Victoria bowling coach Mick Lewis is on his last warning from the Bushrangers after being fined $2,266 for ball tampering during the Sheffield Shield final

Daniel Brettig in Adelaide28-Mar-2016Victoria’s bowling coach Mick Lewis is on his last behavioural warning from the Bushrangers after being fined $2,266 for tampering with the ball on day three of the Sheffield Shield final against South Australia at Glenelg Oval.In the 10th over of SA’s second innings Mark Cosgrove struck a boundary, and a Cricket Australia video camera captured Lewis kicked the match ball into the gutter beyond the boundary rope before he scraped the ball across the concrete when retrieving it.When the ball was returned to the field after another boundary in the 12th over, it was inspected by the umpires, Paul Wilson and Mick Martell. They decided that the ball’s condition had been changed illegally and added five runs to South Australia’s second innings score. A substitute ball was then called for. After play Lewis admitted to his offence and the match referee Steve Bernard imposed the fine without needing to hold a code of conduct hearing.”Ball tampering is a very serious offence and simply won’t be tolerated at any level of the game,” CA head of cricket operations Sean Cary said. “Match Referee Steve Bernard addressed the matter as soon as it was brought to his attention, spoke at length to Mick Lewis about it and has handed down the subsequent penalty.”We acknowledge that he has apologised to the South Australian team and the match officials and hope the matter deters others from doing anything like this in the future.”Lewis, who had a mixed disciplinary record during his time as a pace bowler for Victoria and occasionally Australia, was also spoken to by the CV chief executive Tony Dodemaide and the chairman Russell Thomas. Dodemaide said Lewis would be in serious trouble if he transgressed again.”Cricket Victoria does not condone any action to gain an unfair advantage in any form, we’re committed to playing fair cricket in the spirit of the game,” Dodemaide said. “Myself and Cricket Victoria chairman Russell Thomas immediately spoke to Mick and he has apologised unreservedly and understands that this reflects unfairly on the Bushrangers and all of Victorian cricket.”Mick pleaded guilty to Cricket Australia’s code of behaviour breach and has also accepted a severe reprimand, imposed upon him as a Cricket Victoria employee, and assured us that actions such as this will not happen again. Mick also went personally to South Australian coach Jamie Siddons and apologised after the day’s play.”Victorian coach David Saker was extremely disappointed in Mick’s actions and also that he cost the side five runs in what could be a very close match. We believe that Mick will learn a valuable lesson from this and understands this type of behaviour will not be tolerated.”Both sides have been penalised for ball tampering in recent years. In 2010, Aaron Finch was fined and the Bushrangers penalised for an instance of tampering against South Australia at Adelaide Oval. The umpires found markings on the ball at the end of the second day’s play and initially reported the entire Victoria team before it was concluded that Finch had been responsible.In 2014, the then Redbacks captain Johan Botha was suspended for one match after he pleaded guilty to “repeated inappropriate conduct relating to the condition of the match ball” during a drawn match with New South Wales, also in Adelaide.

Luke Procter’s career-best 137 cemented Lancashire’s command of their match against Hampshire, while Haseeb Hameed gave a study in concentration until just before lunch

Paul Edwards at Old Trafford09-May-2016
ScorecardAlviro Petersen was able to play with freedom after Lancashire’s solid start•Getty Images

