Bermuda 231 for 7 (Tucker 59*, Edness 41) beat Uganda 224 for 9 (Kishore 84*, Ruyange 50, Hurdle 4-40) by seven runs
ScorecardBermuda won their opening warm-up match against Uganda in Nairobi, but they were taken to the wire, eventually squeezing a seven-run victory.Bermuda, whose form in the last year has been desperately poor, need good results in Kenya and the UAE, and they got off to a good start after winning the toss, Stephen Outerbridge and Jekon Edness putting on 83 for the first wicket. But then the innings lost its way as five wickets fell for 53 runs, Davies Arinaitwe and Frank Nsubuga picking up two each. Nsubuga’s offspin was particularly effective on a slow pitch, his ten overs producing excellent figures of 2 for 24.Janeiro Tucker led a middle-order revival, smacking an unbeaten 59, including five sixes, as Bermuda recovered to 231 for 7.Kevin Hurdle struck twice in his opening overs to reduce Uganda to 7 for 2, and although they eased to 85 for 4, the game seemed beyond them. Nandi Kishore had other ideas, and with Daniel Ruyange he boosted the score to 170 before Dwayne Leverock broke the stand. The reintroduction of Hurdle was too much for the lower middle-order, and although Kishore kept blazing, the ask was just too much for Uganda.Bermuda will be relieved to have avoided an embarrassing slip-up while Uganda will take great heart from an impressive performance. The two sides meet again on Tuesday (October 23).

Kent’s redevelopment of the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury could be delayed by legal action brought by a member who claims the club has not provided any financial details of the sale of land that is being used to finance the project.A report in the Times quotes Ben Moorhead, a local lawyer who successfully opposed other development work in the area. “If you were selling your house, would you expect to exchange contracts without being informed of the price?” he said. “I hope to achieve the appropriate details, followed by a proper consideration of the matter by members at a fresh special general meeting. The resolution passed at the meeting in September is invalid and it follows that the general committee is not authorised to dispose of the club’s land.”Moorhead opposes the construction of a hotel next to the pitch but insists his move is purely on grounds of corporate governance.The county maintain they can dispose of land as they see fit and that members were provided with sufficient information for them to take an informed decision.

Ricky Ponting has dismissed the fracas surrounding Shaun Tait’s action as “absolute rubbish” and called New Zealand’s insinuations “a bit disappointing”. But he admitted the situation motivated Australia to victory in the Chappell-Hadlee Series opener in Adelaide on Friday.”It seems to be their opinion,” Ponting said. “To air it publicly is a bit disappointing I suppose, but what can you do? It probably just makes us a bit hungrier to go out there and play some good cricket against them.”He said he can’t see anything wrong in Tait’s action, which hasn’t been questioned before, and wasn’t reported to the match referee after the Twenty20 match on Tuesday. “He’s got my full support, it all looks pretty good to me,” Ponting said. “I think everyone handled it well and Shaun especially. When things like that come up that are absolute rubbish you dismiss them.”Ponting himself contributed a chanceless century in the seven-wicket win on Friday, while Tait took three wickets, including a crucial double-strike which punctured New Zealand’s momentum and left them 30 runs short of a par score.Daniel Vettori clarified his position after saying on Thursday, “You ask Braces [coach John Bracewell]” that one”, when asked if he had an issue with Tait’s action. “I never meant to insinuate that he was a chucker,” Vettori said after the match. “There is a process in place if you feel a bowler has an illegal action and obviously we haven’t gone through that process.”Although New Zealand came up short on a flat track, Brendon McCullum’s 96 to push them past 250 gave them a psychological boost. “It certainly helps,” Vettori said. “We were obviously coming in off question marks about whether we could play pace or not. I’d like to think we answered that.”There are few question marks surrounding Australia’s continued dominance and they are now one step closer to regaining the trophy from New Zealand’s clutches. The visitors have to win on Sunday in Sydney to stay in the series.

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.

Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) enter this season’s Carib Beer Series as defending champions, but coach Kelvin Williams does not feel the pressure of expectations.”I just want to continue the success of the team,” he said, noting that there will be big gaps to fill in the squad.T&T will be without the services of Daren Ganga, Dwayne Bravo and Denesh Ramdin, all on tour with the West Indies in South Africa, and Williams believes that “We will have to use what we have.”Yes we will be missing these guys but the players coming in to replace them have to realise the role they have to play,” said Williams, who is filling in for David Williams, appointed West Indies’ assistant coach.”Everyone plays important roles in the squad and I think the senior guys will have to encourage the younger ones to perform and bring their game to the level required.”Bad weather has hampered T&T’s preparations for their first match against Guyana on January 4 Williams thinks, “because of the nature of training indoors” the guys have not adjusted well to outdoor conditions.”T&T is in an enviable position with the talent we have. It is up to them to continue to play the way they normally play as a team together, with pride and passion. If they continue to play like that then we will be able to successfully defend our championship.”A core of players have been training for the last eight weeks or so and I don’t think it will be a problem for the final squad to gel together.”

Mohammad Yousuf’s lawyer, Tafuzzal Rizvi, has moved an application against the Indian Cricket League (ICL), saying his client had returned the money paid to him before backing out of a contract and signing with the officially-sanctioned Indian Premier League (IPL).In the application, Rizvi, who represented Yousuf at an arbitration hearing in Mumbai on January 24, insisted that there was “no contract” with the ICL as the money was “received back by the ICL without any objection”.Based on the application, the arbitrator has issued notices to the ICL, asking their legal team to appear before him on February 20 to provide their response.Meanwhile, a PCB media release, while elaborating on the details of this case, says Yousuf’s name will be included in the IPL bidding process on February 8, which is open to its eight city-based franchises.

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.

Chris Read, the Nottinghamshire wicketkeeper, has said he will take the ECB to court if his involvement in the Indian Cricket League (ICL) proves to bring an end to his England career.Read last played for England in the fifth Test against Australia, in Sydney, last January before being shunted out by Paul Nixon, Matt Prior and now Tim Ambrose. He took part in the inaugural ICL event last December but since then the ECB have started to take a hard line against players who appear in the ICL.Read’s county future isn’t in doubt but he would face a one-year ban if he appeared in further ICL tournaments. The ECB have said there won’t be retrospective action against players who have taken part in the ICL, so Read’s England chances appear to back in his hands despite earlier suggestions that selectors would take into account the league.”I don’t feel I am banned from international cricket,” Read told the latest edition of . “I haven’t spoken to anyone at the ECB for the best part of 13 months so I am not sure. I made a commitment to play in the ICL before any statement was made by the ECB.”And he admits that the legal path would be one to consider if his international hopes have been ended by the ICL. “That would be the natural course to take. I signed my ICL contract in good faith before the ECB had an official policy.”Read believes that as an out-of-contract county player he was free to choose how to fill his winter. Nottinghamshire do not provide 12-month deals for their players so he was a free agent at the time of the ICL last November.”The ICL was employment for me in the winter. I am a cricketer so I went out to play cricket, it looked competitive and it looked fun and that’s why I signed up,” he added.”I would like to play more cricket for the ICL but it is hard to commit because I still have England aspirations. If I am banned from playing international cricket, or unofficially banned, then I would be very disappointed and find that pretty harsh. By performing well with Nottinghamshire I hope I can still be in the frame.”

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.

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.”