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England Women produced another encouraging result in their preparations for the CricInfo Women’s World Cup as they beat South Africa by 9 wickets in a rain-affected match at Trent Bridge.The rain rules, bizarrely avoiding the reliable yet incomprehensible Duckworth Lewis system, played straight into England’s hands. Captain Clare Connor remarked as such as she won the toss and elected to bowl. Man of the Match Lucy Pearson produced a devastating opening spell from which the South Africans struggled to recover.England’s team spirit and fielding was electrifying throughout. Arran Thompson’s catch in the first over set the standard for all that was to follow. Every appeal was uniformly supported in the field, and every wicket greeted with genuine excitement. None more so that the run out of Cindy Eksteen just as South Africa were heading confidently towards a good total, with Jane Cassar gathering a wild throw as she fell backwards, rapidly recovering to whip off the bails.The South African batsmen were positive throughout, despite losing regular wickets. The sixth wicket partnership of 74 between Eksteen and Davies ensured a total that would have been competitive without the intervention of the now familiar Trent Bridge rain.Initially chasing 151 in 35 overs, Claire Taylor and Charlotte Edwards formed a contrasting blend of patience and panache. Edwards was quickly into her stride, timing a number of shots exquisitely, while Taylor played a solid supporting role.Then came the rain, and a dramatic change in the match situation. The target off the remaining seven overs was reduced to just 38 runs, but after one eventful over, decisive hitting and poor fielding put England well on top. Taylor was dropped three times as she attempted to set the pace, including an horrific drop at mid-on by Lewis. From then on, runs came easily, quick singles and emphatic boundaries saw England cruise to a comfortable victory.Edwards was dismissed just before the winning hit, and it fell to Barbara Daniels to deny Taylor a well-deserved 50 as she cut the winning boundary.England Women now require just one more win to ensure a series victory, and a valuable morale boost prior to the CricInfo Women’s World Cup in New Zealand.

Well the time has come for us to get stuck into our winter programme. On Thursday, in Bulawayo we start off our two Test Match Series against India, who on paper, and on recent performance look a very formidable unit.I read through their team sheet the other day, and the thought struck me that on their day, every member of their team could be a match winner. Not many other teams in the world could boast such strength and depth.India’s batting has always been its strength, and with players likeTendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, and Ganguly it is no surprise why. But with Srinath fit again, Zaheer Khan, Agarkar and of course Harbhajan Singh bowling for them, the balance of their side has never looked better. With John Wright at the helm they have gone from strength to strength. I feel it is going to take a lot of good gutsy cricket from us to get one over the Indians.Having said all of this, though, there still hangs over their heads the fact that their away record is nothing short of “a few unprintable four letter words”.They have been described as Tigers at home and Lambs abroad, and I am sure that they will be going all out to try and change this particular title as well as their record.This however could work in our favour, as they get to a stage where they start pushing too hard to achieve results, we will be there, hopefully, to cash in on any errors and mistakes they may make.It promises to be a fascinating contest, something I can’t wait to start and get my teeth into. I think people will enjoy the battle between the two teams no more so than the individual duels we are going to witness. Heath Streak against Sachin Tendulkar, and Andrew Flower against Harbhajan Singh promises to be a great contest between great players – Let the action begin!

A positive mentality helped Malcolm Waller play freely in the first T20I against Bangladesh. Waller smashed a 20-ball fifty, the fastest by a Zimbabwean in international cricket, during his 68 off 31 balls; it was also his first fifty-plus score in international cricket after more than two years, the last being a 70 against Pakistan in a Test in Harare.”I just tried to go out there, and back my game, free myself up,” Waller said. “I was in a similar situations in the one-day games [where] I sort of got a bit knuckled down and I felt the pressure. Today I told myself that we lost four wickets, back your game and play your shots.”Waller set to work, peppering the straight boundaries with sixes and went on to strike six of them, to add to the four fours in his 31-ball 68. His method was as simple as watching the ball closely and depositing it to his favoured zones. “I just tried to watch the ball,” Waller said. “I don’t just look at one area. I see where the ball is, and I got a couple of areas where I like to hit.

