Month: July 2018

3:00 AM ET Essex 237 for 5 (Pepper 68, Westley 57, Umesh 2-23, Ishant 2-38) trail India 395 (Karthik 82, Kohli 68, Walter 4-113, Coles 2-31) by 158 runsScorecard and ball-by-ball details Umesh Yadav bowls BCCI A flat wicket, another scorching day with “abnormal” temperatures, and some stodgy batting from Essex made India’s bowlers work hard on the second day of their warm-up match in Chelmsford. India wouldn’t mind a day…

3:00 AM ET ECB Reporters Network Surrey Stars 136 for 3 (Taylor 50*) beat Western Storm 132 for 9 (Mandhana 37, Dunkley 3-18) by seven wicketsScorecard Revenge was sweet for Surrey Stars as they beat defending champions Western Storm by seven wickets in the first ever Kia Super League fixture to be staged at Cheltenham. Legspinner Sophia Dunkley claimed 3 for 18, including the wicket of Indian star Smriti Mandhana,…

10:43 AM ET ESPNcricinfo staff Ed Smith, the England national selector, has defended the selection of Adil Rashid for next week’s first Test against India at Edgbaston, in spite of his unavailability for Yorkshire in red-ball cricket, saying that the decision was taken with the full approval of both his fellow selectors and England’s Test captain Joe Root, with Yorkshire kept informed at every step of the process. Smith took…

7:26 AM ET The selection of Adil Rashid in England’s squad for the first Test will go down as one of the great betrayals of county cricket. And that is quite an accolade at a time when barely a week goes by without England’s professional game being treated with condescension. When, back in February, Rashid informed Yorkshire that he wanted to sign a white-ball contract and turn his back on…

3:00 AM ET Liam Plunkett has signed a three-year deal with Surrey and will leave Yorkshire at the end of the season after becoming the first casualty of the IPL rivalry to England’s county game Plunkett’s future at Yorkshire was thrown into question on the eve of the season when he accepted a last-minute offer to go to IPL as a replacement for the injured South African quick Kagiso Rabada…

Jul 25, 2018 Osman Samiuddin Having made a good fist of the most difficult job in Pakistan, Imran Khan is now all but set for a crack at the second most difficult post in the country – that of its Prime Minister. Results from Wednesday’s general elections are not final and complete just yet – there was a delay in the counting process after polls closed early Wednesday evening in…

11:14 PM ET New Zealand’s cricketers will be entitled to a 26.5% share of their governing body’s projected revenue and 30% of revenue above projections after striking a pay deal for the next four years. But the first-class Plunkett Shield competition is to be reduced from 10 matches per team each season to eight. Estimates of the payment pool from 2018 to 2022 have centrally and domestically-contracted players sharing from…

3:00 AM ET ECB Reporters Network Loughborough Lightning 109 for 4 (Jones 35, Villani 35) beat Southern Vipers 105 (Beaumont 37) by six wicketsScorecard Amy Jones and Elyse Villani carefully claimed a crucial 71-run stand helped Loughborough Lightning begin their Kia Super League title mount with back-to-back wins. The third-wicket stand saw both Jones and Villani score 35 as the Lightning beat last year’s runners-up Southern Vipers by six wickets….

2:37 PM ET Mohammad IsamESPN For the second T20I series in a row, Bangladesh’s selectors submitted to the team management’s demand to include Soumya Sarkar in the squad. On Wednesday, chief selector Minhajul Abedin said that their plans to keep Soumya in the Bangladesh A setup ahead of the Ireland tour next month had to be changed because of his inclusion in the senior team. Soumya, who along with Ariful…