board president, to stop opposing the Indian Cricket League and help promote it.”Instead of taking a confrontationist stand you should act as a facilitator for the ICL to succeed. I am sure the objective of the BCCI is not to make millions but to popularise the game of cricket,” wrote Singh, a general secretary of the ruling Congress party. “I am sure you will prevail upon the hardliners in the Board and make them understand sentiments of millions of cricket lovers in India.””I don’t know why he is pre-empting this. It’s almost like apartheid. The BCCI is there for cricket and cricketers and not to look after [its own] members only,” he told .Singh also stressed there was no hidden agenda in his letter, which was written in his personal capacity; he had, he said, written it as a cricket lover and not with the intention of taking on Pawar. He said he felt Pawar was being pressurised by his colleagues to take a confrontational stand towards the ICL.

Scotland have signed Ian Moran, an allrounder from New South Wales, to strengthen their squad ahead of their C&G Trophy campaign, which starts against Warwickshire on April 30.Moran joins Corey Richards, the NSW batsman, in the squad after a productive season playing grade cricket in Sydney. He scored 742 and took 38 wickets, finishing as the leading player, and although he has yet to feature in first-class he was part of the NSW Twenty20 squad.Peter Drinnen, the Scotland coach, said: “We need to give World Cup-qualified players every chance to perform. But we also need to be able to compete effectively in this first year of the new C&G Trophy format.”

Eleven first-class players have been named in the Australian Academy squad that is aiming to win the Emerging Players Tournament for the first time. The 17-man outfit, which begins its campaign with two Twenty20 games on the Sunshine Coast on Monday, has been boosted by the inclusion of Mark Cosgrove, the former one-day international, and Luke Ronchi and Brendan Drew, who are in Australia’s 30-man preliminary squad for the Twenty20 World Championships in South Africa.Cullen Bailey, the Cricket Australia-contracted legspinner, has been selected with New South Wales’ opening batsman Ed Cowan and the Western Australians Luke Pomersbach and Aaron Heal. The coaching contingent is also impressive with the national bowling mentor Troy Cooley working alongside the fielding expert Mike Young and assistant Dene Hills to back up the head coach Brian McFadyen.The World Cup winner Darren Lehmann is also part of the squad’s management and he will help prepare the players for the three Twenty20 and seven one-day fixtures against teams from South Africa, New Zealand and Karnataka in India. McFadyen said the tournament would test his men after they completed a 12-week preparation phase at the Centre of Excellence in Brisbane.”Many players have looked to expand their skill sets during the high-density training programme and we are excited about the prospect of improvement,” he said. “There is no doubt that they are all fitter and more advanced in all areas of their games than last year, so they enter this tournament with great confidence.”A side from India won the inaugural Emerging Players Tournament in 2005 while South Africa were successful last year. The event begins on Monday and finishes with the finals in Brisbane on July 28.Australian Academy squad Craig Philipson (Qld), Matthew Wade (Vic), Ben Cutting (Qld), Brendan Drew (Tas), Aaron Finch (Vic), Shawn Gillies (WA), Aaron Heal (WA), Luke Pomersbach (WA), Luke Ronchi (WA), Grant Sullivan (Qld), David Warner (NSW), Ed Cowan (NSW), Moises Henriques (NSW), Cullen Bailey (SA), Mark Cosgrove (SA), Michael Hill (Vic), Phillip Hughes (NSW).

The colour of the traditional baggy green cap will be used on Australia’s one-day uniforms this summer, but another icon tone has been dumped to allow the change. Gold shirts and trousers have been sent to the opportunity shops after a sun-fading reign as the dominant hue in home series fashion.Greg Chappell’s 1980-81 teams staged the “canary yellow” pyjama revolution and Australian sides have stuck with variations of it as the predominant colour through Southern Cross stars and horizontal stripes, thunderbolts striking over Craig McDermott’s chest in 1992-93 and the Spiderman style of 2003-04. In this summer’s currently name-less tri-series the only gold patches will belong to the players’ names and numbers, the stars on the Southern Cross logo and the manufacturer’s stripes on the shoulders.When the squad uses the kit for the first time against England on January 12, the Australians will show off the same dominant colour as Bangladesh, South Africa, Pakistan and Kenya, but it’s unlikely the rest of the world’s teams will be green with envy. At the first showing the kit appears to have been picked up from surplus stock of army-style casual gear during the squad’s pre-season boot camp.Designed in consultation with the players, the new-age uniforms include fabric colour-matching to an original baggy green cap, no collar, a “sun protection neck line” and a “mesh zip neck”. “It feels great,” Ricky Ponting told at the SCG launch. “It’s very light-weight. In the conditions we play in around the world it’s important that you have the right technology and materials in your shirt.

