New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori has said that Bangladesh could have shown more resolve in chasing a mammoth target of 336 in the second one-day international in Napier yesterday. Bangladesh failed to build on a solid opening stand of 63, losing three wickets for the addition of only five runs and went on the defensive for the rest of the chase. Bangladesh ended on 181 for 6 before rain forced an early end to the match, handing New Zealand a 102-run victory by the D/L method, and the series 2-0.”There was probably a little bit of frustration about the style of play,” Vettori said. “We thought Bangladesh would chase a little bit harder – whenever you chase 330 [sic] you have to take a few risks. If you don’t, you stall and that’s what happened.”Bangladesh coach Jamie Siddons said the quick loss of wickets, including that of captain Mohammad Ashraful, was rather unfortunate as it threw the team’s plans off balance.”We had a plan in mind and we were going along according to that plan but we lost three wickets for five runs and the plan changed,” Siddons said. “The batsmen really did not get going after that and we probably lost our biggest strokemakers.”Siddons also backed his batsmen to go for their strokes, despite several instances of experienced players throwing away their wickets in the first two matches. He said a lot of improvement was needed on the bowling front, after each of the New Zealand batsmen enjoyed a good hit in the middle, in particular Jacob Oram ,who clubbed 55 off 31 balls in the slog overs.”If the ball is not swinging or spinning, which it really didn’t today apart from the early overs where I think we bowled really well today, then it is a problem,” he said. “The pace is also not there.”Despite the heavy defeat, Siddons was willing to be patient. “These are young players and it’s going to take time. We are going to suffer some pain, there’s no way round it.”The other topic of discussion was Ashraful’s controversial dismissal, after he spooned a low catch to Ross Taylor at cover. Taylor claimed the catch while Ashraful stood his ground, convinced that it was a bump ball and that prompted the umpires to confer. Vettori backed Taylor’s honesty and the umpires’ decision.”You saw Ross’ reaction,” Vettori said. “He left it in the umpires hands and they made the call. From what I’ve heard it was the right call.”The third and final one-day international will be played in Queenstown on December 31.

David Morgan, the president-elect of the ICC, has voiced his concern over Sunil Gavaskar’s recent critical comments on Mike Procter. Gavaskar, the former Indian captain and the chairman of the ICC’s cricket committee, had come down hard on Procter after the decision to hand Harbhajan Singh a three-match ban.”Conflicts of interests pervade our sport. In terms of Gavaskar, within the ICC, there is a concern now that he’s chairman of the cricket committee and a journalist who has expressed some fairly outspoken comments,” Morgan said in Perth, while on a business visit.”But that would be dealt with by David Richardson of the ICC. In all walks of life and business, you have people operating with conflicts of interests. All boards have a policy for conflicts. When people come to the board table they leave their other baggage at the door.”Morgan was happy to have witnessed a “terrific Test”, especially after the tumultuous week that preceded it. He said the Sydney fiasco had offered several lessons, mainly with regard to umpiring and technology.”Once we have fool-proof technology we should trial it,” he said, looking ahead. “We need to see technology improved and find a way to embrace it. I think referral system with improved technology is the way to go, as long as it doesn’t take away the authority of the umpires.”He said the ICC would back Steve Bucknor, but revealed that the decision to replace him was not related to the protest made by the Indian side. “The decision to replace Bucknor was not the result from any protest from one of the participating teams,” he said. “There was a protest but the decision wasn’t a result of the process.”Would this be a precedent for other umpires to be replaced too? “I don’t believe that a precedent is being set. I believe we have acted in the best interest of the game and the best interest of Bucknor. He’s our longest serving umpire and our best umpire. I’m sure he will be back.”Bucknor himself said that he would like to continue for another year, if his contract is extended in March, but no more. “I am scheduled to go to Bangladesh, where they will play South Africa, in another four weeks,” Bucknor, speaking from Jamaica, told CANA. “I am in reasonably good physical condition.”I think I am seeing reasonable well, so I will go on until I think it is necessary. I can’t stop anybody’s opinion. I would not wish to go on beyond another year. If I am asked to go on for another year, I would accept, but not beyond.”Morgan agreed that the volume of cricket was a concern but said that it was up to the member boards to come to an agreement. “The ICC doesn’t drive the volume of cricket, the member boards do,” Morgan said. “Volume of cricket is a concern, sometimes exaggerated.”When England play Australia all that is needed as far as ICC is concerned is a two-match series, twice in six years. If we operated to that from a business point of view, it would be commercially suicidal. So it’s a fact and minds [between the two concerned boards] need to be engaged about it.”

