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ScorecardSri Lankan discards Upul Chandana and Russell Arnold steered NCC to the Premier limited-over title with a six-wicket win in the final against Moors SC at the Sinhalese Sports Club. Chandana, the NCC captain, took 5 for 34 with his legspin and Arnold used his experience to guide them to victory from a difficult position at 34 for 3 by scoring an undefeated 67 off 91 balls with seven fours and a six.However NCC’s matchwinner was 21-year-old allrounder Tharaka Kottehewa who won the Man-of-the-Match award. He scalped four of the top five Moors batsmen for 48 runs with his right-arm medium pace and then partnered Arnold in an unbroken 90-run stand off 113 balls. Kottehewa scored 35 off 54 balls with three fours.After being asked to bat, Moors never recovered from losing their first three wickets in three balls for no runs after an opening stand of 40. Their batting failed to gain any momentum and they were all out for 167 in the 42nd over. Hemantha Boteju was the top scorer with 43 off 52 balls.The NCC top order wobbled against Moors’ three-pronged pace attack before Arnold and Kottehewa saw them through.

Greg Maybury, a promising 14-year-old swing bowler, has become the second young Bermuda player to enrol at Oakham School near Peterborough in England, and is to further his cricketing career by attending a University Centre of Cricketing Excellence (UCCE).”I am really looking for to this challenge,” Maybury told . “They [Oakham] have great coaches with good philosophies and excellent facilities. I can only get better in the sport as well as in academics, so there is no better place to do these two than in England.”Like Stefan Kelly, who joined Oakham in 2003 and is now studying for his A-Levels, Maybury’s further education in England is sponsored by the Bank of Bermuda Foundation, and he was given financial support by the government last week who pledged $4,000 to aid his training and development.”I would like to thank the Bank of Bermuda and the Bermuda Cricket Board for giving me this opportunity and I want to tell players behind me that there are great opportunities out there for them and they can succeed and do even better then me,” he said. “There is no pressure from the expectations placed on me. I am looking forward to the challenge and the experience I will gain from this exposure.”I can end up at one of the UCCEs and continue to be a professional cricketer or succeed in the office, whichever I chose.”

The Vanuatu Cricket Association (VCA) has been given an excellent report card for its ICC East Asia Pacific Under-19 World Cup qualifying tournament preparations, following an inspection by the ICC. The tournament will be hosted in Port Vila from July 17 to 24.Competing countries include Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Japan and Vanuatu. The winner will earn direct entry to the 2008 U-19 World Cup which will be held in Malaysia.”Vanuatu Cricket Association’s logistical preparations are already well underway,” said Bron Madigan, the ICC EAP regional project officer. “I have inspected the grounds which will be used for the tournament and am very impressed with the quality of the facilities. Having staged the successful 2005 EAP Cricket Cup tournament, the VCA staff have used their experience to their advantage. They have also been working very hard at getting corporate sponsorship from the local Port Vila community.”The tournament has the backing of the Vanuatu government and local businesses have also been quick to get involved.

Positioning fielders is like manoeuvring chess pieces and there is usually a lot of build-up before any reward. Dinesh Karthik, a substitute for Wasim Jaffer, was the pawn who helped break down Australia’s famed batting order and all he did was move a couple of steps.Harbhajan Singh was involved in a tight tussle with Ricky Ponting, who was fortunate to avoid another cheap dismissal to the offspinner when Mahendra Singh Dhoni missed a stumping, and he was starting to look comfortable when working the ball to fine leg. Anil Kumble had ordered a short leg, short midwicket, midwicket and mid-on to stifle Ponting’s legside play; he responded by shuffling across the stumps and finding space with flicks and dabs.The careful Indian plan was being exposed and Harbhajan needed a change. Karthik, who was under the helmet at short leg, was shifted a couple of metres to his right to cut down Ponting’s safe scoring option. Now just behind square, Karthik’s new spot forced Ponting to play straighter and into India’s trap. It was a switch that worked at the first attempt, although the tourists received some charity from the umpire Mark Benson.Harbhajan’s doosra forced Ponting back and he intended to push down the ground, but the ball hurried on, hitting his edge before the pad. India roared, having achieved the prized dismissal, and Harbhajan ran to point, waiting for his team-mates to approach before bowing like a matador. It was the seventh time in eight Tests he had accounted for Ponting and he deserved the wicket, even if the lbw decision was wrong.Ponting was furious, hanging his bat towards the umpire and swinging it over the boundary rope as he walked off, but he had already benefited from a not-out ruling to a leg glance off Sourav Ganguly on 17, and an over before his dismissal he could have been caught at deep square leg if Rahul Dravid had been more alert. His 55 contained some brilliant drives and a century seemed assured if only he did not have to face Harbhajan.In Harbhajan’s second over of the day he enticed Ponting, facing his fourth delivery from the bowler, to come down the pitch and Harbhajan was horrified to see the ball brush Dhoni’s glove and speed for two byes instead of a legside stumping. Ponting had fallen to his first ball from Harbhajan in Melbourne and was again in trouble against high-quality offspin, just as he was when facing Muttiah Muralitharan in November. For the rest of the over he went back to defend, but during lunch devised a strategy for runs to fine leg.A quick change in the field helped straighten up India as well as Ponting. The essential breakthrough gained in significance when Australia lost their legs with the departure of their captain, dropping 4 for 15 in 30 balls. However, a tiny first innings was avoided by the fine recovery of Andrew Symonds and Brad Hogg, and no amount of tinkering in the field by Kumble could stop the partnership reaching 173. By then even Ponting was feeling upbeat again.

