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India have retained the same squad for the first three ODIs against South Africa after giving Sri Lanka a 6-1 hiding in the one-day series. VRV Singh, the Punjab fast bowler, has been sidelined for two-and-a-half weeks because of an ankle injury.VRV Singh was originally picked as Jai Prakash Yadav’s replacement for the last two matches against Sri Lanka but it was later discovered that he was suffering from an inversion injury to his left ankle with associated bruising. Yadav, who was then recalled as VRV Singh’s replacement, has another chance against South Africa to stake his claim to a one-day spot.Sourav Ganguly, who was initially injured for the first two ODIs against Sri Lanka and was subsequently dropped for the rest of the series, did not find a place in the squad. Ganguly was overlooked in spite of making 117 against North Zone in a Duleep Trophy match at Rajkot. However, in his next innings, he made just 14 against Zimbabwe Board President’s XI.Ganguly did his cause no favours today after Zaheer Khan bowled him for a duck in the first innings of the Duleep Trophy final against West Zone at Ahmedabad. Zaheer also did not earn a recall even after tallying 19 wickets to date in the Duleep Trophy .Squad for the first three ODIs against South Africa
Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid (capt), Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Murali Kartik, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, S Sreesanth, RP Singh, JP Yadav

Thirty-five years of struggle was not meant to end so easily. Conquering the final frontier was supposed to finish with a duel similar to the one Australia fought in India in 2001, except that it was meant to finish with Ricky Ponting’s sweaty hands raising the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Instead, the conquest was over in three Tests as India let down the drawbridge before Ponting could try his first sweep.Moses led his people through the desert wilderness for 40 years before arriving in Canaan. Adam Gilchrist, the stand-in captain, has achieved what Hughes, Border, Taylor and Waugh – four times – could not, by leading Australia to the promised land. The journey began when Bill Lawry departed Madras with a 3-1 victory on December 28, 1969. Of the current Australian side only Shane Warne was alive, but he was a baby months away from his first mouthful of baked beans.While Moses had his Ten Commandments, Australia’s definitive plan didn’t come until the heartbreak of 2001, when Steve Waugh turned up to celebrate with his Southern Comfort and instead drank in unfulfilled destiny. Desperate to avoid further heartbreak, the players and the support staff filled laptops with tactical and trivial plans over months and years. No team has ever been better prepared.There’s been an executive summary for everything and everyone. They’ve had a yoga instructor, detailed instructions for the hotel chefs, and have sipped drinks during games instead of gulping them like their predecessors. In mid-tour everybody went on holiday. These were small moves, but they yielded big results.On the field they would be more patient. Under Gilchrist Australia have been willing to go on the defensive in a way Waugh never allowed. Shane Warne, now the world’s highest wicket-taker, would be a stock bowler. The pace attack would be the hit-men, bowling straight, sharing their reverse-swing secrets and having more protection on the leg side. Only singles would be on offer to batsmen addicted to boundaries.Importantly, they’ve been flexible enough to adapt. Michael Clarke wasn’t supposed to bat, but performed better than everyone except Damien Martyn by playing with a joie de vivre not seen since the young Michael Slater. Gilchrist took charge so seamlessly that Ponting, recovering from a broken thumb, was not missed. And after avoiding the sweep in the first innings at Bangalore, the batsmen began to play that shot in an effort to rotate the strike. The outcomes have been spectacular.India have four of the world’s most intimidating batsmen, and two of the most feared spinners. Yet they have been humiliated. Gilchrist continued the torture today by extending the lead well beyond 500. He had declared early at Headingley when filling in for Waugh in 2001, and was Butchered. There was no way he was risking such a prize on anything remotely close to a sporting declaration.What followed was the Indian top order’s softest collapse of the series. Aakash Chopra and Rahul Dravid were bowled in ways that would upset club batsmen, and Jason Gillespie finished with four wickets. Sachin Tendulkar became Glenn McGrath’s 450th victim with a timid shot from a great man, and the game was up. The fielders’ smiles widened and they waited for the winning moment. John Buchanan held his camcorder, Ponting chewed his fingers like Mark Taylor, and the final pair’s boundaries were laughed off.But this was serious. When Martyn caught Zaheer Khan in the deep off Warne the team exploded. Gilchrist, flapping like a swan chased by a fox, was overwhelmed, but managed to call the moment “the most fulfilling of my cricketing life”. Allan Border, now a selector, was in the stands to cheer, and greetings were quickly sent back to Steve Waugh.This was the Australian equivalent of England winning the rugby World Cup, and the trophy they had won only at home in 1999 will be returned next week in Mumbai. This result means that the team, the extended family reborn under Border, built into world champions by Taylor, and turned into record-breakers by Waugh, can enjoy the view as cricket’s greatest travellers. It has taken them 35 years, but they have finally won in India.

