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South Africa may be relieved with Richie Benaud’s ruling which has kept Shoaib Akhtar out of the second Test at Faisalabad, but Graeme Smith and his not-so-merry men will still be hard-pressed to level the series after the first-Test debacle. Akhtar was instrumental in starting the slide in the second innings at Lahore, but more worrying for Eric Simons, the South African coach, was his batsmen’s inability to come to terms with Pakistan’s spinners.Between them, Danish Kaneria, Shoaib Malik and Mushtaq Ahmed took 12 wickets in the Lahore Test. Mushtaq was the least of the threats, though, which persuaded the selectors to call up Mansoor Amjad, a 17-year-old wrist-spinner who has yet to play a first-class match, although he has appeared for Pakistan’s age-group teams. He is unlikely to make his debut at Faisalabad, but South Africa can expect another severe examination by spin at the Iqbal Stadium.The lack of experience in playing quality spin bowling showed quite clearly at Lahore, as none of the batsmen attempted to use their feet and smother the spin. There were also far too many batsmen who got starts, and then failed to cash in: Smith, Herschelle Gibbs, Jacques Kallis and Boeta Dippenaar all made scores of between 24 and 33 in the first innings at Lahore.To make matters worse, the South Africans have no-one to exploit the conditions, which are again likely to favour the slow bowlers. Paul Adams picked up seven wickets in Pakistan’s first innings in the first Test, but also served up plenty of hit-me balls – and he was taken apart in the second innings, when he disappeared for 57 in 11 overs. The only other spinner in the squad, Robin Peterson, is hardly a wicket-taking option.Pakistan might be one strike bowler short, but their batting will be bolstered by the return of Inzamam-ul-Haq, their captain, who missed the first Test with a hamstring injury. He will step in for Yousuf Youhana, who has a hamstring strain of his own. Pakistan’s line-up in Lahore lacked experience, but Asim Kamal, the 27-year-old left-hander who filled in for Inzamam there, made an encouraging 99 on his debut. It was an excellent example of how to construct a Test-match innings. It lacked the flourish of extravagant shotmaking, but in a batting order already bursting with exciting strokeplayers, Kamal’s solidity is a huge asset.Smith’s short stint as South Africa’s captain has been notable for his hard-nosed approach, and his earnest attempt to ensure that his side shrugs off the choker’s tag that it has been stuck with. The South Africans demonstrated this newfound steel as recently as the one-day series in Pakistan, turning a 0-2 deficit into a 3-2 series win. It is time to display that resolve again.Pakistan (probable): 1 Taufeeq Umar, 2 Imran Farhat, 3 Yasir Hameed, 4 Inzamam-ul-Haq (capt), 5 Asim Kamal, 6 Abdul Razzaq, 7 Moin Khan (wk), 8 Shoaib Malik, 9 Mushtaq Ahmed, 10 Mohammad Sami, 11 Danish Kaneria.South Africa (probable): 1 Graeme Smith (capt), 2 Herschelle Gibbs, 3 Gary Kirsten, 4 Jacques Kallis, 5 Boeta Dippenaar, 6 Neil McKenzie, 7 Mark Boucher (wk), 8 Shaun Pollock, 9 Paul Adams, 10 Makhaya Ntini, 11 Andre Nel.

