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ScorecardGareth Batty captured four wickets after hitting a half-century to give England A the upper hand against West Indies A on the second day of their first unofficial Test at the Antigua Recreation Ground. Batty remained unbeaten on 75 in England A’s first-innings total of 386 and then took 4 for 62 to reduce West Indies A to 229 for 7 by the close, still 157 behind.Sylvester Joseph, the West Indies A captain who was leading a rearguard fightback, was unbeaten on 36 along with Dave Mohammed on 28. The duo have so far put on 40 for the eighth wicket. Joseph has batted patiently for 152 minutes while facing 107 balls and striking four fours, while Mohammed has so far faced 31 balls and struck two fours and a towering six over long-on off Alex Loudon.Batty had resumed on 30 with the score on 304 for 8. He and Alex Wharf, unbeaten on nine at the start, shared in a ninth wicket stand of 89 to frustrate West Indies A for 75 minutes in the morning session. Wharf made 32 before he edged a drive to slip off left-arm spinner Mohammed, who ended with 4 for 109 from 30 overs as the ninth wicket fell at 356.Sajid Mahmood was last out for ten when his on-drive was caught inches off the ground by a diving Dale Richards running in at mid-on off Narsingh Deonarine. Batty, who slapped Jermaine Lawson to the cover fence to bring up his 50, batted for 173 minutes, faced 112 balls and struck nine fours. Richard Kelly, who took four scalps on the first day, ended with 4 for 70 from 17 overs.Batty then captured four wickets on the trot after West Indies A were seemingly coasting at 104 for 3 with Richards and Joseph at the crease. Richards, who had pulled Mahmood for a six over midwicket and hooked Kabir Ali for four to reach his half-century, was dismissed one run later when he edged a cut off Batty to wicket-keeper Chris Read.Joseph and Deonarine then added 32 for the fifth wicket before Deonarine, who had lifted a full toss from Batty over midwicket for a six, needlessly lost his wicket. He padded up to a delivery from Batty and was adjudged lbw by Clancy Mack, who also ruled that Kelly (18) was caught at slip off Batty, to leave West Indies A on 189 for 7.Kelly, who had swung Batty for a big six over midwicket, gestured to Mack that the ball had taken his pad before walking away. Carlton Baugh (4) skied an attempted slog-sweep to midwicket to give Batty his third wicket. West Indies A had lost four wickets for 85 runs. Earlier, two wickets in three balls by Mahmood rocked the top-order after Ali had made the initial breakthrough by removing Lendl Simmons (14) to a catch at the wicket at 42 for 1.Mahmood, who has taken 2 for 30 from 13 overs, induced Sewnarine Chattergoon, who hit 45 from 104 balls with six fours, to chase a wide ball to third slip, to end a second-wicket stand of 59 with Richards. Marlon Samuels (0) only lasted two balls before Mahmood comprehensively beat his lazy attempt to cover his stumps, the ball taking an inside edge before knocking back his off and middle stumps.England A lost the services of Wharf after 9.3 overs when he twisted his right ankle attempting to stop a back-drive from Joseph. His condition will be assessed overnight.

John Bracewell, the New Zealand coach, has backed Sri Lanka’s decision to return home after the series was cancelled owing to the tsunami disaster that ravaged most parts of South Asia, including large parts of Sri Lanka. Bracewell went straight to the airport to wish the Sri Lankans and expressed his sympathy for them.”To put things in perspective it’s not a difficult time for the Black Caps at all, but a very difficult time for the Sri Lankans,” Bracewell told Radio Sport. “We’ve just been down there to offer what small comfort we can in wishing them all the best for where they’re going and what they’re going into.”Bracewell revealed that the New Zealand side were thinking of ways to provide assistance, and hinted at the possibility of a charity match sometime in the future. He said that Chris Cairns had volunteered to work out the possibilities. “Chris is dealing with that as part of our senior-players group,” Bracewell said. “He’d taken it on as he had done with the floods [in New Zealand last February] in terms of organising the players. That’s something we may deal with when we know where we stand.”Mathew Sinclair, the top-order batsman, was in favour of the decision and felt that the Sri Lankans would have found it “difficult to concentrate on cricket”. He added: “I think it is the only thing for them to do in the situation. They obviously have friends and relatives at home badly affected and want to go back and help. It would have taken the edge away from them and it would have been difficult for us to focus fully as well. Not only Sri Lankans are affected, there’s a lot of New Zealanders unaccounted for as well.”New Zealand’s next international assignment is the tour by Australia, starting on February 17 and most of the cricketers would return to domestic cricket in the next few days.

