Scotland’s captain, Craig Wright, has flown home from the World Cup following the sudden death of his maternal aunt.Wright, who took the wicket of Ricky Ponting during Scotland’s 203-run defeat in their opening match against Australia on Wednesday, left St Kitts on Thursday evening and has been replaced in the short-term as captain by Ryan Watson.Euan McIntye, Scotland’s manager, told Cricinfo that Wright would miss Scotland’s match against South Africa on March 20, but with the funeral scheduled to be held on Monday 19, he was expected to return to the squad in time for their key fixture against Holland next Thursday.In Wright’s absence, the South African-born seamer, Dewald Nel, 26, could be given a chance to play against the country of his birth.

Top shot
There’s a touch of arrogance about Saqibul Hasan thatmakes him so entertaining to watch. Even with five wickets down, he didn’tretreat into a shell, and when Andrew Flintoff pitched one a little toowide, he rocked back and sent the ball soaring over backward point. Itcleared the rope by a foot – the shot of a cornered tiger rather than ameek mouse.Armed and dangerous
In his previous over, Mohammad Rafique hadFlintoff in all sorts of trouble with an arm ball. When he producedanother, there was no response, just statuesque football and ahalf-hearted prod that did nothing to keep the ball from the stumps.Comedy of errors
Habibul Bashar admitted later that he was cursing theloss of another wicket when Shahriar Nafees looped one up towards MichaelVaughan at short midwicket. By the time he heard the shout of “He’sdropped it”, it was too late, and Vaughan’s throw to Paul Nixon – more infrustration than anything, he said later – gave England another wicket.Remember that old adage about keeping your eye on the ball?Net run-rate? What’s that?
With wickets falling and the tail tocome, Nixon and Paul Collingwood played out 22 dot balls with just eightruns needed. Given that run-rate might be the clinching factor for asemi-final place, it was almost as perplexing as Graeme Smith’s decisionto give himself five overs (56 runs) against West Indies.Sing when you’re (barely) winning
No one could complain about theatmosphere though. The English fans were in fine voice, belting out and , in addition to the usual BarmyArmy chants. Father Christmas led the choir for , though thecostume probably wasn’t such a good idea given the intense heat.How bizarre
No, we’re not talking about the 1996 hit from OMC, butabout a group of fans who kept chanting, “India, India” midway through theBangladesh innings. But even they were eclipsed in the Joke of the Daystakes by another character who was waving a flag that said: . Too much sun perhaps?

Scorecard

Opener Malinda Warnapura ensured Sri Lanka A’s efficient bowling effort didn’t go to waste with a composed, unbeaten hundred to put his side 2-0 up over Bangladesh A at the P. Saravanamuttu Stadium in Colombo. The Sri Lankan bowlers bowled the tourists out for 206 in 45 overs, and overcame a top-order wobble to ease home in the 45th over.Bangladesh’s decision to bat came a cropper as they were quickly 10 for 3, Akalanka Ganegama and Ranga Dias, the opening bowlers, shared the early spoils as they accounted for openers Jahurul Islam and Mehrab Hossain jnr, and Nazimuddin, the No. 3. Ishara Amerasinghe, the right-arm medium-pacer, wasted little time in getting in on the act with the wicket of Nadif Chowdhury (25).Tushar Imran, the captain, was removed for 38 by Dias, Amerasinghe got Mahmudullah for 0, and it was then up to Farhad Reza and Saghir Hossain, the wicketkeeper, to salvage the job. In a solid display of hitting, Reza bailed Bangladesh out of further trouble with an 84-ball 82, with seven fours and three sixes. Hossain chipped in with 25, and the duo added 82 for the seventh wicket. Kaushal Lokuarachchi, the legspinner, picked up 3 for 57.Set 207 to win, Warnapura and Dilruwan Perera (46) added 91 before the slow left-arm combo of Enamul Haque jnr and Mehrab struck. Enamul trapped Perera lbw, and Mehrab got Chamara Kapugedera for 6. Mahmudullah, with his right-arm medium-pace, picked up Thilina Kandamby to leave Sri Lanka on 138 for 3, before he got Jehan Mubarak (21) to make it 179 for 2.Warnapura, however, was in good touch and moved onto his maiden List A hundred in the company of Lokuarachchi, who contributed an unbeaten 2 from 20 deliveries, to finish the game and give Sri Lanka an unassailable series lead with one to play.

