Three youth sides from Zimbabwe have travelled to South Africa for their annual end-of-year tour. The three age groups – Under-14, Under-16 and Under-19s – will play four 50-over matches and two Twenty20 encounters against teams from the Northerns and Gauteng.Prior to their visit the three sides were given a send-off at Harare and presented with equipment and kit for their tour, sponsored by the wholesaler Makro.Boyd Rouse and Peter Moor, both of Saint John’s College in Harare, will captain the Under-14 and Under-16 teams respectively. Victor Chaitezvi, from Prince Edward School and Old Hararians Sports Club, captains the Under-19s.

Defending Carib Beer Series champions Trinidad and Tobago will be the team to beat when the 2007 regional cricket series bowls off on January 4.Carib chief executive officer Andrew Sabga, speaking at the launch of the tournament at Crowne Plaza Hotel on Wrightson Road, Port of Spain, congratulated Trinidad and Tobago on achieving the double in 2006, but warned the champions that the other countries will come out stronger in 2007 as they face-off for the championship.Sabga was excited to be part of what he calls “the premier event of the Caribbean”. He said: “The Carib Beer Series, which dates back to the 1960s, has produced some of the greatest cricketers the world has ever seen, from legendary Sir Garry Sobers to the Prince of Port of Spain, Brian Lara.”The prestigious event, according to Sabga, “Allows young cricketers to showcase their talents regionally, while demonstrating to the world that the West Indies still has an abundance of talent that simply needs nurturing.”Through their five years of sponsorship of the regional tournament, Carib have invested more than US$3 million and Sabga stated the rewards have been most visible in the past year. “Coming through the ranks of the Carib Beer Series, Dinesh Ramdhin, Carlton Bough, Renako Morton, Lendl Simmons and Jerome Taylor have been selected to the West Indies team and it rests on them now to take West Indies cricket back to the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s.”The Carib Beer Series represents the climax of the cricketing calendar and all efforts throughout the year in each of the participating territories are geared towards preparing the best team for the regional tournament.According to Colin Murray, Sponsorship and Events manager of Carib Brewery, “2007 is a critical year for the region as a whole as it will be hosting the Cricket World Cup for the first time. The Carib Beer Series now takes on an additional role-the preparation of the regional team for the World Cup. “The Carib Beer Series is a stepping-stone in the process of rebuilding West Indies cricket,” Murray declared.Six teams will be participating in the tournament: defending champions Trinidad and Tobago, runners-up Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana, the Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands. The competition will be played on a round-robin basis, with each team playing each other once in a four-day match. The two teams with the most points will advance to the final of the Carib Beer Series, a five-day match, which will be played at Guaracara Park, Pointe-a-Pierre.

Greg Blewett remains hopeful he can play first-class cricket for two more years despite several states indicating they have no interest in signing him up. Blewett, 35, who is contracted to South Australia until the end of 2007-08, was dropped from the side due to poor form in his three one-day matches this season having lost his place in the Pura Cup team in 2005-06.Blewett was disappointed not to be recalled after injuries hit the South Australia top order and kept Darren Lehmann, the captain, and Cameron Borgas, the No. 3, out of action. He said South Australia’s agreement to pay out the remainder of his $270,000 three-year deal should make him an attractive option to the other states.”I would quite like to play on as I wouldn’t like to finish on these sort of terms,” he told Adelaide’s newspaper. “If I sign on for someone else, I will get paid whatever I can negotiate for that state which I think will help me in terms of my bargaining power. I think I’m in a pretty strong position.”But Blewett, who wants to play in the eastern states, said it was unlikely he could step into the shoes of the newly-retired Michael Bevan at Tasmania. “I am not sure I would fit into a team like Tassie which has gone down a development path,” Blewett said.The paper reported that Victoria and Queensland were not interested in adding Blewett to their squads, leaving New South Wales as his main option. Graham Dixon, the Queensland Cricket chief executive, said his state preferred to use local players. “We haven’t spoken to Greg and don’t intend to at this stage. Without closing the door he isn’t part of the plans,” Dixon said.Cricket Victoria said Blewett had been considered but they were looking instead at younger batsmen. South Australia, who are on the bottom of the Pura Cup and FR Cup tables, replaced Lehmann and Borgas in the limited-overs team with newer players such as Ken Skewes and Ben Cameron.

