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The ICC board of directors meeting in Dubai decided, as expected, to end the unloved trial of the Supersub with immediate effect. It also announced a new pitch-monitoring process, endorsed an anti-doping policy and received a report from Peter Chingoka on the state of play in Zimbabwe.Among other items were an agreement on the minimum number of matches required for a team to be ranked in the official ICC One-Day Championship, and an agreement to revert to full recognition of the administration of the United States of America Cricket Association (USACA) subject to certain conditions.The briefest discussion surrounded the agreement not to continue with the Supersub experiment, introduced in haste last June and widely lambasted ever since. Indeed, it would not be right to describe it as a discussion so much as a rubber-stamping exercise.The board endorsed the adoption of an ICC anti-doping policy for all major ICC-run events. The proposed policy complies with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code and will be introduced in time for the Champions Trophy in India in October.The board also proposed the first formal pitch-monitoring process for international cricket. This process, which has been adopted with immediate effect, includes potential sanctions ranging from a formal warning to a fine, or even suspension of international status for venues that produce substandard pitches.The continuing problems in Zimbabwe were discussed, with a presentation by Chingoka, the chairman of the interim board. An ICC statement said that the board were told that an independent auditor had been appointed to conduct a forensic audit and that a new constitution would be in place by the middle of the year. Chingoka was told that Zimbabwe Cricket would be required to provide a report to the ICC board at its October 2006 and March 2007 meetings reviewing the on-field performances of its teams ahead of any decision regarding its resumption of Test cricket.With regard to the ICC One-Day Championship, the board decided that the minimum number of matches needed to be played by a side to qualify for a ranking should be eight matches. That meant that Kenya have now played sufficient matches in the qualifying period. The two matches it played in the ICC Champions Trophy 2004 have a 50% weighting, while their recent four matches against Zimbabwe and the opening two matches of its series against Bangladesh take it to the eight-match threshold. Kenya is ranked 11th on the table with a rating of 18 points. It needs to win both remaining matches of its four-match series against Bangladesh to climb to tenth and claim the last qualifying spot for the ICC Champions Trophy.Another board that had been a thorn in the ICC’s side, the USA Cricket Association, has again been recognised subject to certain conditions. The only one specified in the media release is that it must conduct independently-monitored elections before November 30, 2006. The USACA has been at odds with the ICC since a split last year challenged the existing board’s right to run the game.

The West Indian batsman Wavell Hinds has been fined his entire match fee from the final Test against South Africa in Antigua, for a Level 2 breach of the ICC Code of Conduct. But Graeme Smith, South Africa’s captain, has been cleared of any misconduct on his part, after a confrontation between the pair on the final day of the match.The incident occurred towards the end of a generally well-mannered series. Hinds deliberately overstepped the popping crease during his bowling spell and at one stage he was seen to spit on the ground in front of Smith. Billy Bowden, one of the umpires for the Test, and Brian Lara had to step in.Jeff Crowe, the match referee, found that Hinds breached the ICC Code for intentional throwing, overstepping the popping crease, and generally unacceptable conduct. Crowe said: “It is a breach of consequence that undermines the game’s values and is unacceptable in any given situation. The player has apologised for his actions.”Smith, who angrily denied reports that he had earlier used racist comments towards Dwayne Bravo, was later found not guilty of “conduct unbecoming [to his] status which could bring himself or the game into disrepute”.”No conclusive evidence was produced or found to support the serious nature of the alleged breach,” said Crowe in an ICC statement. “We must now look forward to a positive ODI series.” Smith had earlier told the South Africa African press agency News24: “This is ridiculous. Action should be taken against the people spreading the story.”The charge against Hinds was originally brought by the umpires as a Level 3 offence but, after considering the evidence, Crowe used the discretion available to him to reduce it to a Level 2 one . For Level 1 and Level 2 breaches of the code there is no appeal procedure for the player.

