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Easterns have won Zimbabwe’s provincial Twenty20 tournament with a seven-run win over Westerns in the final on Good Friday, but concerns over standards of play over the three days hogged the limelight.Zimbabwe Cricket were using the tournament, a last-minute fixture in place of the twice-postponed Logan Cup, to prepare for South Africa’s domestic Standard Bank Pro20 contest. But the ever-tumbling domestic standards were in evidence.It gave indications that the Zimbabweans could expect pretty much the same or even worse treatment on the field against the South African franchises as they did in the MTN domestic championship, more so as their opponents in South Africa have more adept and experienced at this version. What’s more, they have already identified their Twenty20 specialists while the Zimbabweans are still searching.And neither did they find them in this tournament. No one set the competition alight, although the usual suspects, Brendan Taylor (Northerns), Hamilton Masakadza (Easterns), Tatenda Taibu (Northerns) and Stuart Matsikenyeri (Easterns) all showed good consistency with the bat and threw caution to the wind when necessary, perhaps conscious of their role as the best Zimbabwe can manage at the moment. They could ill-afford to have their best misfiring.If this was a positive, its one that quickly wipe the smile off the selectors’ faces because few from outside the pool of current national and A side players staked claims and showed Twenty20 attributes. Perhaps it’s a good thing because now the coaching staff can only concentrate on few, targeted players at Twenty20.But then, Zimbabwe Cricket has been boasting about the success of its outreach programme where new cricketers are being churned out in the new structures. Besides, Zimbabwe needs to widen its pool now more than any other time. It was generally acknowledged that the available talent wasn’t that big when Zimbabwe were doing well before the senior players left, and with not much resources now as in the past, it will be a real struggle to get things right.Without experienced bowlers, those in the tournament, particularly the seamers, tried too hard to adjust their actions for Twenty20, thus overcomplicating their bowling and not getting the balance between defence and attack. They went for aggression and in the process losing the basic line and length. The only time they looked good was when the batsmen were getting themselves in trouble. To the better bowlers, it was so easy to read the batsmen’s good shots thereby getting them to play outside their comfort zones and drying up runs.Attendances were far from encouraging, largely because few outside the inner circles knew about the tournament due to poor publicity. Only a handful stumbled upon the final day play while patronising the Keg & Maiden bar on Good Friday.The victory by Easterns, formerly Manicaland, means they become the new dominant side in Zimbabwe provincial cricket after winning the Logan Cup last year. But the province is made up almost entirely of players from Harare, drawn from the Takashinga club in particular, and cricketers based in the province hardly got a chance to play, as was the case last year. The purpose seems to be to fool people into believing these is strength outside the capital.Southerns (Masvingo) and Centrals (Midlands) do have a fair number of players originally from the provinces, but Harare players are also posted to strengthen the sides. That leaves Northerns, the former Mashonaland, and Westerns (Matabeleland), the only sides without exported players.

Fleming: ‘Tomorrow is one of the biggest games this team will play’ © Getty Images

