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Daan van Bunge, who was the youngest member of the Holland side at the 2003 World Cup, entered the record books earlier this week when he hit the fastest century in the history of MCC’s Young Cricketers.van Bunge, 21, smashed a 38-ball hundred, including 14 fours and nine sixes, against the Surrey Under-19 team at Weybridge on Monday. His innings of 121 eclipsed Surrey’s total of 119, and helped his side to a 258-run victory. His record-breaking knock was made all the more impressive considering the other players who have passed through the young cricketers programme, including Ian Botham, Martin Crowe and Mark Waugh.”It’s a tremendous achievement for Daan to have scored a faster century than any previous MCC Young Cricketer,” said John Stephenson, MCC’s new Head of Cricket. “He is a player of enormous promise and, ever since he joined MCC, he has been a great credit to the club – on and off the pitch.”van Bunge, who is in his second year on the MCC staff, has been part of the Dutch international side since 2002, and had an impressive World Cup last year. He scored 62, his highest score in an international, against India in a losing cause, and then took 3 for 16 against England, taking the wickets of Nick Knight, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff.Darren Sammy, who is part of West Indies’ squad for this summer’s NatWest Series, is also a current MCC Young Cricketer, while England’s Rikki Clarke and Hamish Marshall of New Zealand are recent graduates of the scheme.

The ICC has agreed to the Sri Lankan board’s request to hurry up their bowling-review process. After discussions at the ICC’s annual conference, representatives from the Sri Lankan board challenged the ICC on how they currently deal with illegal bowling actions.The result of the discussions was that the ICC will speed up the process of looking at illegal actions as far as they can, as long as it doesn’t hinder the Cricket Committee and the Chief Executives’ Committee, the groups which will specifically be researching these issues.The ICC has promised to look further into the problem of throwing during the Champions Trophy in England this September. After that, members of the Cricket Committee, including the former cricketers Tim May, Aravinda de Silva and Angus Fraser, will have another look at how the current process of reviewing bowling actions is dealt with.The Sri Lankan board’s request came in response to the ICC’s recent handling of Muttiah Muralitharan’s action. After Murali was put through a series of high-tech tests at the University of Western Australia earlier this year, it was confirmed that when he bowled the doosra his elbow did exceed the permitted five-degree tolerance level for spinners. However, Bruce Elliott, the biomechanics expert who led the testing, then called for further research into the setting of tolerance levels for bowlers.As a result, Murali escaped any punishment and was allowed to continue bowling, although he was advised not to deliver any doosras. He went on to break Courtney Walsh’s Test-wickets record during Sri Lanka’s tour of Zimbabwe. However, his decision not to tour Australia for personal reasons – not unconnected with Aussie disapproval of his bowling action, not least from their prime minister John Howard – has put his position in danger, with Shane Warne hot on his heels only seven wickets behind going into the second Test against Sri Lanka at Cairns.The ICC’s stand on throwing has been scrutinised, and its tolerance levels for throwing have been criticised by Elliott, who believes that the limits are set on illogical data. He said that “the five-degrees [rule] is based on illogical data because they’ve just tested fast bowlers and assumed that there is some relationship between fast bowlers and spin bowlers. Fifteen degrees is the right angle for fast bowlers and you probably should come down to 10 degrees for spin bowlers.”While Elliott’s suggestion would ensure that fewer bowlers are reported for throwing, a current player told that even under the current method of reporting a bowler, too few bowlers were called. The batsman went on to say that the degree of extension for the bowlers had to be on a lower scale and that special allowances should not be made for bowlers with deformities, as there were no such provisions for the batsmen.But of late, what has become even clearer is that most bowlers bend and straighten their arm to a certain degree, which goes against the traditional definition of a legal delivery. Resolving this issue is what the ICC’s goal is, come September.