Australia was given a taste of life without Glenn McGrath as New Zealand briefly took control of the third and deciding cricket Test at the WACA here today.With opener Lou Vincent joining an elite band of players by scoring a century on debut and captain Stephen Fleming ending years of self-doubt by scoring his first century in 42 months – Australia was on the ropes for much of the day.New Zealand finished at 7-293 with the match evenly poised.It’s no coincidence that New Zealand’s ascendancy corresponded with McGrath’s absence.The tall fast bowler, who has played 41 consecutive Tests, was out of the attack for a total of four hours today when he suffered back spasms after bowling fiveovers.When he left the field to go to hospital for precautionary scans, New Zealand was 2-19 and hovering on the brink of another batting slump.When he returned to the attack late in the day, the Black Caps were 3-226 after Vincent (104) and Fleming (105) added 199 for the third wicket.With Steve Waugh having to manage his bowling assets, the Kiwis had the luxury of 10 overs from Damien Martyn, Mark Waugh and Ricky Ponting while ShaneWarne bowled much more than he would have anticipated on the first day of a WACA Test.Just enough pressure was taken off for the New Zealanders to flourish.The tourists were also helped by cool, overcast and windy conditions and a pitch which lost some of its bite as the sun went off it.”It was a pretty flat wicket – an ideal wicket to play cricket on,” Vincent said.As soon as McGrath took the ball again, things went downhill for the Kiwis.While he didn’t take any of the four wickets to fall late in the day, his presence alone appeared to lift the Australians who had drifted through the middle session.New Zealand slumped from 3-264 to 7-281 as Brett Lee (2-89) and Jason Gillespie (3-79) did the damage with the second new ball.Vincent admitted “things looked good for a while” when McGrath was away.”It’s mixed emotions towards the end there I was hoping we’d finish a maximum five down – seven down’s a bit of a kick in the guts,” Vincent said.New Zealand skipper Fleming preferred not to talk about his own century saying “it’s Lou’s day”.And it was Vincent’s day – from the moment he was beaten all ends up by the first ball he faced from McGrath.”I played and missed but I didn’t nick it – so I thought it could be my day,” he said.He praised Fleming for getting him through the day to become the sixth New Zealander to make a century on debut.”He’s an inspiring leader, he kept me cool and composed at times in the game when the timing, the head and the feet were all over the place.”The 23-year-old Vincent had never opened the batting in a first-class game before today but the Kiwis gambled on his raw potential and positive attitude as they sought to become the first side in nine years to win a series in Australia.That is still a possibility but Fleming said the way Australia roared back in to the contest was a warning for his team.”It was a very impressive the way they came back but at seven for 293 we’re still in the game and we’ll be looking to make 350-plus tomorrow.”Gillespie removed Craig McMillan (4) and nightwatchman Daniel Vettori (2) before Lee sent dangerman Chris Cairns (8) back to the pavilion.At stumps, Nathan Astle was on 28 and Adam Parore on five.While Fleming played down his effort, even the Australians stopped to applaud his century.It’s been three and half years and 48 innings since Fleming made his last century – against Sri Lanka in May 1998.In his 63rd Test it was just his third century – although he passes 50 every second match he plays – and his first against Australia.

Dehradun will host eight of the top campus-cricket teams from around the world in the Red Bull Campus Cricket World Finals 2015. The matches will be played at the Abhimanyu Cricket Academy, Dehradun, from October 19 to 24.Teams from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, England, South Africa, Australia and UAE will compete in the annual Twenty20 competition. Each participating team has qualified for the finals after winning their respective national tournaments. The 2015 edition will be the first time UAE will participate in the tournament, having replaced West Indies in the team line-up.Assupol TUKS from South Africa were crowned champions in the last edition, which was held in London. Assupol TUKS have maintained their winning ways and will begin as pre-competition favourites this year as well. They recently beat Steinhoff Maties in the finals of their local competition to qualify.The defending champions will face tough competition from University of Technology, Sydney (Australia), Loughborough MCC University (England), Government Jinnah College (Pakistan), European University of Bangladesh (Bangladesh), International College of Business and Technology (Sri Lanka) and Heriot Watt University (UAE).Shradhanand College (Delhi) will represent hosts India, after they beat DAV College Jalandhar to secure their spot in the world finals. Rizvi College (Mumbai) – who made the finals last year – failed to make the cut, due to a poor showing in the national tournament.

