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Mark Taylor has joined a growing number of Australian players to back Ricky Ponting as captain despite the “over-reaction” to the Ashes loss. Taylor, who was in charge when Australia became world champions in 1995, said the defeat “may be the making” of Ponting after Dennis Lillee called for his sacking.”We’ve seen Ricky Ponting and the Australian side winning everything,” Taylor told , “but sometimes you need a loss to sit down and say ‘what can I do, what can we do as a leadership group do to make things better?’ If you can turn it around you can bounce back and become a better leader.”As most of the squad returned to Australia yesterday, Adam Gilchrist, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer and Michael Kasprowicz believed Ponting should continue as leader. A report in said Ponting also had the support of Bob Merriman, the Cricket Australia chairman, and at least five members of the board.The paper said a review of the tour had already begun with Taylor, Allan Border and Daryl Foster, the bowling coach, investigating all aspects of the trip as well as looking into Australian cricket at all levels. Taylor said there was always going to be an over-reaction to the series loss and was not surprised by the mood.However, Taylor said both Ponting and Michael Vaughan did not show enough imagination with their tactical decisions during the series. “To be critical, I thought both captains at times were either full-on or full-off,” Taylor said in . “It was either four slips, two gullies and a bat-pad or no slips, deep point, deep third man, deep backward square, deep fine leg.””One of the things you don’t want to do is panic in a situation like this,” Kasprowicz said in . While the future of Ponting is safe Kasprowicz, who played in two Tests and took four wickets, is waiting for news from Trevor Hohns, the chairman of selectors.”[Hohns] said straight: `I can’t tell you where things sit. We just don’t know yet’,” Kasprowicz said. Decisions will be made quickly as the Super Series starts in three weeks.

38 overs England 198 for 5 (Collingwood 35*, Jones 25*) v Zimbabwe – Rain ended play at 5pm
Match scheduled to resume tomorrow at 10.15am
Scorecard

Vikram Solanki led from the front with a mellifluous 62 as England set about their Champions Trophy campaign against Zimbabwe with some variable batting – that was before the rains came, again. The wet weather had already pushed the start back to 2pm, and then ultimately curtailed proceedings as England stumbled to 198 for 5. The match will resume tomorrow, weather permitting.England were put in to bat by Tatenda Taibu, and started brightly enough – courtesy of seven zooming wides in the opening over from 18-year-old Tinashe Panyangara, who seemed overawed by the prospect of bowling against England. Marcus Trescothick struck two scintillating fours, before his innings ended abruptly on 10 as he edged Douglas Hondo’s loose-but-bouncy delivery to first slip, playing away from his body (21 for 1).Michael Vaughan made an enterprising and entertaining start, including two majestic hooks in consecutive balls from Hondo, which flew for six. The second one brought up England’s 50 in the eighth over. But Vaughan’s disappointing one-day season continued, as Edward Rainsford invited a drive which Vaughan thick-edged to second slip (54 for 2). Rainsford, the pick of the Zimbabwe bowlers, deserved his first one-day international wicket, and he later struck again to remove Andrew Strauss.Strauss and Solanki had enjoyed a useful partnership – mustering 60 runs from 62 balls – before Strauss fell for 25, trying to steer a widish delivery to third man (114 for 3). Taibu, ever alert behind the stumps, dived full-stretch to his left and Strauss was gone – and in strode Andrew Flintoff, the man of the moment.

Flintoff was fortunate to survive a first-ball lbw shout from Rainsford, but two balls later he clubbed a typical four and the crowd settled back to enjoy the ride. But, unusually for Flintoff in this, his summer of plenty, it was only to be a quick trip out. A touch over-confident, he stepped up to toe-end a full-length drive off Panyangara to deep mid-off, where Hondo was waiting to typify Zimbabwe’s superb fielding. Hondo grabbed the ball – diving – to cut short Flintoff’s journey (123 for 4).Solanki, meanwhile, continued to hold the England innings together, and brought up his fifty in fine style, with a crashing slash through backward point.He played gracefully throughout his innings, comfortably despatching anything pitched up with a series of glorious drives and well-timed shots off his legs, before eventually being trapped lbw by the part-time medium-pace of Sibanda (159 for 5).Geraint Jones then stepped in to mount some sturdy resistance with Paul Collingwood. But then, just as they were hitting their straps – and the boundary boards – the game was washed out for the day.

