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Despite the exodus of Australian players from county cricket in the past few weeks, those who remain are still making their mark as the season slowly comes to a close. Justin Langer’s strong form continued as he lifted Somerset to the top of the Pro40 division two table with half-centuries two days in a row.Langer’s productive week began at Canterbury on Monday when he turned around Somerset’s poor start with 92 from 105 balls before a run-out denied him a century. However, his efforts were enough to take the team from 2 for 6 in the early stages to 8 for 214, a total that was fractionally too high for Kent.The home side wobbled to 5 for 45 – the medium-pacer Peter Trego claimed the first five wickets – before a remarkable fightback was led by Ryan McLaren. His unbeaten 78 nearly pushed Kent over the line but they fell two runs short, finishing their 40 overs at 7 for 212.The next day at Taunton, Langer followed with 53 from 47 deliveries in Somerset’s impressive 6 for 287. Leicestershire never looked like reaching the target and were dismissed for 177, allowing Somerset to edge one point clear of Durham with two rounds remaining.While Durham’s Pro40 form has been good, they sit right in the middle of the County Championship division one table. However, they could jump towards the top if they can beat Worcestershire at Chester-le-Street this week and thanks partly to Michael Di Venuto that is a strong possibility.Di Venuto, who averages 74.66 this season, made 50 as Durham closed day one at 7 for 201, having already passed the visitors’ 182. Seventeen wickets fell in the day and the stars of the first innings treated the Riverside Ground like a fountain of youth. Ottis Gibson, 38, continued his age-defying season with 7 for 46 and the main resistance for Worcestershire came from Graeme Hick, 41, who slapped a quick 64 from 65 balls.Stuart Law’s Lancashire were also hoping to edge towards the top of the division one table in their clash with Kent at Canterbury. Law made 66 to help Lancashire close day two at 8 for 316, just short of the home side’s 327, which had been set up by Matt Walker’s 142. With a line-up boasting Law, Muttiah Muralitharan, VVS Laxman and, earlier in the tournament, Brad Hodge, Andrew Flintoff and James Anderson, Lancashire would be disappointed to have only three wins from their 13 matches so far.

Worcestershire have offered to sign up Umar Gul, the Pakistan fast bowler, as their overseas professional for the first part of the 2008 season.”We have talked to Umar’s representative in the United Kingdom and have made an offer. We will continue to talk to see what is possible,” Mark Newton, the club’s chief executive told the , a London-based newspaper. “We would like Umar to be our overseas player for the early part of next season and his likely availability would be from early May to early August.”We are just hoping it [the signing] will all come to fruition and it will be an exciting time if Umar, Simon Jones, Kabir Ali and Matt Mason are all fit and available for next season. Umar is one of the most exciting prospects around and in addition to Test cricket, he has also proved to be economical in Twenty20 cricket.”Gul, 23, was the highest wicket-taker in the ICC World Twenty20 with 13 wickets at a miserly 5.60 runs per over. He has also taken 67 wickets at 31.55 from 16 Tests and 44 wickets at 28.27 from 34 ODIs.But Gul needs clearance from the Pakistan board before joining Worcestershire. If the board gives him permission, it will be his maiden appearance on the county circuit. Gloucestershire had signed him on for the 2007 season but the Pakistan board had refused to release him owing to concerns about his fitness.Worcestershire’s bowling department has been bolstered by the signing of Simon Jones, the England fast bowler, who will be on a two-year contract. Kabir Ali, who has played 14 ODIs and a Test, and Matt Mason would provide support. Mason is undergoing rehabilitation work after missing most of the previous season due to a shoulder injury.