The picturesque ACA-VCDA Stadium, located on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam, will host its first international game tomorrow when India defend their 1-0 lead against Pakistan before an estimated 26,000 spectators.The stadium was built only recently and has hosted just one international team before, when the touring New Zealanders took on a Board President’s XI here in 2003. Unlike Kochi, the venue of the last game, which had several tiers of stands built upon each other and seated more than 60,000, the stands here are comparatively low, allowing spectators a view of the beautiful hills that surround the ground. But in the preparation for the game there is evidence of thought and care not seen at Kochi, with a temporary shelter put up over the stands to protect the paying public from the hot April sun.For the players out in the middle, though, there will be no such respitefrom the baking heat, though it is more breezy here than at Kochi, and thelow-lying stands allow the breeze into the playing arena. Even so, cricketin this weather is as much a test of endurance as of skill. As RahulDravid suggested in the pre-match press conference, the team that copeswith the heat better is the one likely to win.Certainly there were signs of disorientation in the way Pakistan batted atKochi, after fielding in the first session and being given the runaroundby Virender Sehwag and Dravid, so there is little doubt that the sidewinning the toss tomorrow will choose to bat first. The pitch is expectedto be a belter, and the evenly grassed, well-cut outfield looks like itwill give batsmen full value for their strokes.India are expected to field the same eleven that played at Kochi, and tookthe team to the biggest-ever victory by India over Pakistan by a runs-margin in an ODI. Pakistan are sure to make some changes, if for no otherreason then from the worry of going two-down in the series. Their bowlinglooked a little toothless at Kochi, especially after the opening bowlershad gone off, so it would not be a bad idea to bring Danish Kaneria intothe side; and the batting line-up, which flopped so badly in the firstgame, might benefit from being tweaked slightly so that Shahid Afridiopens the innings.There are indications though that Younis Khan, who missed the last gamebecause of illness and whose return would boost the team’s confidence, maynot play tomorrow, and for good reason. These are conditions that will sapthe fittest and hardiest of men, and may not be the best place to test outif a player has made a full recovery.Teams (probable)India 1 Sachin Tendulkar, 2 Virender Sehwag, 3 Sourav Ganguly (capt), 4Rahul Dravid, 5 Yuvraj Singh, 6 Mohammad Kaif, 7 Mahendra Dhoni (wk), 8Harbhajan Singh, 9 Zaheer Khan 10 Lakshmipathy Balaji, 11 Ashish Nehra.Pakistan 1 Shahid Afridi, 2 Salman Butt, 3 Shoaib Malik, 4 Inzamam-ul-Haq(capt), 5 Yousuf Youhana, 6 Abdul Razzaq, 7 Kamran Akmal (wk), 8 ArshadKhan, 9 Mohammad Sami, 10 Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, 11 Danish Kaneria.

The remarkable surge in public interest resulting from this summer’s Ashes series has been a double-edged sword for the ECB. While revenues are up and the public cannot get enough of the game, it has also served to highlight the decision to sign away all TV rights to satellite broadcaster Sky Sports.On Tuesday, David Collier, the ECB’s chairman, spoke of his hopes that terrestrial broadcasters will bid for the rights when they next come up for grabs, but that drew an angry response from Luke Johnson, the chairman of Channel 4, who lose the rights after the final Test at The Oval.In an interview with Mihir Bose in the Daily Telegraph, Johnson was quite clear what had been behind the ECB’s decision. “Our view is that the ECB did a very bad deal for the sport. They didn’t handle the negotiations well. They were short-term. They went for the money.”We tried to bring it to the attention of the relevant people at the ECB,” he continued. “But what happened is that there are certain factions in the ECB and they took charge of the negotiations and they are very commercially minded.”The ECB stance is unequivocal. TV money finances the game, and so it was honour-bound to take the best deal. Had it not, so the argument goes, then funding for the England team right down to grass roots cricket would have had to be slashed.While Johnson admitted that Channel 4 could never match the money Sky had available, he said he believed that going for the highest sum was not in the game’s best interests. “The ECB went for the money and they will find they have made a terrible mistake, with cricket disappearing from terrestrial television the level of interest in the sport will decline sharply,” he told Bose. “Cricket is not like football, it needs visibility. How will they get 20,000 people outside a Test ground?”A number of MPs have called on the government to make Test cricket one of the so-called “crown jewel”, events, such as Wimbledon and the FA Cup final, which have to be available on free-to-air terrestrial TV. Test cricket had such status until 1998 when it was taken off the list.Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats’ sports spokesman, told The Guardian: “It is frankly appalling that cricket is not on the list. I wrote to the secretary of state before the Old Trafford Test urging a review and the latest success demonstrates the need for a rethink even more clearly.”

