6:31 PM IST Ashley Giles believes resuming training will be “safer than it is to go to the supermarket” for England’s players and support staff. Giles, the managing director of England men’s cricket, has unveiled plans for around 30 players to return to training in the coming days and weeks, with a view to staging international fixtures from July. While Giles accepts “we are all nervous” of the threat posed…
5:45 PM IST Umar Farooq in Lahore A back injury to Hasan Ali will potentially keep him out of cricket for a prolonged period, capping off a difficult few months for the pacer who, until 2019, was an essential component of Pakistan’s pace attacks. In part, Ali’s form and injuries resulted him in missing out on a central contract on Wednesday. And now it has emerged that the injury, identified…
9:57 AM IST For the first time since March, competitive cricket involving international players of a full-member region is set to return after a long hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic with the Vincy Premier League (VPL), a franchise-based T10 tournament, scheduled to start from May 22 in the eastern Caribbean island country of St Vincent and Grenadines. This will be the inaugural season of VPL, a six-team tournament, which…
9:03 AM IST ESPNcricinfo staff Alyssa Healy is concerned at the prospect of a reduction in Women’s Big Bash and National Cricket League matches, saying it could widen the divide between international and domestic players. Amid Cricket Australia’s financial battles due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all domestic cricket is set to come under pressure and it has been reported that cuts could be made to both female competitions as well…
7:12 AM IST Matt Roller Close Matt Roller is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets at @mroller98 Shane Watson has criticised the expansion of the Big Bash season from 32 group games to 56, describing the tournament as “just too long” and suggesting that “the quality of the cricket has been put on the back burner”. Watson, an influential figure in the as the president of the Australian Cricketers’…
Play 01:53 Buttler: Sport, in the grand scheme of things, has not been important for a while The return of international cricket came a step closer on Wednesday, as the UK government outlined its plans for a resumption of training as the nation comes to terms with its ‘new normal’. In the hope of both minimising the risk to players and support staff as well as attempting to minimise the…
Buttler believes time off could extend players’ careers (1:16) England’s Jos Buttler explains this break from cricket could physically and mentally benefit players. (1:16) 10:33 PM IST Jos Buttler has conceded that it would be “completely natural” for players to be apprehensive about returning to action behind closed doors while the UK is still coming to grips with the coronavirus outbreak, and said it had been made clear by the…
10:31 PM IST Matt Roller Close Matt Roller is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets at @mroller98 Jack Leach, the left-arm spinner, is a doubt for England’s international fixtures this summer due to health concerns. Leach takes immunosuppressant medication, which places him on the list of people considered ‘vulnerable’ to Covid-19. He has suffered from Crohn’s, the inflammatory bowel disease, since he was 14, and the medication he takes…
10:16 PM IST ~ ]# !–#cricinfo_insert type: image_lead object_id: 1165423 alt_id: 4 caption: Shabnim Ismail celebrates removing Stafanie Taylor size: 900 –> South Africa’s women and A-team tours to the West Indies, scheduled to begin at the end of May and in mid-June respectively, have been postponed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. CSA and CWI agreed to reschedule dates for the two series but will continue to discuss…
9:57 PM IST All players and support staff at the elite level of sport must be allowed to opt out of a return to action during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to government guidelines released today. The policy, which covers all elite, adult athletes in the UK, was unveiled among a raft of protocols issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on Wednesday as part of an…