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Yorkshire return to Sheffield for the first time in over a decade this week with two 2nd XI matches. The first is a one-day fixture at Sheffield United Cricket Ground on July 17 followed by a three-day Championship fixture at Abbeydale Park from July 18.Sheffield was for many years the home of Yorkshire cricket. Bramall Lane ground staged first-class Yorkshire matches for 110 years from 1863 to 1973 before the Club moved to Abbeydale Park where Championship games and one-day fixtures were played from 1974 to 1996.Sheffield City Council is delighted to see professional cricket back in the city. Councillor Tim Rippon, Cabinet Member for Economic Regeneration, Culture and Planning at Sheffield City Council said “We are really looking forward to the return of Yorkshire to Sheffield. It is a great privilege that they have chosen to return to the city and we hope that local residents go along and watch the team and visitors to Sheffield enjoy their stay.”Stewart Regan, Yorkshire’s chief executive, said “I am delighted to see one of our sides returning to Sheffield where Yorkshire cricket began. It’s a great event for the city and the Club and something I hope can continue for many years to come.”Yorkshire’s final senior appearance at Abbeydale Park was in May 1996, when they drew their Championship match against Derbyshire, and Yorkshire 2nd XI took their final bow a month later when they lost a three-day Championship match against Gloucestershire by five wickets.Yorkshire’s first team played 41 first class matches at Abbeydale, winning eight, losing 11 and drawing 22 with two games being abandoned because of bad weather. They played a total of 391 games at Bramall Lane, winning 163, losing 78 and drawing 150 with three matches being abandoned.

Another setback for Andrew Flintoff © Getty Images

Andrew Flintoff is in doubt for the second Test against Pakistan after feeling discomfort in his ankle during his comeback match for Lancashire, against Kent, at Canterbury.A decision on his availability for the second Test at Old Trafford will be made after he visits a specialist tomorrow.An ECB statement said: “Andrew Flintoff has made good progress with his rehabilitation from an injury to his left ankle. He has worked extremely hard and at every stage of the rehabilitation program has shown improvement.”However, bowling in a four-day County Championship match against Kent was intended as the final test of the progress that he has made. Unfortunately, he has experienced some discomfort today and he will see a specialist tomorrow to reassess the ankle and future management of the injury.”Flintoff has steadily increased his workload over the last couple weeks, starting with two Twenty20 matches for Lancashire before his Championship return. He bowled 19 overs in the first innings against Kent, taking two wickets in his first spell. However, despite opening the bowling in the second innings he sent down just four overs before feeling pain in his ankle.England drew the first Test against Pakistan, at Lord’s, and the four-man bowling attack was lightweight without Flintoff’s presence. Andrew Strauss led the side and would again stand in if Flintoff is ruled out of any further Tests.

Graham Thorpe has ended his 12-year England career © Getty Images

Graham Thorpe has announced his retirement from international cricket. It brings an end to a 12-year England career in which he won 100 caps, the last coming against Bangladesh at Chester-le-Street in May.Thorpe, 35, missed out on a place in England’s squad for the first Ashes Test and had already made himself unavailable for the winter tours by signing a contract with New South Wales. He will continue to play for Surrey but wants to be able to spend more time with his family.”My partner is having a baby in the next couple of weeks and I have decided that I want to concentrate on my family life,” he said. “I have enjoyed my time with England and I have wished them every success in this Ashes series. I am proud to have been part of this successful era in English cricket.”David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, paid tribute to Thorpe. He said: “Graham was one of the leading players of his generation and that is reflected by the fact that he has collected 100 caps. You can judge what a feat that is by looking at the list of other players who have reached that number of appearances. He will be remembered as a tenacious batsman who served England with great ability and great pride.”Thorpe made 6744 runs in his career at an average of 44.66 and scored a century on debut against Australia at Trent Bridge in 1993. His highest score of 200 not out came against New Zealand at Christchurch in 2002.