India A 181 and 70 for 0 (Das 22*, Jaffer 32*) trail Warwickshire 537 by 286 runs
ScorecardIndia A’s impressive tour was in danger of coming to an ignominious end, as Ian Bell swung his way through their batting with career-best figures of 4 for 12 from nine overs. India, whose batsmen have been the star performers of an unbeaten tour, were forced to follow on and salvaging a draw is now the best they can hope for.India had resumed at 5 for 0 in reply to Warwickshire’s formidable 537, and had reached 117 for 1 when Bell began his wicket-spree. With Graeme Wagg chipping away at the other end, India folded for 181, with four batsmen recording ducks. Only Parthiv Patel, with a composed unbeaten 46, was able to keep his head.They faced a tricky 20 overs in their second innings, but Shiv Sunder Das and Wasim Jaffer prevented any further mishaps by reaching 70 for 0 at the close. But Bell, who made a fine 75 in Warwickshire’s innings, has yet to be unleashed for a second time.

The famous Green Park ground at Kanpur saw Vidarbha claim theimportant first-innings lead against Uttar Pradesh on the second dayof their match on Friday.It was a coup of sorts for a visiting side up against a home side thathad stars like Mohammad Kaif, his elder brother Mohammad Saif andJyoti Yadav. The man who made a major contribution towards helpingVidarbha reach 227 for six at stumps, a lead of 17, was 26-year-oldParesh Sutan who made a patient 71. Shailesh Harbade who made 44 andSamir Khare who made 31 were the other men among the runs. For UP,fast bowler, Ashish Winston Zaidi, a former India prospect, and leftarm spinner Gyanendra Pandey claimed two wickets each.

Kent 159 (Footitt 4-61) and 30 for 0 require a further 299 runs to beat Derbyshire 253 (Godleman 108) and 234 for 3 dec (Godleman 105*)
ScorecardBilly Godleman has three hundreds in a row, a rare feat in Derbyshire’s history•Getty Images

Billy Godleman had a day to remember as Derbyshire moved into a commanding position in the LV County Championship Division Two match against Kent.The opener became only the fifth Derbyshire batsmen to score centuries in three consecutive innings and the first for 25 years, joining William Storer, Levi Wright, Peter Kirsten and Kim Barnett in the county’s record books.Godleman followed his hundred at Leicester and 108 in the first innings with an unbeaten 104 out of 234 for 3 before Derbyshire declared after rain held up play for two-and-a half hours.Godleman said: “It’s very special, 25 years is a long time and I’m very humbled by that achievement. I know because I’ve done it for 10 years that opening in first-class cricket is difficult so when I get in I try and make the most of it.”Derbyshire elite performance director Graeme Welch also confirmed that Sri Lankan batting star Tillakaratne Dilshan, who was not selected for the Kent game, had returned home and would not play again for the club.”It’s amicable,” Welch said. “We can’t get promoted so we might as well play some of the young lads and he understands that.”Kent’s chances of chasing down a target of 329 looked slim on the evidence of their first innings but Rob Key and Daniel Bell-Drummond played well to reduce it by 30 when bad light brought an early close.Bell-Drummond knows the odds are against Kent but said: “We haven’t been batting well in the red ball game and didn’t bat well first innings but everyone knows the capability of our side with the bat so we will try and make sure we click tomorrow and do the best we can. We’re not favourites and it’s a tough ask and we will need to play smartly.”They had gone into the third day well behind in the game with Derbyshire 73 for 1, already 167 runs on, and the early breakthroughs the visitors needed failed to come as Godleman and Chesney Hughes took the second wicket stand to 114 in 34 overs.A strong wind, which blew Sam Northeast’s cap off at one stage, may have hampered the bowlers but there were few alarms for Godleman and Hughes with both reaching 50 with boundaries from James Tredwell.Hughes, who was dropped at cover on 46, was bowled going for another big hit at Tredwell but Wayne Madsen accelerated towards a declaration with 43 from 41 balls before he was bowled by Ivan Thomas.Goldeman’s progress had stalled as he approached the milestone and he was in the nineties for 41 balls before he nudged Tredwell behind square and raced through for the single that took him to three figures.Alex Hughes became the second Derbyshire player to retire hurt when a hand injury forced him to go for an x-ray but even against an attack two bowlers down, Kent had a hard road ahead of them but Key and Bell-Drummond negotiated 10 overs to leave a target of 299 on the final day.