Phil Tufnell has got under the skin of Australia’s cricketers with jibes about them losing the Ashes to England. Facing accusations of being too precious after dining out on English sporting misery for more than a decade, the Australians took exception to Tufnell’s teasing during a filmed segment of last night’s Allan Border Medal awards ceremony in Melbourne.The film was intended as a bit of harmless fun, by showing Tufnell perched at a bar having a shot at Australia’s costly blunders against England during last year’s Ashes series. But the move drew an angry reaction from the Australian team, with their captain, Ricky Ponting, warning: “Quite a few guys at my table were pretty fired up at that.”Tufnell was shocked at the reaction of a skit done “for a bit of fun”. “Good gosh … how on earth has it come to this? I thought Australians had a sense of humour,” he said in . “I’m sorry if I caused any offence … My advice to Ricky and the boys would be to enjoy life before it’s all gone.”Tufnell highlighted Ponting’s decision to bowl first in the second Test at Edgbaston despite having just lost their strike bowler, Glenn McGrath, to an ankle injury in the pre-match warm-up, and a crucial dropped catch by Shane Warne during the final Test at The Oval.Ponting, however, rejected claims he and his team were too thin-skinned in their reaction to Tufnell’s sledging. After being named Australian Cricketer of the Year for the second time, and becoming the first multiple winner of the medal, Ponting told the audience at Melbourne’s Crown Casino that Tufnell’s jibes would motivate him and his team against England in the Ashes series in Australia later this year.Ponting was still fuming on Tuesday morning, despite having a night to sleep on the words of Tufnell, who averaged 2.73 with the bat and 38.14 with the ball in 12 Tests against Australia. “Disappointment is probably the right word,” Ponting told reporters. “I’m not so concerned or angry over what he had to say. Looking back at a week or two’s time it will probably be quite funny, but on our night – the Australian cricket team’s night of nights for the whole year – I didn’t think the timing was that good.”He rejected any suggestion that he and his players lacked a sense of humour. “There’s no doubt that the Ashes loss cut pretty deep with all the players, but in saying that, we haven’t thought about it for a long time,” Ponting said. “We’ve been pretty focused and pretty positive on what we’ve been trying to achieve over the last few weeks, and to have it all re-hashed and brought up again probably touched a note with some of the guys.”But I don’t think that means we’re precious or anything like that,” he added. “It’s just we’re there to enjoy the night for what it is and we had to sit down and go through all of that sort of stuff.” Tufnell lampooned Warne for spilling a straightforward slips chance early in Kevin Pietersen’s innings in the final Test, allowing the England batsman to go on to score a century, save the match and secure a 2-1 Ashes win for his team.”Warney … just because you’re a mate of Kevin Pietersen’s, it didn’t mean on that last day at The Oval you had to drop him,” Tufnell teased. “Do you wake up in the middle of the night thinking you might have dropped the Ashes? I have got Herschelle Gibbs’ phone number here if you want some counseling.”Steve Waugh, Ponting’s predecessor as Australian captain, once famously sledged Gibbs for dropping him during the 1999 World Cup which gave Australia a lifeline on their way to winning the tournament. Warne said he was itching for another chance at England and shrugged off Tufnell’s remarks. “It didn’t really worry me whatsoever what he was saying,” he said. “You can take yourself too seriously, take it for a bit of fun.”Cos Cardone, Nine’s Melbourne director of sport, told no offence was intended and there was no need for the station to apologise. “We just tried to immerse a bit of comedy in the night,” he said. “Last year we had Hale and Pace. If we win the Ashes back next season we will fly Phil over and get him to the Crown Casino and Australia can get their own back.”

John Davison might be able to devote more time to Canadian cricket after he was dropped by South Australia in a move which could signal the beginning of the end of his time with the state.Although Davison is currently South Australia’s one-day vice-captain, Paul Nobes, SA’s chairman of selectors, said that Davison had “no future” with the state.”Davo’s form hasn’t been up to the standard we would like,” Nobes admitted. “He’s been dropped from the first-class arena and now the one-day arena. As a 34-year-old, the way we’re heading, his chances are very, very limited.”Davo is pretty much resigned to the fact,” Nobes added. “It’s just one of those things … the time has come.”