WESTERN Australian fast-bowling legend Jo Angel will make his final appearance at the WACA Ground in this weekend’s Pura Cup match against NSW.With the Retravision Warriors unlikely to host the Pura Cup final WA will not play another first-class match at the WACA Ground this season.The entire Warriors squad will be at the WACA Ground to farewell Angel at 11.00am on Thursday morning and the Media are invited to Angel’s final Media conference.Angel is WA’s leading wicket-taker in first-class cricket. In 120 first-class matches for WA Angel has taken 480 wickets at an average of 25.14. In 104 Sheffield Shield/Pura Cup games he has taken 414 wickets at an average of 24.90.He has taken five wickets in an innings on 16 occasions and has once taken 10 wickets in a match.Angel is the second highest wicket-taker in Sheffield Shield/Pura Cup history. Only legendary leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmet has taken more with 513 wickets, a record unlikely to ever be beaten.Angel and Grimmet are the only bowlers to take more than 400 wickets in the Sheffield Shield/Pura Cup.The WACA Ground has been a happy hunting ground for Angel. In 53 Sheffield Shield/Pura Cup matches here Angel has taken 248 wickets at an average of 22.94 with 10 five-wicket hauls.He recorded career-best figures of 6-35 against Queensland at the WACA Ground last season.Angel turns 36 in April and is in his 13th season with WA. The right-arm quick said his retirement has come about from wear and tear on his body.”It’s a case of the mind being willing and the body not being able to cope with the demands of professional cricket anymore,” he said.The WACA has dedicated the final home Pura Cup match of the season to Angel and will hold a lunch in his honour on Friday at the WACA ground. Many past WA greats are expected to attend.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday ordered the government not to release foreign exchange to sponsors if India is banned from taking part in next month’s cricket World Cup, reports said.The court, ruling on a public interest litigation filed by former cricket great Kapil Dev and five others, said the tournament sponsors should also be restrained from telecasting advertisements on Indian channels.The order is, however, unlikely to be enforced amid reports that the International Cricket Council (ICC) will allow India’s leading players to take part in the World Cup despite changing the terms of their contracts.The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is expected to announce later today whether it will agree to the compromise proposed by the ICC.Kapil, a former World Cup-winning captain, had moved the Delhi High Court last week to ensure India’s top cricketers took part in the tournament to be played in Africa from February 8 to March 23.In the event of the players being banned, the litigation wanted the finance ministry to withdraw all tax benefits to the tournament’s official sponsors hailing from India.At least three of the four major World Cup sponsors – Pepsi, Hero Honda and LG Electronics – have major interests in the lucrative Indian market.Some of India’s best known lawyers, former law minister Arun Jaitley, Kapil Sibal and Harish Salve, argued the litigation on behalf of Kapil and the other plaintiffs.ICC sources in London told AFP yesterday that Indian players could take part in the World Cup, but the ICC will not release the Cup bonus of “eight to nine million dollars” due to India until the dispute was resolved after the tournament.Sources also warned that if the BCCI failed to pay any compensation arising from its players’ altered contracts, it would be suspended from the ICC and so become a rebel cricket nation.India’s entire World Cup squad objected to the ICC ruling which prohibits players from endorsing non-official sponsors before, during and after the World Cup.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
What began as a low-percentage humpty from Dinesh Chandimal ended as a high-quality counterattack of 162 not out off 169 balls to set India a tricky target of 176, nearly double the highest successful chase in Galle. He came in with Sri Lanka still 100 runs behind with only six wickets in hand, which soon became a deficit of 97 with five in hand. He scored 162 of the 275 runs that came while he was at the wicket. He did enjoy some good fortune, surviving early on through an umpiring mistake and then through inferior technology available for third-umpire decisions, but the second half of his innings, shepherding the tail, was special. He was helped along by 40s from Lahiru Thirimanne and Jehan Mubarak. India ended the day by losing KL Rahul, lbw playing back to a full ball from Rangana Herath.India were rattled by him, and for large parts you couldn’t tell how they were planning to get a wicket. R Ashwin, though, kept at it, and ended up with four wickets, his first 10-wicket haul outside India. Ajinkya Rahane at slip and gully helped him along, taking five in the innings to reach world-record eight