England coach Duncan Fletcher is not a happy man.He has been disappointed, and surprised, by the lack of fitness of those players in the England touring side who joined the team for the Test leg of the tour.With only the Canterbury game, starting tomorrow, in which to work on their fitness there is no recovery time for those players, and England risk being below par when they start the first Test in Christchurch on Wednesday next week.Fletcher said all the players had been given fitness programmes but not all the players adhered to them.It was ironic that he should air his frustration while the team trained at New Zealand Cricket’s High Performance Centre complex at Lincoln University because the practice wickets at Jade Stadium were wet.The complex is regarded as the finest in the world and some of the innovations coming out of it, and the personnel stationed there, have been trend-setting.But there is nothing especially out of the rocket science manual in a fitness advisor being part of the administration at the Centre. He monitors the fitness of all the leading players in New Zealand and regularly checks that fitness regimes are being maintained.The players work on an Internet-based system that they plug into from their own computers and the fitness advisors can log into. Special attention is placed on contracted players.If there are any concerns, NZC fitness advisor Warren Frost gets on the cellphone immediately.And if they are not getting on with the job?”I get on their case straight away,” Frost said.Surprising as it may seem, there was no monitoring element involved in the England preparations for those players joining the tour out of the English winter.Fletcher said it was something that would have to be sorted out at the end of the tour.England’s players were professionals and supposed to present themselves fit and ready for play.”I know which guys weren’t fit,” Fletcher said.England would look to put the best team on the field to win the Test matches.For the match against Canterbury starting tomorrow, the side will not be named until the last possible moment.However, Marcus Trescothick will not play as he has been given the break he was looking for. Andrew Flintoff has a knee worry which isn’t serious and either he or batsman Graham Thorpe could be given a break as well.The game was very important, especially to the players who have joined the tour as the Test match specialists. Even some of the players who have been involved in the one-day series but who are also contenders for the Tests, need to get out of the one-day mode.Some of them were guilty of sparring at balls in the nets in one-day style rather than in usual Test-match mode.After the failure to bowl out Otago in either innings, it is likely to be a much tougher job to contain a more experienced Canterbury side.

Robert Griffiths QC, Darrell Hair’s barrister, has told a tribunal in London that the ICC bowed to pressure from a bloc of Asian countries when it, in effect, sacked his client in the aftermath of the abandonment of the Oval Test last year.Speaking on the first day of Hair’s claim at the London Central Employment Tribunal that he suffered racial discrimination at the hands of the ICC, Griffiths maintained that the Indian and Pakistan boards heavily influenced the ICC.”Darrell Hair’s case is that he was treated the way he was because the ICC bowed to the racially discriminatory pressure that was brought to bear on it by the Asian bloc and ICC board member supporters,” Griffiths said. “The Asian bloc is dominant in cricket sometimes it uses that dominance inappropriately. Everyone knows it, but most are afraid to say so.”Griffith asked why the ICC’s three-man panel who looked into Hair’s future included Pakistan board chairman Nasim Ashraf – who had earlier called for sanctions against Hair – Sir John Anderson, the New Zealand board chairman who supported action against Hair, and Zimbabwe Cricket president Peter Chingoka. “As the world knows only too well, Zimbabwe Cricket has not historically selected teams on merit,” he said. “It has selected its players on the basis of their race and colour.”An environment has been created for him that is any or all of intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive. His feelings have been most significantly injured. He has suffered both personally and financially.”

Opening for the defence, Michael Beloff QC denied the allegations. “[Hair] was not a victim of race discrimination,” he said. “He was the author of his own misfortune. In cricketing terms, Mr Hair ran himself out.”His case on the question of discrimination has been changeable, evasive and, to a degree, reckless. He was immeasurably the more experienced and senior of the two umpires and in respect of every action during the fourth Test which has excited adverse comment, Mr Hair took the initiative and Mr [Billy] Doctrove’s role was only to agree.”Critically, it was Mr Hair who baled out of the crucial meeting when an attempt was made by all interested parties to broker a restart to the match,” Beloff continued. “The fact that a majority of those who supported the so-called resolution were Black or Asian does not of itself establish or even give rise to the inference that they took their decision on grounds of Mr Hair’s race as distinct from his behaviour.”When he took the stand after lunch Hair accused Anderson of brokering a secret deal to end his career during a private lunch during an ICC meeting. That conversation was not previously disclosed and Hair’s lawyers maintain that crucial discussions were left out of official transcripts in what was described as a “Watergate-style cover-up”.Hair explained why he accused Pakistan of ball-tampering, claiming that he felt the rough state of the ball “had been accelerated by human intervention”. He stressed he had taken joint decisions throughout the Test with Doctrove. “I was surprised by how much roughing up of the ball there had been,” Hair told the tribunal. “There were quite a few scratch marks on it.”He said that at the conclusion of the game “Doctrove called time and I removed the bails at my end,” indicating the decision was taken in unison. He also said that “the abuse I received from Pakistan players continued unchecked by the ICC”.Arriving at the hearing, Ray Mali, the ICC president, told reporters: “We are here today because we are an organisation that believes in fairness, justice and equality. We have come here to prove that we have been fair throughout this process. We believe racism was never an issue in this matter.”

