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South Africa’s fast bowler Andre Nel is torn between the crease and the altar, after carelessly arranging to get married in the middle of next week’s fourth and final Test against West Indies.Nel had not expected to feature in the series when he set the date, but he picked up five wickets in an innings for the first time in his career at Cape Town last week, and is now an automatic selection for the Centurion Test – if available, of course.Given that he is contracted to the United Cricket Board, it is unlikely that he will be permitted to miss the match. The UCB have allowed players such as Shaun Pollock and Gary Kirsten to take time off to be present at the birth of their children, but Nel is due to marry his girlfriend Deanne Weitz in Johannesburg on the second afternoon of the match, and the venue is only an hour’s drive from the ground.”I’ve discussed it with him," said South Africa’s coach Eric Simons, "and hopefully he can put [the ceremony] back by a few hours.” South Africa are reluctant to enter the match without Nel, who has taken 17 wickets at a cost of just 20 runs each in the series.”In a certain way I had probably given up on playing Test cricket again,” said Nel, who reinvented himself at Northamptonshire last season, where he gained an extra yard of pace and helped the county to a double promotion. “But now that I’ve been given this lifeline I want to grab it and hang on.”

The XXXX Queensland Bulls have suffered a setback on the eve of theirING Cup clash with the Southern Redbacks tomorrow following thewithdrawal of Australian pace bowler Andy Bichel for the match at theGabba.Bulls physiotherapist Stephen Partridge ruled out Bichel before trainingthis morning due to a hip injury sustained in Australia’s last VB SeriesOne Day International match in Perth on the weekend.He has been replaced in the Bulls team for tomorrow’s match by ScottMuller, who made a pleasing return to the Queensland ranks last week inthe ING Cup win over Victoria at the Gabba.Bichel is not considered in doubt for the tour of South Africa, with hiswithdrawal from the Queensland team taken as a precaution.”I’m disappointed any time I have to miss playing for the Bulls but witha long tour of Africa coming up, it was in my best interests not to riskaggravating what is admittedly a minor injury by playing tomorrow,”Bichel said.He joins fellow Australian pace bowlers Glenn McGrath and JasonGillespie on the sidelines for this weekend’s round of ING Cup matches,after they were rested from their respective teams.Tomorrow’s match starts at 2.30pm. Queensland lead the ING Cup on 27points with the Redbacks locked in equal second spot on 22 points withNSW and WA.Queensland travel to Adelaide on Sunday, following the Final of the K&RPlumbing Cup one-day competition at Allan Border Field on between Valleyand Norths. The Bulls take on the Redbacks at the Adelaide Oval fromWednesday in the Pura Cup.XXXX Queensland Bulls v Southern Redbacks, ING Cup, Gabba, Friday: JimmyMaher (c), Matthew Hayden, Martin Love, Andrew Symonds, Clinton Perren,Brendan Nash, James Hopes, Wade Seccombe, Nathan Hauritz, DamienMackenzie, Scott Muller, Joe Dawes (all twelve to play).Southern Redbacks, ING Cup team: Darren Lehmann (Captain), Ben Johnson,Greg Blewett (V.Captain), Graham Manou, Nathan Adcock, Paul Rofe, ChrisDavies, Mike Smith, David Fitzgerald, Paul Wilson, Ben Higgins, BradleyYoung.

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!

Bangladesh A will tour India later this month to play three one-day matches and two three-day games, the first of their three back-to-back tours this year. The touring squad is likely to be announced on Sunday.According to the tour schedule released by the BCCI, Bangladesh A play three limited-overs matches against India A in Bangalore, on September 16, 18 and 20. Their three-day games are against Ranji Trophy champions Karnataka from September 22 to 24 in Mysore, and against India A from September 27 to 29.Two weeks after their India tour, Bangladesh A go to South Africa to play two one-dayers and a three-day game, followed by a tour of Zimbabwe, where they are scheduled to play two four-day matches and three one-dayers. The Africa tour ends on November 18.India is the only Test-playing nation where Bangladesh is yet to play a Test: the senior side is scheduled to tour the country in August next year. Bangladesh A have previously toured India in 2001, 2009 and 2012.