Harbhajan Singh’s appeal over his three-Test ban will be heard in Adelaide on January 29 and 30, after the Test series between Australia and India, leaving him free to play the last two Tests. New Zealand judge John Hansen, the commissioner appointed to hear the appeal, has agreed to hold the hearing after the fourth Test in Adelaide following formal requests from Cricket Australia and the Indian board.”We would have preferred the appeal to be held earlier but it was not possible,” Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, said. “Both CA and the BCCI have requested the hearing to be held after the Test series for logistical reasons and, following due consideration, Justice Hansen agreed.”The reality is that it is likely to go into a second day as lawyers will be involved,” he said, “so we needed to have two clear days to assign to it. With just three full days between the third and fourth Tests, we were conscious of the teams’ travel arrangements and preparations for the match.”The provisions of the ICC Code of Conduct indicate that the hearing should be held within seven days of the commissioner being appointed but it may be delayed if circumstances make it unfeasible and the commissioner agrees, as in this case.Harbhajan was banned for three Tests after being found guilty under Level 3 of the International Cricket Council’s Code of Conduct following an incident that took place during the second Test between India and Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. ICC match referee Mike Procter upheld the umpires’ report that Harbhajan had made a racist remark against Andrew Symonds and served him with the ban.

Clive Lloyd, the former West Indies captain, has been appointed manager of the West Indies team for the four-match one-day series in India. Lloyd had earlier toured with the side as an advisor during the Champions Trophy in India last year, where West Indies finished runners-up.Lloyd takes over from Tony Howard, who has served as the team manager since April 2004. Howard has been appointed as acting chief cricket operations officer of the West Indies Cricket Board.The board also announced that Hendy Springer, the Barbados coach, will assist Bennett King, the West Indies coach, during the tour due to the unavailability of regular assistant coach David Moore.

The irrepressible Shoaib Akhtar today got a huge vote of confidence from Pakistan’s top cricket boss who said he was a more disciplined bowler now and was capable of running through the strong Indian batting line-up in the forthcoming series. Shaharyar Khan, the Pakistan Cricket Board chairman, said Pakistani bowling was not at its best when they hosted India last time two years ago but the scenario had changed since Bob Woolmer took over as coach.Shaharyar, in New Delhi for the two-day Asian Cricket Council meeting, said Akhtar in particular had become a better bowler and would prove to be quite a handful for the Indians when they arrive in Pakistan on January 5 to play three Tests and five ODIs.”Last time, India had the best batting line up in the world. But our bowlers were not disciplined; they gave away a lot of extras. This time, it is going to be different. Our bowlers were very disciplined against England. And I am sure Akhtar will breakthrough the Indian batting,” Shaharyar said.

No. 2 – Australasia Cup Final, Sharjah, 1985-86
Scorecard
Almost two decades later, Javed Miandad, the scrapper who knew not how to throw in the towel, would confess to having almost done just that. When Imran Khan departed with 37 runs still needed, Pakistan needed eight an over. “I thought then that we had no serious chance of victory,” wrote Miandad in his autobiography. “I just wanted to salvage some pride for Pakistan. I had no plan, other than to bat out the full fifty overs in the hope that we would at least lose with some dignity.”He managed far more. With 31 needed from the final three overs, Miandad whittled the target down to 18 with the aid of a superb six over long-on off Chetan Sharma. But despite the presence of the big-hitting Wasim Akram in the middle, Pakistan could manage just seven from Kapil Dev’s final over, leaving Sharma, a 20-year-old who had already earned 28 ODI caps, with the task of denying Miandad, who had cut his way to an imperious hundred in his previous over.But though Akram was run out going for a second run off the first ball, Miandad smashed the next to the mid-on fence to ease the pressure. The next delivery was fetched nonchalantly from outside off stump, but a splendid diving stop from Roger Binny kept the batsmen to just one. Zulqarnain’s swat at the ensuing ball saw the stumps rearranged, leaving Tauseef Ahmed, a man with no great batting pedigree, to conjure up five from the last two balls. With Miandad urging him to scamper a single at any cost, Tauseef tipped the ball to short-cover and set off. Mohammad Azharuddin, India’s premier fielder, pounced and picked up in one fluid motion but, crucially, his shy at the stumps missed with Tauseef still yards short.With four needed, it was merely a question of who would blink first. Miandad, with more than a decade of experience behind him, anticipated the yorker, and sure enough, Sharma attempted just that. But when the ball slipped out of the hand, the potentially lethal stump-wrecker metamorphosed into a woeful leg-side full toss. For those watching, time stood still as Miandad’s bat arced swiftly to send the ball soaring over the midwicket boundary. It was a heist that would have done Ronald Biggs and friends proud, and Miandad himself admitted: “Up until the final delivery, India’s dominance remained supreme.”That dominance had been built on a stolid 92 from Sunil Gavaskar, buttressed by half-centuries from Krishnamachari Srikkanth and Dilip Vengsarkar. And with Pakistan’s top order not doing enough to supplement Miandad’s courageous effort, it appeared that the Indian total of 245 would be more than enough, in an age when turbo-charged starts and pinch-hitting were almost unheard of.In retrospect, that one resounding stroke was to signify far more than a final won. For years afterwards, India were no match for Pakistan in the one-day arena, shell-shock victims unable to regain a sense of perspective. There may have been tears in the Pakistani dressing room that evening, but it was India that were to weep over the unimaginably deep Miandad-inflicted cuts for the best part of a decade.