Scorecard

St Vincent and the Grenadines made a meal of the target set by Trinidad & Tobago and handed them a 59-run win and a spot in the semi-finals of the Stanford 20/20.Dwayne Bravo plundered 62 off 34 balls and added 86 with William Perkins (56) to revive the T&T innings following a poor start. T&T had scored 55 for 3 in the first ten overs. By the 15th – with Bravo and Perkins on the offensive – 55 more were added without the loss of any wicket. Bravo hit a six and two fours off Romel Currency’s first over that went for 18 runs. But the T&T batsmen’s urgency to score runs was evident though ill-advised with four of the seven wickets falling to run-outs. Keon Peters was St Vincent’s most successful bowler, removing Perkins and Bravo in successive overs.St Vincent’s chase was checked right from the second ball when opener Miles Bascombe was caught off Mervyn Dillon for a duck. It hit further snags on the way and at the end of the first ten overs St Vincent were 37 for 6.Legspinner Samuel Badree dried up the runs, conceding only nine from his four overs, and took two wickets off successive deliveries. Deighton Butler was St Vincent’s top scorer with an unbeaten 33.On February 15 T&T will play the winner of the match between Barbados and Grenada to fight for a spot in the final.

Somerset’s first innings ended 25 minutes before lunch on the second day when they were bowled out for 488. Top scorer Keith Parsons remained undefeated on 193, an innings which contained 22 boundaries and one 6.Resuming from their overnight 390-6 Somerset’s not out batsmen Parsons and Jason Kerr looked to seize the initiative early and elevate their side to a potentially match-winning first innings total.During the West Indies last tour of the UK in 1995 Kerr scored 80 against them at taunton. Sadly his batting has stagnated somewhat and he yet to better that score. He began confidently on the second morning though, driving Nixon McLean straight for four and then slashing high over the slips for another boundary.Those two shots helped lift the county side beyond 400, the first side to do so this summer and the first time ever that Somerset have done it against the West Indies. With Reon King off the fielding – nursing a bruised instep – and Corey Collymore also mysteriously absent, Roger Harper, the West Indies’ coach, reminded us of a bygone era with some athletic stops and fine throwing from the deep.The tourists had perhaps expected to swiftly wrap up the Somerset innings on the second day but Parsons and Kerr had other ideas as they stretched their stand past 70.Nine years ago South African Jimmy Cook hit 162, the highest individual score by a Somerset batsmen against the West Indies, and he was expunged from the record books as Parsons went past him with a clip to midwicket.With the score on 422 Nixon McLean, in his 23rd over, at last picked up his first wicket. Kerr, having made an accomplished 32, steered a sharply-lifting delivery into the bucket-like hands of Lara at first slip.Adrian Pierson hung around for 20 balls (during which he only made a single) before he nicked one to ‘keeper Phillip, again off McLean. That brought 20 year old Joe Tucker in for his debut innings, which began with a McLean ‘throat ball’. A clumsily-conceded bye enabled him to escape to the relative sanctuary of Nagamootoo’s end, allowing Parsons to smash the quickie down the ground for 4.It was from the bowling of McLean that Tucker eventually got his first run, dabbing him on the on-side for a single. His next scoring shot almost brought his downfall – a dash for the line just beating Adrian Griffith’s direct hit from midwicket. Visibly growing in confidence he then pulled McLean square to bring up the 450.After bowling 12 consecutive from the River End Nixon McLean gave way to Wavell Hinds and the switch brought instant success as Tucker feathered hi first ball to Phillip for an encouraging 14.Last man Jamie Grove hung around to add 17 valuable runs but with Parsons in sight of a double-ton he lost his middle stump to Hinds, who finished with 3-32.