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.

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.

Australian players have dominated the English county scene in recent years, in both their number and with their figures. But the IPL, the new one-overseas player limit, and, ultimately, the rain all had their part to play in limiting Australians’ appearances and their chances to contribute to the opening round of seven first-class matches last week.Chris Rogers, however, made the most of his opportunity to give a nod to the selectors who had dumped him off the contracts list, with a second-innings ton for Derbyshire in their Division Two draw with Gloucestershire in Bristol. He had made an inauspicious 3 in the first dig as the visitors collapsed.His former Western Australian team-mate Marcus North topscored in the home side’s first innings with 87 and did not bat second time out as rain put paid to proceedings after Derbyshire’s Rogers-led rally. Only three wins were registered, the four draws all victims of the weather.Lancashire captain, the English-qualified Stuart Law, made 38 as Lancashire, last year’s runners-up, drew with the champions Surrey at The Oval. His team-mate Brad Hodge made an unbeaten 43 before the rain came. Surrey were without Matt Nicholson, who had a virus.In the second division, Western Australia’s Steve Magoffin took one wicket in each innings as Worcestershire drew with Warwickshire.

The popularity of Twenty20 cricket has spread to Canada, including a chance that Indian Premier League teams could visit the country following “advanced” discussions, Cricket Canada has confirmed to Cricinfo.The board held talks with important IPL figures at the start of the Indian tournament last month but have so far been offered “no promises and no confirmations”.”Atul Ahuja, Cricket Canada’s chief executive, had discussions with leading individuals in respect to possible visits to Canada by IPL teams,” a CC spokesperson said. “In some cases, those discussion were quite advanced, but at the moment there are no promises and no confirmations.”Either way, Twenty20 will be taking centrestage for the next few months in Canadian cricket. The first-ever national Twenty20 championship will be held over the weekend of May 17 and 18 at King City near Toronto, on four turf pitches. There will be 12 matches per day, involving teams from Briitsh Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. The competition is a formal Cricket Canada event in partnership with their new major sponsor Scotiabank.”There is growing commitment to the Twenty20 format across the country,” said the spokesperson, “in part because it fits perfectly with the North American sporting format.” The Toronto and District Cricket Association now has a separate Twenty20 League, as does the Etobicoke and District Cricket League in the suburbs of Toronto. In British Columbia, their mainland competition launched a Twenty20 league in April, with Sri Lanka’s Arjuna Ranatunga as the chief guest.There will also be a non-representative team from Canada at the upcoming MAQ T20 Cricket Festival May 23-25 at the Broward Stadium north of Miami, Florida.The Twenty20 arrangements are aimed at solidifying cricket across Canada. “It’s also geared to preparing Canada for playing more Twenty20 cricket internationally,” the spokesperson said, “with a particular eye on the Associates tournament in Ireland in August and the June 2009 Twenty20 World Championships.”

ScorecardA collapse – six wickets for 21 runs – by Windward Islands in their chase of 217, gave Trinidad and Tobago a 16-run victory in St Vincent.Windwards top order had led them to a comfortable 181 for 3, with No. 3 Andre Fletcher and Liam Sebastien scoring half-centuries. But legspinner Yannik Cariah ripped through the middle order, and the final six batsmen scored 16 runs together, with three batsmen dismissed for 0, to be bowled out for 202 in the final over. Cariah finished with 5 for 44, his best performance in his three-match List A career.T&T’s innings revolved around a solid top-order performance, led by an unbeaten half-century from Jason Mohammed. Besides Justin Guillen, who was dismissed for 2, all other batsmen scored atleast 20. Spinners Sebastien and Shane Shillingford took two wickets each.
ScorecardA balanced and collective effort by Jamaica helped them clinch the contest against Combined Campuses and Colleges by four wickets at Sabina Park, and lead the points table.Having being asked to field, Jamaica kept chipping away at their opponents, as none of the batsmen could anchor the innings. Floyd Reifer and the captain Kyle Corbin got starts, but departed after scoring 32 and 24 respectively. Spinner Nikita Miller was the chief wicket-taker, with three wickets.The home side two wickets early, with opener Jermaine Blackwood and No. 3 Nkrumah Bonner dismissed for a duck. However, Andre McCarthy (45), the captain Tamar Lambert (34) and David Bernard (28) helped them reach the target in the 46th over.

