In the latest round of County Championship matches, Kent beat Northants by 145 runs after Mohammad Sami ripped through the batsmen with 6 for 99. Sami finished with match figures of 10 for 138. Robert Key further reminded the England selectors of his ability with his third century of the week. Elsewhere, Surrey drew with Middlesex after Jamie Dalrymple’s 244, and Sussex drew with Warwickshire at Horsham. Ian Bell, the first-innings double-centurion finished on 64 not out at the close. At Chelmsford, James Foster smashed an aggressive 212 in Essex’s draw with Leicestershire. Derbyshire drew with Somerset at Derby, despite Andy Caddick’s 6 for 92. Yesterday, there were big wins for Worcestershire, Glamorgan and Nottinghamshire. Matthew Mason took five wickets as Gloucestershire went down at New Road, David Hussey helped set up Notts’ win with 125, and Alex Wharf grabbed five to sink Durham at the Riverside.

Frizzell County Championship Division One

Scorecard
Day 1 Report – Wisden Cricinfo
Day 2 Report – Wisden Cricinfo
Day 3 Report – Wisden Cricinfo
Day 4 Report – Wisden Cricinfo
Scorecard
Day 1 Report – Middlesex see red as Murtagh rides his luck The Guardian
Day 2 Report – Dalrymple cashes in on Strauss call-up The Daily Telegraph
Day 3 Report – Nash altercation sours Batty’s mood The Guardian
Day 4 Report – Brown guides Surrey home The Sunday Times
Scorecard
Day 1 Report – Bell rings with old joy of young freedom The Guardian
Day 2 Report – Bell and Frost shine in day of records The Daily Telegraph
Day 3 Report – Ward in carefree mood The Daily Telegraph
Day 4 Report – Bell still learning the fame game The Sunday Times
Scorecard
Day 1 Report – Wilting county watch the Hick master-class Gloucestershire Echo
Day 2 Report – Hick wallows in batting heaven The Daily Telegraph
Day 3 Report – Gidman digs in to delay inevitable The Daily Telegraph
Day 4 Report – Mason’s zip seals victoryThe Daily Telegraph

Frizzell County Championship Division Two

Scorecard
Day 1 Report – Caddick hits a reach seam The Daily Telegraph
Day 2 Report – Belligerent Blackwell hits back The Daily Telegraph
Day 3 Report – Derbyshire look to end drought The Daily Telegraph
Day 4 Report – Derbyshire dilemma The Sunday Telegraph
Scorecard
Day 1 Report – Hodge tears into Essex The Daily Telegraph
Day 2 Report – Promising Cook grabs maiden 100 The Daily Telegraph
Day 3 Report – Foster hits out as Essex boys shine The Daily Telegraph
Day 4 Report – Essex miss Napier power The Sunday Telegraph
Scorecard
Day 1 Report – Pietersen tucks into depleted Yorkshire The Independent
Day 2 Report – Hussey closes on century to deflate Yorkshire attack The Independent
Day 3 Report – Hussey piles on Yorkshire woe The Guardian
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Day 1 Report – Quickfire Powell turns on power in glory bid IC Wales
Day 2 Report – Harrison’s best swings it towards Glamorgan IC Wales
Day 3 Report – Wharf leads the way IC Wales

Waqar Younis is all set to join the growing band of former-cricketers-turned-commentators. According to a report in The News, a Pakistan daily, Waqar is in Delhi to sign up with ESPN, and will be part of the commentary team for the Asia Cup, to be held in Sri Lanka from July 16 to August 1.Waqar played his last international match during the 2003 World Cup, after which he was dropped following Pakistan’s miserable performance in the tournament. He waited a year for a possible recall, but with the Pakistan board plumping for youth, Waqar finally announced his retirement in April 2004.Waqar, 32, ended with 789 international wickets (373 in Tests and 416 in one-dayers), and will add to a burgeoning list of players who have opted for a lucrative career as commentator after their playing days. The last to join the band was Nasser Hussain, who announced his retirement after England’s first Test against New Zealand earlier this season, and within weeks joined the Sky Sports commentary team for the NatWest Series.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has announced the schedule for Australia’s tour, which takes place at the end of the year. Australia will only have one warm-up match in India after the Champions Trophy – a three-day match against a Board President’s XI.A BCCI committee will meet tomorrow and Monday (July 18 and 19) to finalise the venues of the matches, as well as those of the Test series against South Africa which follows the Australia tour. Delhi, which was slated to host one of the Tests against Australia, has now officially pulled out of the race after indicating their inability to finish the renovation of the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in time for the match. The Test is now likely to be shifted to Eden Gardens in Kolkata.Australia’s last tour of India, in 2001, was an epic confrontation between the world’s two leading teams, with India eventually winning 2-1.Australia in India, series schedule:
September 30 – October 2 v Board President’s XI
October 6-10 v India, 1st Test
October 14-18 v India 2nd Test
October 26-30 v India 3rd Test
November 3-7 v India 4th Test