Piyush Chawla tied Malaysia in knots as India eased to a seven-wicket win in their tri-series match at Kinrara Oval. He claimed 5 for 17 as the hosts were crushed for 101 before Saurabh Tiwari guided the chase.Malaysia had made deceptively comfortable start as Shafiq Sharif and Faris Almas-Lee added 46 for the first wicket. However, once Swapnil Singh provided the first breakthrough the batting order resembled a pack of cards.Chawla, who has a Test cap against England to his name, was too much for the inexperienced line-up although some poor shot selection didn’t help. All 10 wickets fell for 54 and only extras joined the openers with double figures.India didn’t knock off the runs without a few blips as they fell to 63 for 3. Aminuddin Ramly took two wickets but the match was finished in grand manner by Tiwari who dispatched consecutive sixes in the 19th over.

Ireland’s Niall O’Brien wants to follow his countryman Ed Joyce in playing for England. O’Brien was Ireland’s hero in their World Cup victory against Pakistan on Saturday, striking 72.”I want to play cricket at the highest level and obviously that’s Test match cricket,” he told Reuters news agency. “Whether that’s for Ireland or England I’m not really sure,” he began, with some loyalty, before adding: “realistically, it’s with England.”O’Brien, a wicketkeeper/batsman, spent four years at Kent but lost his place there when Geraint Jones was demoted from the England set-up. Northamptonshire soon snapped him up and he is set to make his debut for them later on this year.But he is grateful for his time at Kent. “It proved to be a great stepping stone and I want to push on with Northants now.”In the meantime, he is focused on taking Ireland as far as they can in the World Cup, and with a win and a tie under their belts already, their ambitions to make the next stage are looking realistic: “Hopefully we’ll be in the Super Eights and I will be able to do my pre-season out here in the sun rather than the cold and rain in Northampton.”

Scorecard
West Zone continued their winning streak in the Deodhar Trophy, beating South Zone by 192 runs after Shrikant Mundhe and Abhishek Nayar took four wickets each and removed any chance of South Zone chasing a mammoth 308.The result of the tournament had been decided in West’s favour – after a gap of 16 years – two games ago following South Zone’s 30-run win over North. South Zone, meanwhile, are at the bottom of the league table with three points.Sent in to open, Yusuf Pathan scored his maiden century in domestic cricket – an 80-ball 112 – and set up the West Zone total. In his 104-run partnership with Parthiv Patel for the first wicket, Pathan scored 68 while Patel made 36. Pathan then added another 86 runs with Cheteshwar Pujara, who himself made 69 off 80 balls. Venugopal Rao, the South Zone offbreak bowler, took three wickets though he was smashed for 61 runs in his eight overs. B Akhil and Vinay Kumar also had expensive spells for their two wickets each.South Zone never got off to a start that would have set up the chase. Mundhe took four top-order wickets, including that of VVS Laxman (11), for 34 runs. South Zone had collapsed to 6 for 97 inside 24 overs after which Nayar polished off the tail for another 19 runs. Rao was South Zone’s top scorer with 26.

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 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

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.

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.

The Indian squads for the tours of Ireland and England will be selected on June 12 in Delhi. The selected players will have to attend a camp in Bangalore from June 13 to June 16.”The selection committee will meet in Delhi at 5.30 pm on June 12 after the meeting of the working committee to choose the team for England and Ireland tour,” Niranjan Shah, BCCI secretary, told PTI. “The selected players would be asked to assemble in Bangalore by the afternoon of June 13 for the cricket camp which will run till June 16.”The camp will follow a fitness-specific camp for batsmen which will be held at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore from June 9-12.India are scheduled to play a three-ODI series against South Africa in Ireland in July before heading to England for three Tests and seven one-day internationals.

