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Croft paces chase after bowlers share wickets in one-sided contest at Grace Road

ECB Reporters Network07-Jun-2022Lancashire 139 for 3 (Croft 45) beat Leicestershire 135 (Hill 50) by seven wicketsUnbeaten North Group leaders Lancashire Lightning made it five wins from six as they defeated Leicestershire Foxes, who have lost all three home Vitality Blast fixtures, yet won three from four on the road.The Foxes opted to make first use of what looked a good batting surface but were bowled out for just 135, failing to complete their 20 overs despite 50 from Lewis Hill. The Lightning spinners held sway, sharing six wickets and conceding only 73 runs in 11 overs.The visitors cruised past their target in the 18th overs to win by seven wickets with 23 balls to spare, veteran all-rounder Steven Croft top-scoring with 45 off 46 balls.The combination of competitively priced tickets and away wins over Yorkshire, Birmingham Bears and Worcestershire by the Foxes attracted a full house of around 5,000 to the Uptonsteel County Ground but it was an unrewarding night for most of them.A wet ball after a couple of hefty showers during the Lightning innings did not help matters for the Foxes bowlers, although against a batting line-up as strong as Lancashire’s they would have struggled to defend such a low total even in perfect conditions.Leading wicket-taker Naveen-ul-Haq removed Keaton Jennings via a caught-behind off an inside edge on to pad and ended an 81-partnership between Croft and Phil Salt (38 off 34) when the latter skied one to deep square leg.Croft, who looked nailed on for his first half-century of the season, was run out after a suicidal call for a second run by skipper Dane Vilas, but with only 36 more needed from 46 balls the outcome was never in serious doubt.Tim David, who lost his off stump to Ben Mike in swinging at a free hit on 19, won the contest with a six over wide long-on off Naveen, finishing with 24 off 17 balls.The only negatives for Lancashire were injuries to Liam Livingstone (knee niggle) and Luke Wood (tight quad), although they will hope neither is serious with their next match against Yorkshire at Headingley on Wednesday.Hamish Rutherford’s disappointing debut season for the Foxes continued with a second-ball duck as he punched Richard Gleeson straight to the fielder at short third man, leaving the New Zealand opener with just 51 runs from seven innings.Otherwise, it was a satisfactory powerplay for Leicestershire Foxes, for whom Hill was profitably innovative. Arron Lilley’s first scoring shot against his former county went back over off-spinner Livingstone’s head for six.Hill ramped a six as Gleeson’s second over went for 14 compared with three off his first as the Foxes posted 54 for two from six, Scott Steel the other casualty when he hit straight to mid-off. Hill and Lilley added 41 and the Foxes looked well set at 78 for two before the latter was caught at long-on in the 11th.But Lightning’s spinners successfully applied the brake and claimed five wickets as the Foxes stumbled to 125 for seven, two for Matt Parkinson, who removed Rehan Ahmed via a catch at long-on after the youngster had clubbed him over cover for six, two for left-arm spinner Tom Hartley, who dismissed Rishi Patel and Mike in consecutive overs, and one for David, who held a low return catch moments after Hill had completed his first half-century of the season.Callum Parkinson was leg before to a Danny Lamb slower ball, Naveen run out by a direct hit from cover and Colin Ackermann was caught at mid-wicket for 25 as the Foxes innings ended after one ball of the 20th over.

Club and ECB appeal to CDC after reduction of matches from 14 to ten in 2021 season

ESPNcricinfo staff21-Jan-2021Somerset’s points handicap for next season’s County Championship has been reduced to reflect the competition’s remodelled format, after they were sanctioned by the Cricket Discipline Commission in 2019 for breaching the ECB Pitch Regulations with their spin-friendly surfaces for home fixtures.The club was originally handed a 24-point penalty for the 2020 season – of which 12 were suspended – after being deemed to have prepared a substandard pitch for their Championship decider against Essex at Taunton in September 2019, a match in which Essex held on for a draw to secure their second title in three seasons.The deduction was initially rolled over into 2021 when the onset of Covid-19 led to the cancellation of last summer’s County Championship and the introduction of the Bob Willis Trophy, a competition in which Essex and Somerset once again played off for the title in the final at Lord’s, with Essex again taking the title after a hard-earned draw on the final day.But now, with the Championship divided into three initial groups of six to mitigate against further Covid disruption in 2021, a joint petition from Somerset and the ECB has resulted in the CDC adjusting their penalty to reflect the competition’s reduction from 14 matches (in an eight-team first division) to ten.Related

