Andy Flower, the England team director, hopes James Taylor can take ownership of England’s problematic No. 6 position

Andrew McGlashan31-Jul-2012Andy Flower, the England team director, hopes James Taylor can take ownership of England’s problematic No. 6 position but has said that Ravi Bopara will be considered for future selection when his personal situation is resolved.Bopara, who returned to the side for the first time in a year at The Oval, was inked in for the second Test against South Africa at Headingley, despite a lean comeback match: he made 0 and 22 in the crushing innings defeat before informing the management that he would not be available. His withdrawal means England are set to use their fifth No. 6 of the year as the middle-order spot, which has not been consistently filled since Paul Collingwood’s retirement, continues to cause headaches.Eoin Morgan was the first to be given the role and had a sustained run through last summer and the early part of 2012 until paying the price for a poor series against Pakistan. Matt Prior then moved up the order in Sri Lanka, with Samit Patel playing an allrounder’s role at No. 7, before Jonny Bairstow was debuted against West Indies where he struggled.That laid out a clear route for Bopara to finally return to a position that would have been his earlier in the year but for injury but now another obstacle has been put in his way meaning a second debutant of the season in the role. It has also meant another tricky Test build-up for Flower to manage, following the issues revolving around Kevin Pietersen in the days leading towards The Oval.”It’s disappointing for him obviously but it opens the door for another player who has come through the academy system and worked really hard over the years to get his chance,” Flower said. “I certainly hope James can make six his spot for a while.”I don’t know him that well. We’ve had him down for the odd net and he’s worked with Graham Gooch. I watched him play against Sri Lanka at Derby last year. He looks like a young man that understands his game pretty well and he knows how to score runs. We don’t know how he’ll do but we wish him well and hope he has a wonderful international career. It doesn’t close the door on Ravi Bopara.”Flower all-but confirmed that Taylor will debut at No. 6 by saying that it was “unlikely” England would employ a five-man bowling attack despite only taking two wickets in 189 overs at The Oval. However, he did not completely dismiss the idea of an all-pace attack if the Headingley pitch looked particularly lively – although that is a trap England have fallen into before at Leeds. “An all seam attack is an option for us,” he said. “But we haven’t done that for a long time.”It would be a major departure from type if England were to leave out Graeme Swann even though the offspinner went wicketless in 52 overs against South Africa, has taken just six Test wickets at 72.16 this season and is carrying a long-term elbow problem. Flower said Swann’s elbow was “Okay… He has a chronic problem but it’s improving.”Some of England’s players, especially Swann and James Anderson, have been reasonably candid in the days following the defeat at The Oval about how the team have struggled to adapt to their No. 1 ranking, which will slip away if they lose this series. Swann went as far as to call England’s recent record as “dismal” but, perhaps unsurprisingly, Flower did not quite agree.”I wouldn’t describe our results as being dismal,” he said. “I think you have to look a little deeper than that. The series in the UAE was in different conditions and we struggled against their two spinners. You can’t compare that to the first Test against South Africa.”South Africa played very good cricket, we played some good cricket in parts but we didn’t capitalise on a great platform in the first innings. On a pitch like that you need a significant score. South Africa bowled well that second morning and that was where the momentum of that game changed.”And, as even with the measured Flower, he tried to keep the situation in perspective. “Sometimes you are outplayed, regardless of your attempts at dismissal or strategy implemented, so you have to give credit to the opposition,” he said. “It would be very hard for me to argue our strategies were successful. But in international sport you’ll have huge ups and downs, and our make-up has to deal with those ups and downs.”

James Foster and Steven Croft have agreed to play in New Zealand’s Twenty20 competition with the Northern Knights