Stuart Clark has revealed his disappointment at being dropped from the Australian Test side, after he played a vital role in their emphatic whitewash in South Africa.Clark, who it is believed had asked for a break from the one-day series to spend time with his pregnant wife, stated clearly that he was available for the selection for the second Test at Chittagong. But Australia decided to play three spinners in the game and go with Jason Gillespie ahead of Clark, who had been their best bowler against South Africa with 20 wickets in the three Tests.”I am disappointed to have missed out,” Clark was quoted as saying in . “I said I was available for the whole match, no matter what the circumstances. They chose the team, I wasn’t in it, and I only came home once I knew I wasn’t picked. I had a bit of a chat with the selectors over there, but I didn’t really get into why I wasn’t picked. I’ll find out more later on.”Merv Hughes, the traveling selector, reasoned that Gillespie was chosen because of his good performance in the first Test and his experience in subcontinental conditions. Gillespie, of course, made a historic double-hundred in the game, posting the highest score by a nightwatchman.”I had spoken to some people about coming home if things got close,” Clark said, referring to the imminent birth of his first child. “They wanted to play three spinners, I guess. I’m not sure about the selection, I haven’t looked into that.”

The former England captain, Tony Greig, believes that the England & Wales Cricket Board is right to resist calls for its contracted players to be allowed to play in the lucrative Indian Premier League, but has rubbished suggestions from the board’s chairman, Giles Clarke, that there are parallels between the current situation and World Series Cricket.Greig was one of the prime movers in Kerry Packer’s revolution, which changed the face of cricket forever in the late 1970s, and he never played again for England after taking part in the first competition in 1977-78. On Monday, Clarke warned England’s current stars, not least Kevin Pietersen, that a spell in the IPL could have a similar effect on their careers.Clarke told reporters at Lord’s: “Thirty years ago, Tony Greig thought it was important to play in World Series Cricket, and Ian Botham appeared to replace him from pretty much nowhere.” Greig, who played alongside Botham in two Tests of the 1977 summer, as well as the previous year’s one-day series against West Indies, described that version of events as “hogwash”.”I picked Ian Botham to play for England when I was captain and he was always going to replace me as England’s allrounder,” Greig told Cricinfo. “My joining WSC simply gave Ian a permanent position a little sooner than may otherwise have been the case.”Clarke’s attempt to draw a comparison with World Series Cricket is absolutely ridiculous,” added Greig. “We, the England players of the day, were being seriously ripped off by Clarke’s ECB predecessors who didn’t give a damn about the plight of the then-county and Test cricketers, especially where their remuneration was concerned.”Thanks to WSC they were forced to change their attitude,” he continued. “It provided me with the security the Clarkes of the day weren’t prepared to offer. All they gave us was a threat that, if we didn’t stay on, we wouldn’t receive our tax-free benefits. The situation now is very different because players are being well-paid and also have the security of the contract system that the Players Association worked so hard to implement.”Broadly speaking, however, Greig agreed with the ECB’s attitude towards the IPL, not least because he believes that England is in a much stronger position to build a sustainable Twenty20 competition. “Clarke is on the right track,” he said. “All he and his board has to do now is form the England Twenty20 Cricket League and play it sometime during the English summer when all the players from around the world will be available.”Unlike India, England is the perfect venue for an annual Twenty20 festival because, with very few exceptions, teams are out of season or touring England.”The Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans should consider doing the same in the Southern Hemisphere during their summer,” said Greig, “although their tournament will have to be along the lines of the Super 14 rugby tournament because the players from Asia and the Northern Hemisphere will be otherwise occupied.”