All doubts over the nature of the surface were dispelled when Harbhajan Singh coined a sweet term for it. is a term used to describe a benign, flat surface with very little in it for the bowlers but Harbhajan felt it right to call the pitch provided for the first Test as a super . So dopey was the track that WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] might send a few officials to Chennai soon.”It was a first-day wicket and you can’t rely on the patches [on the pitch]. You have to vary your line and length according to the wicket,” Harbhajan said. “Let me tell you one thing. The wicket is very, very flat and it is hard for the bowlers to keep running in with the same intensity in this heat.”The irony about India preparing such tracks for home Tests is that their recent successes abroad have all come on bowler-friendly surfaces. Spiced up pitches in Kingston and Johannesburg have produced Indian wins; so have swing-fests at Headingley and Nottingham; so has a sporting pitch in Perth. It’s high time someone realised that India’s best chance of winning is on a track with some life.The Chennai ground staff point out to the lack of preparation time. As recently as February 27 a Ranji Trophy one-dayer was played on this ground and 12 days of rain in between meant there was little time for producing a quality wicket. They probably have a case but the earlier India start putting some life into their pitches, the more advantageous it could be. Through the 1990s India relied on their spin formula to torment visiting teams but this is an era when their strength lies in seam and swing. Even their spinners thrive with a bit of bounce on the surface.”I think it was very important to win the toss,” Harbhajan said, “but the Madras [Chennai] wicket has always been like that. It has always been good for the batsmen for the first two-three days and then the spinners come into play. You can’t really keep complaining.”The moment the toss plays such a big part in fortunes, you know something is amiss. Which brings us to the kind of bowling attack India choose for such death-beds. The conditions were always going to be hot and humid, the batsmen were bound to apply the pressure, and the bowlers were expected to tire. Neither Sachin Tendulkar nor Sourav Ganguly were given a bowl [the former was off the field for an extended period] and it meant long spells for the frontline bowlers. With 14 days to go in the series, it could well turn into a long and tiring one.Choosing Irfan Pathan would have probably been one seamer too many and going with Piyush Chawla would have required one of the middle-order batsmen to sit out – a possibility which might have been pushing it too far. So in a way India probably had their hands tied but there should be a thought given, in the long-term at least, for playing five specialist bowlers. Even if one of them has an off day, the others could share the responsibility.Where India really lost out was the amount of boundary balls they gave through the day. Forty- five fours on the first day of the match is probably twice as much as they would have targeted. Even more interestingly they managed 400 dot balls out of 540. So while they did the right things for most of the day, they kept taking off the pressure with the loose deliveries. Handcuff the batsmen for a while before opening the back door at exactly the wrong time.Harbhajan agreed. “I think we have given a lot of boundary balls,” he said. “In the first session we gave around 60-70 runs in boundaries. The first session is always important in a Test match and they dominated it. We did very well in the last two sessions and got those four wickets. It would be nice to have got one or two more wickets, but they batted well today.”I think we have given around 20-30 runs in our fielding and that makes a big difference. I hope tomorrow we put in a good performance in bowling, batting and fielding. It would have been nice to stop those 30 runs and see the scoreboard at the end on 270 for 4.”