If there’s one thing that this World Cup has taught us, it is that all things have a shelf life. Duncan Fletcher is perhaps the most prominent example of a good coach turned bad, but there have been enough off-colour performances from the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Michael Vaughan to suggest that what once may have glittered on the international stage may not necessarily remain golden.But then, poking proudly through the haze of smouldering reputations is a man who bucks the trend, and has done so for more than a decade. New Zealand’s captain, Stephen Fleming, has been described so often as the greatest captain in world cricket that it has, at times, been hard to ascertain precisely what he’s done to deserve such an accolade. In the past six weeks, however, he’s reaffirmed his reputation as the thinking man’s leader. Now, at the age of 34, he stands on the brink of fulfilment.It was once said of Tim Henman that he was one of life’s semi-finalists, and perhaps that’s the same of New Zealand. Four times they have come this far, punching above their weight of population, but never have they gone further. But under Fleming’s leadership, which he inherited from Lee Germon in the week of his 24th birthday, they have contested three World Cups, and only in the 2003 campaign, which was undermined by the costly forfeiture of a match in Nairobi, have they failed to get this far.”It’s just a case of dealing with the anxiety and nerves because it’s unknown territory for New Zealand to go past this point,” said a plain-speaking Fleming on the eve of the match. “Tomorrow is one of the biggest games this team will play. The pressure’s on and it’s a big occasion, but we know what to expect from Sri Lanka and we feel worthy of being here. We know that if we win one game at a time against these two sides, the World Cup’s ours.”Standing in his way are a trio of captaincy opponents who, like Fleming, have moulded sides in their own image. Tuesday’s counterpart is Mahela Jayawardene, whose deft touch, genial popularity and personal weight of performances has helped pull his country out of a tailspin since taking over from Marvan Atapattu last February. Awaiting him on the other side of the draw are two driven men who prefer to lead by example; South Africa’s Graeme Smith and Australia’s Ricky Ponting. Each would be a worthy man to lift the trophy, but they are all still young enough to come back for another tilt. For Fleming, who will be 38 come the 2011 edition, one senses this must surely be his last – and finest – chance.If so, there is very little else he could have done to spur on his side. His leadership has been first-rate throughout the campaign, quick-witted when opportunities arose, but quick to learn on the occasions he has found himself outflanked. “Captaincy isn’t a science,” he said after losing to Sri Lanka at the Super Eights stage of the competition. “There is no right and wrong.” Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t right your wrongs. Two days after that match, in a display of pride-swallowing that is the mark of the man, he changed his team and his tactics on the same sluggish Grenada pitch, and delivered the victory over South Africa that propelled his team into the knock-outs.

Fleming’s 352 runs places him in the top 12 run-getters of the World Cup, and for New Zealand he is second only to the prolific Scott Styris © Getty Images

All throughout the Super Eights, Fleming had been the one leader who displayed the sort of spatial awareness that comes with such overwhelming experience. Tunnel vision has been the preferred method of Ponting and Smith in particular – nothing but the end game has mattered to them. In Ponting’s case that has delivered nine emphatic victories in a row; Smith’s in the meantime has been more up and down, but the up when it arrived was the biggest high of the competition to date – the surging victory against England in Barbados when the stakes were truly at their highest.Fleming has not played it like that at all. He’s displayed throughout a carefully cultivated inner meekness. He’s been happy to embrace the role of the underdog but all the while he has been plotting and scheming to give his men that extra half-an-inch. His cunning manipulation of New Zealand’s net run-rate, for instance, was an insurance policy that he did not, in the end, have to cash in. But had South Africa beaten the Kiwis, as they have done on four out of six occasions in the past 18 months, New Zealand would still surely have made it to the knock-outs through Fleming’s carefully unlatched back door.Fleming’s batting has also been a revelation. One of the big questions that has hung over his career is “how good could he have been?” As a youngster, he shared more than just an April Fool’s birthday with David Gower; he shared a languid line of strokeplay that was, by necessity, shelved when the burden of leadership was foisted upon him. For an eternity, he possessed one of the worst 50 to 100 conversion rates the game has ever seen, with just two Test centuries in his first eight years of international cricket. Now however, he is mature enough to lead with the bat and the brain in one go. His tally of 352 runs places him in the top 12 run-getters for the tournament, and for New Zealand he is second only to the prolific Scott Styris.In less than a week, the speculation will be over and the 2007 World Champions will have been crowned. It may well be that the greatest prize is destined to elude the longest-serving leader in international cricket. But if it does, he will still be able to say that he carried out his campaign to the absolute limits of both his abilities and those of his countrymen. To reach your peak after a decade at the top is a rare and impressive achievement.

Bennett King believes there are options after Shivnarine Chanderpaul © Getty Images

Bennett King, the coach of West Indies, says there are several players who can take up the mantle of captaincy of the national team.Speaking on the heels of Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s resignation, King pointed to players like Sylvester Joseph, the A-team captain, as possible candidates for the job.”There are a number of players I suppose in the side that have got reasonable experience, having been around international cricket for quite some time. There are some people,” King told the . “I thought Sylvester Joseph did a very good job with the West Indies A side as well. But certainly the players that we have got and the help that is surrounding them, I think there is always room for development and improvement.”King pointed out that leadership was an area in West Indies cricket which needed to be addressed. “Certainly leadership is one of those areas that I think the West Indies need to take a good look at as well,” he said. “It is an area in our cricket which we need to try to nurture and develop, and great leaders just don’t fall out of trees. They come along every now and then and if they are backed up with a very good team, people automatically think that he is a very good leader, but that is not always the case either.”He said that even though an individual leader was important, the entire team needed to be responsible for the leadership of the side. “You want more people contributing to the total development of the side. I think Utopia for a sporting team is a side in which players take complete ownership and coaches aren’t necessarily required any more,” he said. “Moving forward I think that is what any coach would want – for the players to be the ones who ultimately run the entire show. I think in the past it has been proven in certain sporting teams. The best sides are the ones that are self-driven.”The West Indies Cricket Board are expected to announce a new captain shortly.