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Somerset will now begin the season with a direct eight-point penalty in the Championship’s group phase, but if they commit any further breaches of the pitch regulations in 2021, they could face a further sanction, in addition to the suspended element of their punishment, which will be revisited when the format for the 2022 County Championship is confirmed by the ECB.However, the amended sanction comes just days after Somerset’s former spin pairing of Dom Bess and Jack Leach combined with 14 wickets at Galle – including a five-for in either innings – to set up England’s seven-wicket win in the first Test against Sri Lanka.Speaking to ESPNcricinfo in the wake of that victory, senior figures at Somerset said that their overwhelming feeling was one of pride at the achievements of their spinners, with both Jason Kerr, the head coach, and Tom Abell, the captain, feeling that the club deserved recognition for the role it plays in preparing English cricketers for facing spinning conditions overseas.”Surfaces need to be good enough for four-day cricket, definitely,” Kerr said, “but ultimately you want to encourage skill development and make sure that batters are prepared to go to somewhere like Sri Lanka, and perform as well as they do in Australia or anywhere else in the world. Yes, we want to win competitions, but to me, domestic cricket is there to help make the England team as strong as possible.”

It was a day of incredible feats in Visakhapatnam, but as well as the visitors did, they still ended it trailing by 117 runs

The Report by Sidharth Monga04-Oct-20197:52

Agarkar: SA left India’s spinners short of ideas at times

Stumps South Africa exorcised some of the demons from their last tour of India on a day of glorious batting in which two of their players scored hundreds. So tough is it to play in India that despite doing much better than expected, South Africa were looking at the prospects of having to bat out three-and-a-half sessions to save the Test, which is roughly what they had batted in this innings.

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Thanks to R Ashwin’s 27th five-for, Dean Elgar and Quinton de Kock will have to put off full-fledged celebrations of their incredible hundreds by two days. India still led by 117 runs with two South African wickets standing. Should the last two wickets fall early, India have enough cushion to be able to time their declaration in the third innings.Yet the magnitude of South Africa’s achievement cannot be understated. They were 15 short of becoming the first visiting team since 2013 to score 400 when not batting first in India. That year was the start of India’s dominant run at home since when they have lost just one home Test and only weather has been able to deny them a win at home when they have won the toss.Dean Elgar braces for a long vigil ahead of a session•BCCI

Bringing the biggest fight to the Indian juggernaut were Elgar of the “this is not Jo’burg” fame from the last tour and de Kock, who was not considered good enough by the South Africa selectors the last time around. The originator of that Jo’burg jibe, Ashwin, had to work much harder for his wickets here, but he showed he had just enough in his repertoire to come out with his head held high on a tough day.Elgar’s 160 was 18 short of the highest score by a visiting batsman in India’s latest dominant run at home, de Kock’s 111 was a wonderful display of natural talent backed by a clear head. It was hard work for India’s spinners on a pitch that might not have been as flat as Rajkot against England or Delhi against Sri Lanka but didn’t quite break up like Indian pitches do of late. That shouldn’t take credit away from South Africa who were ruthless against any marginal error in length, especially on the fuller side.For long periods of the innings, South Africa’s was the second-fastest innings of 80 overs or longer by an away team in India in this dominant post 2013 era. Elgar, de Kock and Faf du Plessis, who nearly matched his 2015 series tally of 60 runs in one innings, hit 42 fours and seven sixes between them. That’s 64.4% of their runs in boundaries.R Ashwin leaps in joy•BCCI

