Greg Chappell made no excuses after a shocking display that summed up India’s one-day series. He refused to hide behind the lack-of-preparatory-time line, and insisted that his batsmen would have to perform a great deal better if the Test series was to be any more of a contest than the one-day version.”We set out to bat as well as we could and make sure we batted 50 overs, which we managed to do,” he said. “But obviously, it wasn’t enough. This type of a wicket does a bit in the morning, and they bowled well under the conditions. Having said that, 200 wasn’t enough. We should have made more.”When asked how he viewed the team’s dismal batting given his own status as one of the game’s all-time batting greats, he just shrugged and said: “It’s disappointing, there’s nothing more I can say. There’s no finer point to put on it, we are not batting well enough. We haven’t come to grips with the conditions and we need to. Nothing more, nothing less.”According to him, there was no simple solution to the current woes. “The remedy has got to come from within the players,” he said. “They have got to find a way to come to grips with the conditions. No-one else can do it for them. We can only say what the facts are: we haven’t batted very well. No one’s trying to bat badly. It happens. It has happened before, and it will probably happen again. Teams go through these phases. When the confidence is down, it’s hard to play with confidence. We are not playing with a great deal of it at the moment, and we need to find some.”He refused to pick on individuals, and when asked about Irfan Pathan’s insipid allround show, he said, “A break could have done quite a few players good. But we’ve got to face up to the fact that we have a Test series to play in the next 10 days or so. We’ve got to find some confidence and some form from somewhere.”He hoped that the return of experienced campaigners like VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly would make a difference in the five-day version, and said that it would be best to draw a line under the disastrous one-day showing. “We’re not the first side to come to South Africa and struggle,” he said. “And that itself is some consolation. But it’s not the ideal situation. We haven’t batted well enough in any of the games in the ODI series. We just haven’t made enough runs, and if we don’t make enough runs, it’s hard to win.”India’s plight was made worse by the nasty blow that Sachin Tendulkar took on the left forearm from Andre Nel. “I think it’s just a bruised arm,” said Chappell, after Tendulkar had laboured 97 balls for his 55. “We’ll have to wait and see how he pulls up over the next few days. Thankfully, we’ve got ten days or more before the first Test match. So we’re hopeful that it’s not going to be a problem.”And when asked if there could be any crumbs of comfort for disconsolate fans back home, he merely said: “I can’t keep giving messages to the Indian cricket fans. They just have to support the team as much as they can. And the team must find a way to play better.”On this evidence, that’s going to be easier said than done. Rahul Dravid can’t return soon enough.

Iain O’Brien, the Wellington medium-pace bowler, has been called up as cover for Michael Mason and Mark Gillespie during the first ODI against Sri Lanka on December 28 at Napier’s McLean Park. Gillespie, on international debut, suffered a knee injury during New Zealand’s Twenty20 win on Tuesday, while Mason is reportedly not fully fit.O’Brien, 30, served as 12th man for both the Tests. He has previously played two Tests, against Australia, in March 2005.John Bracewell, New Zealand’S coach, hinted that Daniel Vettori, who will captain in the first two ODIs place of a rested Stephen Fleming, will bat at either No. 5 or 6. “There may be a surprise in that we use Daniel Vettori in the middle because of his ‘gapping’ ability, in particular against spin,” he told . “So there may be a shift there.”Nathan Astle, whose unbeaten 40 helped New Zealand to a five-wicket victory on Boxing Day, underwent an x-ray on his hand, with Craig McMillan on standby. “We’re delighted with the progress he’s [McMillan] made,” Bracewell said. “We’re in constant touch with him and his domestic coach.”Brendon McCullum will open the innings with Astle and keep wickets, though it’s assumed that a second ‘keeper, probably Gareth Hopkins, will be named in the squad later in the series.