Indian viewers will have a wider choice of sports channels © Getty Images

Zee Telefilms Ltd, the Indian television company which which bid unsuccessfully for the telecast rights to Indian cricket, has launched its own 24-hour sports channel.”The sports-programming genre is growing at a fast pace,” Punit Goenka, the CEO of Zee, was quoted as saying by Reuters. “What we felt missing was content relevant to the average Indian apart from cricket. With that in mind, we aim to bridge the gap by providing a programming mix that is entertaining, relevant and catering to our core viewer base.”An investment of Rs 1.5 billion has been allocated for the channel which will air sports shows and news meant for youth, along with interviews and live sports action.The Indian Supreme Court recently rejected Zee’s plea to grant them the telecast rights for international cricket in India till 2008. Zee had challeged the decision by the Indian board to cancel the bidding process.However, Zee hasn’t lost hope and will wait for telecast rights for cricket in other countries. “In the next 18 months, cricket rights in England, Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies would be up for bidding and we intend to be contenders with reasonable means,” said Gary Lovejoy, CEO, Zee Sports. “We have plans to cover lifestyle sports such as golf, motor sport and adventure sports, and also looking at the creation of events.”Zee has also expressed interest in securing rights of a few domestic events. It has placed its bid for Indian football at the committee meeting of the All India Football Federation.On the television rights controversy, Himanshu Mody, executive vice president, Zee Sports, said, “As an operational strategy, it (the telecast controversy) has had a positive effect. We had to think a lot harder. We will bid aggressively but sensibly.”After the entry of Zee Sports, India will have as many as five sports channels, including ESPN, Star Sports, Ten Sports and DD Sports.

The Chief Executive of Cricket NSW David Gilbert has announced the NSW 2nd XI to play Tasmania’s 2nd XI in a Cricket Australia Cup match at the T-C-A Ground in Hobart from Monday February 9th to Thursday February 12th, 2004.

Matthew Phelps (C)
Ed Cowan
Grant Lambert
Paul Maraziotis
Damien Wallace
Nathan Pilon
Liam Zammit
Jason Krejza
Aaron Bird
Don Nash
Mark Cameron
Glenn McGrath (subject to fitness)

12th man to be named on the morning of the match.The 2nd XI will train at the SCG Nets on Thursday February 5th, 2004 at 4:00pm when Glenn McGrath will undergo a final fitness test.

Warwickshire’s Ian Bell has been declared fit to join his fellow England hopefuls at the ECB’s Academy in Adelaide this month.Bell, 20, has spent the last three months recuperating from a fracture in his lower back, but has now been given the all-clear and he will fly out to Australia on Thursday.Bell said: “I am certainly looking forward to two weeks intensive coaching from Warwickshire’s new coach, John Inverarity before linking up with my colleagues at the Academy and going on to tour Sri Lanka.”Naturally slightly longer term it is my ambition to break into the Test team, but given the opportunity I would jump at the chance of playing against the Australians.”Bell, a former England Under-19 captain who won a gold award in last year’s Benson and Hedges Cup Final, has also agreed a two-year deal with cricket manufacturer Slazenger.”After my recent injury worries it is nice to have some positive news – hopefully my relationship with Slazenger will prove very profitable in terms of runs,” Bell added.”However the next three months are crucial to me, as I start my preparations for the 2003 domestic season.”