The tests conducted on Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling action revealed that he was straightening his arm by 14 degrees while bowling the “doosra”, which is nine degrees more than is permissible for spinners under the guidelines of the International Cricket Council. has managed to get hold of the report submitted by Daryl Foster, the former Western Australia and Kent coach who was part of the team of experts which analysed Murali’s action at the University of WA recently. The Hindu has published snippets of the report, which claim that though his doosra is technically illegal, he should be allowed to bowl it “until a valid database is collected on the various spin bowling disciplines. The relatively minor level of elbow extension following remediation over the period from arm horizontal to release is not believed to give Mr Muralitharan an unfair advantage over batsmen or other bowlers.”Murali’s action came back into the spotlight after Chris Broad – the match referee when Sri Lanka played Australia – suggested all was not right with his doosra after the third Test in Colombo. Even after undergoing a period of “technique remediation” under Foster, the report says that Muralitharan still straightens his arm by 10.2 degrees (the limit previously imposed by the ICC for spinners was five degrees).The report also suggests that further research is necessary, including an analysis of the doosra as bowled by others. “Other offspin bowlers, in particular Harbhajan Singh, Saqlain Mushtaq and Shoaib Malik, all bowl the ‘doosra’ delivery, which suggests for comparison purposes that their ‘other one’ should also be analysed.”The ICC regulation which details that spinners can only bend their elbow five degrees – as opposed to ten for pace bowlers – has also come under the spotlight. “Murali, who has been tested more than any other bowler in the history of the game – 1995, 1999 and now – possesses different physical characteristics which make him a unique bowler,” says the report. “A straightening of ten degrees when he [Murali] bowls his ‘doosra’ is not excessive and that should not therefore be deemed advantageous.”We contend that because the speed of his upper-arm rotation is as fast, and in some cases quicker than, fast bowlers’, his level of acceptability for elbow extension should also be set at the ten-degree mark.”A case can certainly be made for some spin bowlers such as Muralitharan to have the same range of acceptability in elbow angle to that of fast bowlers. With no spin-bowling database to make a comparison, this would seem both a wise and prudent recommendation.”If Foster’s report does indeed come down on Murali’s side, the laws of cricket could be in line for yet another rewrite.

In two crucial World Cup games on successive days, the weather gods had the final say, knocking South Africa, England and Pakistan out of contention for the Super Six. On Monday night at Durban, the Proteas were at the receiving end, and on Tuesday morning intermittent rain forced the abandonment of Pakistan’s crucial encounter here at Queens Sports Club against Zimbabwe, which gifted the hosts two points to allow them to pip England for the third Super Six slot from Pool A.It is an irony of fate that two African teams – Kenya and Zimababwe, one from each pool – have gone to the next round, but neither is South Africa, who hoped to be the first side ever to win a World Cup at home. High levels of expectation and unrealistic optimism have again done for a home side.Pakistan’s task was steep anyway, and there was too much rancour and instability in their eleven to to achieve it. But the rain reduced the match to a farce anyway, eventually forcing its abandonment after a delayed start and two interruptions, the last coming when Pakistan were 73 for three after 14 overs, with Saeed Anwar unbeaten at 40.Though Zimbabwe were fortunate to qualify without beating a front line cricketing nation, Pakistan were left to lick their wounds. They too had a dismal failure – not beating any of their three worthwhile rivals, and managing only scrappy wins against minnows.It will remain a point of conjecture whether they would have done any better had rain not deprived them of another two points, and afforded them a late opportunity to beat England on net run-rate. But the fact is that though Anwar stuck around until the final interruption, Pakistan had lost three batsmen rather cheaply.Yousuf Youhana made just 17 and Inzamam-ul-Haq three. Inzamam, Pakistan’s premier batsmen, made the sum total of 19 runs in six innings. That was plumbing the depths, but it pretty much sums up the performance of the big guns – most of them failed to fire throughout the tournament, and never when it mattered.There will be explanations and excuses for Pakistan’s premature exit, but it was not unexpected from a fractious outfit in which everyone was for himself and none for the team.Mercifully the whole sorry business is over. A few prima donnas who held the cricketing destiny of the nation hostage in the last decade will be gone. It is a shame that they are going of their own will; many feel they should have been forced out a long time ago.And if tomorrow comes for the present set-up in the PCB (again a moot point for no Pakistani Board has survived a World Cup failure in the previous two instances – that is, post-1996 and post-1999), it will need to sit down and do a lot of soul-searching before rebuilding a strong team from scratch.