Australia’s coach, John Buchanan, has scotched suggestions that today’s match between Australia and England would give an insight into the teams’ prospects for next summer’s Ashes series. There has been a familiar sense of optimism surging through England’s ranks, thanks to their recent successes in Tests and one-dayers, but Buchanan is not getting caught up in the hype, saying that this match was only a fleeting moment.”I’m not convinced about that,” Buchanan told AAP, when asked if the match was an indication of the future. “It’s a snapshot in time. It makes a statement about this particular match. Nothing else. There’s a lot of time before the Ashes series, a lot of change will happen to both teams between now and then. I don’t think this game will have any bearing.”But Duncan Fletcher looked at it differently. He believed English cricket was changing, and that the team had a pretty good chance of putting one over Australia. “This is probably the best opportunity we’ve had in a long time to topple the Aussies,” Fletcher said to the . “Winning the World Cup and the Ashes would be the ultimate dream. Any decent coach would tell you the same thing.”But something special is happening in English cricket. We really do want to become the best side in the world.”It was a thought mirrored by Darren Gough, who added that neither victory nor defeat could hide the fact tht England had improved. “I don’t think we have to beat them to know that England have progressed in both forms of the game. We have a good one-day side and the Test side is playing some excellent cricket, but we’ll only get a true test of how close the sides are when they play against each other in a five-Test series.”Even when I’m not playing I want England to beat them. It’s always going to be that way,” said Gough. “There will come a time when England beat Australia all the time and the Aussies will be thinking the same.”

The ongoing dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and its players boils down to concerns about possible clashes between contracts signed by individual players which may conflict with the board’s new major sponsor.The WICB had also been slow in paying the players’ salaries and bonuses from as far back as the England tour in August. Although the board is known to be short of cash and waiting for a bank loan to come through, the revelation that administration and back-room employees had been paid on time hardly helped the situation. A statement from the board revealed that non-payment of outstanding monies had occurred before.The Barbados-based newspaper reported that the dispute arose after there were concerns that the contracts from the WICB, which has responsibilities to their new sponsor, would conflict with some players’ own agreements. Digicel, the new sponsors of West Indies’ home series, replaced Cable & Wireless, one of their main rivals, who did the job from 1986 and gave over US$50million to the WICB in that time. But some players, Brian Lara among them, who became free agents after the Champions Trophy in England, have made their own deals with Cable & Wireless.Dinanath Ramnarine, the president of the West Indies Players Association, saidin a media release that “some of the conditions [for playing] have nothing to do with cricket but represent an attempt to exploit the players for commercial purposes”.Although the board has agreed to start making the payments, representatives from the players association and the WICB will meet on Thursday to discuss the tour contracts for the forthcoming series in Australia.

Australia 585 (Clarke 141, Gilchrist 126, Martyn 70, McGrath 61, Gillespie 54*, Ponting 51, Martin 5-152) beat New Zealand 353 (Oram 126*, Sinclair 69) and 76 by an innings and 156 runs
Scorecard
Day 4
Bulletin – New Zealand have no answer to McGrath
Verdict – An overwhelming gap
Roving Reporter – The Gabba faithful
Quotes “It’s a huge turnaround for us” – Ponting
Quotes Fleming asks for more out of top order
Big Picture – Oram’s freak dismissal

Day 3
Bulletin – Clarke and Gilchrist flay New Zealand
Verdict – Back to the familiar opening theme
Michael Clarke: a hero … in the flesh
Big Picture – Clarke’s celebration
Quotes “It’s great to play in front of a big crowd”
Quotes “It’s quite funny when the tail is batting”Day 2
Bulletin – Honours even after Oram hundred
Verdict – Kiwis ruffle Aussie feathers
Oram carves it like Cairns
Quotes – Warne speaks out
Big Picture – Warne’s wides
Day 1
Bulletin – Kasprowicz gives Australia the edge
Roving Reporter – Fashions of the Field
Verdict – A matter of confidence
Quotes – Kasprowicz and SinclairPreview package
Preview – Brothers in Arms
Quotes – Weird and wonderful series theories
News – New Zealand lose Franklin

