The celebrations in the wake of their Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy victory continue for Somerset County Cricket Club when the players parade the cup before the start of the Heineken Cup match between Bath and Swansea at The Rec on Saturday afternoon.The players visit to Bath gets underway at 11a.m. with a civic reception at The Guildhall where they will meet the mayor and other dignitaries from the noble city.They then move onto Bath Rugby Club where they will be entertained for lunch at 1pm. before receiving what will no doubt be a heroes welcome from the large crowd when the parade the cup before the start of the match.The Somerset players have already attended a reception held in their honour by the Mayor of Taunton Deane, been treated to a luncheon held in their honour by Somerset County Council at Mount Somerset Hotel at Henlade near Taunton, enjoyed a full house presentation dinner at The County Ground and also paraded the cup at Ashton Gate, the home of Bristol City.The celebrations after the 18 year wait for a trophy just seem to go on and on!

The possibility of an innings victory over Jammu and Kashmirwas converted into a reality by Haryana’s bowlers today.After a dismal display last year Haryana came to life with arejuvenating outright trumph over Jammu and Kashmir in theopening encounter of the North Zone Ranji Trophy league at theMaharaja Aggarsain Stadium today. In the process they alsoavenged their defeat suffered at the hands of same opponentslast year at Jammu. On the third and penultimate day of thematch , Haryana registered a convincing victory over theirrivals with an innings margin.After facing the humiliation of follow-on, Jammu and Kashmirneeded another 282 runs to make Haryana bat again with ninewickets intact at draw of stumps yesterday. Today, Haryanabowlers spent a frustating first session as Jammu andKashmir’s overnight-unbeaten pair of batsmen ­ Raju Sharma (57in 227 minutes) and Kavaljit Singh offered resistance andregistered hundred run partnership for the second wicket in144 minutes off 223 balls.The partnership was terminated when leg-spinner Amit Mishraprovided the much needed breakthrough, but not before the pairhad added 140 runs. Kanwal scored 71 runs in 206 minutes off174 balls. He hit twelve fours. His dismissal cleared thedecks for Haryana’s outright victory. Jammu and Kashmir lostthe remaining wickets in quick succession. It was young leftarm spinner S Vidyut who was playing his first match forHaryana after migrating from Tamil Nadu who did the damage.Vidyut struck in a big way and bagged 6 wickets afterconceding only 24 runs in 21 overs. The Jammu and Kashmirinnings folded at 179 to give Haryana a victory by innings.Haryana managed to garner as many as 8 points whereas Jammuand Kashmir got no points from the match.

An easterly wind blew into Port Elizabeth on Wednesday, shrouding St George’s Park in drizzle and driving South Africa into the indoor nets two days ahead of the second Castle Lager/MTN Test match. At the same time, though, the direction of the wind would have set India thinking about the composition of their side for what could prove the deciding match of their South African tour.Local wisdom has it that the ball swings at St George’s Park when the wind comes in from the east. When the westerly or prevailing wind blows, however, the pitch dries out and, if it blows for long enough, spinners can come into their own on the fourth and fifth days of a Test.So should India, who seem bound to play only four bowlers once again, go in with two and two, or should they field three seamers and leave out a spinner? If the latter is the case, the word is that Anil Kumble will go, leaving Harbhajan Singh to wheel away on his own.Two days ahead of a Test match that India cannot afford to lose if they are to stay in the series, the St George’s Park pitch looked hard beneath a generous covering of grass. It will be shaved on Thursday, but the South African coach Graham Ford seemed to be happy with it.”It looks as if it will have some pace and carry,” he said. “That’s really all we ask for. We’ve never asked for greentops and the ball to go sideways, but if there’s pace there our guys enjoy bowling and batting on it, and I think it makes for entertaining cricket.”None of which is really any help to Sourav Ganguly, Indian coach John Wright (whose contract, curiously, now comes up for renewal in mid-tour) and the touring team, who have to find away to turn around a nine-wicket defeat in Bloemfontein’s first Test.If it is any comfort to the Indians, Ford is wary of describing the margin of victory as an accurate reflection of the difference between the two teams. “For three days it was anyone’s game before they had their collapse,” he said. “What pleased me was the way we came back after they’d had much the better of the first day. They’re a good team, make no mistake.”Are they good enough, though, to beat South Africa on South African soil, something no Indian team has succeeded in during two previous tours? And to make the task just a little more difficult, it now seems to have emerged that no one wants to open the batting with Shiv Das.Rahul Dravid filled in at the top in the first Test, but if the whispers from the Indian camp are to be believed, he has said no thank you to a repeat performance. And neither, apparently, does VVS Laxman want to go in at the top of the order. It may come down, then, to Ganguly taking on the role, a prospect which will not displease the South Africans who will have noted his discomfort against the short, lifting ball in Bloemfontein.Not that Ford is about to make too much of this. “That’s their problem, but you’ve still got to get them out wherever they come in,” he said.South Africa, meanwhile, are likely to go into the match with the team that won in Bloemfontein. This would mean there will be no place at this stage for Jacques Rudolph, although his presence in the squad inevitably puts pressure on Boeta Dippenaar, who was the only South African in the top six to fail in the first Test.”Boeta’s very level-headed,” said Ford. “He deals with the ups and downs of cricket very well. I’m not worried about him.”So India, really, are the team that has to make the tough choices. Three seamers or two? And if there are only two, will Ashish Nehra partner Javagal Srinath or will it be Ajit Agarkar who, Wright conceded at the end of the first Test, should have played in Bloemfontein?Agarkar is held in some esteem by the South Africans who respect his willingness to run in. At the same time, it is true that the home side probably haven’t seen the best of Nehra, although the washout of the East London match last weekend prevented the left-armer getting more overs under his belt.It’s a hard call for the tourists, whichever way they choose to play it. And the answer, as Bob Dylan noted nearly four decades ago, might well be blowing in the wind.

