Month: September 2024

South Africa will rest several first-choice players on their tour of the UAE this month, where they face Afghanistan and Ireland in white-ball matches, as their Champions Trophy preparation gets underway. None of Kagiso Rabada, Keshav Maharaj, Anrich Nortje, Marco Jansen, Tabraiz Shamsi, Gerald Coetzee, David Miller or Heinrich Klaasen will feature in either the ODI or T20I squads. The management has widened the player pool instead with some fresh…

Sherfane Rutherford‘s unavailability has added to St Kitts and Nevis Patriots’ woes in CPL 2024. Midway through their last home game of the season against Antigua and Barbuda Falcons, a CPL release stated that Rutherford had withdrawn from the rest of the tournament for personal reasons. A replacement for Rutherford will be announced in due course. Rutherford, 26, had played just four games for Patriots this season, scoring 35 runs…

Alec Stewart, Surrey’s director of cricket, said it was “an easy decision” to sign Shakib Al Hasan on a one-match deal as the club confirmed his arrival for their vital County Championship fixture against Somerset at Taunton this week. Surrey are on the hunt for a third consecutive Championship title in Stewart’s final season as director of cricket and are 24 points ahead of second-placed Somerset with three matches remaining…

Rishabh Pant is back in the Test side for the first time since his car accident in December 2022 as India announced the squad for their first match against Bangladesh. There was no return for Mohammed Shami, though, who is recovering from an ankle surgery. Meanwhile, left-arm seamer Yash Dayal has received his maiden Test call-up. The 16-member squad also sees the return of KL Rahul, who was ruled out…

Moeen Ali believes that Brendon McCullum is “100 percent” the right man to revive England’s flagging white-ball fortunes, and backs him to bring out the best in his captain Jos Buttler too, after confirming that he is calling time on his own international career at the age of 37. Moeen, who played 138 ODIs and 92 T20Is in a ten-year England career, was an integral member of two World Cup-winning…

Rahul Dravid says Indian cricket has evolved into an “extremely powerful” force, thanks to the growing talent pool that now extends to even the remotest corners of the country. Dravid, who coached India to the T20 World Cup triumph in June, said a strong club cricket culture has a lot to do with bucking the old trend of city cricketers dominating the passage to the national team. “If you look…

Two balls across two innings defined Akash Deep‘s impressive outing in the Duleep Trophy game, where he returned a match haul of 9 for 116 for India A against India B. The first one was Nitish Kumar Reddy’s wicket, courtesy of late seam movement that squared him up to hit the top of the off stump. The second was a set-up that involved playing with Washington Sundar’s mind. After troubling…

India B 321 (Musheer 181, Akash 4-60) and 184 (Pant 61, Akash 5-56) beat India A 231 (Rahul 37, Mukesh 3-62) and 198 (Rahul 57, Akash 43, Dayal 3-50, Saini 2-41) by 76 runs For over three hours on the final day of the Duleep Trophy game in Bengaluru, KL Rahul‘s discipline kept India B waiting. Victory had seemed a mere formality post lunch when India A stumbled to 99…

Innings Sri Lanka 263 (Dhananjaya 69, Kamindu 64, Stone 3-35, Hull 3-53) trail England 325 by 62 runs Three wickets apiece to Josh Hull and Olly Stone preserved a 62-run first-innings lead for England early on the third day of the third Test against Sri Lanka at The Oval. Sri Lanka had resumed on 211 for 5 with a deficit of 114, and despite three of their players passing fifty,…

Big picture: Back at it after a break When New Zealand last played Afghanistan, during the T20 World Cup in June, they suffered a defeat so catastrophic it precipitated a rare group-stage exit from an ICC tournament. That match was in Providence, Guyana, on the other side of the planet from where the teams are now for their first meeting in Test cricket. The possibly spin-friendly conditions in Greater Noida,…