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THE BOARD OF CONTROL FOR CRICKET IN INDIAFollowing players have been selected to represent India in the last two one-day internationals (Hyderabad and Guwahati) against the touring Zimbabwe team.Sourav Ganguly (Captain)
Rahul Dravid
VVS Laxman
Dinesh Mongia
Mohd Kaif
Yuvraj Singh
Sanjay Bangar
Harbhajan Singh
Murali Kartik
Zaheer Khan
Ajit Agarkar
Ajay Ratra
Vijay Bharadwaj
Tinu Yohannan
Note: Since Anil Kumble is having some sign of weakness on his shoulders and keeping in mind his recent surgery and rehabilitation programme, the selection committee has decided to give him rest and a chance to regain his strength.The selection committee has further decided to pick the Indian Team for the West Indies series after observing the performance in the last one-dayers. The team will be picked on 21 March in Mumbai.Niranjan R ShahHonorary Secretary, BCCI.

A century from opener Gautam Gambhir in the India A second innings saw the tourists gain an overall lead of 417 runs over Sri Lanka A at the end of the third day of the first unofficial Test between the two sides being played at the Sinhalese Sports Club Ground, Colombo.The start of play had earlier been delayed in the morning because of rain. The players finally took the field at 11:45 A.M. with a minimum of 86 overs being scheduled. India A, who had secured a 115-run first innings lead after bowling the home team out for 200 on Friday, got off to a rousing start.Openers Gambhir and Akash Chopra were in fine nick. A confident Gambhir, fresh from his 79 in the first innings, went after the bowling with unrestrained glee. At the other end, Chopra decided to play the waiting game. The partnership progressed at a healthy rate before Chopra (51) fell with the score reading 138-1 in 38.3 overs.His dismissal, however, failed to stem the flow of runs with Gambhir continuing to prosper in the company of next man Sridharan Sriram. The partnership between the two left-handers realised 58 runs before Gambhir fell after making 120 off 167 balls with 15 sweetly-timed fours. Gambhir’s rich vein of form, coming as it does at a time when Shiv Sunder Das is struggling in the West Indies, must have significantly boosted the former’s chances of being included in the Indian squad for the upcoming Test series against England.Gambhir’s departure saw Hrishikesh Kanitkar striding out to the middle. But after making just seven, the India A captain had to suffer the mortification of being castled by fast bowler Pushpakumara.Rohan Gavaskar, who replaced Kanitkar, started patiently in a bid to ensure that his first-innings failure was not repeated. Sriram could not keep him company for long, being dismissed for 45 after the two had only added 14 runs to their team’s score. The Tamil Nadu left-hander’s dismissal set the stage for next man Jai Prakash Yadav.Using his bat like a bludgeon, Yadav rattled up 46 runs off just 50 balls with two fours and three sixes before bad light saw play being called off. Walking off with him was Gavaskar, who was batting on 22.With India A having already gained a massive overall lead, the duo might not be called upon to strap on their batting pads on the final day. What we might see is India A pushing for a victory after making an overnight declaration. With leg-spinner Amit Mishra in fine bowling form, their chances to go 1-0 up in the three `Test’ series look bright indeed.

Rain interrupted an innings of high promise from Graeme Hick on the openingday of the CricInfo Championship. Batting with great authority and superb touch, Hick had hit six fours in his unbeaten 37 out of Worcestershire’s total of 73 for one against Middlesex at Lord’s.Fears that early-season pitches would, in the wake of the atrocious weather of recent weeks, be disastrous for batsmen proved unfounded. The strip at Lord’s looked dry and Worcestershire had no hestitation in electing to bat.The visitors did suffer an early setback, but only because left-hander Phil Weston went in pursuit of a ball from Tim Bloomfield which would have been better left alone.Weston’s opening partner, Anurag Singh, who was making his debut for his new county, plated with immense patience and care to remain unbeaten with 22 while Hick played the drive with total freedom.Rain struck when half an hour remained for play and persisted rightthrough the afternoon, ending play for the day.