Pentasoft ousted Canara Bank by two wickets to enter the semifinals of the Moin-ud-Dowlah Cup in Hyderabad on Friday. With ONGC having withdrawn from the tournament, this Group D encounter was a cut throat game at the ECIL ground, both protagonists having beaten Hyderabad Districts, the only other team in the group. Brothers S Ramesh and S Mahesh were the leading participants in the Pentasoft run-chase as the Chennai based software company reached their target of 200 with seven balls to spare.In the morning session, the bankmen after being put in to bat, made 199/9. This was a palpable recovery for they had been lost four wickets for 30 at one stage, including the important scalp of Vijay Bharadwaj for 11. But the lower order applied themselves to the task of batting out the full 50 overs. Sunil Joshi (29) and Somasekhar Shiraguppi (31) commenced the rearguard action. And it was completed with gusto by Srinivas Murthy who remained undefeated on 46 (53 balls, 4 fours) and skipper Venkatesh Prasad who revealed some hitherto unrevealed flair with the bat with a run-a-ball 24. S Mahesh and S Satish both had identical figures of 2/30.In reply, Openers M Arvind and S Ramesh added 62 for the first wicket and skipper Ramesh in the company of SS Das compiled another 58 for the second. At 134/2 Pentasoft were sitting pretty but the loss of three wickets (Ramesh, Kanitkar and Jaffer Ashiq) in the space of four overs left them slightly perturbed at 139/5. Ramesh’s 59 was a quickfire effort, coming off 71 balls and inclusive of eight boundaries. Although C Raghu (4/30) kept Pentasoft on their toes, Mahesh (43 not out, 60 balls, 4 fours) retained his composure to see Pentasoft home from the last ball of the penultimate over and round off a good match for him.

Nic Pothas provided the sort of innings that was once a regular feature ofhis repertoire, but has been missing for the last couple of seasons, to takethe Highveld Strikers to a thrilling five-wicket victory with two balls oftheir 45 overs to spare.Pothas belted 79 off just 77 balls, the last 26 coming offjust 18 deliveries, to see his side through to their victory target of 226in 44.4 overs, after they had faced an asking rate of eight to the over inthe latter stages. Forty-eight were needed off the last six, then 31 off thelast four and 18 off the last two. That was when Pothas really came into hisown as Kenny Benjamin’s last over went for 14, taking the match away fromthe visitors.It was a bitter pill to swallow for the team from Benoni, just 35km away, asthey suffered their third defeat in six days to see their chances ofreaching the semi-finals diminish even further. Prior to their match againstBoland on January 5, Easterns had been sitting pretty with four wins fromfive matches. Now, despite gaining a bonus point in each of those threematches, they find themselves outside the top four with two difficultmatches, away to Eastern Province and at home to Free State, to come.In truth, the visitor’s defeat was partly of their own making. Having wonthe toss and chosen to bat, Easterns got off to a great start as Mike Rindeland new recruit Andre Seymore put on 120 for the first wicket, before beingseparated at the halfway mark of the innings, in the 23rd over, when Seymorewas bowled by Clive Eksteen for 46.At that point, they were looking good for a total beyond 250, but Rindel ranhimself out just 12 runs later for 60, made off just 63 balls, including 22off Eksteen’s first two overs, and after that, Easterns were never able tosustain the same scoring rate. It fell below five to the over, only gettingup to that mark again through some good late hitting and running by captainDeon Jordaan and Aldo van den Berg. That enabled them to reach 225 forseven, which proved to be just short of what they needed.For the Strikers, after a woeful season, the victory over a team includingmany former Strikers players salvaged some much-needed pride, given thatthey can no longer qualify for the semi-finals.