The most striking method, though, was Elgar’s, who had to fight through a top-order collapse on the first evening and saw Temba Bavuma go early on the third morning. During the last South Africa tour of India, Ashwin had mocked Elgar by saying in a press conference that this is not Johannesburg with regards to his dismissal trying to hit offspin against the turn. In this innings, though, Elgar, who called the pitches on the last tour a farce, kept playing Ashwin against the turn. Thirty-six of Elgar’s runs against Ashwin came through the leg side, including the slog sweep to bring up the century. Ashwin showed he was a good sport by applauding the innings even before the ball had landed beyond the midwicket boundary.In the four years since that last tour, South African cricket has seen a lot of turmoil, but Elgar has been a picture of stability. He has been their best batsman these four years, and that has not happened without a method. His method against spin here was to defend solidly, but every once in a while – like a swimmer coming up for a breath – he hit a boundary to earn himself the breathing space that India’s cauldron-like conditions deny you. Sixty-three of his 160 runs came through lofted shots, the highest rate for any batsman in this Test. Rohit Sharma, known for his lofted hits, was just behind.Elgar’s stability allowed du Plessis to get into an attacking mindset, employing the sweep shot to good effect. India’s bowling seemed unremarkable in this period, but they were not allowed to bowl well. Calculated risks were taken to put them off their rhythms. One of the biggest changes from the second evening was that Ashwin was now bowling a more defensive, straighter line. However, for Ashwin it has always been about getting the drift to bowl it wide outside off and not just spearing it in there. When he got one to drift away from du Plessis, the South Africa captain was now playing at a ball outside the line of his head, and it turned back to take an inside catch for backward short leg to hold.Jadeja races to 200 Test wickets•ESPNcricinfo Ltd

At 178 for 5, South Africa still needed to do a lot of work. The ball had gone soft, the pitch was not turning from the straight, and India strived to save their spinners for the second new ball. De Kock, who had started attacking at any rate, was not going to let part-timers and a seemingly less-than-100% Mohammed Shami get away with quiet overs. Some clean hitting followed in a second successive stand of 100 or more. De Kock, too, brought up his hundred with a six off Ashwin.Just before that, Elgar made a fatal misjudgement of length, top-edging a sweep for Jadeja to become the fastest left-arm bowler to 200 wickets. The new ball had more bite than the old one, and Virat Kohli was now asking his star spinners to do something for him. Ashwin did just that with two ripping offbreaks followed by one that didn’t turn and consumed de Kock. He completed his five-for with a loopy wide offbreak to draw an expansive drive from Vernon Philander and bowl him through the gate. With just four overs left in the day, South Africa would have expected better from a veteran who played this Test partly because of his batting.Those wickets in the extra half hour to make up for the rain on the first day had set up a thrilling finale to this Test. Provided there was no more rain.

BCB president stresses that repeat offenders will not go unpunished as batsman awaits hearing over social-media fracas

Mohammad Isam30-Aug-2018Sabbir Rahman might be facing another lengthy ban from cricket. He is set to meet the BCB’s disciplinary committee on Saturday, for a hearing related to the outburst on social media that allegedly came from Sabbir’s official account and directed abuse at a fan following Bangladesh’s loss in the second ODI in the West Indies last month.Sabbir has been dropped from Bangladesh’s ODI squad for the first time since his debut in 2014, and is already on the BCB’s watchlist for physically assaulting a spectator; for this, he was stripped of his central contract, fined, and barred from domestic cricket for six months in January. He has been in trouble over disciplinary matters previously too, with the BCB fining him in 2016 for “serious off-field disciplinary breaches” during the Bangladesh Premier League.BCB president Nazmul Hassan said Sabbir would get a chance to defend himself but indicated that a repeat offence will not go unpunished.The disciplinary committee has also summoned Nasir Hossain, over being embroiled in a social media scandal earlier this year, and Mosaddek Hossain, who was recently sued by his wife Sharmin Samira from whom he is now divorced.”The disciplinary committee will hold Sabbir’s hearing after which we will reach a decision,” Hassan said. “He is not in the ODI squad, which could also be because of the hearing’s influence. One has to be given a chance to defend himself. We will take an appropriate action.”When we see our punishment has no impact on a cricketer, we have to give him more stringent punishments. We also have to be fair in our judgment. If it [the allegation] is proved, however, we have to take a final decision which, for me, is being ousted from the national team.”In the last three years, several Bangladesh cricketers have found themselves in trouble off the field. Rubel Hossain was jailed briefly in January 2015 after a fall-out with his girlfriend. Al-Amin Hossain was sent home from the 2015 World Cup for breaking a team curfew in Brisbane. A few months later, Shahadat Hossain also landed in jail for allegedly physically assaulting his house help.Arafat Sunny got bail last year after serving jail time in a dowry case. Around the same time as the Sunny affair was playing out, Mohammad Shahid’s wife had reportedly lodged a complaint with the BCB CEO alleging Shahid of physically assaulting her.Hassan said the BCB was prepared to bring in outside help, in the form of a psychologist, to address such issues. Also, he said, the board is considering social media restrictions on tours, but ultimately the responsibility to behave in an appropriate manner lay with the players.”The players have to follow the guidelines but, at the end of the day, the players have to be good themselves. We cannot force it on them.”

