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Ere Sheshiah, the Jamaican government pathologist who performed the post-mortem examination on Bob Woolmer, came under criticism on the tenth day of the inquest in Kingston for not following accepted international practices.Sheshiah was asked by Jermaine Spence, the attorney representing the International Cricket Council, why should anyone accept his findings that Woolmer died of asphyxia and pesticide poisoning. “I have already told the court of my opinion, so I am not deviating,” Sheshiah replied.Sheshiah was criticised for not adhering to international practices from three overseas pathologists, who reviewed the post-mortem findings. The trio said they believed Woolmer died of natural causes, probably related to heart disease.Sheshaiah originally said Woolmer’s hyoid bone was fractured, which suggested the former England player was strangled.When shown an X-ray last week, Sheshiah had admitted he made a mistake, but insisted the hyoid bone in a 58-year-old man doesn’t have to be broken to prove he was strangled.”The person who examines the bone can say whether it’s broken, not somebody who analyzes a photo,” he said.Sheshiah stuck to what he said regarding the cause of the death last week. “My final opinion is it was asphyxia, associated with cypermethrin [a pesticide] poisoning.”Last week, a Jamaican forensic analyst testified that toxicology results showed conflicting results on the presence of pesticide in Woolmer’s blood and urine.The inquest, presided over by coroner Patrick Murphy and 11 jurors, is expected to end on November 9. Three members of the ICC have sat in on the inquest since it started on October 16.

Andrew Flintoff was delighted with his “best workout yet” after a thorough net session at Lord’s on Friday to test out his ankle. Flintoff spent an hour in the nets at the Nursery End while his team-mates piled on the runs against Pakistan during the first Test.Flintoff, whose recovery from an ankle problem has so far seen him play two Twenty20 matches for Lancashire, was monitored by the county physio Dave Roberts and Dr Peter Gregory, the ECB’s chief medical officer. He produced a lively spell pf pace then batted against members of the Lord’s groundstaff for half an hour.”I bowled six overs so it was my best workout yet and I’m not creaking or anything,” said Flintoff, who is now due to feature for Lancashire in their County Championship match against Kent at Canterbury starting on Tuesday. “I’ve played two Twenty20 matches with Lancashire, bowled three overs and two overs so far, but I wasn’t bowling at full pelt today – I’ve still got something else remaining to give.”I’ve had two tough days last week running up and down hills and it’s all been building up towards bowling and geared towards playing at Canterbury.”But Flintoff, who England hope will be their captain in the second Test at his Old Trafford home ground on July 27, warned: “I’m not going to get ahead of myself about my fitness for the second Test because I can’t be sure until I’ve bowled in a four-day match.”This is all part of the recovery and the fitness work. I’m going to have another net and practice with the England lads again tomorrow.”

Sandeep Patil, the former India coach, and Dinesh Mongia, the former India batsman, have cited ill-treatment by the Indian board and the selectors respectively as reasons for their decision to join the Indian Cricket League (ICL).Patil said he was given “false assurances” of being made the India A coach but, eventually, nothing materialised. “I still have a copy of the e-mail that I was asked to send by Sharad Pawar [the president of the BCCI] expressing my willingness to be India A team’s coach. Nothing moved after that,” Patil told the Times of India. In fact, once Pawar called Ratnakar Shetty [the chief administrative officer of BCCI] and secretary Niranjan Shah in my presence, telling them to make my appointment, yet nothing materialised.”Mongia blamed the selectors for not giving him a proper run and said he was dropped despite some good performances. “Before the World Cup, I was given a break against Australia in Malaysia where I scored 63 not out. But after that I was dropped,” Mongia told the Indian Express. “I think I was dropped because I was scoring runs or I played well, that is the signal I got”.”Later too, I got a chance against Australia [in the Champions Trophy], where I failed. I did tour South Africa, played in Durban, where I disappointed, but everybody else also failed. Later I played in the Twenty20 game and was instrumental in winning the match against South Africa , and again the same old story: I was dropped.”Mongia did play in the 5th ODI against South Africa, two days after that Twenty20 game, and scored an 89-ball 41. He later made a comeback in the tour of Bangladesh and made 17 runs in each of the two ODI games that he played.”If you see a team like Australia, Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh and Michael Hussey, they all are treated as equals,” Mongia said. “It’s the performance that matters there, not the name. One thing has be to understood, when you are the boss, you have to give due importance to everybody. You can’t just concentrate on the big names and ignore the lesser players.”