“The guys won’t have to be flicking their collars right up through the game. The zip at the front will enable the collar to stay up and keep the sun off the back of our necks, which is obviously very important.”Player kits change as often as venues for spring fashion parades and the view of Alan Barnes, the former Australian Cricket Board secretary, becomes more outdated every season. “Pardon me,” he said during the original forays into non-white fashion, “but I’ve always thought people watched cricket for the play, not the décor.”This season Cricket Australia, the swankier, 21st century version of the ACB, is using the uniform in money-making and patriotic schemes – it wants to ensure the local crowd is not out-cheered or out-numbered by England fans during the Ashes. As part of CA’s “Go Off in Green and Gold” campaign, which was also launched today, every person who buys a replica shirt will have the opportunity to stand in one of three huge photos with the Australian team in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.

Not only did Matthew Hayden’s world-record score of 380 at Perth last week deny Brian Lara ownership of the record, it also removed him from the No. 1 spot on the PwC Ratings of Test batsmen. It is not Hayden’s first appearance at the head of the rankings – he reached the summit a year ago during the short series against Pakistan. He had not been out of the top three since then.

But the Perth innings could still not displace Lara from the ranking as the scorer of the highest-rated innings. That is still regarded as his 213 in Kingston in 1999, while VVS Laxman’s 281 at Kolkata in 2001 is also ahead of Hayden’s innings, as both were scored against strong Australian attacks. The fact that Hayden scored his runs against the weak Zimbabwe bowling downgrades his performance according to the ratings.

Click here for full PwC ratings

Eleven days after he was hit on the face by a Shahid Nazir bouncer and a day after Jagmohan Dalmiya termed him a , Sourav Ganguly is in the eye of another potential storm. Speculation is rife about his possible rehabilitation, even though partial, in the form of a place among the 30 probables for the Champions Trophy.It all originated from a quote from an unnamed national selector who said Ganguly, who hasn’t played for India after being dropped following India’s tour to Pakistan last year and whose last appearance in an ODI was in last September, was very much in the frame for the long list. Since then, the story has already aquired layers of intrigue.Giving credence to the rumours is the talk of a bargain struck between Ganguly and the Indian cricket bosses. Ganguly wrote a dramatic email to his brother, which was made public in a press conference, accusing Jagmohan Dalimya, among other things, of having played with “my career”. The timing of the letter was significant: it came about a week before the CricketAssociation of Bengal election, in which Dalmiya was facing a tough challenge from Prasun Mukherji, the police commissioner of Kolkata, who was being publicly backed by the West Bengal chief minister.In return for his support to Dalmiya’s rival, Ganguly, it was suggested, had been offered a passage back to the Indian team. A charitable view is that having experimented with newcomers, the selectors were now ready to finalise the squad for the World Cup. Twenty-nine year-old Dinesh Mongia, who has not played for India since been found wanting in the last World Cup, has been recalled, and Anil Kumble is back in the fray for the Champions Trophy. So why not Ganguly, who has more than 10,000 runs in one-day cricket?Mongia of course has been recalled on the basis of solid performances in county cricket, and with Kumble, it is only a question of age and agility in the field. With Ganguly, there is a serious question of form. He managed 71 in the only one-day game he’s played so far for Northamptonshire and averaged 27.5 in nine Twenty20 matches. One can point to the fact that he snapped up 11 wickets in the Twenty20 but can’t discount the economy rate of 8. And from sixfirst-class innings, he has totalled a mere 24 runs.As expected, there has been a flurry of reactions. Niranjan Shah, the board secretary, has insisted that there is no order from “anywhere to consider or drop anybody”. Kiran More, the chairman of selectors, has dismissed the report as a piece of “kite-flying”. And Raj Singh Dungarpur, the former board president, termed it as “retrograde” and “disgraceful”.However, one selector, speaking to Cricinfo, felt that the whole speculation was triggered off by a section of the Indian board, “a political move rather than anything based on cricketing logic”.

Kenya 237 (Odoyo 53) beat Zimbabwe A 152 and 73 (Odoyo 5-31) by an innings and 12 runsKenya’s tour of Zimbabwe got off to an excellent start when they beat Zimbabwe A by an innings and 12 runs with more than a day to spare in the opening match of their brief visit.The first day ended with honours just about even. Zimbabwe won the toss and batted, but were almost immediately in trouble, slipping to 66 for 6 at lunch before recovering to 152 thanks to a last-wicket stand of 55 between Allan Mwayenga and Christopher Mpofu. Kenya found the going equally hard, sliding to 111 for 6 by the close.But on the second day, Kenya established an 85-run lead, thanks largely to Thomas Odoyo’s 53, and then skittled Zimbabwe A out for only 73, Odoyo leading the rout with five wickets. Zimbabwe A’s top order was again found wanting as they slumped to 29 for 5, with Dion Ebrahim, the most expereinced player in the side, collecting a pair.