catches in the match.India will, or should, be forced to rethink their absolute stance against DRS. The two decisions that went against them with Chandimal and Thirimanne, both in single figures, did not involve any technology that the BCCI is suspicious of. They were clear edges missed by the umpires – who have been ordinary in this match – and would likely have been easily overturned without looking at any projections of the ball path.This was minutes before lunch, just after Ashwin and Amit Mishra – the latter took three wickets – had broken a brisk and assured 87-run partnership between Kumar Sangakkara and Angelo Mathews. Chandimal came out playing his shots, and his first one was a top edge onto his helmet and through to backward short leg. Not given. If Ashwin was the aggrieved party here, Mishra was to be denied soon. A legbreak took the inside edge of Thirimanne onto his pad, and then into the hands of short leg only for Nigel Llong to join Bruce Oxenford in making mistakes in those frenetic minutes before lunch.Soon Chandimal drove Mishra into the boot of silly point. The ball lobbed up for a catch that India claimed. Replays suggested there was no touch with the ground but not conclusively so. Even though there was no puff of dust, the third umpire couldn’t have been sure given the frame rate of the visuals provided to him.Everything went right for Chandimal. It looked like an innings impossible to sustain. When he connected he connected well, when he mis-hit the ball somehow failed to find a fielder, and the reverse sweeps and the switch hits played with the field. He played a bit like Ravindra Jadeja at Lord’s last year, a low-percentage innings during which all risks came off. Jadeja’s half-century back then gave India a winning lead. Chandimal certainly gave Sri Lanka a chance.Chandimal might have had all the luck with him, but he should get the credit for making the most of his early luck, and at that time Sri Lanka needed someone to break India’s wicket-taking template. He attacked them off their rhythm. His sweeping, reverse-sweeping and switch-hitting distracted the spinners, and the quicks failed to string together good deliveries when attacked. There was a spell of 20 overs without a maiden when India kept going past the bat, but also were taken for easy runs. Whatever pressure would build would dissipate as Chandimal and Thirimanne broke through with some excellent shots. The slog sweep remained their favourite.As Sri Lanka attacked, Kohli’s worried demeanour suggested how tricky chasing on this pitch could be. He will be disappointed that none of his bowlers could maintain any control when attacked. Even with the ball reversing the quicks failed to string together tight overs. Harbhajan Singh remained unimpressive, bowling with little venom or patience. Ashwin, who remained persistent even when Mathews attacked, lost his line and length in face of an unconventional attack from Chandimal. Against Thirimanne, though, he kept the examination on, and made him his seventh left-hand victim in the match when he drew the edge for another excellent catch for Rahane at slip.Mubarak, with an average of 17 after 11 Tests and on a pair, jumped out of the crease third ball, and hoisted Mishra for an emphatic six. Mubarak failed to get a maiden fifty, but played arguably the cleanest innings of the match, driving languidly, using the depth of the crease after front-foot shots, adding 82 with Chandimal to take the lead 110.It was still quite comfortable for India with three tail-enders of modest batting credentials to follow, but Chandimal manipulated the strike expertly, taking 45 of the 83 balls bowled after the seventh wicket and scoring 52 of the 65 runs. He was not averse to taking a single off the fourth ball or later, but when he couldn’t, he managed hit five boundaries off the last two balls of overs from Ashwin, Ishant and Varun Aaron. In the second half of the innings Chandimal looked assured, his risky start a distant memory.Another distant memory was an easy win for India, which looked quite probable in the minutes before lunch. Facing the tricky target, having to play eight overs before stumps, India lost Rahul, but the nightwatchman Ishant Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan – allowed to open despite not taking the field because his hand injury was external – went to stumps unseparated. An interesting chase was set up for India’s Independence Day.Rahane had earlier taken a stunner diving to his left to send Sangakkara back. Sangakkara had been excellent at playing inside the line of sharp offbreaks in scoring 40 in his last innings at Galle, but with 20 minutes to go to lunch he was a little late in withdrawing his bat when he intended to leave a flat offbreak well outside off. Mishra then got a legbreak to kick at a forward defence from Mathews for a catch at silly point. The two looked unplayable during that spell, and might well have been in their hotel by tea but for India’s inexplicable resistance to any form of DRS.