ScorecardSulakshana Naik and Thirush Kamini struck half-centuries to steer India to a resounding ten-wicket victory against Sri Lanka at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur. The opening pair shared an unbeaten 151-run stand for the first wicket after the Indian bowlers restricted Sri Lanka to 145 for 8 from 50 overs.Naik struck 11 fours and a six during her 79 and Kamini’s 60 included five fours as the pair finished the run-chase in just 31.3 overs. The ground work for the victory, however, was laid by a splendid bowling effort after Mithali Raj asked Sri Lanka to bat.Jhulan Goswami and Amita Sharma bowled miserly opening spells and did not allow Sri Lanka to build any momentum. Preeti Dimri took three vital top-order wickets and prevented partnerships to build. She finished with figures of 3 for 14 off eight overs and received support from Kamini who chipped in with 2 for 38 to go with her excellent innings.Shashikala Siriwardene, the captain, top-scored with 40 but there was a shortage of support from the other end as Sri Lanka struggled to reach 145 off their 50 overs.

Navjot Singh Sidhu, the former Indian opener-turned-politician, has been sentenced to three years in prison for a 1988 murder case.The Punjab and Haryana High Court, which found him guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder on December 2, awarded him the sentence under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code. He was also fined an amount of Rs. 1 lakh (approx. US $ 2,200).However, Sidhu will not be arrested immediately as his sentence has been suspended till January 31, during which time he can appeal to the Supreme Court.Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu allegedly beat up Gurnam Singh in Patiala on December 27, 1988. Gurnam was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.Sandhu said that the duo will approach the Supreme Court in case of an adverse verdict. “Even we feel sorry for the family of victim. The matter is now sub judice. After the sentence is declared, we’ll approach the SC,” he said.Sidhu resigned from Parliament after the verdict, but has hinted that he would remain in politics and campaign during the Punjab Assembly elections in February.

The Pakistan Cricket Board has decided to stick to the best possible team for the ODI series against Zimbabwe that is scheduled to get underway next month. It was widely anticipated, and planned by the national selection committee, that new faces will be tried in the relatively low-key series in order to assess Pakistan’s backup resources.”We cannot take Zimbabwe on any other team lightly,” Nasim Ashraf, chairman of the PCB, told the . “That is why we will ensure that our best possible team plays against Zimbabwe and wins the series five-nil.”Salahuddin Ahmed, the chief selector, had earlier planned on introducing young blood into the team during the series.”We will definitely try out some new faces in whichever department we need them in,” Salahuddin had told Cricinfo. “That’s not to say that we are taking Zimbabwe lightly, but we need to assess players on the fringes of the national side and this is a good opportunity.”However, after Ashraf attended a couple of domestic matches on Thursday, he had a meeting with Salahuddin where a decision to hold a three-day exercise to test several upcoming cricketers was taken. The camp is scheduled to take place in Karachi from January 9 and will include 22 to 24 promising youngsters in action.”We will call around 20 to 24 youngsters for a few trial matches ahead of the series against Zimbabwe,” Ashraf said. “The players will be selected on the basis of their performance in domestic events as well as during Under-19 assignments.”We will spot players who can be a part of the national team in the future but will bring them in step by step. This is because we have to make it sure that the team’s performance is not affected by too many rapid changes.”We have a four-day and a three-day game against Zimbabwe and they would provide us with excellent opportunities to check out the youngsters who are knocking at the doors of international cricket.”We need solid players who can be groomed into world class Test cricketers.”The tour is scheduled to start on January 14 with a four-day match in Karachi. However, yesterday’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister, has thrown the immediate fate of the series in doubt.

Pakistan’s national champions Sialkot have left for India to play Uttar Pradesh, India’s Ranji Trophy winners, in a four-day match from September 27 to 30 at Dharamsala.Sialkot were the winners of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy and were scheduled to play Uttar Pradesh on September 12 but that game was postponed because of time constraints. “The match is final and the Sialkot team has left today for Dharamsala where the match is being held,” Subhan Ahmed, a PCB official, told Reuters. “We wanted this match to be held on time so that we can work on other bilateral proposals.”The Sialkot team includes Test players such as Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Asif and Imran Nazir while Uttar Pradesh have Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina and RP Singh from the Indian squad. The boards of the two countries hope that this game will pave the way for more bilateral domestic matches.Uttar Pradesh – Mohammad Kaif (capt), Suresh Raina, Rudra Pratap Singh, Piyush Chawla, Jyoti Yadav, Avinash Yadav, Shivakant Shukla, Praveen Kumar, Mohammad Amir Khan (wk), Gyanendra Pandey, Rizwan Shamshad, Ashish Winston Zaidi, Shalabh Srivastava, Rohit Prakash, Ravikant Shukla
Coach Rajinder Singh Hans, Manager – Gopal SharmaSialkot – Shoaib Malik (capt), Imran Nazir, Majid Jehangir, Mohammad Asif, Atiq-ur-Rehman, Khalid Mahmood, Abdur Rehman, Mansoor Amjad, Shahid Yousuf, Sarfraz Ahmed, Tahir Mughal, Shehzad Malik, Inam-ul-haq
Coach – Abdul Quadeer Chaud, Manager – Azmat Rana

