Jayantha Dharmadasa, the chairman of Sri Lanka Cricket, has said that the board will take steps to modify the players’ contracts to prevent them from finding excuses not to honour their commitments with the national team.Dharmadasa’s statement was with reference to the issue surrounding Marvan Atapattu, who got away with any reprimand after he decided to pull out of the three-Test series against Bangladesh citing personal reasons. “We had to be lenient with Marvan because of the reasons he had stated in his letter explaining why he had pulled out,” said Dharmadasa.According to Dharmadasa, Atapattu had said that ten days was insufficient for him to prepare himself mentally for a Test series after the trauma he had to undergo by being overlooked for the World Cup matches and the matches in Abu Dhabi. SLC decided against taking any disciplinary action on Atapattu but they will impose a three percent penalty from his total earnings. Atapattu is at present playing league cricket with Lashings in England.Dharmadasa also questioned Sanath Jayasuriya’s decision to play county cricket for Lancashire when he was being ‘rested’ for the Bangladesh series. Jayasuriya is expected to replace Muttiah Muralitharan, who will return home to play against Bangladesh. Dharmadasa said that due to these incidents SLC will seriously review players’ contracts in future and amend certain clauses that would include disciplinary action and heavy fines if players refuse to represent their country due to reasons other than injury.Dharmadasa also accused Ashantha de Mel, the chairman of selectors, of helping the players play outside the national team’s interest by resting them from international series.Relations between de Mel and SLC have been somewhat strained in the recent past. The SLC excluded de Mel from the list of ten candidates they sent to the sports minister to form the next selection committee.

Rahul Dravid, the Indian captain, has emphasised the need for a fixed season at home along the lines of Australia and England. Dravid has suggested that India could play a home series every year in the winter months of November and December. India have had an irregular pattern of home series, the last of which was against England in March last year, and the one before that in December 2005 against Sri Lanka.”A lot of cricket is being played nowadays. It is going to put a lot of pressure on players and it is a question of coping,” Dravid told rediff.com a day ahead of the second Test against England at Trent Bridge. “It is about devising strategies on how to cope with the amount of cricket being played and how they are going to go about it.”He indicated that India must take the cue from Australia and England and host a series annually in November and December.”For countries like India we don’t have a set summer,” he said. “England are always here [at home] in the summer, Australia are always at home in the summer. For us every year is different; we can be in different parts of the world, we can be playing in July in West Indies one year and in England some year and not playing in India in November or December, which is winter and which is where we should be playing.”Dravid felt a fixed home season would also aid preparation and team selection.”It makes a huge difference I think personally from a captaincy point of view – of managing your resources, managing your players if you know exactly where you are going to be five-six months in the year. For us to manage our workloads and manage our teams is a lot more different than for the teams that have the advantage of knowing exactly where they are in their cricket season.”India will next play three Tests at home against Pakistan in November and December, following which they will travel to Australia for a four-Test series.

New Zealand coach John Bracewell has said that Stephen Fleming is still a part of New Zealand’s one-day plans despite being dropped from the 15-man squad for the Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa this September.Fleming gave up the ODI captaincy after the 2007 World Cup and Bracewell said that he had been left out of the Twenty20 squad because his batting style wasn’t suited to the shorter format, and to give Daniel Vettori, the new captain, space to “breathe” for himself.”As far as I’m concerned he [Fleming] is still one of our best one-day batsmen given the way we play the game,” Bracewell told stuff.co.nz. “We are keen to win, but I think it is going to be a bit of a power game in its initial crudeness and that is not Stephen’s game. Also, mobility in the field is a factor. We also wanted to give the new captain a chance to breathe and have a go at leadership without having the old one standing over him.”Vettori, however, hasn’t been named captain of the one-day side as yet but Bracewell said it was because New Zealand hadn’t named their team. “We’ve been grooming him for a while and Dan [Vettori] has not done anything to dissuade us from thinking that he is a very good captain.”