A whirlwind 94 by Australian Jimmy Maher and an impressive all-roundperformance from Robert Croft helped Glamorgan to a 111-run victory overWorcestershire in their Norwich Union National League Division Two clashat Cardiff.The Queenslander fell six short of his first league century but notbefore he had shared in a match-winning 151-run partnership for thesecond wicket off just 20 overs with Croft after Glamorgan hadwon the toss.It was the backbone of Glamorgan’s 305-6 – a record league score for thecounty beating the 294-4 against Surrey at Pontypridd in 1999.Both Maher and Croft scored their half-centuries from just 41 deliveriesas the Worcestershire seam attack was put to the sword. The visitorsweren’t helped by their fielding which saw Croft dropped three times andMaher once on 65.The off spin of Graeme Hick slowed Glamorgan up and also accounted forthe wickets of Croft and Maher in the space of two overs. Maher’s 94came up off 76 with 18 fours.The rest of the Glamorgan innings couldn’t quite match the scoring rateof Maher and Croft but at the end Adrian Dale cruised to a 36-ball 50.Worcestershire started their reply in encouraging manner reaching 100 inthe 15th over but at the cost of three wickets – Anurag Singh, JamiePipe and Phil Weston.Worcestershire’s hopes rested on the shoulder of Hick and Vikram Solankibut both fell victim to Croft who produced a superb spell of three for31. Once those two perished the visitors innings slowly subsided andthey were bowled out with 10.3 overs remaining.

	Part of Lancashire’s plan is to make this scene less of a common sight at Old Trafford © Getty Images

Lancashire will begin the first stages of redeveloping Old Trafford next January with the initial work costing the club £12 million.It will include replacing the County Suite, Tyldesley Suite and the Ladies stand – which runs from the pavilion around to the broadcast media centre – with a 1000-seat function room which will provide hospitality during international matches.There are also discussions taking place with Trafford council, Ask developers and Tesco about a regeneration of the area around Old Trafford. A decision on this won’t be made until later this year but Lancashire hope the first set of works will be complete by April 2010. The overall plan also includes installing permanent floodlights.”We knew it would take time to finalise the overall development so we thought we had better show willing to the ECB and our own club members by making the first steps,” chief executive Jim Cumbes told the . “We are talking to the bank about funding. If we realised our dreams of a new or improved hotel, and complete redevelopment of the ground, it would probably cost around £70m.”Lancashire believe redevelopment of the ground is the only way to secure its international future. They lost out on an Ashes Test in 2009 when the match was given to Cardiff and their current hosting agreement with the ECB runs out at the end of the forthcoming season.From August, Lancashire will play its home matches at outgrounds such as Blackpool and Liverpool so that work can start on laying a new outfield with state-of-the-art drainage. Considerable time has been lost at Old Trafford in recent seasons when the weather has been fine because the playing area hasn’t recovered from heavy rain.

A tour de force from Andrew Flintoff should be sufficient to overwhelm an opposition that mustered only 183 in reply to New Zealand’s 331 for 7 © Getty Images

A week ago, England’s indiscretions were the talk of the tournament. Now, however, like Freddie’s Pedalo, they are at the very bottom of a sea of intrigue that has swamped the Caribbean. Bob Woolmer’s murder, and the Chinese whispers that are accompanying it, make the exploits of six pissheads on a tropical island seem ever so slightly irrelevant.And yet, there is nothing irrelevant about Saturday’s showdown at Beausejour. As India prepare to join Pakistan on the World Cup scrapheap, England – the next-most flawed outfit among the big eight teams – prepare to take on the best of the rest, Kenya, in a must-win tussle. England should win against a side that they trounced by nine wickets in their only other one-day encounter, at Canterbury in the 1999 World Cup, but given everything that has happened in this week already, certainty is the one thing that they cannot bank on.As the two teams don their black armbands to observe a minute’s silence in memory of Woolmer, it will be a much-chastened Andrew Flintoff who lines up alongside his team-mates. Named and shamed for his excesses in the aftermath of the New Zealand match, Flintoff was dropped for England’s unconvincing 51-run win over Canada on Sunday and stripped of the vice-captaincy to boot. If ever a week was designed to remind him of life’s priorities, it was this.A tour de force from Flintoff should be sufficient to overwhelm an opposition that mustered only 183 in reply to New Zealand’s 331 for 7 on Tuesday, but Michael Vaughan, England’s captain, was concerned about the impact that Woolmer’s death might have on some of his players, particularly the likes of Ian Bell, who was nurtured as ateenaged batsman during Woolmer’s stint at Warwickshire.”We’ll sit down and talk about what’s happened and we’ll have to get a feel for the mentality of the players,” said Vaughan. “We’re going to have to be strong as players and go out there and produce a performance. I hope the World Cup goes on to be an unbelievable tournament with some great games and the best team wins, but I thinkeveryone will always remember this World Cup for one incident and rightfully so.”England’s selection issues extend beyond the recall of Flintoff. Ravi Bopara, who came in as Flintoff’s replacement, took 2 for 43 and made 29 from 30 balls against Canada, and he could well have done enough to earn a second outing, seeing as Jamie Dalrymple’s form has collapsed since the tournament began. He made just 3 and 2 in the opening twomatches, and has yet to take a wicket with his offbreaks.Ed Joyce has also been under pressure at the top of the order, but is expected for now to hold off the challenge from the man he displaced, Andrew Strauss, while Michael Vaughan’s knee, which caused yet another scare when he tripped in a pot-hole at Gros Islet on Tuesday, is not believed to be sufficiently sore to rule him out of the match.For Kenya, Saturday’s match represents a chance to emulate Ireland’s achievement and secure a place in what is rapidly becoming a very depleted Super Eight. But though those hopes may seem realistic, Ravindu Shah, who top-scored for Kenya when they reached the semi-finals in 2003 and who made a classy 71 against New Zealand earlier in the week, was pessimistic about his country’s hopes of progression.