England 173 for 5 (Shah 55) beat West Indies 169 for 7 (Gayle 61, Samuels 42) by five wickets
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Owais Shah reignited his England one-day career with a classy unbeaten 55, bringing up his half-century from just 30 deliveries, as England squared the two-match Twenty20 series with a hard-earned five-wicket victory at The Oval. It was a consummate performance from England, who learned their lessons well after a heavy beating in the first match, and kept their nerve – both with the ball as Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels teed off, and later with the bat after slumping to 68 for 4 in the ninth over.West Indies won the toss and chose to bat first on the same strip of turf on which they had scythed an imposing 208 for 7 in Thursday’s opening fixture. They produced another power-packed performance in a form of the game they have taken to like ducks on the square at New Road, but crucially, this innings took a little bit longer to reach top speed, then petered out in the final overs as the momentum returned to England’s bowlers.Needing 170 for victory, England began their reply briskly. Alastair Cook slotted the last two balls of Dwayne Smith’s first over through the covers for four, while Matt Prior at the other end took the long handle to Ravi Rampaul, almost decapitating the square-leg umpire, Ian Gould, with the second of his two fours in three balls. But the introduction of Daren Powell in the third over changed the tempo of the innings. Touching 90mph with each delivery, he found the edge of Cook’s bat before plucking out his off stump in arguably his most hostile over of the tour.Prior kept on swinging, making room against Rampaul to clobber him twice through the covers. But Rampaul kept his nerve and his line, and when Prior sized up his third boundary of the over, he lost his leg stump to a wild heave. Kevin Pietersen emerged to a massive ovation from a merry crowd, but his fellow South African import, Jonathan Trott, was soon heading off in the other direction, looping a gloved hook off Rampaul into Ramdin’s hands behind the stumps.England brought up their fifty at the end of the sixth over, as Paul Collingwood thumped Ramdin through midwicket, and on that cue Pietersen decided to up the ante. He pulled Powell twice through the leg-side for four, but neither shot was quite timed to perfection – a sign perhaps that the pitch wasn’t quite as true as it had been on Thursday. Either way, after trading frustrated singles for an over-and-a-half, Pietersen chipped a tame return catch to a delighted Darren Sammy, who danced a jig of delight as West Indies resumed the upper hand.That, however, brought Shah to the crease, and he was gifted a first-ball boundary when Austin Richards fumbled horribly at third man. At the other end, Collingwood had a hairy couple of balls when he was first caught-behind off a no-ball beamer, then prodded uncertainly in the air and away through the covers, but with a run-rate still at a manageable nine an over, England were still content to deal in ones and twos.After four overs of such measured tactics, Collingwood signalled the charge by launching Samuels over long-on for six, but with his dander up, he was beaten by a quicker delivery next ball, and Ramdin – who had been so convinced of a caught-behind in the previous over he forgot to pull off the stumping – this time made no mistake in whipping the bails off. It looked like being a terminal blow as Shah and Mascarenhas struggled to pick up their tempo as Powell came back to complete a fine spell.Powell’s last ball, however, was loose and Mascarenhas latched onto it for a welcome boundary, and suddenly England were up and running again. Shah creamed Samuels for 16 in an over, including three fours of varying subtlety, and suddenly the requirement had plummeted to a manageable 40 from 25. That became 24 from 18 as Smith lost his line horribly, allowing Shah to belt a full-toss through the covers and tickle a leg-stump delivery off the pads in an over that culminated in five costly wides down the leg side.Shah and Mascarenhas never looked back after that. Another pulled four brought the requirement down to nearly a run a ball, and the pair were able to trade in singles, even as Gayle brought his ultra-slow spin into play for a nervy final over. However, a missed swipe down the leg-side gave England victory with two balls to spare.It was a harsh way to finish for Gayle, who had led from the front in his most forceful innings of the tour. Unfortunately he lacked the support of Devon Smith and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, both of whom had been rested after their heroics on Thursday. Instead Gayle had blazed to 33 from 17 balls before his new partner Simmons had managed to squeeze his first run, and Richards was equally cagey before being pinned lbw by Stuart Broad for 10 – via a suspected inside edge.From that moment on, however, West Indies were back to their unfettered best. Samuels was the next in line, and he picked up in the vein he left off on Thursday night, clubbing his first delivery from Broad clean into the pavilion, before launching Michael Yardy onto the roof of the press box.Gayle by this time had reached his half-century from 29 deliveries – again with a six, this time off a Dimitri Mascarenhas slower ball – but it was the lack of pace that eventually made the breakthrough. Collingwood brought himself into the attack and struck with his fourth delivery, as Gayle heaved manically and Broad at short third man trotted in to take a steepling top-edge.Samuels was utterly unfazed by the demise of his skipper, back-cutting Collingwood’s next ball for four, before launching Mascarenhas off the back foot for the third six of his innings. But he too succumbed to the slower ball, mowing a slog-sweep into the hands of a back-pedalling Mascarenhas just inside the long-on rope. After that, West Indies’ momentum vanished, with just 31 runs coming from the last five overs of the innings. It ultimately proved to be the difference between the sides.