Matthew Hayden was on the treadmill when the semi-final of ’99 happened. He meant it literally – it’s from where he watched the remarkable dying minutes of the match on telly – but his every other memory of the occasion was laden with the metaphoric. Dumped from the national side, he was doing the county circuit with Northamptonshire; he was, in his words, “absolutely zero part of the Australian setup and didn’t even looking getting a start”.He remembered that “it’s the same year that Steve Waugh rang and said: ‘Mate keep going. You have a chance of playing for Australia. I believe in you. Keep going’.” And he remembered that “it was a pretty remarkable event really, the whole game, but ironically, I happened to be in a completely different competition, at a completely different part of my life. But still, with that sort of burning desire to play for my country and be part of the spectacle of a World Cup.”Hayden did become a part of the spectacle in 2003. He lifted the World Cup. Another four years down the line he is its prime spectacle.No batsman has imposed himself on this Caribbean tournament as Hayden, and few have in any previous edition. Only two batsmen before him have struck three centuries in one competition. While both his predecessors were rather more soothing on the eye, neither so damaged the very soul of the opposition. Neither also made their runs against such quality opposition.Sourav Ganguly in 2003 scored two of his centuries against Kenya and one against Namibia. Mark Waugh had one against Kenya. Hayden’s came against South Africa – 66 balls – West Indies and New Zealand. His 580 runs have been at an average of 82.85 and a strike-rate of 108. Not bad for a man dropped from the one-day side two years ago.Hayden has thanked Ricky Ponting for reposing faith in him. That was a good headline there. Yet more impressive was his assessment of the comeback. “I mean this story is nothing remarkable,” he stressed. “It’s just a story of what it means for us to play for our country and the level of expectation that we firstly put on ourselves and secondly the rewards of playing good cricket for Australia. It’s no coincidence that this is a side that’s been at the top of its game for a long period of time.”Perhaps not to the degree of his partner of old, Justin Langer, Hayden brings a kind of spiritual heft to his work. He meditates at the pitch the day before the match. He speaks of hard work as a kind of salvation. Accomplishment is a kind of credo. While it may not be unusual for cricketers to have hobbies and interests, few pursue them as seriously as Hayden does cooking, surfing, fishing.

In the Caribbean Hayden has been at peace with himself. He talks about the joy of being surrounded by water, of waking up to the sight of it. He is delighted to find juicy fresh lime that can be squeezed on his food. At St Vincent he caught tuna and did a barbecue for the team. In Grenada he hauled in a 136kg marlin that made him famous on the island. Eighty people received him on the shore. A local presented him a greyhound on the achievement. “The smiles you see on the West Indians faces, no matter what walk of life they are, are certainly encouraging,” he said. “We draw a lot of strength from it as well.”To achieve is to be, Hayden gives off the feeling. When the Australians recently had an audience with the rowing legend Sir Steve Redgrave Hayden was moved. “What hit a chord with me,” he said, “was that he really had to work harder as his career went on. He wasn’t looking for the easy routes at all. In fact, he was looking to trying harder.”When Hayden returns to face the South Africans on Wednesday the memories will be of his contemptuousness of their bowlers last month. But the association goes back 13 years, and it was in some ways the making of Hayden.”I certainly learnt a lot from my first tour of 1994 of South Africa,” he said. “We saw the likes of Allan Donald and Brian McMillan – very aggressive, competitive cricketers, backed up by the hard-nosed captain in Kepler Wessels,” he said. “In my first game against them I got 5 and 15 and a broken thumb. So, it was a baptism of fire, but one I really enjoyed.”The teams are staying at the same hotel, and Hayden acknowledges the effect of all the talk of mental holds and historic needle flying about before a big match. “There is an unusual tension – a friction I guess,” he said. “It is melodramatic in a lot of ways. It’s kind of good versus bad. All those kind of things come out. But I can assure you that it is very personable.”I mean, you get two great countries like Australia and South Africa and you can play a game of dominoes, as the locals love to play here, and I am sure we will be competitive as well.” You suspect he’s probably been practising dominoes.