Interest in the Twenty20 Championships were piqued when Gujarat pulled off an upset of sorts, beating Punjab by 11 runs on a still, warm humid evening at the Brabourne Stadium. Powered by a sensible knock from Niraj Patel, who was unlucky not to becoming the second batsman to score a century in this tournament, falling short by seven runs, Gujarat posted a decent score and then bowled well enough to defend it.When they finished on 153 for 8 Gujarat probably had just enough on the board to make a fight of it. Punjab’s bowling attack had done well early on, but both the spinners and the medium-pacers failed to prise out Patel, who concentrated on running hard between the wickets, only going for the big shots when he had the room to free his arms and time the ball.Patel, who has been on the domestic scene for a while now, has always been an industrious sort of player. Small and not especially powerfully built, he has relied on working the ball into the gaps and picking up the ones and twos to keep the score ticking over. He did that especially well on the day, and perhaps the Punjab bowlers did not see him as a major threat because he doesn’t possess the really big shots.He was still good enough to his 12 fours and two sixes in his 65-ball 93. And when he was dismissed, in the first ball of the last over, it was through a bit of bad luck. Mohnish Parmar hit a return catch to Dinesh Mongia, who cleverly realised that Patel was backing up too much. Mongia made to drop the ball and effected the run out at the non-striker’s end. With no player appealing for the catch the umpires had no choice but to rule Patel out.There was a bit of confusion over who was dismissed – as per the laws of the game if a catch is taken cleanly the ball is then dead and there’s strictly no need for an appeal from the bowling side. However, the umpires reckoned that Mongia was not fully in control with of the ball soon after taking the catch, and that he had not held the catch, but in fact effected the run out. At any rate, it only dented Patel’s personal score, not Gujarat, who mustered 153.With a strong batting line-up and more than one international with some Twenty20 experience in the mix, Punjab should have had no difficulty chasing down the target. However, they did not, at any point, really get going, and with the highest partnership of the Punjab innings only amounting to 37, unbroken for the last wicket, there was never a time when they were ahead of the required rate.Parthiv Patel pulled off a terrific stumping off the medium pace of Hitesh Majmudar to account for Yuvraj Singh. Dinesh Mongia, who made 32, was bowled by Ashraf Makda. Harbhajan Singh tonked three sixes, but that only got the sparse crowd excited in vain as Punjab fell well short.

Global news and photograph agencies will carry out their threat to boycott coverage of the Indian Premier League because of the restrictions on the distribution of photographs. Agencies are prohibited from providing photographs of the Twenty20 tournament to cricket-specific websites.The News Media Coalition (NMC), the umbrella body that comprises global news and photograph agencies Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Getty Images, called the restrictions “discriminatory”.”It is discriminatory for the accreditation terms to prohibit international news agencies from being able to serve a specific group of users, such as cricket websites,” the NMC said in a statement. “The interests of the IPL are protected by the fact that its accreditation terms limit news content generated by the news agencies to be used for editorial purposes only. The NMC calls upon the IPL to remove remaining obstacles in the way of full editorial coverage of the tournament.”The Editors Guild of India also called for the withdrawal of “unacceptable conditions” while the Press Trust of India, India’s leading news agency, had said it would cover the event “under protest”.The tournament’s initial media guidelines which, among other constraints, gave the IPL the right to use all pictures taken at its grounds for free and without restrictions, had met with severe criticism from media bodies. The IPL then removed some of the limitations imposed but news agencies, stand-alone cricket websites and news channels were still unhappy. News channels dropped their boycott threat after their two main issues – accreditation and access to match footage – were resolved.