A 79-ball 71 from Michael Rippon helped Netherlands post 279. They then bowled Zimbabwe out for 130 to complete a consolation win at The Hague

ESPNcricinfo staff24-Jun-2017
ScorecardFile photo – Michael Rippon’s 79-ball 71 carried Netherlands to a strong total•Peter Della Penna

Incisive opening spells from Shane Snater and Fred Klaassen ripped through Zimbabwe’s top order, leaving them 44 for 5 in the 13th over, in their chase of 280. Malcolm Waller struck a counter-attacking 50 off 43 balls, but without much support, Zimbabwe’s resistance didn’t last long. Roelof van der Merwe picked up the last three wickets to fall, completing a consolation win for Netherlands by 149 runs.Snater finished with figures of 3 for 30, while Paul van Meekeren and Logan van Beek claimed one wicket apiece. Zimbabwe were bowled out for 130 in the 27th over.After being put in to bat, Wesley Barresi and Stephan Myburgh put on a 53-run opening stand off 69 balls. Netherlands’ middle order – Ben Cooper (27), van der Merwe (32) and Peter Borren (29) – all got starts, but only Michael Rippon, batting at No. 4, went on to make a half-century. His 79-ball 71 carried Netherlands to 279. Fast bowler Chris Mpofu finished with 4 for 41.

Mohammad Hafeez has been ruled out of Pakistan’s skills camp which begins on May 28 at the National Cricket Academy

Umar Farooq26-May-2016Pakistan batsman Mohammad Hafeez has been ruled out of the skills camp beginning on May 28 at the National Cricket Academy in Lahore, but doctors will continue to monitor his recovery from a knee injury on a weekly basis ahead of Pakistan’s tour of England which starts June 18.A fresh MRI scan on Hafeez revealed an improvement in his knee, first injured in March, but stress has been diagnosed and he may be rested for some time as a part of his continuing rehabilitation regimen. He had already missed the ongoing fitness training camp at the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad.Hafeez last played for Pakistan at the World T20 in March where he sustained the knee injury after a bone contusion in his femur. He has been resting since then and undergoing extensive treatment as a part of his rehabilitation. According to the latest report, doctors advised Hafeez against any net sessions. ESPNcricinfo understands Hafeez is desperate to restart his cricket but doctors are cautious about his injury which they fear could be aggravated if he tries to push for an early return.A final call on his participation in the England Test series is expected to be taken in the next three to four days. Pakistan’s 22 probables will be cut down to a final 16-man squad at the conclusion of the skills camp. The squad will leave for England to undergo a conditioning camp in Hampshire ahead of two practice matches in Somerset and Sussex before the first Test starts July 14 at Lord’s. The selectors had named four options among the probables for the opening slots, with the inclusion of Hafeez cited as subject to fitness.