After having embarrassed the West Zone batsmen, who were coming off a prolific run in the Ranji one-dayers, in the Deodhar Trophy opener, the Central Zone attack will come up against their toughest test of the tournament tomorrow at the Chinnaswamy Stadium when they take on an even stronger North Zone batting line-up.If a domestic team can leave out Mithun Manhas, it has to be spoilt for choices, and when you have Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Shikhar Dhawan, Aakash Chopra, and Virat Kohli as your top five you really are spoilt. If Sehwag, Gambhir and Kohli make it on the back of being India and India Under-19 players, Dhawan and Chopra have slayed domestic attacks in the Ranji one-dayers. Chopra has scored three unbeaten centuries in scoring 332 runs in four innings, and Dhawan two centuries in scoring 342 from five innings. Even more impressive was the fact that both scored at more than a run a ball. To add to that, North have the best allrounder of the season in Rajat Bhatia, who would like to carry the form from the longer version into the one-dayers.This batting line-up, though, will be up against perhaps their toughest test of the domestic season. Praveen Kumar and RP Singh sound more like an India opening combination, and the pressure they create makes the job easier for the bowlers to follow. It showed in the way Sandeep Singh bowled in the previous game, bowling seven tight overs for 21 runs and getting Rohit Sharma’s wicket. And if things do go wrong, they have two quality spinners to fall back upon: Piyush Chawla and Murali Kartik.That is where the positives ends for Central Zone. They look far too much like an Uttar Pradesh team, and the batting line-up suggests an over-reliance on Mohammad Kaif and Suresh Raina for their runs. They lost four wickets chasing 99 against West; Raina scored 18 and Kaif 8. While chasing a bigger target or while setting one, the two might not be allowed the luxury of failure. To add to their troubles, Tanmay Srivastava has been ruled out of the tournament with a hand injury he picked up at the U-19 World Cup.Their coach Abhay Sharma, though, wasn’t very worried by the unconvincing batting display in the first match, choosing to look at it as complacency that accompanies a low target. The consolation for them is that they are not up against the best attack North Zone could have had: Ishant Sharma, Harbhajan Singh, and VRV Singh won’t be playing as they are yet to prove their fitness. Ishant and VRV took the fitness tests today at the National Cricket Academy, but the results are not yet known.VRV was North’s striking force in their Duleep Trophy success earlier this year, with back-to-back ten-wicket match hauls. In his absence, Pradeep Sangwan will be an essential reinforcement. He will be supported by the steady medium-pace of Vikramjeet Malik and the legspin of Amit Mishra. If the wicket is like it was in the previous match here, when the seamers got plenty of assistance, North will want to go with a third fast bowler in Punjab’s Manpreet Gony.A seaming pitch could make this game an enticing contest between the Central bowlers and the North batsmen. Those who thought domestic cricket was boring could be in for a shock.Teams (from)
Central Zone: Mohammad Kaif (capt.), Praveen Kumar, Suresh Raina, RP Singh, Piyush Chawla, Murali Kartik, Praveen Gupta, Naman Ojha, Sandeep Singh, Faiz Fazal, Rajesh Kanojia, Himalaya Sagar, Rohit Sharma, Deepak YadavNorth Zone: Virender Sehwag (capt.), Gautam Gambhir, Uday Kaul, Aakash Chopra, Shikhar Dhawan, Vikramjit Malik, Yashpal Singh, Rajat Bhatia, Paras Dogra, Pradeep Sangwan, Amit Mishra, Manpreet Gony, Vishal Bhatia

Apart from a lot of sweating and snake-spotting, England weren’t ableto ascertain too much from their opening warm-up match at the ColomboCricket Club. The bowlers toiled with little reward on a dead pitchwhile the batsmen enjoyed a succession of misleadingly unchallenginginnings. Nevertheless, for Alastair Cook, who top-scored with 63before retiring at the lunch break, the chance to build an inningsover the course of two-and-a-half hours was not to be sniffed at.For Cook, however, the more significant cricket took place not inColombo, but in Brisbane and Hobart, where he watched with interestthe success enjoyed by Australia’s domineering batsmen, not least hisfellow left-hander, Mike Hussey, who racked up hundreds in the firstinnings of each Test. Australia lost only 11 wickets out of a possible40 en route to a 2-0 series victory, and Cook believes that thepositive mindset they