Old Trafford on a blissful Monday morning in May. The leaves on the trees girdling the red-brick Town Hall are green with all the delicate effrontery of an English spring.Inside the ground, a medium-pace bowler runs up to the wicket and delivers a ball which passes perhaps nine inches outside off stump. The willow-thin batsman lets the ball complete its journey while holding his bat extravagantly high, as if excluding the merest possibility of outrageous accident. The bowler shrugs, turns and walks back to his mark while the batsman plays his leave again, as if something about the original execution displeased him. In the early stages of Ken Dodd’s marathon one-man shows he encourages his audience to chant: “Time matters not one jot.” One can rather imagine Haseeb Hameed nodding in fervent agreement.Certainly the cricket seemed held in gentle suspension when Lancashire’s Hameed was occupying the crease for nine minutes short of five hours in taking his score to 62 in the first session of this game. The pace quickened markedly after lunch as Alviro Petersen hit 13 fours in a pedigree 81 off 85 balls to extend Lancashire’s lead beyond 200 and reinforce their dominance. But Petersen is 17 years older than Hameed and has played exactly 200 more first-class matches. He is stronger, cricket-fitter and knows his game far better. At the moment Petersen has more of everything…except time.Comparisons between the two players were therefore of limited value and they threatened to deflect attention away from the career-best 137 made by Luke Procter on a day when Lancashire extended their first-innings lead to a colossal 347 before they were bowled out for 456. The home side’s late clatter of wickets was caused largely to a splendidly defiant spell from Tino Best, who took four wickets in 23 balls, finished with 5 for 90 and greeted every success with a lovely explosion of Barbadian joy.This was still far and away Lancashire’s day, though, not least because they claimed the important wicket of Jimmy Adams, caught at second slip by Karl Brown off James Anderson, in the hour before the close. They are playing very much like a team bubbling with self-belief and this is obvious in all their disciplines. Petersen built on Hameed’s work and Procter combined well with both his partners in century-plus stands.Hameed deserves credit for opening the Lancashire innings with impressive solidity and for the smooth grace with which he drove the ball through the covers. Although only 19 years old and with more than 15 cricketing summers before him, he bats as if every innings is precious. Hameed plays a minimum of 12 shots every over, six to the balls bowled and then at least one after each of those six, as if he is still searching for a shot so perfect that it defies experience or description. He leaves the ball as a matador might manoeuvre a bull, the bat a muleta before it becomes a sword.What Hameed needs to do is develop the ability to work the ball around in the manner of Procter who spent much of the morning pushing ones or twos and keeping things moving The stance of Lancashire’s No. 3 may remind one of an arthritic rent-collector trying to see under a door of a late payer but he knows his strengths and he is revelling in his new responsibilities.Indeed, it seemed that the many Lancashire supporters at Old Trafford would be greeting at least two centurions this run-soaked afternoon but it was not to be. Hameed pushed forward to Mason Crane’s penultimate ball before lunch and edged a good leg-spinner to James Vince at slip.Simon Barnes once wrote of cricket as a wonderful metaphor for death and one imagines that each of his dismissals is accompanied by a sense of mild bereavement for Hameed. At one stage it seemed nip and tuck whether, if Hameed was to score his first century for Lancashire, he would do so before the county completed the building of their new hotel But such frivolous speculations suddenly became as nothing. Hameed departed, smacking his bat against his pad in an abyss of disappointment. Lunch had become funeral meats and they will have tasted no sweeter to the young Prince of Farnworth than they did to his Danish counterpart.The cricket in the afternoon session only deepened the woe for Hampshire as 146 runs were piled on in 33 overs. And only a flint-souled Jesuit would have no sympathy for Hampshire at the moment. Deprived for varying lengths of time of Fidel Edwards, Gareth Berg and Chris Wood, they are trying to make do and mend until Sean Ervine and Reece Topley are fit to wear the colours again in around a fortnight or so. James Tomlinson must feel like one of the last Texians at the Alamo, albeit that Hameed currently lays the gentlest of sieges.

A dramatic Yorkshire collapse gave Somerset hope of pushing for victory on the final day if the weather stays clear

David Hopps at Taunton17-May-2016
ScorecardAdam Lyth reached his hundred but few other Yorkshire batsmen prospered•Getty Images