‘I thought of Jubair as my main bowler’ – Mashrafe

Mashrafe Mortaza played down the pressure of playing Jubair Hossain, which was the legspinner’s first-ever T20 at any level. “We didn’t pick him in the 14-man squad thinking that he never played T20s,” Mashrafe said. “I thought of him as my main bowler, and not someone who would put me under pressure. I wanted him to bowl more than one over however he does. We had options but Jubair was part of my five-man bowling attack.”
Malcolm Waller, who took 17 runs off Jubair’s first over, said he targeted the bowler: “It was his first game in the series so it was very important to put him under pressure. I felt he was the right bowler to target at that time.”

“If it happens to land there, I back myself to hit them. I like to go both offside and when they come a lot straighter, I try to open up the legside.”Waller also said that the Zimbabwe batsmen were more positive but eventually their 131 wasn’t enough to challenge a buoyant Bangladesh side, fresh from the 3-0 ODI series win. “I think the guys had nothing to lose in their thinking today,” Waller said. They went out there really positively, we put the one-day series behind us and we focused on a new game today.”I think the total wasn’t big enough,” he said. “We had to go out there and get a couple of wickets early. We managed to get them. They were four down and we needed to just build on that.”Waller also said that his job was to bat till the end, instead of targeting a hundred, after Craig Ervine and Luke Jongwe had got out. When Waller was finally dismissed in the 18th over, the Mirpur crowd found its voice again, an indication of the impact of Waller’s record fifty.

The former Gloucestershire wicketkeeper, international umpire and professional footballer Barrie Meyer has died in Durban aged 83.Meyer stood in 26 Tests and 23 ODIs, including the 1979 and 1983 World Cup finals, following a career where he played 406 first-class matches and 44 List A games. He stood in the famous 1981 Ashes Test at Headingley where Ian Botham and Bob Willis turned the match on its head.He was an all-round sportsman having played football for Bristol Rovers, Plymouth, Newport County and Bristol City. For Bristol Rovers he scored 60 goals in 139 league matches and scored against Manchester United in the 4-0 FA Cup victory in 1951.Meyer umpired his first international in 1977, an ODI against Australia at Old Trafford, and his final match was also against Australia, a Test at The Oval, in 1993.

“I haven’t seen too many of those games,” was Kevin Shine’s reaction to Somerset’s 10-over victory over Surrey in the Norwich Union National League on Sunday at the Oval.”It was an excellent all round performance, and we were very happy to come away with four points. All the bowlers performed well, particularly Ian Jones who came in at the last minute to replace Richard Johnson who went down Sunday morning with food poisoning. Rob Turner was also missing with food poisoning and Mike Burns had to keep wicket.”When it came to the batting he said: “there was some pretty brutal hitting from Ian Blackwell who made an unbeaten 33 to help us home with more than three overs to spare.”