demonstrated – and the knock-on effect it willhave on Sri Lanka’s morale – is something that England have tocapitalise on in the course of the next month.”Obviously we don’t know what these wickets will be like, but we sawhow aggressively [Australia] played, and we know that you’ve got to bepositive and look to score,” said Cook. “On those wickets you couldprobably hit through the ball more, but if you just look to survivethere will be a ball that gets you out.” With that in mind, he’sdetermined to master the sweep – a shot that was his undoing onseveral occasions in the summer. “I’ve been working quite hard on thatas a gameplan B, and if I have to resort to it, I will.”Muttiah Muralitharan, who needs just five more wickets to overhaulShane Warne’s record tally of 708, is likely to be the target of thatstrategy. Few people, Cook included, doubt that the record will fallat some stage this series, but in Australia Murali managed just fourwickets at exactly 100 apiece. It’s proof that the man is notinvincible, and Cook believes that the experience he gained fromfacing Sri Lanka in 2006 will help him go some way towards emulatingthat success.”He’s a good bowler but picking him is the key,” said Cook. “Towardsthe end of the series in England I was picking him more and more, andif you can pick him and survive defensively, rather than defending andthinking you’re going to get out, it gives you a base to work from. Icertainly can’t score as quickly as the Aussies did, but we’ll just dothe normal stuff like rotating the strike and playing from the other end.”The strike rotation will be especially important now that England havesettled on their new left-hand right-hand combination – the firstthey’ve used since Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick were aregular partnership from 2002 to 2004. There is more than a decade’sdifference between the ages of Cook (22) and Vaughan (33), but theyounger man is more than happy to have acquired such an experiencedsidekick – even if it means he’ll have to take first strike for thefirst time in his career.

“Vaughany’s a good man to bat with,” said Cook, after the pair had puton 77 in their first outing of the tour. “He’s a serious player who’sseen a lot in his career. He’s been here [to Sri Lanka] twice and heis quite good technically at picking out something that you’re notquite doing right – just one word and he reminds you of your basicskills. It worked well yesterday, and hopefully that’s just a goodstart.”He looks after a lot of the players in his own way,” said Cook.”He’ll wander over for a chat, and make sure everyone’s alright. Andwhen he’s playing he just checks up on you, because his game is quitebasic in terms of how he thinks about batting, and he relates that tothe way we bat. If your head’s falling over, for instance – simplethings that when you’re in the heat of the battle you forget about.That’s what I picked up from batting with him.”Vaughan’s batting looked to be back to its sublime best during thehome series against India, most notably during his century at TrentBridge, and he was once again full of attacking intent during hisbrisk innings of 38 on Thursday. By and large, however, Cook is awarethat he and his new partner tend to bat at the same tempo – much as heand the out-of-favour Andrew Strauss did during their summerpartnerships.”We’ll just look to get the side off to a good start in the mostnatural way we can,” said Cook. “It’s vital that we bat well togetherbecause we want to keep as many wickets as we can against the newball. That means it’s more overs that Murali has to bowl. The lastthing we want is to be four or five-down when he comes on.”

Steve Harmison, the England fast bowler, will make a surprising return to cricket just three weeks after a hernia operation. Harmison had only expected to be available for Durham’s Championship match against Surrey on August 13 at the very earliest – and that was even with his recovery going well.But he has been named Durham captain for their three-day match against Sri Lanka A which starts on Wednesday. He started running in the week following the operation and was given the all-clear at the end of July to resume more strenuous exercise.In his absence, and that of Matthew Hoggard, England’s attack has lacked an incisive edge. But Chris Tremlett showed great promise in the first two Tests against India, with 10 wickets at 19.60, and has received praise from Harmison himself.If Harmison’s comeback goes well, he could be available for Durham’s Friends Provident Trophy final at Lord’s on August 18.