Shane Bond, New Zealand’s fast bowler, has announced his intention to target Sanath Jayasuriya, the hard-hitting Sri Lankan opening batsman, in their semi-final clash in Jamaica.”If we can get Sanath out early we can probably limit them to 200 runs so it’s my job, especially in this game, to get him out and we’ve always identified him as a key wicket,” Bond told the .The pitch at Sabina Park is expected to offer a fair bit of assistance to fast bowlers and according to Bond it has more bounce and swing than any of the other wickets that New Zealand have played on this World Cup. “It’s a small ground,” Bond added. “We have a long batting line-up, some big hitters, so it might suit us better and should be an ideal ground when playing a side like Sri Lanka.”Bond has 12 wickets at 12.83 from seven matches in the tournament. He missed New Zealand’s final Super Eights game against Australia due to a stomach complaint and his side lost by 215 runs. The defeat, Bond said, was disappointing because New Zealand were a better side than the one bowled out for 133 in 25.5 overs.”The moment we beat South Africa [in their penultimate Super Eights game], we knew we would be playing Sri Lanka and that became our sole focus,” he said. “So we didn’t do ourselves justice; we weren’t focused. But we are here for the game we really want to play and we’ll turn up for this match.”Winning the World Cup will give a huge boost to cricket in New Zealand, felt Bond. “I think people are hoping we win but aren’t speaking it,” he said. “I think even to make the final would be a huge buzz and an Australia-New Zealand final would be something special.”

Finally, some good news for Canada’s preparations for the Intercontinental Cup final. After Thursday’s tale of woe – missed planes, lost kits and rain – the sun shone on Friday and suddenly everything looked brighter. What a difference a day makes.Despite the miserable forecast, they managed to fit in a 60-over match against a select England XI at Loughborough Town. It wasn’t quite the two-day match that their coach Andy Pick had envisaged when organising the game, but the match was fudged so that Canada’s batsmen could at least get two innings, with the tailenders sacrificing their time at the crease. John Davison and Ashish Bagai got some runs under their belts, while Bagai will have profited in part from getting some captaincy practice.And, with Canada bossing proceedings, having the ECB at 40 for 5 in their first dart, before a recovery, and then 60 for 6 next time out, Pick was delighted to report “a really good day”. Finally.More than anything, playing outdoors will have done them no end of good, and they will return to outdoor nets at the ECB Academy in Loughborough for Saturday, as organised by Pick. They will then be followed on Sunday by a rest day, allowing the players to recover from their jet lag, before heading to Grace Road for some outdoor practice once more, ahead of Tuesday’s final there against Ireland.The whole team are together at last – and Davison and Geoff Barnett have even been reunited with their luggage.

The World Twenty20 Championship tickets have been selling at a quick pace, according to reports in the South African media.Around 22,000 tickets were sold on Thursday, the first day of the ticket sales, bringing the total number sold to 45,000, including preferential bookings, said News24.com.The website cited sources reporting that Johannesburg recorded the highest number of sales with 15,000 tickets sold, followed by Cape Town at 4800 and Durban at 2400. Tickets for games involving South Africa and for the semi-finals and final were the most popular.Steve Elworthy, the tournament’s director said, “We are pleased to see that so many people have bought their tickets early and we certainly hope that sales increase for this inaugural event.”The organisers were hoping that the matches would be played in front of full-capacity audiences, after announcing low-cost tickets in keeping with Cricket South Africa’s policy of making the game accessible to all.The opening match of the tournament would be played on September 11 at the Wanderers in Johannesburg between South Africa and the West Indies. The Wanderers would also play host to the final on September 24.

Stuart MacGill will play a significant role in Australia’s three-Test tour of Pakistan early next year, according to the coach Tim Nielsen. MacGill, 36, will act as a forward scout when he visits Pakistan in September with the Australia A squad.Australia have not played in Pakistan since 1998-99, when MacGill took 15 wickets at an average of 27 in his first Test series outside Australia. Nielsen said the information MacGill brought back this September would be valuable in Australia’s preparations.”He will get a look at the Pakistan conditions when most of us will be tied up in South Africa with the Twenty20 World Cup,” Nielsen told the . “We haven’t played there for ten years and he will be someone we’ll be counting on to play an important role in that series.”Terry Jenner believes MacGill must assume Shane Warne’s place in the Australian team for at least a year to allow the budding spinners Cullen Bailey and Dan Cullen time to develop. Bailey and Cullen will be with MacGill for the Australia A matches, but Jenner said it was too soon for a full-time international promotion.”Think about Warne, he wasn’t up to it at 22,” Jenner told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Patience is the key, and if the opportunities arise 12 or 18 months from now, they will be better equipped to take advantage of them.”I personally think that MacGill is singularly the most influential player in the immediate future because we want the young blokes to have a bit more time.” Australia’s selectors will not have to make a final decision on the spinners until November when the team plays Sri Lanka in the first Test at the Gabba.

Kerala’s sole home Ranji Trophy match this season may be shifted from Kochi to Palakkad as the dates for the match clash with Kerala Football Association (KFA) plans to use Kochi’s Nehru Stadium for its national league games.Since the Nehru Stadium is hosting the second of the seven one-dayers between India and Australia on October 2, the KFA scheduled nine of its home matches after October 22. So, the Ranji match, from November 12 to 15, against Services was going to coincide with the football league games.”That could be a problem but I think we can settle the issue amicably after discussions with the cricket association,” KMI Mather, the KFA president, told the . “The All India Football Federation plans to have a strict schedule this season. And we’ll need at least two weeks to prepare a football ground after a cricket match, with the focus being mainly on the wicket.”But shifting the match to Palakkad’s Fort Ground will prove costly for the Kerala Cricket Association (KCA). “[It] will mean an expense of Rs 500,000 to Rs 600,000 because we have to prepare the ground all over again,” said TR Balakrishnan, the KCA interim president.