Full text of BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur’s letter in response to claims of his being in contact with an alleged bookie

ESPNcricinfo staff27-Apr-2015Dear Mr Srinivasan,The BCCI has received intimation from the ICC ostensibly under your direction that I should keep away from one Mr Karan Gilhotra who is a ‘suspected bookie.’ The intimation further states that the information is unverified. I have earlier been the joint secretary of the BCCI under your president-ship and I am now secretary, BCCI. I only wish that you had shared the list of ‘unverified suspected bookies’ with me and other colleagues so that we could identify such persons and keep away from them. I have known this person who has been active in the political and cricketing activities in Punjab and adjacent states. I had no knowledge or any clue about his ‘activities as a suspected bookie.’It is curious that intimation about my having known this ‘suspected bookie’ was brought to the ICC notice by your friend Mr Neeraj Gundhe. Mr Neeraj Gunde incidentally is circulating to the media in Delhi the details of documents against your critics in the BCCI. He operates on your behalf. A procured complaint and an ICC advisory based on ‘unverified information’ was issued at your behest on the eve of the BCCI working committee meeting. It was intended to be a counter offensive on your behalf, since you have not reconciled with my election as secretary, BCCI. I would request at least now share with me or other colleagues in BCCI the list of suspected bookies in India, so that we may keep away from them. You may also share this information with your family members, whose involvement in betting has been proved.Since the ICC advisory to me had been made in public, I would be making this letter to you public.With regards,Yours sincerely,Anurag Thakur

Newcomer Dilshan Munaweera, looking to fix his spot as a long-term opener in the Sri Lanka squad, will face a stern test against South Africa on Saturday

Andrew Fernando in Hambantota21-Sep-2012One game into the World Twenty20, it is clear Sri Lanka have invested a great deal in Dilshan Munaweera. The team has split up a successful opening pair, moving their best batsman Mahela Jayawardene to a less favoured batting position to accommodate Munaweera in his familiar spot. It would have been easy for the seniors to pull rank and ask Munaweera to inject energy into a middle order carrying two accumulators, but they’ve been careful to make his international baptism a gentle one. Largesse towards youngsters has been a hallmark of a side that understand the leap Sri Lanka players must make when they move from the local circuit to international cricket.It also emphasises Munaweera’s importance to Sri Lanka’s campaign. Dinesh Chandimal waits on the sidelines to replace the first batsman to falter, but if he joins a lineup already looking short of firepower, Sri Lanka’s finishers may have to work even harder towards the close. With one of the most aggressive top threes in the tournament, Sri Lanka have banked on sustained hitting during the Powerplay, and Munaweera must play his part for the strategy to prove worthwhile.Saturday’s match shapes as the biggest test of Munaweera’s career. Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel have bloodied more hardened men than he, and a nervous start to international cricket and an awkward first dismissal cannot have boosted Munaweera’s confidence greatly. Moreover, South Africa will have studied him closely in their team meetings. They will know he is, at present, over-reliant on boundaries to make a score. They will know he cuts and pulls well but drives poorly. They will endeavour to keep him on strike, knowing he has trouble rotating it, and the customary dose of newbie-abuse will no doubt be gleefully given as well.”It’s always going to be tough, especially when you’re an opening batsman,” captain Mahela Jayawardene said of the trial awaiting Munaweera. “It’s a great experience for him to play one of the two best bowling combinations in the game right now. He has Dilshan at the other end to guide him and a couple of other senior batsmen to follow.”Not only will Munaweera’s mettle be tested by bowlers much faster and capable of generating more bounce than he has encountered at home and on A-team tours, he will also be playing on a foreign surface. The Bloomfield Cricket Club pitch he has thrived on has a reputation for being low and slow. Both pitches in Hambantota so far have had plenty of bounce and carry, and South Africa’s seamers will squeeze every inch of movement available as well.It is perhaps unfair to expect Munaweera to pass the test with flying colours, given his inexperience and the gulf between domestic and top-level cricket he must learn to bridge in the next few weeks. A young Mahela Jayawardene was among the most complete batsmen Sri Lanka’s system ever produced, and even he was forced to make drastic improvements in his early years to compete against the finest.”For me Wasim Akram was the guy I struggled against early on because of his quality and variations,” Jayawardene said. “Every time I played against him early I struggled early on. Every time after the game he would pat me on my back and say keep learning, and that’s what I did. It was a good experience for me. I was one of the victims of his hat-trick early on. After 12 years of international cricket he started getting hat-tricks against Sri Lanka. It was tough playing him.”One of Sri Lanka’s biggest selection regrets has been the meandering career of Chamara Kapugedara. No one can doubt the batsman’s talent, having seen it in spades in domestic cricket as well as in patches for the national team, but perhaps his failure to grow into a match-winner was hampered by inconsistency in selection and a tendency to bat him out of position. So far Munaweera far has avoided that fate.”The good thing is that he’s got a free hand. When you have a youngster coming into the set-up, there’s not much pressure on you. You just go out there and enjoy yourself and back yourself to play your game. That’s what is exciting about young cricketers coming in. We’re just going to give him the license to go out there and enjoy himself.”A poor outing against South Africa’s pace may not warrant Munaweera’s exclusion at the Super Eights stage, but it may earn a him a reputation for being a soft target. He will be watched, analysed, and attacks will formulate plans specifically for him in the coming weeks. It is a different world of pressure at the top, and Munaweera will get a healthy taste of that on Saturday. How he responds in that game and the matches to follow may not shape his career, but having provided Munaweera with the best chance to succeed, Sri Lanka will hope their investment pays off.