Australia’s players made a point of training vocally and boisterously at Trent Bridge on Monday. The fielding-oriented session was characterised by plenty of laughter and competitive drills, as banter between team-mates filled the air that on Thursday will reverberate with the noise of an English crowd expecting its team to seal the Ashes series.Brad Haddin was as involved and vocal as anyone at training, and there was a sense that after a heavy loss in Birmingham, and the conjecture surrounding his demotion behind Peter Nevill, the team wished to give the appearance of unity. There can be little doubt that the players are united, and remain confident of their Ashes chances despite the weight of history against them.But there is a difference between players demonstrating harmony and none raising questions about a decision made by their coach Darren Lehmann and selection chairman Rod Marsh. This is a group mature enough to appreciate that personal opinions on Haddin’s fate cannot be allowed to derail the tour, yet there is undoubted angst about the sequence in which events took place.For that reason, Lehmann was well within his rights to state, as he did in an interview with the Adelaide radio station 5AA, that talk the team was divided over the Haddin decision was “rubbish” and “crap”. But careful questioning of whether everyone agreed with the way the matter was resolved will doubtless result in different answers, as it has been through the words of Chris Rogers and Mitchell Johnson.Rogers conveyed a sense of unease with his terse non-answer in response to a question about the Haddin decision during the Edgbaston Test, and Johnson added his perspective to it with similarly careful steps that nonetheless indicated there is more under the surface.”It’s a difficult one and it’s a hard one to really answer,” Johnson said. “Yeah look, he’s a senior player of the team and it’s good to have those senior players around in an Ashes tour. He hasn’t gone home or anything like that, so it’s good to have him around the team still and being himself. To lose someone like Hadds and I guess in the situation it was, it’s very difficult for everyone. More so for him. I’ll probably just leave it at that.”In an exercise where all players took aim at a single stump in the middle of the field, Nevill enjoyed plenty of direct hits, in keeping with his strong displays in the two Tests for which he has so far replaced Haddin. There is no ill will among players towards Nevill, who in his very modesty and grace has endeared himself to team-mates used to the occasional moment’s grandstanding by one another.Nonetheless, it is a rather different thing to walk onto a Test ground with Nevill than it was to be accompanied by Haddin, who personified the brio and boldness of Australian cricket at its best even when his own batting form had started to trail off. His battles to regain his place in the team and then keep it, while spending time at the side of his ill daughter Mia, only added to the team’s admiration.For his part, Haddin is at peace with the decision, and committed to ensuring Australia have the best chance of keeping possession of the urn over the next two Tests. He has not spoken publicly about it, and will be at long odds to do so until at least the outcome of the series is decided. Even then, he is more likely to keep his counsel than speak out. He is the gloveman as team-builder, even when held in reserve.”The keeper is someone who drives the chatter and the vibe out in the middle, the energy out there,” Johnson said. “That’s what I’ve always found in a keeper, playing Shield cricket or even club cricket – back that far. The keeper is generally the chirpiest. He gives the energy to the team.”Nev has done a great job for us and he is just finding himself. It just happens to be on an Ashes tour. I guess in a difficult circumstance with how it all happened. But he’s making the most of it and everyone is supporting him 100% and backing him all the way.”Supporting one another is something the Australians were doing as they trained at Trent Bridge. That is not to say they simply exchanged empty homilies. Plenty of rowdy and amusing words were exchanged, the rat-a-tat-tat of call and response giving the impression of 17 scallywags on a summer jaunt rather than a squad of cricketers confronting arguably the most important three weeks of their careers. Johnson summed up the mood.”There’s been times in my career when I’ve felt that sort of, I guess that pressure a lot more and the guys haven’t been as happy at times,” he said. “But this group have been outstanding. We’ve had a couple of losses along the way in the last 12-18 months, but we’ve played good cricket.”Everyone’s really happy and get along really well. All the guys want to learn, they want to get better. Have a look at the way we train, we always train really well and always look to better ourselves. Even after a loss like that, the guys are still upbeat.”This Ashes series is bigger than Brad Haddin, and Australia’s team success is bigger than individual selection issues. It follows naturally that the matter of his demotion is a question that is being put to one side for now by a team still eager to win. But it has not been forgotten, either.

Andre Adams, the former New Zealand allrounder, has signed a two-year deal with Nottinghamshire as a Kolpak player. Adams, whose Kolpak qualification is based on his West Indian parentage, played four matches for the county last season, taking 14 wickets to help them qualify for Divison One of the Championship.”With the likely absence of Ryan [Sidebottom] and Stuart [Broad] on England duty for most of the summer and Graeme Swann’s presence in the England one day squad, we felt that we needed to add depth to our bowling unit and Andre fits the bill perfectly,” Mick Newell, the county’s director of cricket, said.Adams played one Test and 42 ODIs for New Zealand before he ended his international career by joining the unofficial Indian Cricket League earlier this year. Nottinghamshire, though, have taken advantage of a successful appeal by South Africans Johan van der Wath, Andrew Hall, and Justin Kemp, against the ECB’s refusal to register them as Kolpak players due to their ICL careers, to ensure Adams’ signing