Marvan Atapattu was upbeat ahead of Sri Lanka’s one-day series against New Zealand and predicted a hard-fought series beginning later this month. Sri Lanka’s one-day squad departed for New Zealand on Thursday morning and are scheduled to play five ODIs and two Tests on their month-long tour.Atapattu hoped that his team would build upon a successful 18 months under his captaincy and move towards becoming the world’s best one-day side by 2007. “We want to be the No. 1 team in the world,” said Atapattu after the team’s final training session earlier in the week. “But we’ll have to work really hard towards that objective. We cannot do that overnight but we can during a set period and the aim is to be there by the 2007 World Cup.”Sri Lanka have steadily risen up the ICC’s ODI Championship under Atapattu, who now has a 71% win ratio, having won 25 of 35 matches played since he took over after the 2003 World Cup. Australia topped the table with 136 points and Sri Lanka were in second place with 119. New Zealand, though, were just one point behind.”Rankings do matter at the end of the day, but at the moment it is a day-by-day process,” Atapattu insisted. “I just try to win each game with the 11 that have been selected. But the result is not as important as the way we play and I’m generally very happy with the way things are going. If you do well the rankings will take care of themselves.”The most important thing is that we are together as a team and playing for each other. Someone may miss a game or a series but when they come back they must be playing for the team. So far the boys are doing just that and that has been a key reason for our success.”Sri Lanka dominated their last one-day series in New Zealand in 2001, and triumphed 4-1, but Atapattu expected a tougher fight this time, especially after New Zealand boosted their confidence with a 1-1 draw against Australia in the recently concluded Chapell-Hadlee Trophy. “They are a tough team in their own conditions and although they don’t have a lot of stars they have been playing very competitively as a group,” said Atapattu. “They also have the advantage of playing at home.”Fortunately we have four days of training before our first practice match and then two practice games before the one-day series. This gives us plenty of time to adjust to the climatic conditions and the pitches. We’ll try and figure out our strategies within the first week.”Sri Lanka will miss Muttiah Muralitharan for the one-day series, although there is an outside chance that he might be ready for the final ODI in Wellington on January 8. He claimed to be feeling much better this week and has increased his workload.”I am pretty confident that he [Murali] will be available for the Test series,” said Atapattu. “He says he is getting better day by day and bowled four overs at normal speed on Tuesday. The cricket board is arranging for him to participate in a practice game [to be played on December 27] and when he is ready he can hopefully join is in New Zealand.”The team also departed without their coach, John Dyson, who missed the last few days of training due to a personal matter in Australia. Dyson will be joining the team straight from Australia later in the week. The first match will be played on December 26.

Graeme Smith pinned the blame for South Africa’s fourth-Test failings on his middle-order batsmen, after England, led admirably by Matthew Hoggard, had bundled them out for 247 in a mere 59.3 overs. Though they started the day as the only side with a realistic chance of victory, they finished it with a 2-1 deficit, and the very real prospect of only their third home series defeat since readmission to Test cricket."The middle-order needs to have a hard look at itself," said a shell-shocked Smith, whose battling 67 not out came too late in the match to salvage the situation. "We gave away too many quick wickets. Any bowling attack needs momentum, and England’s was tired and sore [coming into the day’s play]. But the more sniffs we gave them, the more their injuries seemed to go away."Smith himself was unable to take his usual place at the top of the order, after being felled by his coach Ray Jennings in a fielding accident on the fourth morning. Instead, AB de Villiers was promoted to open alongside Herschelle Gibbs, but managed just 3 from 13 balls as South Africa slumped to 18 for 3."It was just one place messed up, "said Smith. "It’s up to individuals to shoulder the blame. Several guys have made good starts to the series, but they need to turn that into a good run. This is a tough defeat to accept, because we did so well throughout the Test. But we tend to get teams under pressure, and then take our finger off the button. We needed to bat out three-and-a-half hours today, and we couldn’t do it."Smith, however, acknowledged the contributions made by Hoggard and Marcus Trescothick, who added 79 runs to his overnight 101 to give England the perfect start to the day. "Marcus took game to us," said Smith. "He played superbly, and all credit to Hoggard as well. He bowled superbly, put ball in the right areas with a bit of swing, and made the wicket look like it was doing something. But we didn’t start well with the bat, and there wasn’t enough hardness in the middle order. A few extra overs of graft would have done it."It’s disappointing to lose at home," added Smith, "but there’s one Test left, and we aim to regroup in three days and bounce back, because this series is similar to the one in England last year. Every session has been different, and though we need to lift our game in certain aspects, we’ve left our marker in some ways as well."Jennings, South Africa’s coach, echoed Smith’s sentiments about the batting, but added his own praise for the manner in which Hoggard had carried England’s attack. "He’s been like that the whole series," said Jennings. "I can’t remember a spell where he hasn’t put his heart into it. He’s shown a lot of passion and energy, he’s put the ball in the right areas, and at the end of day, I take my hat off to him. He has a desire to bowl, and this shows the effort." Andrew Miller is assistant editor of Cricinfo. He will be following England’s tour of South Africa.