Rangana Herath and Vikram Rathour have linked up with the New Zealand Test squad, who are set to play six Tests in Asia over the next two months. Herath will be the spin-bowling coach for New Zealand’s next three Tests – one against Afghanistan and two in Sri Lanka – while Rathour will only be with the squad for the one-off Afghanistan Test in Greater Noida, India, starting September 9….
Laura Wolvaardt, South Africa’s women’s captain, was the big winner at the CSA Annual Awards, where she picked up five prizes including Women’s Player of the Year following a stellar 2023-24 season. Not only did Wolvaardt accept the leadership role permanently in the past season, she was also South Africa’s leading run-scorer in ODIs and T20Is in the period under consideration. Fittingly, she was named the Women’s ODI Player of…
Somerset 215 for 3 (Banton 75, Kohler-Cadmore 63) beat Northamptonshire 198 for 5 (Willey 57) by 17 runs Tom Banton smashed 75 off just 43 balls to set up a Somerset victory over Northamptonshire Steelbacks and book the reigning champions a place at Vitality Blast Finals Day. Banton made hay against an often-wayward Northamptonshire attack, hitting five sixes and six fours as Somerset racked up an intimidating 215 for three…
Sarah Tsukigawa, the former New Zealand allrounder, has been appointed their new national selector for women’s cricket. She played 42 ODIs and 19 T20Is over a five-year international career which began in 2006 and ended in 2011. Tsukigawa will be working with the New Zealand’s head coach Ben Sawyer. Her role will include selecting players not only for the national team but also to those just below that level in…
Ben Stokes has bemoaned the “culture” of English sport for what he perceives as unnecessary criticism of stand-in Test captain Ollie Pope. With Stokes recovering from a torn left hamstring, Pope, his vice-captain, has stepped in to lead the Test team for the ongoing Sri Lanka series. Having overseen comprehensive victories in the first two Tests, the Surrey batter returns to the Kia Oval on Friday looking for a clean…
“So what was it, Baz, that first attracted you to the 6ft 7in left-arm fast bowler, Josh Hull?” “Josh Hull? Six foot heaps, bowls left-arm, ranges in pace from 80 to 90 miles an hour. Swings it, not too dissimilar to the likes of Jimmy Anderson. He’s 20 years of age … good farming stock. It’s not a huge gamble, is it?” And, well, when you put it like that……
It’s the batters, batters, batters. Right through the series, Sri Lanka have emphasised that it was their batting order that was letting the side down. Four innings in, with Sri Lanka never having got close to 350, with none of their top seven having got to triple-figures, captain Dhananjaya de Silva has reiterated the importance of top order runs again. In the first Test, Sri Lanka were 72 for 5…
The Test tsar watched on from a distance as a once-trailblazing outfit fell apart, culminating in two failed World Cup defences in the space of nine months. Matthew Mott lost his job as limited-overs coach as men’s managing director Rob Key sought a change of leadership, and Buttler was lucky to stay on as captain. Tactical errors across both 2023’s 50-over World Cup and the T20 edition earlier this summer,…
Big picture: Sri Lanka return to scene of 1998 triumph To The Oval, traditional venue for the final Test of the English summer – although not, by any means, the final international commitment for England’s men, who go straight into eight white-ball fixtures against Australia off the back of Sri Lanka’s visit (the first T20I takes place 24 hours after the scheduled fifth day of the Test). For now, the…
England’s top women’s teams will play in their own version of the Vitality Blast and Metro Bank One-Day Cup from next season, aligning the new domestic competitions more closely with those of their male counterparts. The competitions will replace the Charlotte Edwards Cup and Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, which had been the women’s T20 and 50-over contests since 2020. Teams in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup women’s competition will still…