With each addition to the runs column of the scoreboard, with each walk back to his mark by a Baroda bowler, with each passing minute, Baroda’s players must have been aware that, on the third day of their Ranji Trophy final against Railways, the title was slipping ever so surely out of their grasp.Railways needed one significant batting effort on Friday; they got two. Raja Ali, playing, as the commentators strove to point out more times than needed, after the recent tragic death of a brother, made 66 valuable runs and stitched the Railways innings together. Lower down the order, Murali Kartik, perhaps wishing to make doubly sure of that Man of the Match award, hit 69 , taking his side to an impregnable position.Amit Pagnis, making 39 at the top of the order, was the first casualty for the home side, a delivery from Rakesh Patel doing just enough to catch the edge and plop into Nayan Mongia’s gloves inches off the ground. Tejinder Pal Singh took 93 deliveries to score 27 before he was run out needlessly, Valmik Buch rocketing the throw in for Mongia to whip off the bails.Yere Goud and Raja Ali then put together a 56-run partnership for the fourth wicket, both playing the ball on its merit and rotating the strike well. Goud struck three fours in his 81-ball 24, a sedate knock that did its job of settling the innings rather than being remarkable for any fancy stroke-play.Goud fell on 155, and Abhay Sharma and Shreyas Khanolkar, the next two batsmen, could not contribute much. When Raja Ali finally fell for a well-compiled 66 off 116 balls (10×4, 1×4), Baroda must have fancied their chances of wrapping up the innings and attempting the challenging target.At 229/9, however, Kartik and Harvinder Singh came together and posted the biggest partnership of the innings. Seventy-seven runs flowed for the 10th wicket as Baroda’s bowlers, toiling under punishing conditions, proved ineffective against some well-judged batting.Almost 25 overs after the pair came together, Atul Bedade finally had Kartik stumped to get his first wicket of the innings. Both batsmen had become less aggressive towards the close of play, no doubt aiming to bat more on the fourth day. With Mongia effecting a fine stumping, Railways’ second innings finally came to an end on 306.Kartik top-scored in the innings, making 69 off 125 balls with seven fours. Harvinder Singh scored an accomplished 34 off 77 balls with four fours, belying his status of a number 11 batsman. For Baroda, Shekhar Joshi and Tushar Arothe picked three wickets each, but they brought little cheer on a dismal day.Play for the day ended with the fall of Kartik’s wicket, Baroda thus being set a mammoth target of 391 to win this Ranji Trophy. Technically, this match is not over yet, and the fat lady may yet dust off her vocal cords and sing a different tune.But with the first-innings lead in the bag in case Baroda manage to draw the match, and a massive run-buffer behind them to bowl their opponents out over two days on a turning pitch, few will blame the Railways players for popping some champagne corks tonight.

Persistent rains throughout the country are likely to hamper preparations for the second and third one-day internationals between Sri Lanka and New Zealand in Colombo. The Premadasa Stadium, which is scheduled to host the matches on November 4 and 6, has been under covers since Saturday and there is no hope of preparing the pitches for the games.”Half the ground is submerged under water due to the adjoining lake overflowing and the water on the ground is unlikely to subside till the lake waters recede,” a spokesman for Sri Lanka Cricket stated on Thursday. “It will be a difficult task to get the pitch and the ground ready for Sunday’s game. If the rains cease we might be able to prepare a pitch for the game on Tuesday.”Sri Lanka has been hit by unusual weather due to a tropical cyclonic storm ‘Neelam’ in the northern part of the country, which has resulted in strong winds and showers in other areas of the country. The first ODI of the five-match series in Pallekele was also abandoned without a ball being bowled.In November 2010, the tour to Sri Lanka by West Indies was hampered by bad weather with all three Tests ending in draws.