To the West Indies Cricket Board of Directors and to Gus Logie on his recent confirmation as Head Coach of the WICB for at least the next two years.Gus Logie is one of the most unforgettable people that I have ever met. Soft spoken and calm, he is nevertheless supremely confident, knowledgeable and a people and team person. The team of Logie and Lara and company are going to be tough in the Cricket World Cup 2007 with a large number of young talented Test and One Day International players.Gus and the then WICB President, Revd. Wes Hall and his Executive and senior cricket management assisted Canada when we needed help in the Coaching area. They stayed the course and supported Canada’s World Cup team, when it would have been easy to walk away. A friend in need, is a friend indeed. Despite Gus’s track record of success as both a player and Coach, others worked incessantly to kill the assistance.Of the Associates at the World Cup, Canada was the only country with only one coach.. Other countries had at least one assistant. Unfortunately, none was available for Canada. With limited preparation time and even in extremely trying circumstances, Canada perfomed “surprisingly well.” We could have and should have done better, however.Cream will always rise to the top. It was our honour to have had Gus here in Canada and we are sure that given the right support and player commitment to excellence, with professionalism and self discipline, that the WICB team of talented young players will be ready to perform at the top level in World Cup 2007.Onward and upward, you champions of the Continents.

The Knights squad is full of expectation and ambition as we go about our preparation for the State Max, State Championship and State Shield competitions which will shortly be upon us.At our recent team training camp during the first week of October, the squad took the opportunity to catch up with each other after winters of either cricket in New Zealand, England, tours, or working and training back home.The highlight of catching up with one’s mates was well complemented with some constructive work on fitness testing, video analysis, strategic planning, nets and a State breakfast launch.The fitness testing undertaken by the Knights, under the expert guidance of Jason Wheadon, is the toughest I have been lucky enough to have experience.The results were encouraging in an age where the expectations of cricketer’s fitness levels now mirror that of other major sports. Each squad member did a 3000-metre time trial and then was required to complete 10 sets of 4 x 15 metre shuttles within 200 seconds.New programmes have now been issued by Jason and improvement goals set for the next round of testing in late-October. Rumour has it that our 3000-metre time trial compared favourably to those undertaken by some of the representative rugby teams. (As we achieve our improvement goals perhaps our props may be turning into open side flankers!).Our new coach Bruce Blair had his first opportunity to address the squad and has had a positive impact from the beginning. Initiatives introduced by Bruce such as video analysis, bowling grids and SWOT analysis (the identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats by the group) will bring a further dimension to our environment as we focus on that something special something that sports teams spend their lives pursuing – the winning edge.The planning and preparation being undertaken, together with the hunger that I have seen in our group certainly places us in a good starting position for the summer which lies ahead.Over the next few weeks the squad will be looking to turn in performances in club and minor association cricket which captures the eyes of the three selectors. With the depth we have and the younger players coming through the ranks the selectors will have much to discuss as they consider options for the State Max tournament and the State Championship which opens with a game against the State Otago Volts in Dunedin on November 26.

Delhi coach Ajay Jadeja will miss his team’s opening game against Rajasthan because his son is unwell. “Ajay (Jadeja) has informed us that he would not be able to perform the coach’s duty as his son is not well,” DDCA president Sneh Prakash Bansal told PTI. “He is expected to join the team from the second match.” There was speculation that Jadeja’s absence was motivated by his displeasure over Amit Bhandari’s appointment as assistant coach. Bansal, however, denied it was the reason. “For us, Ajay is the chief coach and his decisions are final. If there would have been such a problem, we would have removed Bhandari as Jadeja is more important to us.”

J&K have two teams on eve of game

Jammu & Kashmir were faced with the possibility of fielding two teams on the eve of their opening game. The reported that while the Mithun Manhas-led squad was announced by the Imran Reza Ansari-led faction a few days ago, the rival Farooq Abdullah group announced their own squad, which did not feature Manhas and had Parvez Rasool as captain. The Manhas-led team eventually took the field on the first day.

Tiwary likely to be named Bengal captain

Manoj Tiwary is likely to be named captain of the Bengal side, after Laxmi Ratan Shukla requested Sourav Ganguly, the CAB joint-secretary, and the selectors to not consider him for captaincy. According to a report in the , Tiwary was the only option after Wriddhiman Saha was not firm on taking up the job. The official announcement, the report said, will be made on Thursday when the squad for Bengal’s first match, against Karnataka on October 8, is finalised.

