1:01 AM GMT Jos Buttler is an injury doubt for the second Test in Hamilton have suffered a back spasm in training. Joe Root has confirmed that Ollie Pope will keep wicket if Buttler is unable to play. Pope has kept in just five first-class games, the last of which was in February. Rory Burns, England’s opening batsman, has also kept wicket at first-class level. “Jos has tweaked his back…
Nov 27, 2019 ESPNcricinfo staff Alex Blackwell has announced she will retire at the conclusion of the WBBL season, bringing the end to an 18-year career during which she was the most capped Australian female player. With the Sydney Thunder still holding a slim chance of reaching the finals quite when Blackwell’s final match will be is yet to be confirmed, but it could be that the game against the…
9:53 PM GMT Joe Root believes he is “not far away” from recovering his best form with the bat. The England captain has slipped outside the top 10 of the ICC’s Test batting rankings – with 697 rankings points, it’s his lowest ranking for more than five years – and admits he “played two horrendous shots” in the first Test against New Zealand in Mount Maunganui. But he says his…
8:00 AM GMT The Report Sreshth Shah Paarl Rocks 166 for 7 (Vince 37, Tahir 2-19) beat Nelson Mandela Bay Giants 135 all out (Dunk 45, Viljoen 2-22, Shamsi 2-24, Adams 2-27, Fortuin 2-28) by 31 runs It took a team performance, in the truest sense of the phrase, for Paarl Rocks to beat Nelson Mandela Bay Giants and go top of the points table in the Mzansi Super League….
Zubayr Hamza in action for the Cape Cobras © Cape Cobras Cape Cobras will not be sanctioned for missing Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) transformation target in a four-day first-class fixture last month. They will, however, be expected to make up the numbers in a future match. ESPNcricinfo has learned that a meeting between the Cobras and CSA, which took place shortly after it was reported that CSA were yet to…
2:59 PM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff MS Dhoni has added to the speculation around his future with an intriguing comment on Wednesday. At an event in Mumbai, Dhoni was asked by a reporter about everyone speaking about his future plans barring himself. Dhoni’s response was brief: “January tak mat poocho (don’t ask until January).” Dhoni did not elaborate on what was meant to happen in January, leaving his words open to…
Joe Root goes into the second Test with his role as captain under close scrutiny © Getty Images Big picture If it wasn’t already clear that New Zealand are the closest challengers to India’s current dominance of Test cricket, then their comprehensive victory at Bay Oval last week came close to confirming it. While there are no Test Championship points at stake in this series, New Zealand do, at least,…
2:29 PM GMT Sidharth Monga If Test cricket is professional wrestling, Neil Wagner is an ECW guy. ECW was aggressive, it was extreme, it was chaotic, it was “hardcore”. Traditional rules and grammar don’t apply to hardcore wrestling. There are no disqualifications, it is not confined to a ring, foreign objects are allowed. Wagner doesn’t follow the tradition of fast bowling in Tests. His “top of off” is the batsman’s…
2:23 PM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff Mujeeb Ur Rahman will return to Middlesex for the whole of the group stage of next season’s T20 Blast, and the quarter-final if the club qualifies. Mujeeb, 18, took seven wickets and conceded 7.23 runs per over in this season’s tournament, and will spend most of the summer in England after being drafted by Northern Superchargers for the inaugural season of the Hundred. Having spent…
12:49 PM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff Jofra Archer has declared that he is “over” the incident of racial abuse that marred the closing stages of last week’s first Test against New Zealand in Mount Maunganui, as England’s thoughts turn towards the challenge of squaring the series in the second Test at Hamilton, which begins on Friday morning. However, writing in his column in the Daily Mail, Archer described the incident as…