Cricket in Viña del Mar was reintroduced by two teams of players from the local natural gas company, GasValpo. GasValpo is a very old Chilean business which was bought by the Australian Gas and Light Company AGL a few years ago. The idea of forming a cricket club came from the Australian influence (Martin Turner is to be thanked for that) but as GasValpo has a very active sporting club and the members were keen to learn a “new” sport cricket.So in early 2003 the interested players began practising after watching the most recent world cup highlights on video to enable them to understand the basics of the game. Practice sessions were initially held at a local school but more recently in the GasValpo grounds on Camino Internacional in Reñaca Alto. Numbers of players have grown gradually from 7 to about 18 since the sessions commenced.The first actual game was held on Saturday 23rd August 2003 at the Carinbineros (uniformed police) complex in Reñaca Alto. It is hoped that in addition to this venture some games can also be held at the Valparaiso Cricket Club where cricket was last played approximately 40 years ago.Interest has been generated already in Chile’s second largest city. A half page spread in the local newspaper and an interview on an important radio station is helping the public to become aware that cricket is once again being played in Viña del Mar, the spiritual home of cricket in Chile.The first official game is scheduled for the beginning of October this year and will be against a team of players from San Bernardo, a suburb in the southern outskits of Santiago. The Viña team is confident of winning this match!The San Bernardo Cricket Club was recently formed this year and they too have been training hard for their first match against Viña del Mar. Both clubs are creating history as they are 100% Chilean. The teams comprise both men and women and it is hoped to eventually have a mens and a womens team.This season San Bernardo and Viña will play not only each other but also a team comprised of Chilean born players from Santiago and the Chilean U/15 team. It is hoped that both clubs will progress to the main Chilean club competition which is centred around the four clubs in Santiago in a few years time.

