Sussex 407 for 4 (Alsop 150, Orr 70, Carter 54*) vs Leicestershire When Sussex captain Tom Haines chose to bat on a sweltering day at Hove his bowlers must have felt like giving him a collective hug. The sun was high and the pitch was low as Sussex piled on 407 for four against Leicestershire, the only side in the second division of the LV= Insurance County Championship still looking…
Northamptonshire 303 (Gay 112, Rickelton 55) vs Kent Northamptonshire were all out for 303 against Kent, after a fluctuating first day in the LV= Insurance County Championship match at Canterbury. Emilio Gay hit 112 after the visitors lost Ricardo Vasconcelos to the first ball of the day and Ryan Rickelton was the next highest scorer with 55, but having reached 205 for two, they lost their next eight wickets for…
Essex 127 for 1 (Cook 61*, Westley 50*) trail Gloucestershire 136 (Harmer 5-44) by nine runs Simon Harmer, with figures of 5 for 44, was the architect of Gloucestershire’s batting woes as they were bowled out for a meagre 136 having won the toss. After Harmer had tortured the visitors on a scorching hot day at Chelmsford, Alastair Cook and Tom Westley carried Essex to 127 for 1 at the…
Offspinning allrounder Sneh Rana has made a comeback to the national side, finding a place in India’s 15-member squad for the Commonwealth Games starting July 29 in Birmingham. Rana had been left out of the white-ball tour of Sri Lanka that concluded last week. In another surprise move, the selectors included Taniya Bhatia as one of the two wicketkeepers alongside Yastika Bhatia, with Richa Ghosh left out of the main…
South Africa marked the start of their England tour by training in the Taunton sunshine on Monday afternoon, ahead of the first of two 50-over warm-up games against England Lions. They will play three ODIs, five T20Is (including two against Ireland in Bristol) and three Tests over the next two months, a return to old-school touring after two years of short series being squeezed into schedules following the Covid pandemic….
Big picture If the three T20Is were any indication, the ODI series promises to be a thrill-a-minute ride. England have built a reputation of going hard from the get-go in both white-ball formats, and India, who have traditionally been known to build their innings methodically before going big in the death overs, also took the all-out aggressive route in the T20I series. Whether or not they continue with this approach…
Mark Boucher, South Africa’s head coach, believes that other teams will try to play Test cricket using England’s new ultra-attacking approach after seeing their success under Brendon McCullum, but has cautioned that ‘Bazball’ may only work in favourable batting conditions. England have chased fourth-innings targets in excess of 250 in each of their first four Tests since McCullum’s appointment and have scored at 4.6 runs per over so far this…
They won an attritional series in Pakistan, and dominated Sri Lanka in what was essentially a two-day win last week. But this loss in Galle, by an innings and 39 runs, might be a “reality check” for an Australia team intent on improving their long-form cricket in Asia. So said captain Pat Cummins, after the second Test hurtled to a conclusion on the fourth evening – Australia collapsing to 151…
Toss South Africa chose to bat vs England South Africa have won the toss and opted to bat first in the opening match in the ODI leg of their multi-format series against England in Northampton. With both sides tied on two points apiece following the drawn Test in Taunton, this is their first meeting in an ODI since the World Cup semi-final which England won by 137 runs, having lost…
Umesh Yadav has begun a maiden stint in county cricket in England, with Middlesex signing him for the remainder of the 2022 season in place of Shaheen Shah Afridi. The Pakistan fast bowler returned home to prepare for the national team’s two-Test tour of Sri Lanka, which is already underway with a warm-up fixture in Colombo. Umesh was initially set to play five County Championship games from early next week,…