North ZoneAakash Chopra’s 89-ball 101 propelled Delhi to an emphatic nine-wicket win over Jammu & Kashmir at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi. Ian Dev Singh’s gritty 90 lent some respectability to the J&K total, once they chose to bat, but a total of 168 was never going to be too challenging for a strong batting line-up and Delhi cruised to victory with 22.1 overs to spare, gaining the bonus point in the process.Karan Goel’s century set up Punjab’s win over Haryana at the Harbax Singh Stadium in Delhi. Punjab made the most of a flat batting pitch, rattling up 297 in their 50 overs, before new-ball bowler Gagandeep Singh triggered a collapse with three wickets. Sumit Sharma’s 54 allowed Haryana to limp to 174 but it couldn’t prevent them from conceding the bonus point.Half-centuries from Manvinder Bisla and Paras Dogra steered Himachal Pradesh to a five-wicket win over Services at the Palam A Stadium in Delhi. Services had been propped up by fifties from Yashpal Singh and P Rao, the debutant, but 243 proved inadequate in the final analysis.East ZoneIn just his second one-day game, Sajan Mohanty grabbed four important wickets to lead Orissa to a thrilling four-run win over Assam at the Nehru Stadium in Guwahati. Debutant Payas Ranjan Sinha had propped up Orissa with a patient fifty and their bowlers did a fine job to defend 243. Half-centuries from S Suresh and Sarupam Purkayastha, a debutant, went in vain as Orissa held their nerve in the climactic stages.Sharing six wickets between them, Vineet Jain and Jayanta Debnath bowled out Jharkhand for 179 before the Tripura batsmen knocked off the target with 3.3 overs to spare at the Railway Stadium in Guwahati. Jharkhand’s decision to bat backfired, with Tripura’s bowlers not allowing partnerships to flourish. A target of 180 was always going to be a tricky one and it required good allround contributions from all batsmen to seal the victory.Central ZoneMurtaza Ali picked up three wickets as Railways collapsed to a 65-run defeat against Madhya Pradesh at the Kamla Club Sports Ground in Kanpur. MP reached a competitive 217 in their 50 overs as opener Naman Ojha carved out a patient 75 and added 61 with Shadab Khan (42). But after Ojha fell in the 46th over, the lower order couldn’t push towards a big score and the last five wickets fell for just 20 runs. It didn’t matter in the end though with Railways bowled out in 44 overs. Deepak Yadav scored an unbeaten 57, but with virtually no support from the rest of the side – four batsmen being dismissed for ducks – he couldn’t take them the distance.Rohit G Sharma hit an unbeaten 147 and led Rajasthan’s successful chase of 260 against Uttar Pradesh at Green Park in Kanpur. He added 171 with Manish Sharma (73) and took Rajasthan to an eight-wicket win with 33 balls to spare. Anshul Kapoor (69) and Parvinder Singh (69) had revived UP’s innings with a 104-run partnership for the sixth wicket. But it wasn’t going to be enough. Rohit and Manish hammered UP’s bowlers, especially medium-pacer Bhuvnesh Kumar, who went for 53 runs in five overs.South ZoneS Vidyut’s cracking 120 set up Tamil Nadu’s convincing five-wicket win over Goa at the Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. C Ganapathy, the new-ball bowler, nabbed three wickets to restrict Goa to 198 before Vidyut outshone the rest during the run-chase, allowing Tamil Nadu to collect a bonus point as well.

Stuart Clark says he is still “green” in terms of Test cricket despite being ranked as the world’s best fast bowler. Following the Boxing Day Test against India Clark jumped to No. 2 on the ICC’s Test bowling rankings, trailing only Muttiah Muralitharan.Clark enjoyed a boost after collecting match figures of 5 for 48 against India and he now sits ahead of Makhaya Ntini and Brett Lee at the top of the fast-bowling list. It has been a rapid rise for Clark, who has only played 12 Tests and has 59 wickets at 19.33.”It really doesn’t sit comfortably,” Clark told the . “OK, those rankings are great, but I’m still learning, I’ve played a lot of first-class cricket and a few Test matches but I’m still green.”Clark went for only 1.6 runs an over in the MCG Test as the slow pitch and his nagging line tightened the already defensive Indian order further. “To be fair, the wicket suits what I do and, with the way I bowl, it just gets really frustrating, I reckon,” Clark said. “If you bowled badly, you got belted, but we bowled well in groups and were hard to score against.”It just became really depressing to bowl. I know why you would play two spinners and there’s probably every reason to do so, but on that sort of wicket the quicks are the ones that could tie you up and frustrate the bejesus out of you.”Australia’s bowling coach Troy Cooley said Clark played a critical role in the team. “He has all the qualities now,” Cooley said. “He can seam it, he can reverse it and, if he is given the new ball, he swings it, as he keeps telling me.”