Mohammad Yousuf’s outstanding run in 2006 has pushed his rating points up to among the ten best of all time. Yousuf currently has 933 points, a mark bettered by only nine batsmen in the history of Test cricket. Ricky Ponting leads the current rankings with 940 points, and after his hundred at Adelaide, that rating will go up even higher. He needs just six points to go past Len Hutton’s mark and become second only to Don Bradman.Both Yousuf and Ponting have had an amazing run of form this year. Yousuf broke numerous records – the most prominent being the highest aggregate in a calendar year (1788), and the most number of hundreds in a year (nine). His dream run means he is now 51 points clear of the third-placed Rahul Dravid.Ponting, meanwhile, has been equally prolific in 2006. His century at Adelaide was his seventh in eight Tests this year, and he has already become the second-highest run-getter this year with two matches still to play.

Once again the two captains remained tight-lipped about the composition of their respective teams when they spoke to the press ahead of the second one-day international at Mohali. Rahul Dravid, however, announced that Rudra Pratap Singh and Suresh Raina would miss out. Marvan Atapattu conceded that his team was considering making changes.The one thing the two captains agreed on was that the dew factor could play a role in the game. “That’s the talk going around,” said Atapattu. “We have to think a bit differently about the personnel we will use, and there might be a change or two. I said at the start of the series that it will be a closely battled series and India deserved the Nagpur win, we were outplayed in all departments, but are confident of getting a win here.”Dravid made it clear that India were not idly experimenting with the composition of the team or the batting order. “It’s not experimenting for the sake of it,” he said. “We carry out plans that we think will be good for a particular match, and sometimes, we have the long-term picture in mind as well. I will say we might do things differently or we might not, but our main aim is to try and win every match, and there will be no compromise in that regard.”Both sides have something to think about when it comes to the opening batting combination, and Dravid said that Virender Sehwag’s lack of form did not worry him. “He’s batting really well, looking good in the nets,” said Dravid. “I am not really concerned about his form. He is due for a big one. He made a good 70 in the one-day final in Zimbabwe not too long back and another good 70 in the Super Test. Obviously we would like him to convert his starts and he too would like to, but I strongly believe he is just one match away from a big knock.”Atapattu revealed that Sri Lanka were considering opening the batting with Kumar Sangakkara, who tackled the medium-pacers with aplomb, and used the fielding restrictions to good effect in Nagpur. “The way he batted in Nagpur, as well as in the Super Series in Australia, gives us the option of giving him the chance to open the batting.”Dravid once again had a good word for Sachin Tendulkar, who is all set to play his 350th ODI tomorrow. “It’s a phenomenal achievement and I hope he goes on to play a lot more matches,” said Dravid. “He is only 32, and I know he doesn’t place a lot of importance on numbers, but 350 games is something to be proud of.”

Scorecard

With the Champions Trophy just around the corner, Bangladesh were unconvincing in their five-wicket victory over Scotland at Edinburgh. Defending a meager 143, Scotland’s attack applied pressure on the batsmen but could not rein in Mohammad Ashraful, who scored 61 rapidly, with more boundaries than the entire Scottish side.Craig Wright had braved injury to captain Scotland, and it was his decision to bat first. It was a choice he was soon to regret, as his openers could not handle the bowler-friendly conditions, and the side was in dire straits at 70 for 5. Bangladesh’s bowlers shone, never letting the batsmen get away, and only Colin Smith (35) and Fraser Watts (26) could breach the attack.For Scotland, who were more or less on an even keel with Bangladesh only a few years ago, it was a chastening experience where nothing seemed to work. Even their fielding, which often gave them cause for relief, showed up only in bits and pieces.