Despite stern cautioning from the ICC regarding sledging, Ricky Ponting, Australia’s captain, has openly supported Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath continuing their verbal tirade against South Africa as the first Test gets underway at Perth on Friday.Ehsan Mani, the ICC president, had earlier this week stated that the ICC was determined to keep the game’s image clean and not let it fall to the level of a “hooligan’s sport”. “We don’t want cricket being reduced to a level where it turns into a hooligans’ sport and the spirit of the game is eroded,” Mani had said. “We can’t have a situation like we see in football (soccer).” The ICC is concerned by the fact that since November, eight players and officials have been found guilty of code of conduct breaches – twice the number when compared to this same period last year. So far this year 38 players and officials have been charged with offences, and Mani’s comments come a day after a blunt warning issued by Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, about the growing number of code of conduct violations.Responding to Mani’s claims, Ponting has defended his ace bowlers, maintaining that verbal banter was a part of Australia’s motivation leading into a series of this magnitude. “The main culprits this time have been the ones who do it every series, Warney and McGrath,” Ponting told . “That’s why I don’t think it’s too much different than normal. Those guys actually like the challenge of making some statements and then getting out there and backing them up. That’s the way they’ve played their best cricket over the last 10 years. “While accepting that the ICC was tolerable of verbal exchanges between players in tense and competitive matches, Mani was adamant that it would not tolerate any degrading comments that fell outside the boundary of sport. Ponting, however, maintained that this would not be the case in the series against South Africa. “As long as we’re being sensible about what we’re doing and staying on our side of the line in the sand I’m happy with that,” he said. “Glenn and Shane like to challenge themselves as much as they can and they seem to lift when those bigger occasions and one-on-one battles come around.”He does remain fairly surprised by the ICC singling out this series as a potentially volatile scenario. “There’s no reason at the moment for me to have to address the players and let them know to take it easy. It’s just a bit of banter between the players…there’s nothing untoward as far as I’m concerned at the moment,” Ponting said. “I’m sure the cricket’s going to be played in a hard and fair manner. It usually is when Australia and South Africa get out on the field of play. All the players are very aware of the spirit of cricket on the field and off the field.”He did, though, take the opportunity to mention the role that Warne will play in the tense encounters that will pepper the three-Test series. “Warney’s record against South Africa (101 wickets at 22) would be outstanding so that’s probably why he’s come out and said what he has,” he said. “It’s just another thing they (South Africa) are going to have in the back of their minds now and Warney will just go out there and play cricket.”

Getting into a stadium to watch any match during next year’s World Cup “will be like boarding an airline”, according to a senior official.That’s the word from senior legal counsel with the tournament’s organising committee, Derek Jones,who warned that security was of absolute importance to the International Cricket Council. According to Jones, patrons must understand that security was paramount at global events such as the World Cup, and they must ensure they “provide themselves with ample time” to get ready for the matches. “You must start thinking of getting into the ground as if you were getting into an airplane,” Jones told The Nation in an interview over the weekend.”We must see security as a major area and like the airline industry, safety and security is paramount. Patrons will be allowed to carry certain personal items, but they must be able to fit under your seat.”Over 800,000 tickets are being made available for the tournament, which runs from March 11 to April 28, and patrons will have two major checkpoints. The first will be on entering the venue, and the second on entering the stand.The Jamaican lawyer, with over 30 years in the field, said mechanisms were in place to make sure that all areas of security were established and working.Chris Dehring, chief executive of the tournament, has been attending meetings at the football World Cup in Germany, to get a clearer idea of how to implement and manage the massive security effort. He attended pre-match and post-match meetings in Berlin.