Andrew Flintoff, the England captain, said his team didn’t panic following the late assault launched by India. “It [India’s charge] was explosive. But we knew it would have required some effort from them to chase the total that we had set,” Flintoff told reporters.Facing a daunting target of 368 in three sessions, India produced a late flurry after tea with Irfan Pathan and Mahendra Singh Dhoni leading the charge before the two teams agreed to a draw with 108 runs required for a home win from over 11 overs. “The team showed lot of character. We are proud of the way we performed. With three debutants in the team, we competed with one of the best teams for five days,” Flintoff said.”I enjoyed the captaincy, concentrated on doing simple things correctly. I am grateful for the help by the teammates, particularly Paul Collingwood, Andrew Strauss and Steve Harmison.” Flintoff said it was Matthew Hoggard with 6 for 57 in the first innings who put England in control.”Hoggy bowled us into the match. He showed control and discipline on a wicket that was not conducive for pace bowling.” Among the debutants, Alastair Cook, the 21-year-old opener, and Monty Panesar, the left arm spinner, also the first Sikh to play for England, received special mention from Flintoff.”To get 60 and 100 [in two innings] against the two best spinners in the world says a lot about Cook. Panesar bowled well. He was excited by the way the crowd egged him on whenever he came on to bowl.”Ian Botham, the former England captain and commentator, looking ahead to Thursday’s second Test in Mohali, wondered if England might consider recalling Liam Plunkett if the Durham seamer proves his fitness. “The word is that the wicket in Mohali has a bit more pace and carry than the others so they could revert to one spinner and bring in another seamer,” he said.Botham too had some good words about both Cook and Panesar. “The guys on debut have done magnificently”, and added that a draw was a good result given the problems England had going into the opening Test. “Overall I think England will be very pleased.”

Tea
ScorecardShane Deitz and Greg Blewett eased South Australia towards Tasmania’s first innings total with a 98-run partnership in the battle for the wooden spoon at Adelaide. Playing his second game of the summer, Deitz collected his second half-century while Blewett was 48 as they moved to 1 for 111 at tea. The Redbacks quickly lost Daniel Harris to Adam Griffith but it was one of few low spots during the first two sessions.Dan Cullen, the offspinner, ended Tasmania’s first innings for 319 with four wickets as South Australia took 6 for 71 in the opening session. Cullen, 20, returned 4 for 24 today to clean up the Tigers, who resumed on 4 for 248, and increase his season tally to 39. Damien Wright (25) was the only batsman to delay the collapse before falling to Cullen Bailey, the debutant legspinner who collected 2 for 82.

Wasim Akram has denied claims that he coached the Indian side, or had plans to do so, and insisted that an action against him accusing him of doing so was born out of malice and was little more than an attempt to gain cheap publicity by the petitioner.Akram was appearing in front of a civil court in Lahore in a bid to have the petition, which seeks to prevent him coaching any Indian players, dismissed. “I have no such intention to coach the Indian cricket team," he told the judge. "Nor I have been approached by the Indian cricket board." Akram explained that the petition had caused him "mental torture" as well as damaging his reputation."If anyone seeks my advice I am duty-bound to help him." Akram continued. "Indian bowlers Ashish Nehra and Zaheer Khan used to call me and take advice, there is nothing wrong with that because when I was young I took advice from Kapil Dev and the late West Indian Malcolm Marshall."I am amazed at the narrow-mindedness of the people, they make mountains out of a molehill," he added. "I am going to sue them instead. "Akram also faces another appearance in court, again because of a petition filed by a member of the public, following his appearance in a liquor advertisement in India two years ago.The judge adjourned the current case until December 8.

Baroda off-spinner Ajit Bhoite claimed the last two Hyderabad wickets as the Ranji Trophy champions seal an innings and 256 runs win and a place in Ranji quarter-finals.Bhoite removed No.9 Vishnuvardhan and last man NP Singh to end the Hyderabad innings on the fourth morning. Hyderabad skipper VVS Laxman, who made stylish century in the vistiors’ first innings, again played a lone hand to remain unbeaten on 53.What would be heartening to all Indian cricket lovers is the return to form of Laxman and Baroda’s Zaheer Khan. The latter claimed five wickets in Hyderabad’s second innings, this to go with his five-fer in the first.