Sandeep, Aaron miss opening games

Sandeep Sharma has missed Punjab’s opening game against Railways with a back injury. He is reportedly out of action for two months. Meanwhile, Varun Aaron, who a few days ago said he wanted some game-time before the Tests against South Africa and was named Jharkhand captain, wasn’t part of the XI in their opening match against Services in Delhi.

BCCI bars 22 Delhi players for age fraud

The BCCI has barred 22 Delhi players from participating in age-group tournaments because of allegations of age fraud, the reported. The BCCI’s game development manager, Ratnakar Shetty, advised the DDCA against fielding the players till a clearer picture emerged about their age. Shetty’s instruction followed a letter from DDCA vice president Chetan Chauhan seeking clarity on whether the players could be fielded. “Two of those against whom the FIR has been filed were part of the under-19 team,” Chauhan said. “We didn’t want a situation where they were part of the playing XI and then there is further trouble. We are not targeting a particular player but as an FIR has been filed we have checked with the BCCI.”

Rawalpindi were strongly placed despite a valiant fight back by Karachi Blues on the second day of the Quaid-i-Azam Trophy National Grade-I Cricket Championship match at the UBL Sports Complex here on Monday.The home side ended the day on 106 for three in their first innings in reply to Rawalpindi’s 360. Opener Maisam Hasnain batted responsibly for an unbeaten 27 in almost three hours. Giving him company at the crease was skipper Farhan Adil with 15.Karachi Blues, however, dominated the first half of the day when they claimed Rawalpindi’s remaining seven wickets for 94 runs after the visitors had resumed at 259 for three.Test reject Mohammad Wasim was undone by a fine outswinger from Tanvir Ahmed, who had the upright right-hander caught at the wicket with the second new ball. Wasim added only four to his overnight score of 38.Shahid Javed, the other overnight batsman, collected another 19 runs before he was deceived by an armer from Salman Fazal and was bowled for 82 with the total on 323. Shahid, whose knock lasted 306 minutes, faced 250 deliveries and hit seven fours.All-rounder Yasir Arafat made a brisk 36 off 44 balls with five boundaries in 71 minutes until he edged Salman Fazal to Faisal Iqbal at slip. The other notable scorer on Monday was ex-Test spinner Shakeel Ahmed with 20.Tanvir Ahmed and Tabish Nawab captured three wickets apiece while Imranullah and Salman took two each.Karachi Blues were off to a poor start when left-handed Zafar Jadoon was taken at first slip by Shahid Javed off left-arm pacer Mohammad Ghufran for five.Shortly afterwards Ghufran took his second scalp of an impressive opening spell. Asim Kamal, the left-handed one-down batsman, played away from his body to a widish delivery and was superbly held in the gully by Tasawwar Hussain for 16.Faisal Iqbal, fresh from his double century against Sargodha last week, was a victim of the unpredictable behaviour of the pitch. He tried to play left-arm spinner Shakeel Ahmed off the backfoot but was shocked to see the ball skidding through just above ankle height to strike his pad right in front of the stumps. He made 23 off 55 balls with a solitary boundary.Luckily for Karachi Blues, Maisam and Farhan negotiated the remaining 74 minutes of play to lift the score from 69 for three without being parted.

Surrey are hoping to confirm the signing of the Pakistan paceman, Mohammad Asif, as their overseas player for 2008.Asif has taken 50 wickets at 21.66 in his ten Tests to date, and starred at Surrey’s home ground, The Oval, last year, taking 4 for 56 in the final Test against England before the game degenerated amid the Darrell Hair controversy.His career has been hampered by injury and controversy – he was suspended for 12 months last year after testing positive for a banned steroid, only for the decision to be overturned on appeal – but since the retirement of Glenn McGrath, he is rapidly emerging as the world’s leading seam bowler.”We are negotiating and things are going well,” said Surrey’s cricket committee chairman, Roger Harman, who also confirmed that the West Indian left-arm seamer, Pedro Collins, had joined the club as a Kolpak player on a two-year deal.The former Australia seamer, Matt Nicholson, could also return to The Oval in 2008 as a Kolpak player, if Australia and New Zealand finalise an EU trade agreement.