As England faced up to the prospect of their first series defeat in two years, Ian Bell vowed that the pride in the team’s dressing-room would be enough to prevent a capitulation on the final day of the third Test at Lahore. By the close on the penultimate evening, England had fought their way to 121 for 2 in the second innings, with Bell himself leading the resistance with his third half-century of the tour.”We can’t win the series, but we don’t want to lose, and I’m very confident we can save the game,” Bell told reporters at the close. “It’s a good pitch and I’ll take every ball as it comes, break it down, play very straight, and do what Pakistan did in their first innings. The secret is not to give your wicket away or sell it cheaply.”England still need the small matter of 227 runs to make Pakistan bat again, and so the ideal scenario would be for Bell himself to do what he does best, and occupy the crease from dawn till dusk.”I’m not going to get carried away [by such thoughts],” he emphasised. “The key for me tomorrow is to break it down as much as I can. I’m not looking to bat until a certain time at night, I’ll be taking it ball by ball. But it’s been a very good wicket all through the Test match. Our target is to bat all day, so if we stick to our gameplans and play straight, then there’s no reason why we can’t.””Play it straight” is something of a mantra for Bell, which made his first-innings aberration all the more unfortunate. He was one of four batsmen to fall to the sweep shot, but he was adamant that the shot would remain in his armoury.”I know my game,” he insisted. “I know I can’t do certain things that Kevin Pietersen or Andrew Flintoff can do, so I’ve got to play in my way, and knock it round. The shot I got out to, I was purely trying to get off the strike and not trying to hit it out of the ground. It was well within my gameplan to get a single. I’ve played reasonably well all series and made one mistake, so I’ve got to capitalise when set.””I think it depends on who’s bowling and what the field placings are,” he added. “A lot of the time when we play the shot, it is to move a fielder. That’s in our gameplan so we’re not going to change that.” But Bell did concede that the match situation would have some impact on their approach. “We’re just looking to bat all day tomorrow, and the pitch has dried out a bit and become a bit skiddier. There’s not as much turn for the offspinner, so there’s an opportunity to play straight down the ground.”For the second time in the series, Bell’s major alarm of the innings came courtesy of Shoaib Akhtar’s slower ball. But whereas the one at Multan dipped out of the press-box windows and bowled him between his legs (only to be called no-ball), this time was rather more dangerous, as it hurtled head-high towards his helmet and struck his forearm as he flinched defensively.Shoaib apologised instantly and the moment was soon forgotten after some brief treatment from the physio, but Bell admitted to a moment of alarm. “For a split second I thought it was a quicker one, and I didn’t see it at all. But credit to him, he’s bowled it really well, and manages to get a real dip on it so that when it goes above that sightscreen it’s tricky to pick up. As soon as it goes up, you lose it and start to worry.”For Bell, the final day provides an opportunity to put his personal seal on an important learning experience. He had not been expected to play in the first Test, but instead has chipped in with valuable scores in all three matches, and could yet finish as England’s leading run-scorer. “My goal was not only to get into the side, but to find consistency as well,” he explained. “If you want to be a top player that’s got to be in your game.”India awaits for England after Christmas, and Bell is hopeful that the lessons learned here will stand the squad in good stead. “A few of the guys are in the same boat,” he said. “This is our first senior trip to this part of the world, and it’s been a big experience for me. We’ve been playing some good quality spinners, and people who know how to bowl in these conditions. It’s not only about going to India but our overall cricket development. We will be better players after this.”