“If the cockerel’s arse is in the grass then it’s going to rain.” So revealed one of the Taunton stewards, gesturing at the weather vane on the top of St James’ Church which had its back firmly turned on the exertions below on the County Ground. “That was one of the first things I was ever told when I started working here. It sounded quite rude at the time.”When the cockerel swung round just enough for play to resume under sullen skies it presaged a remarkable passage of play in which Somerset claimed five wickets for 11 runs in 29 deliveries with the second new ball. Tim Groenewald stood out on a freshened pitch, only for Yorkshire to refuse to yield in a felicitous, unbroken last-wicket stand of 69 between Steven Patterson and Jack Brooks. Somerset still lead by 256 – the follow-on seemingly inevitable – but failure to make inroads into Yorkshire’s second innings has undermined their chance of victory.Presumably such an unexpected twist would have disappointed the cockerel which can be presumed to retain a Somerset affinity, even if its roost came under attack in 2003 when Ian Blackwell, one of the cleanest hitters in the county’s history, struck the church tower during the fastest first-class 200 ever made by an Englishman.This slice of Somerset folklore will prey on a few minds on the final day. The forecast is for more prolonged bursts of rain and it won’t require too many “gurt big clouds” heading for the square for Yorkshire to escape with their unbeaten record intact.For all the late excitement at Taunton, weather interruptions combined with too many dead pitches can be expected to deliver another collection of the draws that are dominating the Championship season. Every victory stolen from this Summer of Stalemate takes on huge importance. Warwickshire won it under Nick Knight’s captaincy with five wins in 2004 and a repeat could be on the cards.Since choosing to bowl and conceding 562 for 7 Yorkshire’s only task has been to save this game. Although they began this diligently enough, with 127 for 1 logged by the close of the second day, and although Adam Lyth went on to complete his hundred before lunch before edging Lewis Gregory to slip on 106, none of the other left-handers who fill Yorkshire’s top five looked in form and there followed calamity against the new ball after tea before Patterson and Brooks plotted an escape route.Lyth often prospers at Taunton and an uppercut six against Jamie Overton which damaged a chair in front of the Colin Atkinson pavilion and a cover drive against Peter Trego completed the transformation of his overnight 80 into a hundred. Others struggled: Will Rhodes fell hooking Trego and Andrew Gale’s edge to slip gave left-arm spinner Jack Leach his only wicket of the day.Regular interruptions then held the day captive, stealing 36 overs in all. It all seemed to leave Julian Cattanach, Somerset’s PA announcer, somewhat disorientated. Resumptions of play were twice announced an hour later than actuality, so encouraging the theory that he was on European time, some sort of gesture perhaps towards the forthcoming EU elections. Cattanach was asked if this perhaps revealed his voting intentions, but he responded in Latin so nobody was any the wiser.Making the best of it during such stoppages is a county cricket thing: how can it not be with the English climate and the dead tramp of contracting media coverage? If you want to change the world then Cattanach’s happy knack for impromptu impressions – Margaret Thatcher morphing into Chris Eubank with barely a pause for breath – might not adequately fill your day, but it passed the time for those of lesser ambition before the skies lightened and, in what had appeared to be the dregs of the day, Somerset revived their chances of victory in a trice.Lewis Gregory began the collapse, treating Jack Leaning to a successive lbw appeal and play and miss before having him caught at the wicket. Adil Rashid was sent back looking for a third by Gary Ballance as Tom Abell, from backward point, retrieved at third man. Tim Groenewald then took 3 for 5 in 8 balls in a controlled burst, Ballance and Liam Plunkett caught at the wicket, pushing defensively and Andrew Hodd cleaned up, middle stump.More seemed sure to follow; nothing did. Cattanach, whose forefathers were on the wrong side at Glen Coe, left with the expression of a man inured to disappointment.

Alastair Cook has said that England will seek to ‘park’ all of the off-field hype surrounding Mohammad Amir’s comeback to Test cricket

Andrew Miller07-Jul-2016Alastair Cook has said that England will seek to “park” all of the off-field hype surrounding Mohammad Amir’s comeback to Test cricket, despite reiterating his belief that players who get involved in corruption ought to be banned for life.However, he also admits that the distractions may help to galvanise a Pakistani team that is eager to make amends for the controversies of their 2010 tour.”We’ll spend a lot of time talking about it in the build-up,” Cook told ESPNcricinfo during a Yorkshire Tea event at The Oval, “but once we get out there we’ll just be thinking about playing.”Obviously it’s more of a distraction on the Pakistan side, but we know they tend to get united behind distractions. But all that stuff off the field, we’ve just got to park it, and we’re pretty good at that.”Nevertheless, ignoring the hype of Amir’s comeback is not the same thing as ignoring the threat that he will pose in his first Test appearance since the lifting of his five-year ban for spot-fixing, and Cook in particular remembers the challenge he posed as a teenaged prodigy that summer.Cook was dismissed three times each by Amir and his then new-ball partner, Mohammad Asif – who was also implicated and jailed in the News of the World sting, as he mustered 57 runs in six innings, either side of a cathartic and career-changing century at The Oval in the third Test.”It was warm and humid, it was muggy,” Cook recalled. “When the sun was out it was hot and there was rain around. The ball swung.”He bowled brilliantly as a youngster on his first tour, in good conditions he was an absolute handful,” he added. “But a lot of water has gone under a few bridges since then, so it’ll be interesting to see how he copes and see the crowd reaction is.”But as an England side, we’ve got to stay away from that sideshow. Whether you agree with him playing or you don’t, that’s not for us to say as players. It’s down to us to play him as a fantastic bowler.”Nevertheless, memories of the 2010 Lord’s Test are sure to come flooding back when the players take the field for the first Test next week, and Cook admitted that the atmosphere on that fourth and final day six years ago, on the morning after the newspaper’s revelations that Pakistan’s bowlers had been bribed to bowl no-balls to order, was one of the most peculiar he had ever experienced on a cricket field.”It was very surreal, horrible,” he said. “Did Swanny [Graeme Swann] get a five-for? I don’t think anyone celebrated any wickets. It was a disappointing day as we were on the verge of what we thought was a genuine win.”And that’s the problem when you fix games of cricket, or spot-fix, you tarnish games of cricket for the players, the crowd, everyone. The punishment should be befitting of someone who does that.”Guys who are paying a lot of money to watch us want to see a genuine spectacle, they want to know the 22 players, and the two umpires, are trying their best, and nothing should distract from that.”My feelings are clear, if you get caught matchfixing, you should be banned for life.”England come into the Test series off the back of a convincing 2-0 victory over Sri Lanka but with recent memories of their own 2-0 loss against Pakistan in the UAE last winter – when a near-miss in the first Test at Abu Dhabi gave way to two comprehensive defeats at Dubai and Sharjah. Cook, however, is confident of setting that record straight.”They are massively different conditions,” he said. “Misbah scored about 95% of his runs against spin, I don’t think he’ll be facing as much spin as he did there.”They’ve got a very good bowling attack, with a lot of variety, backed up by good spin. But it was a very close series. I don’t think 2-0 quite reflected the sides. We are a bit more comfortable in those conditions, but we were unlucky in that first Test.”