While the entire Indian team may look back at the first session of this Test – during which they were bowled out for 76 – and cough up excuses, one man isn’t surprised by their capitulation. Dale Steyn, whose 5 for 23 played a pivotal role in an astonishing 109 minutes of mayhem in Ahmedabad, felt they had no game plan whatsoever.”That’s the vibe they’ve given off to us. Once one or two wickets fall and things kind of go wrong, they are pretty weak and the batsmen to follow didn’t look they knew what they wanted to do,” he said. “They didn’t have a strategy. They were bowled out for 76 and I guess that’s what happens when you don’t have a game-plan.”It’s tough for any team to settle when Steyn is in a certain groove, hostile and mixing up deliveries, but this was something else. It took him just 48 deliveries to help send the home side packing and he credited the surface for some assistance.”There was a little bit of movement which probably scared the Indians a bit once one or two wickets fell … it just looked like it sent a couple of shivers down the Indian line-up,” he said. “It looked like the guy that came in next didn’t really know how to approach it and how to play the game. We’re used to playing on wickets like this back in South Africa and knew what we had to do.”When you get a wicket like this, if you don’t bowl full you’re not going to find the edge of the bat so you’ve got to make a decision as to exactly where you’re going to bowl.”Bowling short is one thing, taking the batsmen’s feet away, but it’s that follow-up ball that always gets you a wicket. I think from reading in the papers they [India] weren’t going to come forward before the ball was bowled so maybe that helped us. Then we were able to bowl good-length balls. The ball hit the stumps a lot and there were a lot of inside-edges because nobody was really committed on the front foot.”Planned or not, it worked against a trigger-happy line-up, especially the follow-up balls. And it was Steyn’s first wicket that vindicated much of South Africa’s pre-game talk. Having just nearly dragged one onto his off stump via a cramped cut, Virender Sehwag attempted the same two deliveries later and succeeded – in dislodging the bails. “Sehwag tends to play skywards towards the slips or leave hit bat hanging out towards the slips so there’s always the possibility of an inside-edge,” he said. “His wicket was pretty decent as was that of [Rahul] Dravid. They are two good batsmen and that’s two wickets you definitely want to be getting before the game.”The ball to dismiss Dravid was excellent, breaching a master technician’s defence after he misread the movement. “That was probably the best ball of the day. Hopefully I can deliver a few more of those in the second innings.”Steyn, who now has three five-wicket hauls in the subcontinent, rated this the best and was quick to point out that had his second-last over not gone for 11 the figures would’ve been better. His tally, in his 22nd Test, reads 114 wickets with eight five-wicket hauls.India hit back with four wickets after South Africa’s openers took the lead but thanks to a fluent 106-run stand between Jacques Kallis and AB de Villiers, the visitors lead by 147. Steyn termed each run after wiping out the deficit as “gold” and was confident Kallis and de Villiers would come out on day two further South Africa’s advantage. “We saw the ball moving around so we thought if we get through the day without losing any more. We needed two nice partnerships,” he said. “On a pitch like this, especially against a team that just got bowled out for 76, you aim to get ahead of them and it hurts a lot.”Maybe we can play with a bit of freedom tomorrow and up that lead toquite a big total. Then the pressure’s all on them. They have to dosomething. You can’t go into the last Test match losing this game. I don’t think drawing the series at home it what India wants to do.”