Nottinghamshire are on the verge of securing promotion after an emphatic innings-and-six-runs victory an hour after lunch on the third day against Derbyshire at Chesterfield. Following on, Derbyshire were always up against it and although they lifted themselves past 300, they still couldn’t make the visitors bat again. Travis Birt top scored with 85, while Hassan Adnan made a fifty. Samit Patel ended with three wickets. The promotion spot is now Nottinghamshire’s to lose: Middlesex need to win their last two matches to even have a sniff, while Notts only have to take six points from their final match at champions Somerset.Nicky Boje took 6 for 110 as Northamptonshire capitalised on their dominant position to take the honours in the lower-table clash with Leicestershire at Grace Road. Paul Nixon’s brave century and the efforts of the lower order propped them up for a while, but ultimately they could not stave off defeat and they sank 177 runs behind with more than 23 overs remaining.

Surrey did their chances of staving off relegation no end of good at Edgbaston, ending the third day on 2 for 0 chasing a target of 177 to beat fellow strugglers Warwickshire. Surrey’s first-innings lead of 88 was wiped out for the loss of one wicket as Ian Westwood and Jonathan Trott put on 101 for the second wicket, but Jade Dernbach’s dismissal of Westwood, who had been dropped by James Benning when in single figures, started a slide in which nine wickets fell for 142 runs.

The ECB has invited nominations for a deputy chairman following the recent resignation of Mike Soper following his failure to be elected chairman when he lost out to Giles Clarke.The deadline for nominations is October 19 and if more than one is received, a ballot of the chairmen of the 18 counties and MCC will be held in accordance with the ECB constitution and under the supervision of the Electoral Reform Society.It has been agreed that, in order to prevent the need for another election in January 2008, that whoever is elected will serve the remainder of Soper’s term – up to March 2008 – then a full two-year term after that.

Janeiro Tucker has again been hauled before the Bermuda Cricket Board disciplinary committee after an incident during a league match last month.Tucker, who is player/coach at Southampton Rangers, faces charges of displaying unsportsmanlike conduct during his side’s Premier Division match against Cleveland County at Southampton Oval on September 9. He is alleged to have shouted obscenities towards Hector Watson, the umpire, after being dismissed.Earlier this year Tucker received a three-match ban after a similar incident, and he was also punished for swearing in 2002.Despite this latest incident, he was included in Bermuda’s 15-man squad for the tour of Kenya and UAE.

Former Warwickshire chief executive Dennis Amiss has been confirmed as ECB deputy chairman, the England board has announced.Two weeks ago he won the election to become the new deputy chairman after narrowly defeating Lancashire chairman Jack Simmons, but the process had to be endorsed by the 41 members of the ECB.The Electoral Reform Society duly informed the ECB that this had been successful and Amiss will now replace Michael Soper who resigned last month. Amiss will serve until March 31, 2010. Amiss won by one vote in a poll of the county chairmen and will now be put forward to the 41 members of the ECB for endorsement in the next fortnight.

Pakistan allrounder Shahid Afridi wants Shoaib Malik, the captain, to be “tough and demanding” to get the most out of his players in order for Pakistan to fight back in the Test series. Pakistan are trailing 0-1 in the three-Test series after India won by six wickets in Delhi.”If a player is not performing to his optimum level, the captain must be tough and demand more. I think our team was in a position to win the first Test,” Afridi, who was omitted from the Test squad after the one-day series defeat, told PTI.”Experience counts for a lot and [Anil] Kumble led their team well and intelligently. Malik can also do a similar job but he needs to be confident ahead of the second Test and must push the players to do better.”However, Moin Khan, a former Pakistan captain and wicketkeeper, said that Malik could not be blamed because captaincy happened too suddenly for him.”He [Malik] doesn’t have the captaincy experience,” Moin told Cricinfo. “He just captained his regional side for some Twenty20 games and suddenly he becomes the captain of the national side. It is going to take time for him to develop. The problem lies with the board. They should have groomed a captain.” Moin felt the Test captaincy could have been given to Mohammad Yousuf while Malik could have continued to be the captain in the ODIs.Afridi said that Pakistan were in a strong position when they gained the lead on the third evening in Delhi. However, on the fourth morning, they lost their last five wickets for 35 runs and set India a target of only 203. Afridi said that the batsmen needed to apply themselves more.”The batting didn’t go all the way after a good start. I have no doubt if we had got another 80 to 100 runs, we could have won this Test match,” Afridi said. “It was disappointing to lose out in the end. I am sure the rest of the team will be eager to make a comeback in the second Test in Kolkata. But the other bowlers also need to give more support to Shoaib Akhtar.”Shoaib, who took six wickets including all four to fall in India’s second innings, received little support from the other bowlers. Danish Kaneria, the legspinner, was especially disappointing, going for 0 for 50 in the final innings.”They must have tried hard but the results are important,” Afridi said. “I was surprised that Kaneria didn’t take more wickets on this pitch. I think he was not as effective because of his shortened run-up. He will get more bite into his bowling if he goes back to his old bowling action which allows him more flight and turn.””It is just a matter of getting back the confidence. In 2005, when we were down in the series, we only came back in the final Test in Bangalore because we believed we could do it and Inzamam [ul-Haq] kept telling us we were close to squaring the series. But the batting must click big time like it did in Bangalore.”