Michael Hussey says he is wary of saying he is in good form and believes the second new ball on the third day will be crucial to the fate of the match

Daniel Brettig in Colombo17-Sep-2011Ladies and gentlemen, your Man of the Series. If match awards in Galle and Pallekele were not enough, Michael Hussey strengthened his grip on the individual garlands still further by constructing an expert 118 to hold Australia’s middling first innings together at the Sinhalese Sports Club Ground.He did it in much the same style with which runs were collected in the first two Tests, demonstrating patience, placement, and hands that were in equal part deft and powerful. Hussey now has four centuries in five Tests against Sri Lanka. However it is his 95 on a spiteful surface in Galle that sticks strongest in his memory.”I think the first innings in Galle really stands out at the moment,” Hussey said. “Because the conditions were so challenging and to get our team into a great position to win that Test, the first Test of a series, gives me a lot of pleasure. Having said that you’ve got to work hard for every Test match hundred, so I’m elated with all of them.”Well as he has played, Hussey still began this Test with a demotion in the batting order, to accommodate Shaun Marsh at No. 3. The move down to No. 6 seemed scant reward for the form Hussey has demonstrated over the past 12 months, during which he was the only batsman to consistently defy England’s rampant Ashes tourists, and in Sri Lanka has held the entire home attack in thrall.”I’m not fussed at all about being at No. 6,” he said. “Opposition teams will look at our batting order and think it is pretty daunting; if we get some guys in and doing well, it is going to be a very powerful batting order.”Hussey also said he did not want to read too much into his recent run of good scores because form can be a fickle thing. “I’ve always wondered about this good form and bad form thing; there’s such a fine line between them. Sometimes you just need that little bit of luck. Getting a good score early in a series does wonders for your confidence. You feel like you can just relax, play your game. But I’ve never liked to say I’m in good form because it only takes a couple of good balls and you’re suddenly in bad form.”Two of Hussey’s more significant partnerships in this series have been in the company of Marsh, who has made 141 and 81 in his first two Test innings to provide the other major bulwark of Australia’s batting. Marsh’s dismissal late on the first day saw the Australian innings take a turn towards mediocrity, and Hussey said, despite his effort, Australia had fallen a bit short of a good total.”The conditions, as the ball got older, were very good for batting, so it would’ve been nice if we’d gone over 350. Having said that we did lose the toss and on the first morning there was a little bit of juice in the pitch.”The shortfall has placed Australia in their most tenuous position of the series, more or less at the mercy of Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara on their beloved SSC strip, where they have now scored 1607 runs in partnership with each other. For this reason, Hussey pointed to the third day as the most important one of the series.”It is a little ominous I must admit. They keep putting the statistics up on the board and you can look it at one of two ways, you can either say ‘oh dear’ or you can say ‘well they’re due to fail’, so hopefully it is the latter. It’s certainly going to be hard to dislodge them with the older ball, but hopefully with the second new ball we can make a few inroads; that’s going to be a key part of the game I think.”It is probably the biggest day of the series coming up tomorrow, if we can bowl well, restrict them and take the wickets, then it is going to put us in a fantastic position to win the Test match, but if we can’t get rid of Kumar and Mahela, they’re going to give themselves every chance to win the Test as well.”