Northamptonshire’s former England fast bowler Paul Taylor has confirmed his retirement from first-class cricket.The 37-year-old left-armer, who played twice for England in the 1990s, was released by the County at the end of last season.He said: “There were opportunities with other clubs but I’ve decided it’s time to move on. I’ve really achieved everything I wanted to achieve on the playing side and I want to develop some other interests now.”I still feel pretty fit, and by finishing with the first-class game at this stage I should be able to have a few more years in club and Minor Counties cricket. I was obviously disappointed that my Northants career ended the way it did, but I would like to publicly thank all the club’s supporters for their tremendous backing over the years.”Taylor began his Championship career with Derbyshire in 1984 and moved to Northampton in 1991 after a spell with Staffordshire. He made his Test debut against India in Calcutta on the 1992-93 tour, and was also chosen against New Zealand at Lord’s in 1994.In all first-class cricket he claimed 559 wickets – 531 of them in his 169 matches for Northamptonshire – and his benefit in 2000 raised £92,000.Chief Executive Stephen Coverdale commented: “Paul has made an immense contribution to Northamptonshire over the past eleven seasons. He has been a model professional, and what he has achieved – particularly his international recognition – speaks volumes both for his ability and his character, bouncing back after being rejected at Derby early in his career. I know everyone at the club will want to wish him well for the future.”

Chaminda Vaas may have achieved his best bowling figures in his Test career against the West Indies at the SSC grounds on Monday, but coach Dav Whatmore for one believes that we haven’t seen the best yet.”Performances like that don’t happen by accident. We haven’t seen the best of him yet,” said Whatmore after Vaas had demolished the West Indies batting by ending up with the second best bowling figures by a Sri Lankan in Test cricket with 14 wickets for 191.”I think Vaas had the ability all along, but it is only slowly coming out now. He does a lot of work which a lot of people don’t see; in the weights room, on the running track, and the nets, where he rarely takes the new ball. He always works with the old ball.”To me, there is always some sort of purpose for his training in any of those areas. The results are what we all see at the moment. Results come from hard work and not by magic. A few years ago Chaminda wasn’t as focused from time to time at training, but clearly you can see that every-time we have a session, that there is always something that he needs to achieve. In doing so, he’s built up a lot of hard work and lot of effort mentally as well,” said Whatmore.”When I began the Test series, my one priority was to give as much support to our no.1 bowler (Muttiah) Muralitharan,” said Vaas, reflecting back on his wonderful performance where he picked up 14 wickets to steer Sri Lanka to a ten-wicket win and a historic 3-0 whitewash of a Test nation.”But in the end, I finished with more wickets than Murali the series. The way I bowled throughout the series gave me a lot of satisfaction. My reverse swing is working to near perfection. I have a few more things to learn and add to my armoury. I think after I’d learnt to bowl reverse swing that I started to take wickets regularly,” he said.”It took me about a year to learn to bowl reverse swing. I have not mastered it yet But as a fast bowler you should get a couple of wickets with the new ball and then come back and take more wickets when the ball is old with reverse swing. I am quite happy I was able to do that in this series,” Vaas, who was joint man-of-the-match at the SSC, said.”I had lot of help from Saliya Ahangama, Champaka Ramanayake and Rumesh Ratnayake (all former Sri Lanka fast bowlers) and Whatmore. I also received a lot of support from my team mates without whose help I wouldn’t have been able to get so many wickets,” he said.Muralitharan to some extent would have helped Vaas achieve those career best figures by bowling the majority of overs to West Indies star batsman Brian Lara.”Without Murali’s heavy workload it was difficult for us to achieve the results we did,” said Whatmore.”The West Indies batsmen particularly, Lara attacked Murali, which made him ineffective. That is the reason why he couldn’t get as much wickets as he would have,” said Vaas.Eight of Vaas’ 14 victims were out lbw, which reflected on how accurate he was in line and length. More or less, he bowled wicket to wicket not giving anything away and, the slightest attempt by the batsmen to play across the line made them a prime candidate for an lbw decision.Having made his Test debut at the age of 20 as a left-arm fast-medium bowler Vaas had instant success when in only his fifth Test he became the first Sri Lankan bowler to take a match bag of ten wickets with 10 for 90 against New Zealand at Napier in 1995. The Test was notable for Sri Lanka recording their first overseas victory in a Test match (by 241 runs).That Vaas had to wait another 50 Tests to record his second match bag of ten or more wickets in a Test can be put down to several factors.What matters is that at present, he is bowling as best as at anytime during his career.”My main ambition is to get as many wickets as possible and bring many victories to Sri Lanka,” he said.”Initially, my ambition was to get 200 Test wickets, but if I continue to bowl the way I am now, I am confident of getting to 300 wickets,” said Vaas.His present tally at the end of the West Indies series where he finished as the top wicket taker with 26 wickets, stands at 182 wickets (avg. 28.52) from 55 Tests. Only the indomitable Muralitharan is ahead of him.