Batsmen are supposed to win State Max matches but somebody forgot to tell the Wellington attack, especially left-arm fast-medium bowler James Franklin.He was at the core of Wellington’s third successive Max success in three years in the preliminary season tournament at North Harbour’s Stadium at Albany today when the defending champions beat Auckland by eight runs.Franklin showed that bowlers do have a role to play in this reduced form of cricket and, in fact, the whole weekend showed that bowlers have learned how to adapt their games. But his was the best of the performances and earned him the player of the tournament title.Whereas in earlier years scores of 120-140 were much more common, a good score in this year’s series was around 90-100.Andre Adams, Andrew Hore and Richard Petrie were the only big-hitters to really have an impact on matches.But for Franklin it was an especially pleasant tournament after the disappointments of missing international selection.”It was good fun. I think the extra game may have benefited us and we were lucky enough to get up over Otago,” Franklin said.”What helped a lot was that the ball held up off a length. We had different plans for different batsmen and I got a few lucky wickets. They seemed to find the fieldsmen on most occasions,” he said.Franklin said he felt he bowled with good rhythm even while bowling within himself and he took the view that every batsman had to be respected and he wanted to keep his runs to about eight or 10 an over, a goal he certainly achieved.”It was a great way to start the year. We won the Max last year and that proved a good start and now we’re looking forward to playing Canterbury in the State Championship in Rangiora,” he said.Wellington beat Auckland by eight runs in a final that turned out to be more exciting than seemed possible, especially after Auckland were 17/5 in the fifth over of the first innings.Wellington hadn’t exactly set the world on fire with 98/6 but it proved a welcome advantage when Auckland were 74/8 at the end of their 10 overs, thanks largely to a hard-hit 25 off 13 balls by Tane Topia.Auckland bowled much more tidily in their second innings and restricted Wellington to 83/7. Adams took two for 19 from three overs.That left Auckland with a target of 110 runs to win.It made the mistake of promoting its big hitters to the top of the order. And while some change was required, the wholesale nature of it didn’t seem to help Auckland in the larger scheme of things. They were three wickets down for 15 runs in the second over.Franklin was irresistible with the ball. In the first innings he took four for 13 from three overs and then in the second innings conceded a six but gained a fourth wicket and saw a run out in his only over. He had five for 21 off four overs in the match and eight wickets for 68 runs off 11 overs in the whole weekend, an outstanding effort at Max level.There were some moments when Adams threatened to steal the win from nowhere for Auckland by bringing up his half century from 14 balls. But Wellington captain Richard Jones said the superb catch taken at square leg by Shane Battock diving forward to snare the chance from Topia just off the grass had galvanised the side.”The whole thing about Max is that it can turn so quickly on just one thing. It can be a couple of Max hits, a couple of wickets or something like Shane Battock’s catch.”We knew we had the bowlers to finish the job and we had to have Matthew Walker bowling when Andre was hitting out.”Having Matthew and Paul Hitchcock at the end was great while having Jimmy Franklin and Andrew Penn to open our attack was a key because they take wickets,” he said.Auckland did recover their second innings to the point where with two overs remaining they only needed 18 runs. But they lost captain Matt Horne caught and bowled to Hitchcock while only four runs were conceded.And then Walker bowled an outstanding last over which cost only five singles.Wellington got home by eight runs.Jones said afterwards that yesterday’s loss to Auckland had been a blow to the team and they were very disappointed.”But it was a good wake-up call for the lads and it was a case of how we would come back against Otago,” he said.They knew Hore was a key man and once they removed him in both innings they felt more in charge.”Hore can make or break a game, both of Max and one-day games and it will be the same for us in the State Shield,” he said.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details1:09

‘Tempo the stand-out feature of Malik’s innings’

Shortly after Pakistan had declared their formidable first innings of the first Test on 523 for 8, with Shoaib Malik having marked the end of his five-year Test exile with an innings of Burj Khalifa proportions, a falcon was spotted on the outfield at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, greedily disembowelling the luckless prey in its talons.Happily for any squeamish onlookers among the smattering of fans in the vicinity, Adil Rashid quickly allayed concerns about his whereabouts by taking his place on the England dressing-room balcony. He too had displayed guts on the second day of the first Test – of the blood and gore variety, alas – as Malik’s career-best 245, the majority compiled in a fifth-wicket stand of 248 with Asad Shafiq, condemned him to a cruel slice of Test history.Rashid’s debut innings figures of 34-0-163-0 were the worst by any bowler in the 138-year history of Test cricket. What is more, his efforts usurped those of another legspinner, Bryce McGain, who was tormented to the tune of 0 for 149 by South Africa’s batsmen in his one and only appearance for Australia at Cape Town in March 2009.For AB de Villiers, read Malik, whose 10-and-a-half hour masterclass marked an astonishing return for a man who might not have got a look in had Azhar Ali been fit. Shafiq alongside him chipped in with a century of his own, and though both men survived notable moments of good fortune on the first day of the contest, neither offered another sniff of an opportunity until an improbable clatter of wickets after tea, when fatigue and the impending declaration enabled England’s toiling seamers to massage their stats, in particular Ben Stokes who emerged with the oddly respectable figures of 4 for 57.Shoaib Malik celebrates his maiden Test double-century•Getty Images