Alex Hartley, the uncapped left-arm spinner, and Fran Wilson, who last played an international game in 2011, earned call-ups to the England Women’s squad for the first two ODIs against Pakistan Women

ESPNcricinfo staff17-Jun-2016

England Women’s squad for first two ODIs

Heather Knight (capt), Anya Shrubsole (vice-capt), Tammy Beaumont, Katherine Brunt, Kate Cross, Georgia Elwiss, Jenny Gunn, Alexandra Hartley, Danielle Hazell, Amy Jones (wk), Laura Marsh, Natalie Sciver, Fran Wilson, Lauren Winfield, Danielle Wyatt

Alex Hartley, the uncapped left-arm spinner, and Fran Wilson, who last played an international match in 2011, earned call-ups to the England Women’s squad of 15 for the first two one-dayers against Pakistan Women, following strong performances for England Women’s Academy in Sri Lanka earlier this year.Amy Jones has been designated to take over the wicketkeeping duties from Sarah Taylor, while Lauren Winfield, has been named as a back-up option. Taylor is currently on an indefinite break from the game to recover from stress and anxiety issues that have riddled her for the last four years.June 20 will also officially mark a change of guard in England women’s cricket as Heather Knight, the allrounder, will lead the side for the first time following Charlotte Edwards’ retirement in May. Knight will have in her ranks a top-quality pace attack led by Anya Shrubsole, the newly-appointed vice-captain, and Katherine Brunt, who is one short of 100 ODI wickets. Beth Langston, the seamer, has been ruled out of selection because of an ankle injury.”Monday is going to be a very proud day for our new captain and vice-captain, Heather Knight and Anya Shrubsole,” Mark Robinson, the head coach, said. “Under their leadership we will start a new chapter for the England Women’s team against a Pakistan side that cannot be underestimated. Pakistan showed everyone during the ICC World T20 how dangerous they can be, when they beat the hosts India on their own patch. They represent a fresh challenge that as a squad we can’t wait to get out there and tackle.”All three ODIs of the series will count towards the ICC Women’s Championship that will determine the top four direct qualifiers for the 2017 Women’s World Cup to be held in England next year. England and Pakistan are currently placed sixth and seventh respectively. However, England have an incentive of moving to No. 3 if they win the series, while Pakistan can jump two spots should they win all three matches.”Historically, we have a strong record against Pakistan, but the quality of international women’s cricket is rising all the time, so we are looking forward to the challenge of facing them on home soil over the next few weeks,” Robinson said. “We have a bit of catching up to do in the ICC Women’s Championship, so we will need to play some strong, positive cricket to secure maximum points in the three ODIs in order to move into the top four of that table.”England’s schedule following the series against Pakistan includes assignments against West Indies and Sri Lanka.

Durham’s reward for sneaking fourth spot in the NatWest T20 Blast North Group is an away trip to South Group table-toppers Gloucestershire

ESPNcricinfo staff29-Jul-2016Durham’s reward for sneaking fourth spot in the NatWest T20 Blast North Group, courtesy of Warwickshire’s capitulation at Old Trafford, is an away trip to South Group table-toppers Gloucestershire who have the two leading run-scorers this year in Michael Klinger and Ian Cockbain.Essex, who grabbed the final qualifying place in the South Group when their game against Glamorgan was abandoned after one innings due to rain, visit Nottinghamshire in the first of the quarter-finals on August 8.The other two quarter-finals will see Northamptonshire, last year’s losing finalists, host Middlesex and Yorkshire, who produced a late surge after a poor start to the group stage, will travel to Glamorgan.Finals day will take place on August 20 at Edgbaston. Of this year’s quarter-finalists only Northamptonshire and Middlesex are previous winners.Quarter-final drawAugust 8 – Notts v Essex 1830 + 30 minutes extra time
August 9 – Northants v Middlesex 1830 + 30 minutes extra time
August 10 – Gloucs v Durham 1830 + 30 minutes extra time
August 11 – Glamorgan v Yorks 1900 + 30 minutes extra time