Sunil Narine, the West Indies offspinner, has been reported for bowling with a suspect action during the third ODI against Sri Lanka in Pallekele.Narine finished with figures of 0 for 24 in the Pallekele ODI, which Sri Lanka won by 19 runs based on the Duckworth-Lewis method. The match officials’ report, handed to the West Indies team management after the game, cited concerns about the legality of Narine’s deliveries.Narine will need to undergo testing on his action within 14 days, and will be permitted to continue bowling until the results of his testing are known.This is the first time Narine has been reported in an international game, though he has undergone scrutiny of his action during the IPL and the Champions League T20. He was reported twice in two matches during the 2014 edition of the CLT20, forcing him to miss Kolkata Knight Riders’ final against Chennai Super Kings.Though he was free to bowl in international cricket, West Indies withdrew Narine from their tour of India to allow him “the opportunity to have his action assessed and plan his return to cricket”. West Indies left him out of all their subsequent international assignments until they picked him for the 2015 World Cup. Though he had remodeled his action in the interim, Narine pulled out of the tournament, saying the return would be “a little too much too soon”.Narine endured further trouble with his action during the 2015 IPL – he was first cleared to bowl in the tournament, reported and sent for a re-test, banned from bowling his offbreaks, and then cleared again, with a “final warning”.The Sri Lanka tour was Narine’s first international tournament since August 2014. He picked up four wickets at an average of 18.00 in the three ODIs, while conceding 3.34 runs per over.

Former India allrounder Manoj Prabhakar has been named Afghanistan’s bowling coach until the end of the World T20 in India next year. Prabhakar will join Inzamam-ul-Haq, Afghanistan’s head coach, in the support staff.”I am glad I can guide the Afghan team. They have immense talent and I am sure, in the years to come, the Afghanistan team would emerge as a force to reckon with in all forms of the game,” Prabhakar told . “They have shown a healthy keenness to learn the finer points of the game.”Prabhakar’s most recent coaching stint was with the Delhi state side, where he was sacked two days before the start of the 2011-12 Ranji Trophy season for making critical comments about the players and selectors.Prabhakar’s appointment comes in the wake of recent strong ties between the BCCI and the Afghanistan Cricket Board. The two boards recently signed an MoU with the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority to use the Shahid Vijay Singh Pathik Sports Complex as their home ground.Afghanistan have shown a tremendous rise in their performances in the last six months. They won five of the seven completed matches they played in the World T20 Qualifier in Ireland in July to qualify for the main event, topped it by clinching a historic 3-2 ODI series win against Zimbabwe, whitewashed Zimbabwe 2-0 in the T20s, and recently won both T20Is against Oman in Abu Dhabi.Afghanistan are slotted with Scotland, Hong Kong and Zimbabwe in Group B of the World T20 and only one of the four teams will make it to Group 1 to join England, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies for the Super 10 stage.

Leicestershire have been granted planning permission to install floodlights at Grace Road, a development that has been viewed as vital to the club’s survival.Floodlit evening T20 matches have become increasingly important to driving gate revenue in the domestic game and Wasim Khan, Leicestershire’s chief executive, said the decision would help the club “retain and grow our audiences”. Khan had previously addressed residents’ concerns about light pollution by warning that, without floodlights, “we might not be here in five years’ time”.The path has now been cleared, with Leicester City Council unanimously approving the proposals. Leicestershire will begin work immediately and hope to have the floodlights in place in time for their opening NatWest Blast game in May.”It is fantastic news for Leicestershire County Cricket Club that planning permission was granted at the meeting,” Khan said. “Floodlights are an important aspect of supporting our sustainability strategy and we look forward to improving the match-day experience for our supporters.”We saw an average 48% increase in attendances at Grace Road for NatWest T20 Blast matches in 2015. The installation of floodlights will help us to both retain and grow our audiences. We can start our NatWest T20 Blast games later in the evening which will give more people the opportunity to attend after work.”Leicestershire are currently one of four counties without permanent floodlights. Gloucestershire have been granted planning permission, while Somerset are expected to draw up plans as part of their ground redevelopment, which would leave Worcestershire as the only county unable to play evening games.