Injured captain Michael Vaughan fears for the mental scars inflicted on England during their tour of Australia, which has so far brought just one win, and says the state of the side following their awful showing on Australia Day was the lowest he’d seen the team.Vaughan, who is sidelined as he continues to battle to overcome a hamstring strain, said the self-doubt permeating the team was “cancerous” and a real threat to England’s hopes in the World Cup.A loss against New Zealand at Perth, on Tuesday, would all but end England’s hopes of reaching the tri-series finals and Vaughan said the biggest challenge for his side was shedding the mental frailties so evident in their two losses in Adelaide, when they made just 120 and 110.”At the end of a long, hard tour like this one, it is a mental problem,” he admitted. “Tuesday’s game will be a real big game mentally for the guys, to see if they can come back from the disappointment of Adelaide.”In eight years in the England team, that was as low as I have ever seen players feel. That is what tours like this can do to people. You are getting beat up most days for the whole tour. It has to have some kind of effect.”Vaughan, who again backed besieged coach Duncan Fletcher, has missed the past three England games with his injury and admitted it was hard to watch the side play so poorly from the stands. He said England’s dismal batting reflected their muddled thinking after a string of defeats in Australia.”You can’t defend the way we have batted… We have to work out what is going wrong with our thought processes in the middle. A lot of the times we are getting out, it is the thinking that is wrong and that is purely mental. It is not technique.”However, he dismissed suggestions the English were already marking time and simply waiting to go home, saying it was crucial they left Australia in improved form. “We need to change the momentum fast on this trip and make sure we try and win a couple of these last three games to get into the finals. You can’t keep performing to the standard we have in the last week or so and expect to go to the World Cup in good shape, that is nonsense.”Vaughan said he was shocked by England’s poor efforts in the last two matches. “The two games in Adelaide came a bit out of the blue, to be honest. I just didn’t see those batting performances coming. I watched the guys in the nets and they were all hitting it pretty well.”To further add to England’s problems Vaughan continues to struggle with his injury and looks unlikely to play in Tuesday’s match against New Zealand at the WACA. He is desperate to play again, but said he felt a twinge in his left hamstring during training on Sunday. “I’d have to play a full part in all training tomorrow. We’ll have to monitor how I wake up tomorrow.”Opening bowlers James Anderson and Jon Lewis also remain in doubt after failing to train on Sunday. But Vaughan did hint at changes to the team with Chris Read having a chance to be recalled for Paul Nixon, while Ravi Bopara, the Essex allrounder, is in line for an international debut.

Pakistan’s preparations for the final ODI against South Africa at Johannesburg have been hampered by the disappearance of key analytical equipment en route from Cape Town.Medical and video analysis material went missing after the fourth match at Newlands, in which Pakistan were crushed by ten wickets to trail 2-1 in the series. “Two cricket coffins with computers, a TV monitor, a video recorder, a DVD player and various other pieces of equipment have disappeared,” Bob Woolmer told Cricinfo.”The physiotherapist’s ultra-sound equipment along with other medical supplies have also disappeared,” Woolmer added. “We have no idea what has happened. We can claim it all on insurance but that’s not the point. The bags and equipment were all checked in when we left Cape Town and we have the relevant baggage tags for it. We all saw the bags being checked in so they must have disappeared somewhere during the journey, or on arrival. It’s valuable equipment too, worth somewhere between US$15,000-20,000.”I hate to think ‘typical Johannesburg airport’ but there is a bit of history. We’re still hoping the stuff will turn up but time is running out and we need the equipment to have any hope of being prepared,” Woolmer said.

Michael Vaughan, the England captain, has urged his young side to show fearlessness and to use their inexperience as a positive factor, as England prepare for the World Cup.”A young team can sometimes be surprising,” Vaughan told a news conference ahead of the tournament’s opening ceremony on Sunday at Sabina Park. “They can sometimes have no fear. I see that in some of the young players — they don’t fear many situations and that is exactly what they will have to be like in the next few weeks.”They can’t be fearful of facing world stars, they have to be really excited about the challenge ahead of them.”Vaughan, more than anyone in the England set-up, has been instrumental in opening up team debates to all members of his squad and not, as in pervious regimes, relying on age as the prerequisite for a valid opinion or tactic.”We have an environment where not necessarily the oldest player in the squad comes up with the best idea,” he said. “Who is to say that the youngest guy in the squad doesn’t have the best idea? Maybe he hasn’t the experience of the guys who have played more games but sometimes fresh is best.”It will be the likes of myself, Andrew and Paul who have played World Cups to pass on a bit of knowledge but we haven’t had success in World Cups.”Something that we are trying to accommodate within the team is to have an open voice and the young players in St. Vincent certainly gave a lot of input to the team in the way that they spoke,” he said. “It is down to the team to think on their feet – that is the kind of team that we have tried to create.”An “open” management style alone won’t be sufficient to win the World Cup, however. Though England beat Bermuda in their first warm-up last week, it preceded an under-par effort against Australia who beat them convincingly by 5 wickets. Their opening encounter is no less tough, facing New Zealand at St Lucia on Friday.”It is looking a big game,” he said. “We know New Zealand are a tough team and in recent tournaments they have always been there or thereabouts towards the end of it. They have a vast amount of experience and knowledge.”If we turn up and get our performance right and preparation right we can match any team in the world on that given day. It is about getting that performance right on that day. I do think the tournament is wide open. One-day cricket is a real momentum game and anything can happen.”