By almost every conceivable indicator, West Indies’ third major tour of South Africa, starting in East London today with a 25-overs-an-innings thrash that is part of Makhaya Ntini’s benefit year, is destined to follow the same ill-fated course of the previous two.A pessimistic mass of statistical evidence is balanced only by a few flimsy straws floating in the wind, the kind that keep even the most disheartened fans in every sport hopeful. One is that there are no grandiose expectations from the public, as there certainly were prior to the first, historic trip to the previously debarred country eight years ago that ended in a 5-0 whitewash in the Tests and 6-1 in the ODIs and, if realistically less so, before the second four years ago that ended 3-0 in the Tests, with one drawn, and 3-1 in the ODIs.Another is the age-old adage, “cricket is a funny game”. It may not be that funny that the West Indies will suddenly overturn a decade of defeat, especially in foreign lands.But with several slices of luck, if not a miracle or two, strong and bold leadership from Chris Gayle, the fourth captain in eight months, Australian John Dyson, the new coach, and Clive Lloyd, a manager with a formidable reputation to upkeep, Gayle’s promise that they will make South Africa fight might not be as far-fetched as it now seems.His assertion on arrival on Monday that his team has come not only to compete but to win the series was overplaying the optimism but it was a welcome statement of intent all the same. The most vital job for him, Dyson and Lloyd is to encourage the self-belief that has been drained from West Indies players with every demeaning setback.There was a clear hint during his brief tenure at the helm in the limited-overs matches in England last summer that he has the personality to at least start the process. If unwittingly, Gayle’s comment that, while his team respected the South Africans, they did not fear them was a throwback to the gist of Curtly Ambrose’s rebuke of his colleagues on the 1998-99 tour. Fear, he told them, was their biggest problem.It was the same phobia that transfixed those who confronted Lloyd’s mighty teams of the 1980s and Australia’s now. It is not easily erased, especially given the present circumstances.The overwhelming feeling here, as no doubt among the cricket fraternity everywhere, is that the series will be another of the one-sided disasters that have driven the West Indies to one from the bottom of the pile on the latest ICC rankings. It is a perfectly reasonable assumption. It is not simply that South Africa are equal third (with India) of nine in the Test rankings to West Indies’ eighth. It is virtually every other consideration besides.South Africa have recently come off two successful Test and ODI series, prevailing in the always tough environment of Pakistan before overwhelming New Zealand at home in four days in the first Test and three days in the second. Their premier batsman, Jacques Kallis, plundered five hundreds in seven innings and Dale Steyn established himself as a serious fast bowler with 20 wickets in the two Tests against New Zealand. They believe they should be ranked only below Australia – and not that far either – and are ready to prove that point with the same ruthless efficiency that stunned New Zealand.In utter contrast, the West Indies will not have played a Test for more than a year when they take to the field in Port Elizabeth on Boxing Day and have not won one since their record run-chase to topple Australia in Antigua in May, 2005. Their last overseas win was in 2002 over Bangladesh, the only team placed below them by the ICC.Already without the mastery of the retired Brian Lara for the first time in South Africa, they also have to manage without their originally appointed captain and crucial No. 3 batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan through a knee injury.To add to their woes, Gayle snapped a hamstring in the first of the five preceding ODIs in Zimbabwe and, even if ready for Boxing Day, will be short of match practice. And so will all the others, who last played a first-class match either in the Carib Beer Series last April, on the tour of England in June or, for Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Daren Powell, for English counties in September. One four-day encounter against even a strong South Africa A team in East London on December 16 to 19 is hardly proper preparation although that is the way of modern international cricket.If, in spite of such inequality, the West Indies can, indeed, give South Africa a fight in the coming two months, their cricket will at last have started the long climb back to respectability.