A blistering assault on the North West bowling by 19-year-old Umar Abrahams just failed to carry Eastern Province to victory as the Dragons kept alive their hopes of a Standard Bank Cup semi-final berth at St George’s Park on Friday.With EP apparently down and out at 158 for seven in reply to North West’s 249 for six, Abrahams hammered 73 off 66 balls to carry EP to within 10 of victory at the start of the final over. There was no fairy tale ending, however, as Abrahams holed out off the first ball of the over from Alfonso Thomas to give the Dragons victory by nine runs.Earlier, Arno Jacobs, with 83, and a quickfire 59 off just 43 deliveries from captain Martin Venter had lifted North West to an impressive total. The victory means that North West leapfrog EP into fourth place on the log.In Benoni a torrential Highveld thunderstorm washed out Easterns’ clash against the Highveld Strikers with the Strikers struggling on 119 for six off 37 overs after the visitors had opted to bat first.Andrew Hall nipped out the Strikers’ big three – Daryll Cullinan, Adam Bacher and Nic Pothas – in a devastating opening burst which left the Strikers reeling on 7 for three before Stephen Cook made an unbeaten 55 to stage something of a recovery. Then the rain came down.

After a frustrating couple of days in Masterton, we were thrilled to see the sun shining on Wellington’s Kelburn Park.The only interruption to the matches was a streaker. Although he wasn’t quite as naked as the Beige Brigade boys in Hamilton, he did manage to turn heads, in the opposite direction.The wicket, although covered, was still very damp and just walking along it left indentations. The wind and sun had had a chance to dry the adjacent uncovered wicket and it was decided that this would be used for the match.Wellington captain Anna O’Leary won the toss and not surprisingly put us in to bat on a wicket lacking pace and any bounce at all. Batting conditions proved testing and the Wellington bowlers, in particular openers Frances King and Anna Corbin, exploited them well.Our batting showed little regard for the conditions, let alone any adaptation. After consulting our scorecard you’d be forgiven for thinking we were batting on a minefield. It was far from a minefield, and our dismissal for 88 in the 40th over was inexcusable.Of greater concern was that the second match was almost identical. Again Wellington asked us to bat, again we batted poorly, again we failed to bat our 50 overs, and this time we were dismissed in the 44th over for 93.At this level you must learn from mistakes and do so very quickly. A first-class season comprised of only 10 matches at most, is not kind to slow learners.We do not lack ability with the bat. Our batsman look competent at the crease, sometimes even dominant and we are good strikers of the ball. However we have so far not demonstrated any batsmanship or the ability to build an innings, graft through difficult patches and occupy the crease for a substantial length of time.A few batsmen did the hard work against Wellington, got a start and then threw it away with a poor shot option.We did produce some of the best cricket shots in both matches. What we have to learn is that there is more to batting than just being able to do the biomechanical stuff right. Anybody can hit a ball hard and straight in throw-downs, and look good while hitting a bad ball to the fence. But unless you are prepared to build an innings and have a plan for how and where you are going to score your runs, more often than not the scorebook will have little regard for you.The progress made by our bowlers is pleasing. They are demonstrating, in that discipline, the approach we need to take to batting. They have natural ability and they can bowl with pace and swing as well as anyone. This season they have stood up as competitors who are thinking about what they are doing, how they are going to get wickets and how they are going to make the batsman play. Our batsman could learn from them.Our final round this weekend is against the State Auckland Hearts on Auckland’s North Shore. The last time our sides met we came away with an upset win. It was based around the batting of one individual who got us to a defendable total, and the bowlers did the rest. We have one last opportunity to turn the batting effort around and we must do it if we are to put any pressure on the reigning champions. The Hearts are a strong side, but cricket is a funny game and if you can create a little bit of pressure, you never know what can happen.