While Sri Lanka’s name does the round of pre-World Cup predictions, Muttiah Muralitharan believes the side that lifted the 1996 World Cup was superior to the current contenders. “Some experts are tipping us to surprise a few at the World Cup and maybe even win it. I think we have a good chance but I still believe the Sri Lanka team of 1996 was better,” he told the website bigstarcricket.com.Muralitharan, 34, insisted the Arjuna Ranatunga-led side was a stronger batting unit, full of experienced attacking players. “When we won the World Cup in 1996, batting-wise the team was more experienced, had flair, everything was there in that team in 1996. This team now has a better bowling attack than what we had that time but we had a better balance in the 1996 World Cup because there were four spinners in the side and only two fast bowlers.”With 432 one-day international wickets, it would be easy to pinpoint Muralitharan as a threat on the slow and low pitches in the West Indies, but he felt spinners would struggle. “The rules have changed now with the 20-over power plays coming so the spinners go out of the game, you can’t play two or three spinners any more,” he said. “We have only one spinner at the moment so fast bowlers have more chance [of success] because they bowl in the power play.”Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas, the other veteran bowler in the Sri Lankan side, were both rested for the recent ODI series against India. Both will play their final World Cup. Sri Lanka have been drawn in Group B along with India, Bangladesh and Bermuda.

“Dey wukkup in de West Indies bowling!”Relentless cut-tail has the remarkable power of stripping the veneer of decorum from any occasion, moving Adriel Richard, the CMC CricketPlus producer, to draw on his Bajan dialect, in the midst of a “live” update, to describe the extent to which West Indies bowlers were torn apart by South Africa’s rampant batsmen.”357 to win. Just like the caliber of bullet WI should shoot themselves with.”As this text message from a disgruntled fan back home revealed, a macabre sense of humour also prevailed at the interval in Grenada, with supporters of the regional side everywhere finding different ways to express their frustration, anger and pain at the manner in which the team on whom they have invested so much emotional energy dragged them to a new low in what has already been an increasingly dispiriting World Cup experience.Even for a people given to often unfounded levels of optimism, especially in apparently hopeless causes involving their beloved regional side, it was asking a lot of a deflated home team to get anywhere close to a daunting target of 357 needed to keep any lingering Caribbean interest in this tournament alive, a prospect made all the more depressing with two Super Eight matches still to play next week in Barbados.Maybe it was the memory of how humiliated they felt four years ago when, as hosts, they could not even advance out of the first-round grouping that prompted the South African top-order’s merciless plunder in the quest to keep their own ambitions alive after the shock defeat to Bangladesh last Saturday in Guyana. It was an assault that silenced boisterous home fans keen on celebrating the magnificent reincarnation of the Grenada National Stadium.More than the other new or redeveloped venues around the region, this impressive structure is symbolic of what can be achieved by the people of our tiny territories (with a little help from the Chinese, let’s not forget) when properly motivated, even after the ravages of two devastating hurricanes only two-and-a-half years ago. Issues of accountability and sustainability notwithstanding, the point is that we can achieve a minor miracle, even if the fact that it has primarily been at the prodding of external forces and with the enticing prospect of financial rewards that will remain more than a little troubling.At 87 for 3 after 15 overs, with Brian Lara and Ramnaresh Sarwan in the middle, rebuilding a stadium almost from rubble would have seemed to be like chicken-feed compared to pulling off a record-breaking World Cup victory.The poignancy of the moment was hard to avoid: a beleaguered captain in partnership with his talented but often impetuous deputy trying to rebuild the crumbling edifice of what were, just over two weeks ago, grandiose expectations of glory on home soil come April 28.For all of Lara’s proven genius with the bat and Sarwan’s felicitous elegance, the overwhelming feeling was one of an effort too little, too late, even in the midst of strokeplay that almost took the breath away.Patently fallible as captain and tactician (his decision to delay employing the final power-play until the 45th over was a recipe for even greater carnage), he remains peerless, even three weeks from his 38th birthday, as a strokeplayer, a square-drive off Andre Nel to the point boundary in the 17th over reminding everyone as to just how majestically destructive he can still be. His dismissal, though, bowled off the inside-edge by Jacques Kallis, was probably the lethal gust of wind that effectively left Caribbean aspirations in ruins.

Too little, too late may also define the efforts by the World Cup organisers to bring some “West Indianness” to the tournament. Again it was more than a little unusual to see the ground, on a national holiday, for an ODI involving the West Indies, with hundreds of empty seats. If the desolation was not as stark and the atmosphere not as suffocatingly sterile as at other venues so far, most notably the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, there was still an artificiality about it all. Apparently the new campaign to energise the World Cup atmosphere is entitled “Ram de Dance”. But they could have called it “Rama the Jamma” and it wouldn’t really matter, simply because too many people feel betrayed by the entire event, taken for granted in what was expected to be their unstinting support for West Indies in particular and cricket in general, to the extent that they would not bat an eye at the boot camp-style restrictions in their desire to be part of the spectacle at any cost.As they say, you can fool some of the people all the time, but even for people as gullible as we tend to be around here, you can’t fool all of us all the time. Yet the mamaguile continues. On Monday, the media were advised that there was no such thing as “cheap tickets” for matches in Grenada. Troy Garvey, media communications director for the LOC here, explained that the prices of tickets had not been reduced, just the sizes of certain categories.So, for example, if tickets for a certain category were going slowly, that category was reduced and the extra seats incorporated in a cheaper category.If you can see any difference between that explanation and saying that tickets are now cheaper, then you’re as disconnected from reality as so many key personnel involved with this World Cup.