No more Plate finals
The Ranji Trophy Plate League will have semi-finals and a final for the last time this season. Under the new system, ratified by the BCCI Working Committee last week, the leaders of the two groups in the Plate League will qualify for the Super League quarterfinals along with the three top teams from each Super League group.This means a team from the Plate League could end up winning the Ranji Trophy if it is on the favourable side of three draws. The positive of the move, though, is that the teams get rewarded immediately for a good performance in the Plate League, as opposed to a promotion to the Super League the following season. But it’s open to debate if the best team in the Plate League group is better than the fourth-placed team in a Super League group.This year’s points standing provides an immediate case study. If rain severely affects the match between Delhi and Tamil Nadu in Chennai, Delhi could finish fourth in Group A of the Super League, even though they are a strong team and have done well. If the ruling were to be enforced this year, they could have lost a quarter-final spot to Railways, who are leading Group B in the Plate League.This move doesn’t really remove the original problem of too many teams diluting the competition in the Super League.Long arm of the law
When given out lbw off Praveen Kumar at Kolkata, Manoj Tiwary stood aghast – bat slightly pointing towards umpire, words on his lips, and anger in his eyes – and walked off reluctantly. PTI reported he had words with both umpires on his way back and more when the umpires were headed in for lunch.Chhota dada lost 50% of his match fee for his antics but there seems to be some previous between him and Ranade. cricketnext.com reports that it was the latest in a string of contentious decisions by Ranade involving Tiwary. Earlier this season, when India A played South Africa A in a one-day match at Rajkot, Tiwary was given out caught – though apparently off the helmet – by Ranade. Last year in Hyderabad, Ranade declared Tiwary out lbw while there seemed to be a deflection, the website reported.Elsewhere
Aakash Chopra was sawn off for the second time in two matches, adding to his woes a week after Delhi team-mate Virender Sehwag made it to the squad ahead of him for the Test series in Australia. While Chopra sought to be philosophical and saw it as just another occupational hazard, Pravin Amre, Mumbai’s coach, lashed out at the umpires. After Mumbai failed to bowl Himachal Pradesh out in their second innings, Amre was quoted as saying in the Times of India: “[Abhishek] Nayar and Ramesh Powar had both got [Ashok] Thakur early on – lbw and caught behind respectively — but they were denied. Earlier, Rohit Sharma, Amol Muzumdar and Ajit Agarkar were incorrectly given out. This is the sixth match and I have not spoken against the standard of umpiring so far. But it has hurt us badly in every game. We are having to take 15 wickets in every innings.”While the umpiring standards are not surprising, it is surprising that only Tiwary has been fined for showing dissent. It could have to do with that being the only match being shown live on TV.What’s in a name
Over the last week or two, Ranadeb Bose has been compared to Sourav Ganguly in terms of pace by a national selector, omitted from the invitees’ list for the BCCI awards night where he was an winner, and his second name was changed on the team list in the match against Uttar Pradesh.He was called Ranadeb Mondal on the official list given by Bengal, which could have resulted in a protest by the UP team. On the first afternoon, the Bengal officials desperately went about trying to get the mistake corrected by the match referee Inderjit Singh Sachdeva, the Indian Express reported. In case of a factual error on the team list, the team at fault has to play without that particular player. In an earlier game, against Punjab at Siliguri, Bengal had failed to mention Bose’s name in the team-list, the paper reported. The mistake was rectified during the match.Hat-trick season
VRV Singh became the third bowler to take a hat-trick in two rounds of Ranji Trophy matches. And like the previous two – by Sony Cheruvathur and Parvinder Awana – this one too set up a win and also helped Punjab avoid relegation. VRV dismissed Niranjan Behera off the last ball of his fifth over and Rashmi Parida and Rashmi Das with the first two of his sixth, as Orissa collapsed from 24 for 0 to 76 all out in the second innings.Quotehanger
“To be honest, it wouldn’t have been as bad had Gautam [Gambhir] made it ahead of me.”: Aakash Chopra told Mid-Day about his exclusion from the squad for the Tests in Australia. “But Viru [Sehwag] – although he is a very good friend of mine – being picked ahead of both of us is a bit shocking. He was not even named in the provisional squad. In that sense, I have every right to be disappointed.”