Fresh from their whitewash of the truncated Test rubber, Pakistan take on the much-harried West Indies in the first of a series of three one-dayers here today. Regardless of the misery in which their opponents find themselves, Pakistan are unlikely to show mercy.To make matters worse for the West Indies, Wasim Akram is making a comeback after a lay-off to recover from a hamstring strain to add to the firepower, depth and variety of Pakistan’s vaunted bowling attack. So does young off-spinner Shoaib Malik, the duo replacing Mohammad Sami and Danish Kaneria, both of whom have returned home.For his part, Akram looks lean and hungry, at the venue which found him rejuvenated enough last October to convince all doubters that he could last up to the 2003 World Cup. To further egg him on, he is tantalizingly close to the 450-wicket mark in one-day internationals. Already ahead of the competition by a distance, he needs only four wickets to go past that milestone."I’ve missed quite a bit of cricket, and I am eager to make up for that by taking a few wickets here", said Akram, who was welcomed by the team the other evening as everybody huddled together for a meeting at the stadium before going for practice. They repeated the proceedure on the eve of the match, doing fielding exercises under the lights as well.That Pakistan are unlikely to let up in their resolve of a total whitewash of this series goes without saying. Coach Mudassar Nazar’s statement echoed similar sentiments: “The one-dayers are going to be a different ball game altogether. Since the Windies would be aiming to redeem themselves, we might have a fight at our hands. We at the same time have no intention of resting on our laurels. We intend to improve further – there are so many areas in which I still want the team to do better.”He mentioned fielding as one area where he wants a more disciplined performance by his charges.Fielding is also giving nightmares to Carl Hooper, whose side floored a mind-boggling 17 opportunities in the field – lapses which cost them dear as the Pakistani batsmen capitalized. If the West Indies can’t put up a better show in the field, the Pakistanis will not really be extended in this most happy of hunting grounds for them.The West Indies, badly missing Brian Lara, Ramnaresh Sarwan and now Marlon Samuels, who last week underwent arthroscopic surgery on his injured left knee, have made only one change in the team which was beaten by 170 and then 244 runs in the two Test matches. All-rounder Runako Martin, a three-dimensional player who bats right handed, bowls at a brisk pace and is a good fielder, replaces Samuels in the squad.Though both sides are level in overs-limited cricket here, winning an equal number of games out of 16, the Pakistanis are the form team and keen to improve this record in their favour. But regardless of their woes in the longer version of the game, the West Indies too are reckoned to be a better one-day outfit. After their recent drubbing at the hands of Sri Lanka, they recovered enough to feature in the three-nation final there, and, as Hooper reminded everyone in a briefing here on Wednesday, the match was a proper contest even though they lost."They would be doing us a favour if they [the Pakistanis] underestimate us," said Hooper. While sounding confident of prevailing over his rivals, Waqar too conceded that the Caribbean strokemakers can be a different proposition in the shorter version of the game.But the Pakistanis are not willing to release their stranglehold on the opposition, and if the West Indies succeed in upsetting their best-laid plans, it would indeed be a surprise.