‘We are positive about our own ability, we have shown in the past we can perform’ – Ravi Shah © AFP

“We always seem to be playing catch-up,” Shah told the BBC on Friday. “After a big tournament we don’t have quality cricket to follow up. Rather than progressing it’s a stop-start situation. In the last four years we really haven’t played any of the Test teams except Bangladesh and Zimbabwe so it’s just nice to be playing against the best in the world.”Internal politics have disrupted Kenya’s administration since that triumphant campaign four years ago, while the conviction for match-fixing of their former captain, Maurice Odumbe, also rocked the country’s preparations for this tournament. But Cricket Kenya took sole charge in April 2005 and Shah believes that the upturn in fortunes could be around the corner. “To be fair, probably a new association needs time to put things in place so we’re waiting to see how they go,” he said. “We are positive about our own ability, we have shown in the past we can perform.”All the more reason why England, with their privileged set-up, will be wary of slipping up against a side with nothing much to lose on Saturday. Defeat in this match, and the team might just have to book an entire fleet of Pedalos to make their way home.England (probable) 1 Ed Joyce, 2 Michael Vaughan (capt), 3 IanBell, 4 Kevin Pietersen, 5 Andrew Flintoff, 6 Paul Collingwood, 7 RaviBopara, 8 Paul Nixon (wk), 9 Liam Plunkett, 10 James Anderson, 11Monty Panesar.Kenya (probable) 1 Maurice Ouma (wk), 2 David Obuya, 3 RaviShah, 4 Steve Tikolo (capt), 5 Tanmay Mishra, 6 Collins Obuya, 7 TomOdoyo, 8 Jimmy Kamande, 9 Lameck Onyango, 10 Peter Ongondo, 11HirenVaraiya

Ian Harvey rejoins Gloucestershire who he helped win six one-day titles between 1999 and 2003 © Getty Images

Ian Harvey, the former Australia allrounder, will return to Gloucestershire on a short-term contract for the 2006 season. Harvey helped Gloucestershire win six one-day titles between 1999 and 2003 before joining Yorkshire for two seasons.”It is great to be coming back to Gloucestershire and l am looking forward to being back in Bristol,” he said. “Even though I will only be playing for a short period of time, I am looking forward to staying involved with the club by helping out with the Academy and the development of the younger players, as well as playing in the warm up to the Twenty20 international.”Gloucestershire’s two main overseas players – the New Zealanders Shane Bond and Hamish Marshall – join the club in May; Harvey will play in the first three Championship matches and three one-dayers. After his contract with Victoria wasn’t renewed, he spent the winter playing for the South African side, Cape Cobras.Mark Alleyne, Gloucestershire’s head coach, is delighted at Harvey’s return to the club. “Ian’s record for us is outstanding and there is no doubt he is one that we all love to watch.”Ian is an explosive batsman that can impact an innings from his first ball, he is a bowler with such variation that he is unpredictable and he is now a cricketer with such maturity that he can make a real difference to Gloucestershire.”