Sri Lankan captain Mahela Jaywardene has said that his side will look to capitalise on Andrew Flintoff’s absence when they take on England in the five-match one-day series starting at the Rangiri Dambulla Stadium on October 1.Flintoff was forced to pull-out of the series due to a troublesome left ankle. He also missed the last bilateral one-day series between the two teams in 2006 where England were walloped 5-0 at home.”Andrew is a top-class allrounder,” Jayawardene told , a Colombo-based daily. “England have a more balanced attack with him in their side because he is a batting allrounder who bowls really well. He is a matchwinner and his absence is obviously an advantage for us.”Jayawardene indicated that the England one-day side was stronger than the one they faced last year. “They have got some really good allrounders coming through,” he said. “We met them in the World Cup and it was a very close game. England will be a good challenge for us. It’s a big season ahead and we need to make sure we start on a very good note.”They also have some quality batsmen who play different roles, some we haven’t seen. We need to understand what those are and try to counter-attack them.”Commenting on the Sri Lankan squad, Jayawardene said it was a tough call for the selectors to pick allrounder Kaushal Lokuarachchi ahead of fellow legspinner Malinga Bandara.”Loku’s been performing really well in one-day internationals. We know what Bandara is capable of doing. Thinking of the future, you never know how long Sanath [Jayasuriya] is going to continue playing. We might have to fit in a spinning allrounder in the middle of our batting line-up. It’s good for us to try a few things right now, see what Loku has to offer and how we can have different combinations going forward.”On Muttiah Muralitharan, Jayawardene doubted whether he would be fit for the series. Muralitharan is recovering from a strained right bicep which he sustained while bowling long spells during his county stint with Lancashire.”It’s good to have Murali around but the reality is that he won’t be around for a long time. He won’t be playing all the matches. We need to give him adequate rest. Even the workload on [Chaminda] Vaas must be limited. When opportunities arise we have to try out new blood. There are a few guys we have earmarked. We will them bring slowly into the system.”Chanaka Welagedera, Mahela Udawatte and Dilruwan Perera are some of the players in the short list.

Peter Chingoka may have eased his way past the potential problems posed by the Zimbabwe Cricket Union’s AGM, where the board’s hardline majority retained control, but according to a report in a local paper, his troubles are far from over.An article in The Zimbabwe Independent claims that while Chingoka retains control, he stands accused of intimidation and manipulation in his attempts to stay in charge.Chingoka blithely dismissed the claims – little else could really be expected from a man who described the last year in Zimbabwe cricket as “exciting and challenging” – and claimed that there was a “third force working to destroy Zimbabwe’s cricket, which has an external element”.Ray Gripper, until recently a leading administrator in the game, accused Chingoka of manipulating the system to safeguard not only his own position but also those of his associates. He added that Chingoka had used intimidation and manipulation to block constitutional amendments from the provinces.”I feel it is now time for this to come out,” Gripper told The Independent. “I have been keeping quiet all along because I feared it could affect the career of my son, Trevor. We, as a group calling itself Concerned Cricket Lovers, had challenged the board on the constitution. However, a man who claimed to have been sent from the president’s office came to us and said that he had come to deliver President Mugabe’s message that Chingoka had to remain in power and that we had to stop our actions. It however later emerged that the person didn’t work for the president’s office but had been hired to perform this duty.”Gripper’s allegation was supported by Wellington Marowa, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Cricket Pioneers Association. “We met this guy and Chingoka was also in attendance. The guy claimed that he was coming from the president’s office but failed to produce his credentials. We later tried to check with the president’s office but it later emerged that he wasn’t a genuine government official.”The guy said to us that he was strictly instructed by President Mugabe that Chingoka had to remain in office. He said that we had to stop our calls for leadership renewal as well as challenges to the constitution.”Chingoka denied the accusations, claiming that the police had investigated the incident and that it was not “worth commenting about now”.Further criticism came from Charley Robertson, the chairman of Mashonaland Country Districts, who said that Chingoka and his board made an amendment to a clause in the ZCU constitution that effectively ensured the existing board could not be challenged. “Clause 18 of the constitution used to give powers to provincial chairmen to change the board,” he told the newspaper. “But it was changed two years ago to give the powers to the board only. Some of us only learnt about the change recently. This means that the current board has entrenched itself such that no one can challenge it. The system has been manipulated to retain the same people on the board but nobody on the current board has first-class cricket experience.”Again, Chingoka dismissed the charges. “There is no manipulating the whole system,” he said. “You have to understand the whole process from provincial structures. The seven provincial structures all asked me to stand. How can you have seven provinces nominating you when there is an intention to pass a vote of no-confidence in you?”But despite Chingoka’s insistence that he has the full backing of the provinces, the article reports that three of them – Mashonaland Country Districts, Midlands and Matebeleland – have discussed tabling a formal challenge to the constitution.