It was not only a showcase of the skills and desires of 22 teams and their players, it was also an advertisement for the sport itself.While it remains hard to believe that a month has already passed since the 2001 ICC Trophy tournament was completed, the event will, assuredly, be far more difficult to forget.There can be no denial of the fact that ill-winds have blown through cricket in recent times. But, even amid the whirl of 71 matches played at seven venues over 15 days of competition, the ICC Trophy tournament of 2001 appeared to all intents and purposes immune from the excesses which have pervaded the modern game.As an event, the ICC Trophy has always celebrated the sport’s grandest traditions and, 22 years on from its first incarnation, little has changed.Here, as the nations battled to take advantage of the World Cup pathway offered to the best three of their number, prima donnas were supplanted by pragmatists. Among them, there was no sense of misplaced jingoistic passions, no sledging, nor outrageous gamesmanship.Instead of promoting contention, this was a festival of sport which, above all, neatly wed the virtues of national pride, earnest competition and goodwill.There remains every indication that the logistical and financial difficulties associated with bringing so many teams together for the one event may invoke a streamlining of its format into the future. As such, this may have been the last competition of its particular type.Yet, as always, the tournament offered an unequivocal insight into the extent of cricket’s growth beyond its traditional borders, and the speed and strength of its overall development. No-one but the insanely optimistic would pretend, or even entertain the prospect, that the gap between the top performers at this event and those at the lower reaches of the Test playing fraternity will have narrowed noticeably over the last four years. Yet few would argue that the extent of the game’s progress in its developing nations shows any signs of slackening either.The Netherlands endured a disappointing campaign in Kuala Lumpur four years ago yet its side has probably never played better than it did in this tournament. Question marks still hang over its batting but its bowling is from the highest drawer. Any team which underestimates its attack two years from now will do so at its peril.Namibia was a surprise packet, a glamour team, and a crowd favourite all at once. It started its campaign from the depths of Division Two and ended it in the Final – a match in which it generally looked the better team until it somehow stumbled to a last-ball defeat.All power, too, to host nation Canada. Its administrators and players devoted themselves tirelessly to the twin dreams of organising a successful tournament and securing World Cup participation. And succeeded.Despite its surprise fall to fourth, Scotland has clearly made vast advances around its own World Cup appearance two years ago. The professionalism which it demonstrated in its matches was one of the most powerful indications of all of the benefits that can be derived from sustained exposure for cricket in new markets.Further down the list, such opportunities have not as yet been realised in so tangible a fashion. But the promise of teams like Uganda and Argentina can not do anything other than bode well for cricket’s prospects across a number of emerging frontiers.It might have begun amid a flurry of diplomatic activity. It might have been staged – literally and figuratively – half a world away from cricket’s traditional centres of power. It might have been a venture which simultaneously demanded administrative foresight, a sense of practicality, and the careful analysis of lessons learned from the past.Yet this 2001 ICC Trophy tournament ended having surpassed almost all of its expectations. Manifestly, there is still room for international cricketing competition which is simple, refreshing and enchanting. There are still vast possibilities for the fundamental ethic of participation to join with the power of earnest struggle between bat and ball. There still exist opportunities for the art of creative and far-sighted captaincy to co-exist with humility and decency. These are the virtues of cricket that should endure.