When the Board of Control for Cricket in India meets in Mumbai on Tuesday, the buzz may be singularly focussed on the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and what to do with players who have left its fold, but the BCCI has several other matters to discuss on its agenda.But first and foremost, the board will have to decide what action to take with players who have joined the ICL. In a press conference on Monday, the Zee Telefilms group announced that it had already signed up as many as 44 players. This has left several Ranji teams, notably Hyderabad, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Railways and Bengal severely depleted.It is widely believed that the BCCI will stick to its guns and slap bans on players who have signed up with the ICL. While the BCCI cannot, in any way, stop players from signing up with the ICL, it is certainly within their grasp to exclude these players from deriving any benefit from the BCCI. This means that these players will not be eligible to play in any tournaments conducted by the BCCI or its constituents.This will in turn mean that these players cannot even take part in league cricket organised by state associations – the Kanga League in Mumbai or the First Division League for the Palayampatti Shield in Chennai, for example. These players are likely to lose their jobs, which they hold solely for the purposes of representing a certain team – corporate or bank or public sector – in cricket tournaments. The players will also be ineligible for the pension that the BCCI currently pays out to former cricketers.However, one of the pressing matters that the board will be attending to, when it comes to making constitutional amendments, is finding a successor for Sharad Pawar, the BCCI president, in September 2008. Pawar will become vice-president of the International Cricket Council in July 2008, and will then have to relinquish office at his home board. The BCCI is set to appoint an interim president for the three-month period from July till September 2008, when the elections are set to take place.Once the ICC announced that David Morgan of the ECB, and Pawar from the BCCI, would take up office as ICC president in 2008 and 2010 respectively, the BCCI decided to clear the stage for similar practice at home, wherein the president elect will be chosen a year in advance. This suggestion, sources reveal, came from Inderjit Singh Bindra, former president of the BCCI and current president of the Punjab Cricket Association. It was suggested that such a practice would ensure that the president elect had a good working knowledge of the board, and that elections would proceed in a smooth manner.As per the procedural changes being suggested, the interim president for that period will be someone from the same zone as the existing president – West Zone – which in this case will be Chirayu Amin. By rotation the next turn, which will be for a full three years, from September 2008 till 2011, goes to Central Zone. The front-runner here is Shashank Manohar, who is the president of the Vidarbha Cricket Association and vice-president of the BCCI, apart from being a close aide of Pawar. What this will mean, in effect, is that there will be no elections for the post of president in 2008 and the current regime will continue, unchallenged, till 2011.It is understood that Lalit Modi, the man behind many of the financial and business aspects of the board, is to have suggested that a similar procedure be adopted for other office bearers of the board, apart from the president, in order to ensure some sort of continuity. However, it is unclear how other members of the board have taken this suggestion.The BCCI will also have to make changes to its constitution for the appointment of paid selectors. It is believed that from 2008 onwards – till then the existing system will continue – there will be a pool of five selectors, preferably but not necessarily one from each zone, with a tenure of three years and an option of a one-year extension. Also set to change is the criteria for selectors. All senior selectors will now have to have played at least five Test matches or 50 first-class matches. Currently a selector merely has to have played one first-class match. To be a member of the junior selection committee, the eligibility will be a minimum of 25 first-class matches.

Pakistan A 22 for 3 (Hopes 2-0) trail Australia A 293 (Ronchi 107, Jaques 82) by 271 runs
Scorecard

A lively century from Luke Ronchi gave Australia A a respectable total before the Pakistan A top order threatened to disintegrate in the second Test at Lahore. At stumps on the first day the home side was 22 for 3, still trailing Australia by 271 runs.Khurram Manzoor was the only Pakistan batsman to get off the mark and he was unbeaten on 20 at the close, with Naved Latif yet to score. Doug Bollinger had Khalid Latif caught behind for 0 and James Hopes, who finished with 2 for 0, removed Yasir Hameed and Anwar Ali, each without scoring.It was an unhappy end to a day that had begun well for Pakistan after Faisal Iqbal won the toss and decided to field. The visitors were struggling at 59 for 4 as the Pakistan fast bowlers shared the wickets around, but Phil Jaques and Hopes began the recovery mission.Jaques continued his productive tour – he made 152 in the first Test – with 82 from 99 balls and Hopes managed 34. But it was Ronchi batting at No. 7 who did the major damage, belting two sixes and 16 fours in his 107 from 109 deliveries. Ronchi had solid support from Cullen Bailey (31) as Australia fought their way to 293.