ESPNcricinfo staff20-Sep-2012James Foster, Essex’s wicketkeeper and captain, and Steven Croft, the Lancashire allrounder, have agreed to play in New Zealand’s Twenty20 competition with the Northern Knights. Foster will replace Peter McGlashan, who announced his retirement in July, behind the stumps for the Knights’ 2012-13 HRV Cup campaign.Both Foster, who played for England during the 2009 World Twenty20, and Croft, named in England’s provisional 30-man squad for the ongoing tournament in Sri Lanka, are experienced T20 performers. Scott Styris, the Knights captain, played alongside Foster at Essex between 2010 and 2011 and welcomed his arrival.”He’s a tremendous signing for us,” Styris said. “He topped the MVP table after the group stages of the UK T20 competition and was called the best wicketkeeper-batsman in the world by Essex coach, Paul Grayson, such is the high regard in which he is held in the United Kingdom. He’s also a like-for-like replacement for Peter McGlashan, which is ideal from our perspective.”Styris has also been a team-mate of Croft’s, during the Lancashire man’s spell at Auckland Aces in 2008-09. Croft said: “I loved playing in New Zealand the last time I was there so I’m really looking forward to coming to Northern Districts and playing some T20 cricket. I want to continue developing my game and hopefully push my way into the England T20 side.”Foster was Essex’s leading T20 run-scorer on their way to a quarter-final defeat last season, scoring 270 runs at a strike-rate of 165.64. His record of 15 sixes in the competition was only bettered by Yorkshire’s David Miller, who hit 21. Croft hit 313 runs at a strike-rate of 129.33 and an average of 62.60, putting him fourth on the Friends Life t20 runs list despite Lancashire not making it to the knockout stages.Grant Bradburn hoped the additions would boost his side’s HRV Cup chances. “We’re the Plunket Shield champions, we’ve won the one-day title in recent years and even won the Cricket Max trophy when it was played,” Northern Districts’ head coach said. “But Twenty20 honours have steadfastly eluded us and we’re very determined to set that right.”Northern Districts CEO, David Cooper, said: “Filling the sudden void left by Peter McGlashan’s pre-season retirement was obviously of some urgency for us and we are very pleased to have been able to attract such a highly experienced, competitive player as James Foster so quickly. Steven Croft’s Twenty20 nous and experience was likewise very attractive as we look to succeed in the only format in which silverware has eluded us.”While Foster and Croft will join the Knights towards the end of October, ahead of their HRV Cup opener against Otago Volts on November 2, Northern Districts will be without the services of Hamish Marshall this season. Marshall, 33, who is based in the UK where he plays for Gloucestershire, will remain at home to be with his wife for the birth of their second child, due in January.”I’m spending the winter here training with the Gloucester squad and doing my level 3 coaching certificate,” Marshall said. “Surviving the English winter will be a challenge and I wish the lads all the best over the season.”

Suresh Raina requested Pravin Amre to help him with few technical issues with his batting ahead of India A’s match against England

Amol Karhadkar29-Oct-2012Immediately after arriving in Mumbai on Sunday morning for the warm-up game against England, India A captain Suresh Raina called Pravin Amre, the former India Test batsman who is now a coach, and requested him to come over to the Brabourne Stadium to help him with few technical issues with his batting ahead of the crucial game.Amre, who knows Raina since his age-group cricket days and had last worked with him before he left for Australia for the tri-series earlier this year, obliged and spent a long time with Raina during the A team’s practice session on Sunday.Amre has coached Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy team for five years and has been associated with the Mumbai Indians and the Pune Warriors. However, it wasn’t the first time Amre was dealing with an individual batsman. For the last three months, he has been working as a batting coach for Robin Uthappa, the Karnataka opening batsman, who has been trying to regain his spot in the India team.So is it time for top batsmen to appoint personal batting coaches? “It’s up to the players. I’m earning a lot of money in cricket and I can choose who I want to train with. If I’m not fit, I can ask doctors or physios at the NCA to come and train with me for two months to get me fit,” Raina said on Monday.”With so many formats to switch between, it sometimes gets difficult and you need somebody to observe you and guide you all the time. Look at sports like tennis and shooting, the coach always travels with the sportsman. So when you are making a lot of money, why shouldn’t you hire a specialist who can help you out? It’s something that I can look at in the future. Cricket is all about sharing one’s knowledge and it’s more about skills than technique, if a coach can tell you about your skills and improve them, it will help you play different formats.”Raina also spelt out his bond with Amre, who has been coaching his employer Air India’s team for almost a decade now. “When I was 14 or 15, I played a lot of matches at the Under-19 level for Air India and have known Pravin sir since then. He knows my batting well,” Raina said. “When you’re not in the team, you need somebody to work on your game all the time. Pravin told me I’ve been batting well, but the time has come to change my game now. The button has to be pressed. That’s somewhere England have done well. Graham Gooch has been a big addition to the side. Look at how he changed Alastair Cook’s game and performances.”I asked him [Amre] about [Graeme] Swann. He troubled me a lot in England and got me out four or five times. He asked me to keep my shoulder over the ball and my eyes in line with the ball.”While a player may feel the need of closer assessment from a personal coach, Amre feels it’s more challenging for a coach to work on an individual basis.”When I used to work for a team like Mumbai, I knew I had six batsmen to rely on. It didn’t matter who scored runs. What mattered the most was the team’s performance,” Amre told ESPNcricinfo. “Here, there is just one batsman who I am working on and I would be assessed only based on what he does. So it’s imperative that the player-coach partnerships works for the better. When it comes to Suresh, we share a personal bond and there’s no contract. Whenever he asks me to work on his batting, I cannot say no.”It remains to be seen if Raina makes the most of his time spent with Amre over the next three days.

Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus will not bowl before the first morning of the third Test against South Africa, as Australia try to freshen up the exhausted fast bowlers

Daniel Brettig27-Nov-2012
Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus will not bowl another ball before the first morning of the third Test against South Africa, beginning on November 30 in Perth, as Australia try to freshen up the exhausted fast bowlers after their unstinting but ultimately fruitless efforts in Adelaide.Siddle’s performance was particularly noteworthy, pushing through crippling fatigue to take the hosts to within two wickets of a 1-0 series lead. Those exertions mean both he and Hilfenhaus are in considerable doubt to be recovered in time for Perth, leaving open the possibility of a dramatically recast bowling attack that may feature Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Starc, John Hastings and Josh Hazlewood.Australia coach Mickey Arthur indicated that a wholesale swap of bowlers for Perth was a distinct possibility, granting the captain Michael Clarke a far fresher line-up of bowlers while South Africa continue to rely on the same quartet they brought for the tour. The visitors have been helped by the stout batting display that not only secured a draw but also gave Australia’s bowlers an enormous workload while their opposite numbers reclined in the Adelaide Oval dressing rooms.”It’s certainly something we need to look at,” Arthur said. “I think both Hilf and Sids have been outstanding, especially Sids – I thought there was a huge effort, a really warrior-like effort. We’ve got a couple of days off, I can’t see them bowling any balls at training, so we’ve just got to see how they pull up, see how they come up in Perth.”Hence we’ve given ourselves cover, in case they don’t pull up well we’re in a position where we could go with a completely different attack into Perth. That will depend on how Hilf and Sids travel, and we’ve had Mitchell Starc with us and we know he’s ready to go as well.”The training becomes more individualised now with such a quick turnaround. We’ve got a lot of new bowlers coming in, those bowlers will be very keen to impress I’m sure. So the quality of bowling around the nets is going to be first rate – and I’m sure our bowlers are going to get a really good hit out and be ready to go, come Friday morning.”Johnson’s return to the squad for the first time since he suffered a serious foot injury while batting during the dramatic Johannesburg match a year ago is a nod to his formidable record in Tests at the WACA ground – 30 wickets at 18.13 in four matches – but also an acknowledgement of his improved consistency this summer.”That does play a role, he’s had good success at the WACA ground but he’s just shown really good progression through the whole summer so far and it’s really good to have him back. He gives that little bit of fire and if selected sure he’ll be ready to go,” Arthur said. “I thought Mitchell was outstanding for us in the one day series in Pakistan, he bowled superbly, arguably one of our best bowlers there during that one day series.”He’s been making good progress through Shield cricket, I went and had a look at him at the WACA just last week and he looked in fairly good touch … so I think he obviously thoroughly deserves his place and we’re very lucky we have a lot of depth in this bowling department right now. These two guys [Siddle and Hilfenhaus] have given it their all and we can have a look at how everybody comes up and make a really well-considered decision for Friday.”Another decision Arthur described as well-considered was that to play James Pattinson at Adelaide Oval after he pushed through 53 overs in the first Test of the series at the Gabba. Having bowled only 9.1 overs in South Africa’s first innings in the second Test, Pattinson was forced off by a side/rib injury that ended his Test summer. 
”He’s a young fast bowler, he’s going to get injured,” Arthur said. “Medical reports were that he should be ok, ultimately myself and Michael [Clarke] and the selector on duty make the call and we wanted to go with Patto because we thought he had bowled really well in Brisbane. Unfortunately, young fast bowlers get injured so it was disappointing to lose him during the Test match.”One of Arthur’s chief tasks will be to ensure his team looks beyond the disappointment of Adelaide, emphasising the positives of dominating the world’s No. 1 team for extended periods of both Tests rather than mulling over the two wickets they were unable to take to secure victory.”We’ve had a quick chat about that – it took a massive amount out of the blokes and I’m just so proud of the effort each and every one of them gave. The guys are gutted we didn’t pull this Test match off,” Arthur said. “We spoke to them about it, hopefully we can put that behind us now and it all starts again for us first ball in Perth on Friday.”