According to reports in the Northern Echo on June 21, Everton are keen to sign Middlesbrough centre-back Ben Gibson, but they should forget about him and make an ambitious move for Borussia Dortmund’s Manuel Akanji, rated at £19.8m by Transfermarkt, instead following his latest 2018 World Cup display for Switzerland.

What’s the word, then?

Well, the Northern Echo reports that the Toffees are targeting a move for the Boro captain this summer, with new boss Marco Silva keen to strengthen his central defensive options with Ramiro Funes Mori already being sold, Ashley Williams likely to be sold and Phil Jagielka’s future surely in doubt.

The Northern Echo reports that the Merseyside outfit are willing to offer Mo Besic as part of a deal to bring the 25-year-old to Goodison Park, with the Championship club likely to be keen on signing the Bosnia and Herzegovina international following a successful loan spell last term.

If Gibson did sign for Everton, whose fans have urged to sign a 26-year-old World Cup attacker following his latest display with one describing him as “much better than Gylfi”, their he would likely be partnering Michael Keane at the heart of the defence for the upcoming season.

Why should Everton forget him and go for Akanji?

Well, while Gibson would certainly be a decent addition for the Toffees, they perhaps should be aiming a little higher than a Championship player if they want to really push on and progress next term and beyond.

One player they could make an ambitious move for is Swiss centre-back Akanji, who only signed for Dortmund during the January transfer window.

The 22-year-old has put in two solid performances against Neymar and Aleksandar Mitrovic in his nation’s opening two World Cup fixtures, and as well as impressing with his defensive traits, he has also shown that he is strong and decent on the ball, too.

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In those terms he looks to be ideally suited to the Premier League, and he could form a strong partnership with Keane that would last for many years to come.

[brid autoplay=”true” video=”257647″ player=”12034″ title=”Three reasons we love to hate… Brazil and Argentina”]

	Matthew Hayden: “In any given side, there are always two or three people that look to sledge” © Getty Images

Matthew Hayden has said the Harbhajan Singh-Sreesanth row left him upset but is confident it was a stray incident. Hayden, the Australian opener currently playing for Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League, also said he wouldn’t use this to sledge either of them when Australia tour India later this year.”I was very upset, I just think we play this great game, in a great competition and both these guys are young men with enormous responsibilities as two fine players and prospects for the country that adores cricket and its cricketers,” Hayden told Cricinfo. “So I am sure they will feel remorseful as any player would. Because I think any player who has risen to the top of the game obviously has enormous respect and enormous discipline to get there. Honestly, I think it will be tomorrow’s headlines and life will move on. The game has always moved on.”Asked whether he thought this was just a momentary lapse of reason Hayden said, “I think so, yes. I didn’t think this was ever going to happen and I don’t think it will happen again either. Hopefully not.”Hayden had a famous run-in with Harbhajan during India’s tour of Australia, where he called the offspinner a “little obnoxious weed”. Would he use the latest incident between Sreesanth and Harbhajan as a sledging tool when Australia visit India in October? “No, I won’t be,” he says with emphasis. Is he drawing a moral line to sledging? “Yes, I think so. That is an incident between two individuals and I don’t want to comment on their relationship and where they are at and how they are going. There is no point. All that does is just create another headline and I don’t want to do that. I love the game of cricket and I have been really successful at the game of cricket, so I don’t think I need to push that barrier.”It’s the beauty of our game really; there is a gentlemanly aspect to the game and we get challenged on this. Australia has been nominated as the best sledgers and we get asked the question a lot of time but in reality its actually a mis-truth or certainly an exaggerated truth.”What the world has done following the success of Australian cricket is to try and vilify us. And that’s fair enough as the best in the world need to be taken down. So we always had to be on our guard and understand within that we need to address the issue before anyone else does.