Seamer Gurinder Sandhu and batsman Jimmy Peirson starred in Australia‘s 71-run win over Scotland in Brisbane. Australia put up 315 runs after Peirson smashed his way to a 123-ball 128. Scotland stayed in contention during the chase, courtesy Mathew Cross’ 104, but Sandhu’s five-wicket haul, which included a hat-trick, finished the contest.Sandhu’s effort overshadowed Scotland left-arm seamer Aman Bailwal’s 5 for 52; he ran through the Scotland’s middle and lower-order as the last six wickets fell for four runs to eliminate Scotland’s chances of an upset.In a last-over thriller, captain and opening batsman Chad Bowes’ 104 not out carried South Africa to a four-wicket win against Bangladesh. When the sixth wicket fell in the last ball of the 49th over, South Africa still needed 10 runs to win. But a nerveless No. 8 Prenelan Subrayen, who smashed a six in the last over, helped them reach home with a ball to spare. For Bangladesh, Al-Amin shone with both bat and ball; he scored a 73-ball 60 and later picked up a couple of crucial wickets.Naresh Budayair’s 114 wasn’t enough to help Nepal beat the target of 268 against New Zealand, as the team fell short by 19 runs. In a spirited chase, Nepal was well on course after opener Subash Khakurel, who scored 59, and Budayair added 129 for the second wicket. But only one other batsman made a double-figure score as New Zealand came back into the match by picking wickets regularly. With Budayair’s wicket in the 48th over with 37 runs to win, Nepal lost their chance to inflict an upset.New Zealand’s innings revolved around captain Will Young, who scored 97, and middle-order batsmen Henry Walsh, who scored a half-century, and wicketkeeper Cam Fletcher. Seamer Saurav Khanal took three wickets.Left-arm spinner Harmeet Singh’s five for 32 helped India dismiss Afghanistan for 219 to allow India to record a 52-run victory. India’s innings was based on three half-centuries by the top three batsmen – Prashant Chopra, captain Unmukt Chand and Baba Aparajith. Their innings faltered later with the last five wickets falling for 38 runs, as they ended up with 271 for 7.Afghanistan got off to a positive start with an opening stand of 42 runs, and half-centuries by captain Javed Ahmadi and Shabir Noori seemed to be guiding them towards victory. But a flurry of wickets, similar to the Indian collapse, with seven wickets falling for 56 runs as Harmeet ran through the middle and lower-order, put paid to their hopes.Zimbabwe collapsed for 89 against England to lose by 131 runs, with only three of their batsmen registering double-digit scores. They were in deep trouble at 31 for five before Campbell Light and Nyasha Mayawo briefly led a recovery with a 29-run stand, but the contest was over by then, with a target of 221 well out of reach. Seamer Brett Hutton took three for 28 in his nine overs; Shozair Ali, captain Adam Ball and Tom Knight were the other wicket-takers.Hutton also shone with the bat, with 55 off 66 balls, to rescue his side after they were eight down for 167 in the 42nd over.In a low-scoring match, a six-wicket haul by offspinner Tharindu Kaushal ripped apart Ireland‘s middle-order, allowing Sri Lanka to win by 50 runs. A 55 by Ireland opener Ryan Hunter, which was the highest any batsman had scored in the match, was the only contribution of note. Wickets fell regularly throughout the match but unlike Sri lanka, Ireland couldn’t string small partnerships together. Apart from a 65-run stand for the second wicket there was little the Ireland batsmen could offer.The highest scorer in Sri Lanka’s innings was 29 by opener Pabasara Waduge, but with four batsmen scoring in the 20s, and 32 extras, they reached 188.West Indies crushed Namibia under a weight of a commanding total of 328, limiting them to 182 to win by 146 runs, thanks to a century by Sunil Ambris, half-centuries by captain John Campbell and Anthony Alleyne, and contributions from fast bowlers Ronsford Beaton and Marquino Mindley.For Namibia, No. 3 Jano Coetzee put up a resistance with 89, but four wickets by Beaton and three by Mindley put paid to Namibia’s hopes. Beaton destroyed the top-order, reducing Namibia to 41 for 3, and Mindley took the final few wickets to complete the win.Pakistan opener Sami Aslam scored a 99-ball 132 to guide them to an eight-wicket victory over Papua New Guinea. Aslam’s century contained 22 fours and three sixes as Pakistan reached the target of 195 in the 33rd over. For Papua New Guinea, opener Lega Siaka, who scored a century in their previous warm-up game against Nepal, top-scored with 46, as middle-order batsmen Dogodo Bau and Nigel Boge struck a 91-run partnership to help them reach 194. Legspinner Usman Qadir took three wickets.

Four Pakistan A players, Hasan Raza, Taufeeq Umar, Misbah-ul-Haq and Zulqarnain Haider, have been fined US$300 for violating the code of conduct during the Eurasia series at Abu Dhabi in April. They were fined because they travelled from Abu Dhabi to Dubai without permission from the manager.During the journey, the players spent three hours in a Dubai jail for alleged speeding offences but the Pakistan board said that no blame could be attached to the players because the driver – a friend of theirs – was speeding. They were detained by the police because they were not carrying their visas and were released immediately after the manager produced copies of their visas.All four are free to continue playing domestic cricket.