PERTH, March 2 AAP – Neither severe flu nor South Australia’s bowling attack could dislodge Simon Katich as he steered Western Australia to 4-184 at tea on day one of the Pura Cup cricket match at the WACA.Test hopeful Katich, with just three first class matches to play before a side is picked for the Ashes tour in June, has made his way to an unbeaten 73 in tough 37C temperatures.His 90-run partnership with captain Tom Moody put the Warriors in a commanding position after the Redbacks had claimed two quick wickets in the opening overs after the lunch interval.Moody, playing his 300th first class match, smashed nine boundaries on his way to 55 off 67 balls before he was clean bowled by Mike Smith (1-27) to make the score 4-177.The home side won the toss and elected to bat after a prayer and a minute’s silence was offered in memory of Sir Donald Bradman, who passed away in his Adelaide home on Sunday at the age of 92.Openers Marcus North and Michael Hussey opened for WA on a grassy pitch that looks sure to crack as the game wears on with 35C plus days forecast for Perth.They both survived early chances before Hussey was caught for nine by Mike Smith in the gully off Mark Harrity (3-47).North, who was grassed by Redbacks captain Darren Lehmann while on three off the bowling of Brett Swain, added 63 with Katich before he became Harrity’s second victim, caught at slip by Greg Blewett for 35.That brought Murray Goodwin to the crease, but the former Zimbabwe batsman was again unable to carry his one-day form into the first class arena and was clean bowled for four, taking his average for the season to 13.4.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
S Badrinath was Man of the Match for his 47•AFP

Chennai Super Kings were largely untroubled in their final match as they coasted to a four-wicket victory that left Yorkshire winless in the Champions League T20 proper. S Badrinath, often overlooked in a batting line-up of star names, showed once again how important he is to the Super Kings’ middle order, holding together the innings after three of his top-order colleagues holed out attempting to hammer the ball out of Kingsmead.The Yorkshire top-order, too, came up short once again, as they have invariably in this tournament, before Gary Ballance smashed his second half-century of the CLT20 to lead them to a respectable 140.None of the regular top three of Andrew Gale, Adam Lyth and Joe Root have reached 30 in this competition, which repeatedly left Yorkshire three down early. It was no different today as Gale chipped a catch to cover after a brisk 23, before Lyth was dismissed in a carbon-copy manner and Root gloved a leg-side ball to the keeper to leave Yorkshire at 43 for 3.The Yorkshire middle-order had been boosted by the return of David Miller, back after domestic duties with the Dolphins, and he helped the team recover through a big stand with Ballance. They took their time to get going – overs 6-10 only yielded 21 runs – but the introduction of Super Kings’ second-string bowlers helped boost the rate. Suresh Raina, captaining in place of MS Dhoni, was swept for 12 in his first over, and Ravindra Jadeja was thumped for two sixes in his first.Dhoni, playing his first Super Kings match as non-captain, also didn’t keep wickets, bowling some seam-up instead. He bowled a couple of wayward overs, experimenting with back-of-the-hand slower balls, and was whipped by Ballance for two consecutive sixes as Yorkshire’s run-rate finally hit seven.Doug Bollinger, who was the best of the Super Kings’ bowlers, returned to end the stand by dismissing Miller, but Ballance whacked a couple of sixes off Ben Hilfenhaus in the penultimate over to lift Yorkshire towards 140.Super Kings lost both M Vijay and Faf du Plessis in the Powerplay, but Badrinath was involved in two solid partnerships to put them on course for a second consolation victory. First, he paired up with Raina, compiling 48 to stabilise the innings, and then added 43 with Dhoni as Yorkshire struggled to build pressure on the Super Kings.Badrinath missed out on a half-century after he was bowled attempting a scoop, and Iain Wardlaw added a second scalp when Dhoni missed an attempted helicopter shot, though those two wickets were too late to have an impact against a line-up with plenty of depth.

West Indies T20 squad

Darren Sammy (capt), Samuel Badree, Christopher Barnwell, Tino Best, Darren Bravo, Dwayne Bravo, Johnson Charles (wk), Shannon Gabriel, Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, Sunil Narine, Marlon Samuels, Lendl Simmons
IN – Chris Gayle, Marlon Samuels
OUT – Denesh Ramdin, Andre Russell

Wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin continued to be left out of West Indies’ limited-overs plans, as he was omitted from the 13-man T20 squad for the two-match series against Pakistan. The squad includes Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels, who missed the previous T20 series against Zimbabwe in March due to rest and injury respectively. Besides Ramdin, the only other player dropped is the allrounder Andre Russell.Ramdin was left out of the ODI squad in the ongoing five-match series against Pakistan, leaving the wicketkeeping duties to Johnson Charles. Ramdin has hit only one half-century since his recall to the West Indies one-day side in October 2011, and had been dropped in several recent matches, during the Champions Trophy and the home tri-series which also featured India and Sri Lanka. Kieron Pollard was retained despite his poor limited-overs form in 2013, making six ducks in ODIs.The two matches are scheduled on July 27 and 28 in St Vincent. This will be West Indies’ last set of international matches for the season before the inaugural Caribbean Premier League begins on July 30.

ScorecardAsad Baig bowled miserly and led from the front with the bat•PCB

Asad Baig’s allround efforts helped Habib Bank Limited beat State Bank of Pakistan by six wickets in a low-scoring encounter in Karachi. SBP won the toss and elected to bat, but got off to a horror start, losing their first three wickets for just seven runs on the board, thanks to a double-strike from opening fast bowler Ehsan Adil.A 37-run stand for the fourth wicket looked promising, but Rameez Raja was caught by Kamran Hussain off Baig’s bowling for 26. SBP would lose two more wickets with the score on 68, before finding themselves in the unenviable position of 79 for 7. Rizwan Haider and Hasan Mahmood fought valiantly to push the team to 106 for 7. Adil and Baig finished with two wickets a piece.Despite a double-wicket blow in the second over rendering Habib Bank 5 for 2, the chase was largely uneventful. Baig stroked a 21-ball 27 to give impetus to the innings, while Behram Khan supported him ably in their 33-run partnership for the third wicket. Hasan Raza later joined Behram in a 48-run stand to effectively take the game away from SBP. Humayun Farhat hit an 8-ball 20, including two sixes at the end to finish off the game in the 18th over, handing Habib Bank a six-wicket victory.

Four out of 26 cricketers who played international matches for Bangladesh in the 2012-13 season have been kept out of a 30-member preliminary squad for the New Zealand series that begins in October this year.Mohammad Ashraful (ACSU investigation), Abul Hasan (back injury), Enamul Haque jnr and Nazimuddin did not feature in the list selected by BCB. Of them, Enamul is currently playing club cricket in England, while Nazimuddin has been out of favour since playing a Test against West Indies in November last year.Left-arm spinners Mosharraf Hossain and Saqlain Sajib found places in the preliminary squad, alongside Imrul Kayes, Raqibul Hasan, Farhad Reza, Mehrab Hossain jnr and Nazmul Hossain Milon.Mosharraf was called up for the ODIs in Sri Lanka, but didn’t play a match while Imrul, Raqibul and Mehrab earned call-ups through their domestic performances.Some of these players are also likely to feature in the Bangladesh A team’s tour of England later this summer, as well as the Under-23 side that will play in the ACC Emerging Teams Cup to be held in Singapore.The players will have their fitness assessed, especially those who have been injured in the last three months. Mashrafe Mortaza, who last played in December 2012, has almost recovered from a heel injury, while the likes of Rubel Hossain, Shahriar Nafees, Shahadat Hossain and Naeem Islam will be looked at.Allrounder Shakib Al Hasan will miss the pre-tournament camp, as he is currently in the USA on holiday, and will later play for Leicestershire in the Friends Life T20 this year.Bangladesh squad: Mushfiqur Rahim, Mahmudullah, Tamim Iqbal, Shakib Al Hasan, Nasir Hossain, Ziaur Rahman, Jahurul Islam, Shafiul Islam, Abdur Razzak, Anamul Haque, Sohag Gazi, Rubel Hossain, Mominul Haque, Shamsur Rahman, Marshall Ayub, Shahriar Nafees, Shahadat Hossain, Robiul Islam, Sajidul Islam, Elias Sunny, Mashrafe Mortaza, Naeem Islam, Junaid Siddique, Mosharraf Hossain, Imrul Kayes, Raqibul Hasan, Farhad Reza, Saqlain Sajib, Mehrab Hossain jnr, Nazmul Hossain Milon