	“You choose your targets, really. I would never say anything to Sachin [Tendulkar], Rahul [Dravid] or Anil [Kumble] or anyone like that. I believe they have marked the test of time” – Hayden on sledging

Hayden also said the Australian team has discussed the image of being the bad boys of international cricket and the ways of sledging. “You tell me what are these incidents of bad boys. I don’t think we are. But yes, we senior players do sit together and work out where we want to go and how we want to play our cricket. Also, making comments can be distracting to some characters. If someone is forced to do that without it being a motivating factor then its trouble.”He believes every team has a few characters that get involved in sledging. “I think in any given side, there are always two or three people that look to sledge. For e.g. In the Indian side, it would be Sreesanth, Harbhajan and [Robin] Uthappa. You wouldn’t hear a boo out of Rahul [Dravid], MS [Dhoni] and [Anil] Kumble though they are all fiercely determined.”Hayden also spoke about the art of sledging and how he would pick certain individuals for the treatment. “You choose your targets, really. I would never say anything to Sachin [Tendulkar], Rahul or Anil or anyone like that. I believe they have marked the test of time. We have been in battles together so many times and there is an enormous respect. Not that making comment is disrespect; making comment is trying to unsettle a player because you don’t know whether that guy has the skills to deal with it. And that was exactly the same when I was young coming into the game. You expect to get that.”

Marvan Atapattu cited ‘personal commitments’ for his withdrawal from the Bangladesh series © AFP

Former Sri Lanka captain and opening batsman Marvan Atapattu has pulled out of the upcoming Test series against Bangladesh citing personal commitments. Atapattu, 36 was named in the Test squad of 15 picked on June 13 for the three matches against Bangladesh beginning on June 25.Kanagan Mathivanan, the Sri Lanka Cricket secretary, said that the board had received a letter from Atapattu that due to commitments he was unavailable for the Bangladesh series. Atapattu had however stated that he would be available for future series. Atapattu is currently in England playing club cricket for Lashings.Although picked in the World Cup squad, Atapattu was not selected for any of Sri Lanka’s 11 matches during the tournament held in the Caribbean. Atapattu was also left out of the one-day series that followed in Abu Dhabi against Pakistan.The selection committee, headed by Ashantha de Mel, recalled Atapattu for the Bangladesh Test series. Sanath Jayasuriya, who is now expected to play just one-day cricket, was rested for the series and allowed to sign-up with English county Lancashire as their overseas replacement with Muttiah Muralitharan returning home for the Bangladesh series.Mathivanan said a replacement for Atapattu would be named shortly.

Inzamam-ul-Haq starts to lead his players back onto the field but it wasn’t for long© Getty Images