Indian captain Sourav Ganguly defended the performance of batting star Sachin Tendulkar during the ICC Champions Trophy, telling his critics to get off his back.Tendulkar failed to start during the pool and semi-final stages, forcing Ganguly to change the batting order in the final.”Sachin would have batted at number three yesterday as well, had he got the chance. He didn’t get runs in two games, that happens with everybody but then a lot of people put a lot of unnecessary pressure on him so we thought it would be good for him to go with the ball being hard – that’s what he’s used to. Then he could score a few boundaries early on and the pressure would be off him,” said the Indian captain.Earlier in the week Tendulkar had admitted that he would prefer to bat in his normal opening role where he could dictate terms to the opposition. However, he was willing to bat in the middle order in the interests of the team.To this, Ganguly said: “He hasn’t expressed his desire to me. We’re playing really well at the moment. Sachin had a fantastic series batting at number four in England. He’s a quality player and it’s good for the team that he bats at number four.”Once again the captain dwelt on the fact that certain people are putting pressure on Tendulkar, without clarifying whom he was talking about. “The people who put pressure on him should realise that we need to win as a team. We have to stop selecting individuals and making them stars; we need to pick an eleven and back them,” he said.

The dates for the Canada Cup Four Nation Twenty20 tournament in Toronto have been announced, with the competition going ahead after a company, Sports International Marketing, stepped in when the original organisers backed out.The tournament, which was organised by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to fill up its calendar after the postponement of their home series against Australia, had initially faced problems with the backing out of the primary sponsors, but the board has managed to bring in a Pakistan-based business house to finance the event.The news came from the Bangladesh board, however, as a Cricket Canada spokesperson told Cricinfo that they had not yet received a signed copy of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) from the sponsors. “We have finalised an MOU with the event sponsors, and the CC is in a position to be able to sign that document,” said the spokesperson. “As of midday July 18 (Toronto time) the CC has not yet received a signed copy of the MOU from the event sponsors. We do understand, however, that the sponsors are in active discussions with the three other participating countries.”The competition will take place over four days from 14 August. Each team will play each other once, meaning three matches, ahead of a final and a third-place play-off, both matches on 17 August. Bangladesh and West Indies will kick off the tournament by facing each other on the morning of 14 August, while the hosts Canada will face Pakistan that afternoon.Packed stadiums are expected for the event, with approximately 12,000 spectators expected for each game.Canada will have already played several Twenty20 matches that month, as they will have travelled to Belfast for the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier. The tournament, involving the six leading Associate teams – Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, the Netherlands and Scotland – takes place from August 2 to 5.

Scorecard

India failed to carry their form from the win over MCC to the first ODI against England, falling to an eight-wicket defeat in Bath. Jenny Gunn and Isa Guha took three wickets each as India were bowled out for 124, a total that England overhauled in 36 overs to clinch their ninth successive win.Guha removed the top order and Gunn took care of the lower order as seven Indian batsmen fell for less than 10 – three for ducks. England dominated from the start; Guha took two in two balls, trapping Jaya Sharma and Asha Rawat lbw, to leave India stuttering at 4 for 2.It became 6 for 3 when Katherine Brunt had Sulakshana Naik caught for five, before Amita Sharma and Mithali Raj pumped some life into the innings with a 48-run partnership. After Sharma was caught off Guha, Hemlata Kala provided some stoical support to Raj, batting 49 minutes for her 10. Kala’s dismissal triggered a further collapse – five wickets falling for six runs.England lost opener Sarah Taylor early but Caroline Atkins, who averaged 62 in the three ODIs against South Africa, scored 45 off 96 balls and added 70 with Claire Taylor, before being run out with England needing 18 more to win.Taylor and Charlotte Edwards quickly wrapped up the chase to give England a 1-0 lead in the five-match series. The teams will now head to Taunton for the second ODI on Monday.