The Malik-Shafiq partnership was a fifth-wicket record for Pakistan in Tests against England, beating the 197-run stand at Lord’s between Javed Burki and Nasim-ul-Ghani that had stood since 1962. It continued their run of staggering batting form in Tests in Abu Dhabi, where they have never yet lost a match and where they have now recorded 11 hundreds in their last two-and-a-half Tests, dating back to the visit of Australia last October.Pakistan are past masters of batting in the UAE, having developed an innings tempo that is perfectly suited to the brutal conditions. They were content to wear England’s bowlers down for hours on end before latching on to the opportunities to make their dominance count. Between them, Malik and Shafiq struck 34 fours and four sixes, 160 runs in boundaries, a testament to their patience and ability to cash in.Malik, in particular, batted with the insouciance of a man in utter command of the attack and the conditions, and Rashid bore the brunt of his aggression, not least when he opened his shoulders with his double-century in the bag, first to wallop him over extra cover for four before pumping his next delivery clean down the ground for the third of his four sixes.Rashid, in truth, did not bowl especially badly, having been re-introduced to the attack in the seventh over of the day. By that stage, the seamers – armed with a ball that was just three overs old at the start of play – had been effortlessly repelled, and there was never an opportunity to get a toe-hold in the game. Rashid will cling on to the belief that his debut can be less like McGain’s and more like that of a certain SK Warne, whose debut figures of 1 for 150 at Sydney in 1992 included the maiden wicket of Ravi Shastri, but not before he had made 206.Despite having six front-line bowlers to call upon, Alastair Cook was forced reluctantly to turn to a seventh after 124 overs of fruitless toil when Joe Root was tossed the ball for an exploratory spell of allsorts, and they effectively used an eighth when Stokes entered the attack with his hitherto unseen offbreaks in the final over before the break.That over included, England’s spin attack mustered the combined figures of 70-3-302-0 and, ominously, they scarcely managed to hit the pads at any stage of the innings, let alone pass the edge.The one man to do so, in the whole of the first two sessions, was Stuart Broad, whose optimistic leg-side appeal against Shafiq, on 66 at the time, was going so far down leg that it was almost impertinent to ask. Nevertheless, Mark Wood, with a jig of delight, seemed pleased enough that his team-mate had managed even to breach one line of Pakistan’s formidable defence.Asad Shafiq helped Pakistan put on a record score against England for the fifth wicket•Getty Images

With his third ball after tea, and Pakistan already sated on 499 for 4, Wood finally breached their defences for real, as Shafiq aimed an expansive pull across the line and was trapped in front of middle and leg for 107. That breakthrough set in motion a harum-scarum 15 minutes in which three more wickets tumbled to loose prods and mows – all three to Stokes, including two lollipop catches for none other than Ian Bell, whose lapses in the slips had set Mohammad Hafeez and Shafiq on their way on day one.And so the declaration left England needing to bat out 23 overs in the day, a task that put a particular spotlight on Moeen Ali, whose 30 wicketless overs weren’t exactly the ideal way to focus his mind for the task ahead.But to his and Cook’s credit, they made it to the close with the minimum of fuss. Pakistan’s seamers found as little in the conditions as England had extracted, and arguably were even less effective given their slightly erratic lines of attack.The only real alarm came from the second ball of the innings when Cook jabbed down in the crease at Rahat Ali and all but emulated his mentor Graham Gooch in punching the ball away from his stumps as it bounced up alarmingly. Gooch, at Old Trafford in 1993, couldn’t help himself; Cook managed to resist his urges and lived to fight another day.Zulfiqar Babar, meanwhile, twirled away for seven broadly ineffective overs. There is plenty time for him to come into the game on days three, four and five, but in the absence of the prolific legspinner Yasir Shah, there was a cutting edge lacking from Pakistan’s initial forays. But their weight of runs remains overwhelming.