The World Cup has returned to Australia, landing in Sydney on Thursday morning with most of the side that won the trophy in Barbados on Saturday. Ricky Ponting said the squad had enjoyed its party after sealing the third success in a row.”[I am feeling] more refreshed than I was two days ago, that is for sure,” Ponting told AAP. “The celebrations were long and hard, which is what they should be after you win a World Cup. There were some pretty amazing scenes coming back to Australia from guys with not a lot of clothing on at different hours of the morning, but we celebrated as we should.”After breakfast with the prime minister John Howard at the SCG, Ponting lifted the trophy in front of a large crowd at a public reception for the team in Sydney’s Martin Place. Each member of the squad was given a gold ring to mark the winning achievement. The supporters who turned up also celebrated the work of the retiring Glenn McGrath and the outgoing coach John Buchanan.”I’ve been very lucky to have been involved in an era of cricket when Australia has been so strong,” McGrath said. “Since making the decision I haven’t even had a second thought. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but it’s now time for me to move on and let the young guys come through.”Australia did not lose a game for the second World Cup in a row, sealing the tournament with a 53-run victory over Sri Lanka which was set up by Adam Gilchrist’s 149. “For us to again go through undefeated and once again have a lot of our players peaking at the right time in the World Cup is an amazing achievement by everybody,” Ponting said.”Gilly’s innings in the final, as I have been flat out telling him, it was unbelievable, that was the one difference between the two teams in the final. It has been an amazing couple of months of our lives and even more amazing last few days.”

“That was definitely one of the most fulfilling days of my cricketing career,” Gilchrist said. “As Ricky said, it is very difficult in such a short space of time since it happened [to place it], but it adds to all of the fine achievements which this team has achieved over our careers.”Ponting said ending the final in the dark was a much better option than returning the next day. “I’d have been struggling to find someone to bowl the three overs,” he said. He said the officials, who mistakenly pushed for the extra overs, had learned their lesson.”I’m sure next time they officiate in big games like that they’ll know the rules inside out,” he said. The squad was missing Stuart Clark and Brad Hodge, who were in England for county stints, while Matthew Hayden arrived home on Tuesday to prepare for the birth of his third child in Brisbane.

The Indian board (BCCI) has promised to arrange special flights to shuttle players around if the schedule is tight during the visit by Pakistan later this year, but maintained the venues of the matches would be decided by its own rotation system.”We have played in small centres in Pakistan without hesitation. If necessary we will arrange for special flights but we will go by our rotation system in deciding the venues for the matches,” said BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah in reaction to reports that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) expected its players to play a majority of the matches at big venues.The tour is slated from early November but sources in Pakistan said the PCB had already requested the BCCI not to schedule matches at venues that require a lot of travelling as was the case during the 2005 tour. The Pakistan players and officials had complained of fatigue due to extensive travelling on their last tour which the BCCI defended as a necessary evil as it had to rotate international matches among its affiliated units.A PCB official said more deliberations on the itinerary would likely be held on the sidelines of the joint 2011 World Cup committee meeting next month in the summer resort of Bhurban. “When the Indians are here obviously we will have discussions with them on the proposed venues and dates for the tour and perhaps even on the number of one-dayers to be included in the memorandum of understanding for the tour.”

Jayantha Dharmadasa, the chairman of Sri Lanka Cricket, has expressed disappointment at the withdrawal of Rumesh Ratnayake as assistant coach of the Sri Lankan team.Ratnayake, the former Sri Lankan fast bowler, had signed a four-year contract with Sri Lanka Cricket nearly a month ago to become assistant coach, replacing the outgoing coach Trevor Penney. But in a complete u-turn Ratnayake has stated in a letter that he is unable to accept the position due to family commitments.”I am very disappointed with Rumesh’s decision. We have been trying to get his services for the past two years and when he decided to sign with us to become assistant coach we were extremely happy,” said Dharmadasa. “We have been criticised for not contracting former cricketers for the job of coach. This is what we get in return when we try to open the doors for them.”Dharmadasa said that he had great difficulty in getting Ratnayake released from his present position as development officer of the Asian Cricket Council of which Dharmadasa is the chairman. He said that Trevor Bayliss, who has signed a two-year contract with SLC to become Sri Lanka’s next head coach, will be given the opportunity to find a suitable assistant.