A battling, unbeaten innings of 85 from Craig White could not prevent England from being asked to follow on in the fourth Ashes Test at Melbourne. White’s innings salvaged a measure of pride for England after the tourists had been reduced to 118 for six in reply to Australia’s 551. England were eventually bowled out for 270, and an unbeaten 55 from Michael Vaughan took them to 111 for two in their second innings, still 170 behind.England, 97 for three overnight, were soon in dire straits. Nightwatchman Richard Dawson departed in the fourth over of the day, edging a turning delivery from Stuart MacGill to Martin Love at slip. Robert Key fell six balls later, lbw to an inswinging Brett Lee yorker.Nasser Hussain was MacGill’s second victim, brilliantly caught by a diving Matthew Hayden at short leg. The England captain got an inside edge on to his pad as he tried to sweep, and the ball ballooned up off his forearm.White then joined John Crawley to forge a 54-run partnership that initiated England’s fightback. It ended when Jason Gillespie was brought back, inducing a skyer from Crawley as he tried to pull. Justin Langer ran in from mid-on to take the catch.James Foster joined White, and another 55 runs were added in 23 overs before the next wicket fell. Steve Waugh eventually brought himself on, and ended Foster’s valiant effort by trapping the Essex wicket-keeper lbw for 19. Andrew Caddick and Steve Harmison were both dismissed by Gillespie with the new ball.Gillespie ended with four for 25, and White was left unbeaten after hitting MacGill for three sixes and scoring nine other boundaries in a stay of more than three hours.Sent in again by Waugh, Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick continued to attack before an umpiring howler by Russell Tiffin triggered Trescothick, adjudged lbw to a ball which hit him outside the line. Mark Butcher also fell before the close, playing firm-footed at Gillespie and edging to Love at slip.Vaughan and Hussain saw out the nine overs remaining, as Vaughan took his tally of Test runs scored this year to 1,397, overtaking Dennis Amiss’s England record.

It might not have escaped Nasser Hussain’s attention that the only time he has led England to a Test success against Australia was at Headingley in 2001 when Mark Butcher recorded a magnificent hundred and the captain himself shared a third wicket partnership of 181 with the Surrey left-hander. That memory will serve as a happy omen for Hussain as he and Butcher, with another hundred, put on 166 for the third wicket to take England to a promising position in the fifth and final Ashes Test in Sydney, closing the first day on 264 for five.England have been saying for some time that they could compete with Australia had the hosts suffered the same crippling injuries to their attack as had been the case with them. Now was their chance to prove it, for Australia were without both Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, the lynchpins of their attack, for the first time in 101 Tests.Hussain won the toss and batted on a pitch likely to take increasing amounts of spin as the match progresses, but soon found that Brett Lee was a more than adequate replacement for McGrath as the new ball partner for Jason Gillespie. Inside 14 overs, England had 32 runs on the board, but both openers back in the pavilion.Michael Vaughan, with two big hundreds to his name in the series already, went to the seventh ball he faced. Lee had produced three successive outswingers at which Vaughan drove, only to make contact with thin air. A fourth found Vaughan driving again – this time finding a thin edge which presented Adam Gilchrist with a catch behind the wicket.Lee could have struck again next ball when umpire Russell Tiffin turned down a very convincing lbw appeal against Butcher and not until the two left-handers, Butcher and Marcus Trescothick, were starting to settle into a partnership did the next wicket fall.Trescothick’s run of poor form continued when he played a loose drive outside the off stump against Andy Bichel and Gilchrist did the rest by diving in front of first slip. Trescothick arrived in Australia with a reputation as a world-class Test opening batsman. Unless he can produce something special in the second innings, he will leave the country with a point still to prove and a reputation to be rebuilt.With Butcher unsure and a new batsman in, Australia might have pressed on at this stage as in previous Tests in the series. However, Hussain was dogged, Butcher survived a number of chances and it was England who established a position of strength from such unpromising foundations.There is no way Butcher’s innings could be described as chanceless. Apart from the first ball scare, there were other confident appeals turned down and he was dropped twice. A majority of those chances came in the early part of his innings, but once he got past fifty, he began to play with more freedom and growing confidence to dominate the partnership with Hussain.Hussain appeared in no mood to try to assert himself on the attack as he sometimes does. With Butcher at the other end he could afford to play the anchor role, even if it meant that the scoring rate was never going to match that usually achieved by Australia in similar circumstances.Butcher himself was not exactly racing along either, and he enjoyed another piece of good fortune when three short of his hundred. He went to sweep leg-spinner Stuart MacGill and got a bottom edge into his pad that looped up for Matthew Hayden to take the catch. This time it Dave Orchard who reprieved the Surrey man to allow him to reach three figures off 221 balls with 15 fours.Hussain appeared set for a similar contribution when, with 75 to his name, a ball from Gillespie lifted sharply to take the glove as it went through to Gilchrist. With Robert Key failing to establish himself and falling lbw to Steve Waugh’s nagging medium pace, and Butcher eventually playing on for 124 to Lee with the new ball, there was the makings of a middle-order collapse.However, John Crawley sealed one end while Alec Stewart showed glimpses of vintage form at the other and the pair took England through to stumps without further mishap. Nevertheless, as the last of the recognised batsmen, much responsibility rests on their shoulders. Anything much less than a hundred partnership and it is difficult to see how England could reach the sort of total that might cause Australia serious concern as the match unfolds.