The fourth and final Test between England and Pakistan at The Oval was plunged into controversy on Sunday in an ugly row over ball-tampering. The tourists risked forfeiting the Test after making a tea-time protest over being docked five runs for allegedly altering the state of the ball.But just as it had seemed the match was about to restart, the Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer said a fresh delay had been caused by the refusal of umpire Darrell Hair to continue standing in the match. Pakistan were docked five runs at the end of the fourth day’s 56th over which had been bowled by paceman Umar Gul.It was Gul’s 14th over with England 230 for 3 when the umpires inspected the match ball. Play was eventually called off for the day at 6.13pm local time (1713GMT) with England 298 for four in their second innings, a deficit of 33, with the future of the match still uncertain as the crisis meeting is yet to take place.As the meeting got underway at 7.30pm local time (8.30GMT), a band of journalists, including Cricinfo, were told in no uncertain terms that they must get out of the building it was taking place. The meeting will determine, among other things, whether the match goes ahead tomorrow. It is believed that Mike Procter, the two umpires Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove, Bob Woolmer and an England representative James Avery were present. It’s not known whether Duncan Fletcher is attending.The players, meanwhile, left the ground with a police escort. As at 7.30pm, there was a strong police presence at the Oval, though it is purely precautionary – there are two policemen inside the pavilion and a line of them outside. As one policeman explained to Cricinfo, there was no information given to the crowds all day long and the bars were still open, and that combination makes for an inflammatory situation in his experience. And indeed the crowds were getting restless. “If I had bought a ticket for the day,” he added, “I wouldn’t be impressed.”The controversy began at 2.30pm local (1330GMT) when veteran Australian official Hair, standing with West Indian umpire Billy Doctrove, signalled to the scorers that five penalty runs were to be added to England’s total, taking it up to 235.Then, after an early tea had been taken because of bad light, the umpires walked back out onto the field at 4.40pm local time (1540GMT) only for no Pakistan fieldsmen to follow behind them before walking back in. Some 15 minutes later the umpires returned followed by England batsmen Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell only for the Pakistan team to remain in their dressing room.The batsmen and umpires walked back in, with Pakistan – already a losing 2-0 down in the series – in danger of forfeiting the match. Both umpires removed the bails, returned to the pavilion and the covers came on.Pakistan then appeared on the field, to boos from the crowd, at 5.25pm (1625GMT) but there were neither stumps in the pitch nor umpires. After several minutes without either Hair or Doctrove, or the England batsmen, Pakistan walked back off.The fresh delay was caused by Hair’s refusal to continue.Cricket’s Law 21.3 states clearly states “that, in the opinion of the umpires, a team refuses to play, the umpires shall award the match to the other side.” This was the first time such a five-run penalty for ball-tampering had been imposed in Test cricket, an International Cricket Council [ICC] spokesman said.Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer told AFP: “The team is upset that they have been accused of tampering with the ball and therefore ‘cheating’. “It is a no-win situation as now Darrell Hair has refused to umpire.”The PCB chairman Shahrayar Khan, who had talks with England counterpart David Morgan, insisted the reason for the continuing impasse lay at the door of the umpires. “The boys are extremely upset at the slur of ball tampering. As a result they registered a protest with the match referee for the decision unilaterally taken by the umpires.”Once we did that, we were ready to go out and play but it seems the umpires are reluctant to go out. The whole team felt very aggrieved and Inzy (Pakistan’s captain Inzamam-ul-Haq) more angered than the rest. He felt we should make a protest but once that had been registered he was perfectly prepared to go on.”We felt very deeply insulted by what was in the umpire’s report and there seems to have been no evidence given. I felt the matter had been resolved but it now seems the umpires are reluctant.”We feel it is extraordinary that we are ready to come out and the umpires say they cannot continue. It is very sad. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I want the tour to continue,” said Shahriyar ahead of the five-match one-day between England and Pakistan.The match referee Mike Procter said talks would continue. “Following issues raised by the onfield umpires, which need to be resolved, meetings will be held between the match referee and both teams after play to determine whether any further play will be scheduled in this match.”Umpires have refused to stand in Tests before although the majority of major flashpoint incidents came in the days before the introduction of ‘neutral’ officials. Back in 1973, English umpire Arthur Fagg stayed off the field during a Test match between England and the West Indies at Edgbaston after being upset by West Indian reaction to his decision to give England’s Geoff Boycott not out, although he did later take the field.And in Dunedin in 1980 the West Indies briefly refused to take the field during a Test in protest at New Zealand official Fred Goodall.At Faisalabad in 1987, Pakistan’s Shakoor Rana refused to stand until he’d received an apology from England captain Mike Gatting after the pair had had an on-field row. Gatting scribbled an apology and the match continued.Pakistan’s 1992 tour of England was blighted by allegations of ball-tampering with pace great Waqar Younis, now Pakistan’s bowling coach, coming under intense scrutiny.And in 2000 Waqar himself received a one-match ban for ball tampering following a one-day international against South Africa in Sri Lanka while Azhar Mahmood was fined for “abetting” the infringment in the same match.The Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar, ruled out of the current series with because of an ankle injury, received a reprimand in November 2002 for the same offence after a Test match against Zimbabwe in Harare.And the following year, in May, Shoaib was given a two-match ban for ball tampering after a one-day international against New Zealand in Dambulla.