Malcolm Speed, the ICC’s chief executive, has issued a terse warning to Inzamam-ul-Haq over making public comments about incidents at The Oval pending the ICC’s Code of Conduct hearing.”I have been very disappointed by some of the public comments that have been made by members of the PCB, team management and captain Inzamam-ul-Haq following the Oval Test,” Speed said in a media release. “Over the course of the last two weeks there has been a stream of unnecessary and inappropriate public comment from the PCB, much of which could be seen as prejudicial to the pending Code of Conduct hearing.”We have in place a fair and independent process for dealing with the matters that arose out of the Oval Test and all concerned parties will have an opportunity to present their evidence during the hearing later in September.”Ahead of this hearing it is wholly inappropriate for officials or players to comment on the issues that will be addressed, particularly as the ICC Code of Conduct includes a specific offence of ‘public criticism of, or inappropriate comment on, a match-related incident or match official’.”This raises the rather surreal situation in which Inzamam could find himself facing Code of Conduct charges for commenting on a Code of Conduct hearing that might turn out to have been directly caused by incidents for which he might be cleared.But there was no doubting that Speed had had enough. “The acute international diplomatic and political sensitivity of this issue has persuaded me not to lay a charge to date but despite the exceptional circumstances I will not hesitate to lay a charge should further inappropriate public comments be made ahead of the hearing.”He added that this issue had been raised twice in the last ten days with Shaharyar Khan, the PCB’s president, and that Mike Procter, the ICC match referee, had been asked to speak to the Pakistan team and management.”There will be plenty of opportunity for Pakistan to put its side of the story in the fair environment of the Code of Conduct hearing,” Speed concluded. “That is the appropriate forum for its views on these matters.”

The ECB’s decision to sell all live cricket to satellite broadcaster BSkyB has again come under attack, this time from Andy Duncan, the chief executive of Channel 4, whose contract to cover cricket end with the Oval Test next month.Speaking at the Edinburgh International TV festival, Duncan warned that the ECB’s decision could lead to a generation missing out. “It was not that damaging for us,” he said. “It’s hugely damaging for cricket. It’s a huge mistake they have made.”They’ve gone for the money and will probably spend that on building county clubs or in paying overseas players. They’ve got more money, but in a next few years’ cricket won’t be seen.”The ECB maintain that Channel 4 could have bid, but Duncan said that it was not economic for them to try to match other offers. Although viewing figures this summer had hit record levels, he argued this was a one-off and that when BSkyB had a monopoly in 2006 there would be a “huge drop off”.Duncan’s comments come hard on the heels of similar remarks from Luke Johnson, Channel 4’s chairman. He said: “Our view is that the ECB did a very bad deal for the sport. They didn’t handle the negotiations well. They were short-term. They went for the money. We tried to bring it to the attention of the relevant people at the ECB,” he continued. “But what happened is that there are certain factions in the ECB and they took charge of the negotiations and they are very commercially minded.”Giles Clarke, the chairman of Somerset and the head of the ECB marketing committee that did the deal, explained that not to have gone with BSkyB would have meant a marked reduction in income for cricket in England. “We would have to tell Duncan Fletcher we are cutting your budget,” he said. “Twenty-five per cent of our broadcast income goes to support the England team. What would the media have said then?”

Ray Price, the Zimbabwean left-arm spinner, is the latest player to sign for an English county as a non-overseas player under the “Kolpak” ruling. Price, 28, has agreed a two-year deal with Worcestershire, and is available to play as soon as possible.Before the so-called Zimbabwean rebel players had their dispute with the board, Price had been an integral part of the Zimbabwean Test attack, taking 69 wickets in 18 matches. He also played in 26 one-dayers.He will qualify as a local player because Zimbabwe has a trade agreement with the European Union. Maros Kolpak, a Slovakian handball player, went to the European Court in a bid to play in Germany without being classed as a foreigner because he came from a non-European Union country. His victory meant that workers from around 100 countries who have trade agreements with the EU are now protected by European employment laws.Price, nephew of the major-winning golfer, Nick Price, has now set his sights on a career in England with an eye to qualifying for the national side – watch out Ashley Giles. Price said: “I have always wanted to play county cricket and am really looking forward to the challenge.””In the short-term his experience and skill will help us finish our season in style,” Tom Moody, Worcestershire’s head coach, said: “His attitude and work ethic will give us a timely boost for the final five weeks of the season.”