As expected, Pakistan have made a number of changes to their squad for the fourth ODI against Zimbabwe, to be played in Faisalabad on January 30.Pakistan wrapped up the five-match series in Multan with a comfortable 37-run win and the plan had always been to try out as many new faces as possible. With that in mind, four players have been dropped and three players come in to a 14-man squad.Salman Butt and Kamran Akmal are the most high-profile absences; Akmal making way for Sarfraz Ahmed was always on the card once the series had been secured, but Butt’s poor returns haven’t helped his case. Rao Iftikhar Anjum, who has had a poor series, and Yasir Arafat, who only played in Multan, are the other casualties.In their place come opener Khurram Manzoor, the second-leading first-class run-scorer this season, Sarfraz and Wahab Riaz, the left-arm pace bowler who has taken over 50 wickets for National Bank of Pakistan this season.It is expected that one of Khalid Latif or Manzoor will open with Pakistan’s find of the series Nasir Jamshed, while Sohail Khan might also get a chance to add some bite to what has been a toothless pace attack so far.Pakistan squad: Shoaib Malik (capt), Nasir Jamshed, Khalid Latif, Khurram Manzoor, Mohammad Yousuf, Younis Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq, Shahid Afridi, Fawad Alam, Sarfraz Ahmad (wk), Sohail Tanvir, Kamran Hussain, Sohail Khan, Wahab Riaz

Sourav Ganguly is likely to miss India’s warm-up match against West Indies after injuring his ankle at net practice the day before.The team management may not wish to take a risk and play a half-fit Ganguly whenIndia is scheduled to play its first match of World Cup – against Bangladesh in Trinidad – in less than ten days time.India play West Indies in their second warm-up match today at the Trelawny Stadium in Jamaica.Meanwhile India’s other opener, Virender Sehwag, has said that the backing he received from Rahul Dravid to be included in the World Cup squad was a huge morale booster and he would like to repay the captain’s faith in him by scoring plenty of runs in the tournament.”I now want to justify the faith in me and live up to the expectations,” Sehwag was reported as saying in AFP. “I was confident of staging a comeback and the time I spent away from international cricket helped me get my focus back.”Earlier Dilip Vengsarkar, the chairman of selectors, had said that Sehwag had been selected on Dravid’s insistence. “When I was leading India, I never got the team I wanted and I didn’t want Rahul to go through the same,” Vengsarkar had said. “He insisted on having Sehwag and that made the difference.”Sehwag was included despite scoring just 273 runs in 15 one-day games, including an unimpressive 19 off 23 balls against Sri Lanka a day before the squad was picked on February 12.However he appeared to regain form with an aggressive 46 in the final match against Sri Lanka five days later. “I’m quite happy with my form now. It’s getting better and better with every session in the nets. I want to stay longer at the crease.”

This visit to Swaziland was certainly the most successive and promising one. Besides the Introductory Coaching Course for beginners, the Marketing and Promotion Supper for would be sponsors and other interested people proved very rewarding.The +/- 12 hour course for the 30 teachers from primary and secondary schools in the Manzini region the first formal coaching course proved beyond doubt that this was long overdue. The teachers were very enthusiastic, committed and went the extra mile during the practical sessions. Certificates for attendance were handed to the Swaziland Cricket Association. Mr. Fuad Waggie assisted the RDM in delivering the course.Soft ball cricket equipment was handed over to the SCA to be distributed to the various schools.Cricket manuals and posters were given to the secretary general.A number of well wishers and sponsors attended the marketing and promotion supper arranged by the SCA and the ICC Africa Office.The main aim was to raise money for the New Year, and make the public aware of the SCA’s Strategic Plans for the future and also to inform the gathering of the Africa Development Program. Much money was raised.A member from the National Sports Council and the Swaziland Schools Sports Association was present and very impressed with the proceedings.Judging from the attendance at the Introductory Coaching Course, talks with various people and the Marketing and Promotion supper one can safely say that Swaziland cricket is on the move.

Stuart MacGill, the No. 11 batting hero for New South Wales in the Pura Cup final, would be devastated if he missed the Ashes Tour after his best season. MacGill hit the winning runs against Queensland on Sunday to conclude a close final and a stunning summer.”I think I have done everything I possibly can to be selected for any winter tour,” MacGill told the Daily Telegraph. “If they drew up a set of selection criteria I would be very interested to see where I let myself down.”MacGill claimed 54 Pura Cup wickets for New South Wales, breaking Bill O’Reilly’s 65-year-old state record, and also helped bowl Australia to victory against Pakistan in the third Test in January. “I’ve played in a winning state side, I’ve played in a winning Test match side and every time I’ve got the ball I’ve done what I could," he said.A county bowler for a couple of seasons, MacGill believes his England experience is a big plus for selection as back-up to Shane Warne. “I’ve played on most of the grounds and come across most of their players, including a lot of the players the Australians have not played before,” he said.MacGill said before the Pura Cup final that he was considering a move to Queensland, but the one-wicket victory changed his mind. “Barring injury, I think you will probably see me here until I can’t walk any more,” he said.