A day after the ICC launched a formal investigation into Pakistan’s win in the third ODI at The Oval, Ijaz Butt has hit back at what he believes to be a “conspiracy to defraud Pakistan and Pakistan cricket”

Osman Samiuddin19-Sep-2010In an extraordinary outburst, PCB chairman Ijaz Butt has pointed a finger at the English cricketers for their role in the batting collapse that cost England the ODI at Oval and said the board was investigating a conspiracy, involving “august cricket bodies”, to defraud Pakistan and Pakistan cricket.In a prepared statement read out to ESPNcricinfo – and repeated on Pakistan TV channels – a day after the ICC started a formal investigation into Pakistan’s win in the third ODI at The Oval, he also launched thinly-veiled attacks on the ICC, some cricket boards and the media.”This is not a conspiracy to defraud bookies but a conspiracy to defraud Pakistan and Pakistan cricket,” Butt said. “We have taken it in hand to start our own investigations. We will shortly reveal the names of the people, the parties and the bodies involved in this sinister conspiracy and we also reserve the right to sue them for damages.”There is loud and clear talk in bookie circles that some English players have taken enormous amounts of money to lose the match [the third ODI]. No wonder there was such a collapse.”When asked by this reporter whether the board had any proof of the allegations regarding English players, Butt responded with a question: “Did you ask the other people who made allegations against our players whether they had any proof? What did they say? We have thought about this properly and we have positive proofs here before us just like they say they have also.”Butt then concluded his statement: “We feel the media in certain countries is biased and not fair. We feel august cricket bodies are also involved in this conspiracy, which will damage the great game of cricket.”The statement is an extension of the one the board released late on Saturday indicating its unhappiness with the way the ICC handled the Oval allegations. Nobody in the Pakistan board was informed by the ICC that an official investigation was being launched; the chairman, the team manager and the captain only learned of it through media reports.An ICC spokesperson told ESPNcricinfo they tried to contact Butt all through Friday but his phone was unavailable. “On Saturday morning [after the ICC press release was sent out] we came to know that Mr Butt was in Dubai. Haroon Lorgat [the ICC chief executive] sought out and met Butt in Dubai on Saturday evening and discussed matters of mutual interest,” he said.However, there is no indication that the ICC tried to contact anyone else in the PCB, nor tried to reach Butt – who was in New Delhi after meeting the ICC president Sharad Pawar – through any number other than his Pakistan mobile.The PCB also seems unhappy with the official implication that Pakistan’s batsmen were under the scanner. Though the ICC didn’t point the finger at Pakistan in their statement – though did so in their report – the subsequent statement from the ECB confirmed that no English players were involved.”One statement from a very august official of the ICC said no, only Pakistan players were involved,” Butt said, though he refused to elaborate.Butt also refused to give more details of the nature of the board’s investigation, though he said it had already begun. “I will be revealing names of people and organisations who are involved in this, so I don’t want to comment more on the investigations just now. Details will come out only once our investigations are complete.”Butt’s comments may well signal the final nail in the coffin of the PCB’s relationship with the ICC, if they have not completely broken down already. Under Butt’s tenure, the two have clashed consistently. In 2009, the PCB threatened to take the ICC to court after Pakistan was removed as a venue from the 2011 World Cup, following the Lahore terror attacks on Sri Lanka in March. The dispute was resolved out of court but tensions have simmered consistently since.They boiled over again in the aftermath of allegations of spot-fixing during the fourth Test at Lord’s. The ICC provisionally suspended the three players at the centre of the scandal, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, after the Pakistan board refused to do so. At a press conference in Lahore soon after he returned, the board chairman expressed his unhappiness with the ICC’s decision while a police investigation was still ongoing against the three.Butt then went to Delhi to discuss the investigation and allegations with Sharad Pawar, the ICC president. He travelled on Saturday to Dubai, the ICC HQ, though it is unclear whether he has met with officials there. He said, however, that he would raise these issues at the next ICC meeting, on October 11.