Michael Hussey and AB de Villiers have indicated that the verbal duel between the two teams, which reached its height on the final afternoon in Brisbane, will resume in Adelaide

Daniel Brettig18-Nov-2012Almost as inevitable as the sight of Michael Clarke and Graeme Smith walking out for the toss at Adelaide Oval on Thursday will be the sound of their two sides resuming a noisy and pungent on-field dialogue from the moment the first ball is bowled.Both camps expect the verbal battle to return in the second Test, particularly after a lively and even ill-tempered final afternoon in Brisbane passed without either the umpires Billy Bowden and Asad Rauf or the match referee Ranjan Madugalle raising a formal charge against either side. The umpires did, though, have a cautionary word to the bowlers at various points of the five days. This has effectively defined a generous line for the players’ on-field aggression, leaving Adelaide to witness more jousting from Thursday.”It’s part of the game, once you get out in the middle and emotions start to rise, it’s good for the game to see a bit of competitive spirit out there between the two teams,” Michael Hussey said. “A lot of the players in the past have used it as a mental battle against batsmen and it’s probably worked in the past as well.”Whether it works on these South African batsmen I don’t know. They’ve shown they’ve been a great team for a period of time now, they don’t get to No. 1 in the world without enduring these sorts of things before. But once you get over that white line, competitive spirit between bat and ball starts, and there’s always going to be things that are said, but as long as it doesn’t go too far and players [don’t] cross the line I think it’s fine.”Clarke spoke before the series about “pushing the line” of legal aggression in this series, whether it was in terms of short-pitched bowling or a pointed choice of words. Australia’s players make no secret of their use of verbal aggression towards the opposition as a way of firing themselves up, something witnessed quite pointedly earlier this year during the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka when the ears of the Irish among others were left ringing by fighting words from the mouths of Shane Watson and David Warner in particular.In Brisbane it was James Pattinson who vented his distaste for batsmen most freely, with Smith copping plenty on the final afternoon after he pulled away from one delivery as the bowler entered his delivery stride. Ultimately Pattinson, who won the duel, delivered a send-off to South Africa’s captain that might have forced Madugalle to act had it been even a fraction more prolonged.Smith had played the role of instigator earlier in the match, confronting Ed Cowan with an attempt to disturb the opener’s concentration as he prepared to face up to the first over of the fourth day’s play. Smith’s words were brushed aside by Cowan, but provided further proof that Australia and South Africa are most comfortable when flinging a little mud each other’s way in pursuit of victory.Nevertheless, AB de Villiers noted that Australia’s bluster proved unsuccessful in the 2008-09 series in Australia, a useful reminder of the fact that sharp words can quickly appear hollow if not backed up by sharper deeds.”They thought so in 2008 as well and it didn’t really happen that way, so hopefully we can prove them wrong again,” de Villiers said of the contention that Australia considered sledging to be a way to get into South African heads.”There’s always a bit of chat around. We’re talking about two very good teams who want to win the game. You do whatever you can to get a few wickets when the pressure is on. Whatever you can do to get an edge over the opposition, you will do it.”

Shane Warne did not take a wicket but left a mark nonetheless as the Melbourne Stars edged past the Hobart Hurricanes in the final over of the BBL match at the MCG

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Dec-2012
Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsThis was Ricky Ponting’s first domestic match since his international retirement•Getty Images

Shane Warne did not take a wicket but left a mark nonetheless as the Melbourne Stars edged past the Hobart Hurricanes in the final over of the BBL match at the MCG.Adding an edge to a contest already noteworthy as Ricky Ponting’s first domestic match since his international retirement, Warne offered a barbed critique of the Australian Twenty20 captain, George Bailey, who battled to 28 from 26 balls before falling victim to Cameron White.Twice Warne drew edges from Bailey that were not held, leaving the former Australia spin bowler to remark while miked up to the broadcasters: “You would think the Australian Twenty20 captain would smack me out of the park, wouldn’t you? Rather than keep nicking me?”White eventually dismissed Bailey, as the Hurricanes were restricted to 8 for 134. Clint McKay snared three wickets after Tim Paine had tried to hold the innings together following Ponting’s exit in the second over for eight, coincidentally the same score he made in his final Test innings.The Stars’ chase was guided in its early stages by Rob Quiney and Brad Hodge, before cameos by Cameron White and Glenn Maxwell took the hosts close enough to make the final result a formality, despite a noteworthy spell by the limited-overs specialist Ben Laughlin.After the match, Bailey said he had no intention of getting into a war of words with Warne. “Is it disrespectful? Until I actually see it I don’t think I’ll get into a war of words with Warnie,” Bailey said. “I think he’s still the world’s greatest leg-spinner isn’t he, who’s going to have a Test comeback at the age of 43? So he needs a bit of respect.”