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
How they were out

A canny spell of left-arm spin bowling from Murali Kartik, when he finished with his best one-day figures, set it up before S Vidyut’s spirited 87 ensured that they cruised to a comfortable three-wicket win in the final of the Challenger Trophy in Mohali. The India Seniors bowlers applied the choke effectively, after choosing to field first, and restricted India B to a modest 177, a total which, despite the impressive efforts of Piyush Chawla, and S Sreesanth was never going to be enough with a rampaging batting line-up to contend with.India B were undone by Zaheer Khan early on, when he induced the top-order batsmen into indiscretion, and were flummoxed by Kartik’s accuracy while they tried to accelerate. Once they had lost their top order cheaply, Kartik got into the act with a controlled spell, extracted disconcerting turn, mopped up the tail with hardly any fuss and ended with the second-best spell in the history of the Challenger Trophy. The chase was kick-started by Vidyut, the opening batsman from Tamil Nadu who got his first chance in the tournament, with some gorgeous cover-drives and, unlike the rest; he handled the spinners with assurance en route to an entertaining 87 that included 15 fours.Vidyut, a tall aggressive left-hander, started off as a left-arm spinner and turned in some fine performances in the Under-19 level. But his batting improved just as his bowling fell away as he turned into one of the mainstays in the Tamil Nadu batting line-up, impressing with his flashy batting at the top of the order in one-dayers. He kick-started the chase by belting S Sreesanth, who was named as the Man of the Series for his pacy bursts, and used his feet delectably when the spinners came on. He lost partners at regular intervals but kept up the tempo and left when only five more were required.Most of the other batsmen struggled against the wiles of Chawla, a 16-year-old legspinner from Uttar Pradesh. Not too many bowlers deceive Sachin Tendulkar with a googly and to sneak one in through the gate, as Tendulkar tried to cut, was a stunning sight. Chawla, who came into bowl within the first ten overs, continued to toss the ball up, rip it past the bat and was comfortable both over and around the wicket. Sreesanth too continued his fine showing with the ball – coming back after a pasting in the first two overs to finish with 3 for 32 and always steaming in – that only delayed the inevitable.The scales, though, tilted earlier in the day when India B stuttered against Zaheer and Kartik. Their problems began right at the top with Robin Uthappa, who produced a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hundred yesterday, slashing airily at a full-pitched one as Mohammad Kaif completed a straightforward chance. Kaif, though, had to hobble off in the 9th over owing to a hamstring pull and didn’t take part in the game therafter. Sridharan Sriram experienced a similar fate and his dismissal was almost a mirror image of the first wicket.And the road got bumpier when Dinesh Mongia, the captain, cut recklessly, just like he had done in their first game, and offered a simple chance to the backward-point fielder. The rest of the innings was based on slow-moving partnerships as India B tried to post a modest total. Shikhar Dhawan and Yousuf Pathan weathered a tough period but both fell just after they appeared to have found their groove. Parthiv Patel impressed one again, , with some punchy strokeplay, but was unlucky to be given out lbw when he got an inside edge to an incoming ball from Kartik.Ravikant Shukla was solid in his patient 26, made off 71 balls without a single boundary, but the rest fell around him while going for the big hits. With Kartik bowling with such accuracy, though, they didn’t stand a chance.

India B
Robin Uthappa c Kaif b Zaheer 9 (13 for 1)
Sridharan Sriram c Rao b Zaheer 8 (29 for 2)
Dinesh Mongia c Yadav b Harbhajan 7 (43 for 3)
Yousuf Pathan c Tendulkar b Harbhajan 20 (70 for 4)
Shikhar Dhawan c Dhoni b Zaheer 26 (91 for 5)
Parthiv Patel lbw b Kartik 39 (141 for 6)
Sunny Singh b Kartik 5 (150 for 7)
Piyush Chawla st Dhoni b Kartik 5 (157 for 8)
Amit Bhandari st Dhoni b Kartik 4 (164 for 9)
Sreesanth st Dhoni b Kartik 5 (177 all out)
India SeniorsSachin Tendulkar b Chawla 22 (46 for 1)
Yuvraj Singh c Shukla b Chawla 5 (67 for 2)
Venugopal Rao c Parthiv b Sreesanth 18 (113 for 3)
Mahendra Singh Dhoni st Patel b Chawla 6 (122 for 4)
Jai Prakash Yadav c Uthappa b Mongia 10 (143 for 5)
S Vidyut b Sreesanth 87 (173 for 6)
Satyajit Parab b Sreesanth 4 (177 for 7)

The names of the 30 Test and one-day international players who will make up the squads for the ICC World XI sides to take on Australia in October will be announced in early May.The panel of selectors – the chairman Sunil Gavaskar, Mike Atherton, Sir Richard Hadlee, Clive Lloyd, Jonty Rhodes and Aravinda de Silva – will choose from the cream of the world’s cricketing talent in nominating players for the matches.”It’s a fantastic brief to be able to pick from the greatest players in world cricket to take on Australia,” said Gavaskar. “I’m sure that every cricket fan would love to be in the selectors’ position, discussing and debating the merits of so many outstanding players. The challenge will be in narrowing our choices down to just 30 players with so much talent to choose from for both squads.”Players from the nine Test-playing countries and the ten which have ODI status will come under selectorial consideration. Following the announcement of the initial squads of 30, the selectors will meet again in early July to reduce these down to groups of 20. Captains and vice-captains will also be announced then.The inaugural ICC Super Series, sponsored by Johnnie Walker, will involve three one-day internationals in Melbourne’s Telstra Dome, and a six-day “Super Test” at the Sydney Cricket Ground.The final teams of 13 for the Super Test and 14 for the ODIs, plus management and coaching appointments, will be confirmed in August. Combined prizemoney and match payments for the one-day series will be US$1,254,000, while the total money available for the Super Test will be US$1,390,000. The matches will be accorded official Test and ODI status.The challenge awaiting the ICC World XI teams is to succeed where national sides have mostly failed. Australia have not lost a home Test series since 1993, and are undefeated in a one-day series since 2002.