For years, bilateral one-day series India played at home went right down to the wire. It was almost a joke, and one the extra-suspicious in the anti-corruption unit did not find funny, that the scores were inevitably level when the final match of a series began. In recent times, though, India have comfortably settled the issue at the earliest, and so it has been with England, coming into the fifth one-day international at Guwahati blanked out and with no chance to pull things back significantly.Team issuesIn Kochi, England finally managed to put their best team on the park. Through injury, and Duncan Fletcher’s penchant for going into ODIs with what works in the Tests, England stuck to fast bowlers, and struggled to get their three best ODI batsmen in appropriate slots. In Kochi, though, they gave Gareth Batty a break from sightseeing and a chance to roll his arm over, and also clubbed Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Andrew Flintoff together at Nos. 3, 4 and 5. Whether they will stick to this formula, or again chop things around, perhaps finding place for Ian Bell in the slot that may be freed up if Geraint Jones is ruled out tomorrow, remains to be seen.India’s selection matters are, for the moment, a pleasant pain. With only six specialist batsmen in the side it’s safe to say that Robin Uthappa is extremely likely to make his debut, and that Venugopal Rao will get a game. A squad thick with bowlers suggests that RP Singh, who has waited long, will get a go, while VRV Singh waits just that bit longer to be eased into the eleven.The Gods must be …The meteorological department has predicted thundershowers for Sunday afternoon, so don’t be surprised if it is bright and sunny. Saturday dawned fine but as the sun reached its zenith the clouds rolled in from the hills, turning everything shades of grey. It has been raining intermittently all week, and the weather could very well end up having the final say.Squeeze them inRahul Dravid has been better than his predecessor in getting through fifty overs in time, and on Sunday, weather permitting, Virender Sehwag will get his chance. He, and Andrew Flintoff, have to be on their toes, for the light on a good day will not be fit for play once five o `clock comes round. There has been a suggestion that play should start earlier than the scheduled 9am, but this seems unlikely. It’s difficult to implement changes of this kind at short notice with the all-powerful television channels having already scheduled their programming.I’m 164If he does play Robin Uthappa will become the 164th person to wear an Indian ODI shirt. He has been picked not on the weight of the runs he has scored in domestic cricket – he averages a modest 32 in first-class cricket and a more impressive 39 in List A one-dayers, but the manner in which he bats has caught the eye. Exuberant and strokeful, his aggressive play, backed up by serious ability in the field meant that the selectors saw merit in elevating him to the Indian team on the promise of potential.Small-town excitementLong before the teams had arrived in the city on their chartered flight hundreds filled a stand, waiting impatiently for a glimpse of their heroes. The fact that the teams were staying in a hotel that straddled the ground made matters worse, and when they walked down the corridor that led to their rooms the fans roared. Even when the skies opened and the drenched them in a heavy downpour, intermittently pelting down hailstones, they stayed, waiting for the teams to come to the ground to practice. The ground had taken a heavy soaking, though, and sections of the outfield were waterlogged, making life miserable for the groundstaff. The square was covered, and the teams will be hoping that this is not a preview of things to come.

Brian Lara has been appointed the captain of West Indies captaincy for a third time. The formal announcement was made at midday in Trinidad.”It’s a great honour,” Lara told reporters. “It’s the third time I’m taking the job and I feel I have the necessary support. [Shivnarine] Chanderpaul did a wonderful job under the circumstances. He’ll reap the benefits later in life. He called me and he said he’d support me and asked that I give it some consideration.”The fact that a lot of former players called me was humbling. This was followed up by phone calls from present team-mates who thought I should assume the mantle of leadership at this juncture. I called past and present players for an objective view on the matter. They unequivocally thought the same as the others who were trying to influence me.”Ken Gordon, the board chairman, was quick to stress that Lara was not a stopgap choice. “His appointment is not an interim one,” he said. “His appointment as captain stands and it is not for any fixed period of time.”It is logical to go back to Lara. Of all the players available, they each had varying strengths but there were also varying weaknesses. He brings a lot to the table at this time which will make a material difference. Whatever the risks, the best is to go with Lara, whose experience and knowledge is unquestioned.”Lara has already led West Indies 40 times, winning 10 and losing 23. He was first captain between 1996-97 and 1999-2000, resigning after a dismal series in New Zealand. He was appointed for a second time in 2002-03, eventually being replaced by Chanderpaul in March 2005 when he stood down because of an ongoing contractual dispute with the board.

Day two

A century from skipper Hasan Raza accompanied by some fine seam bowling from Rajesh Ramesh and Imran Javed enabled Karachi Urban to take full control of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy Gold League final against defending champions Sialkot at Multan Cricket Stadium. Raza’s hundred, the 28th of his first-class career, saw Karachi to 403, before Sialkot were reduced to 93 for five by day’s end.Honours began almost even on the second day, Karachi six wickets down with 249 on the board. But Raza, on a painstaking 56 not out overnight, switched gears early on. Though Karachi lost two early wickets, with less than 300 scored, Raza found a useful partner in Tanvir Ahmed. The two put on 97 for the ninth wicket, Ahmed’s share a not insubstantial 36.By the end, Raza had moved to an unbeaten 161, with as many as seven sixes and thirteen fours, a stark contrast to his go-slow yesterday. Sarfraz Ahmed took two of the four remaining wickets to finish with an admirable six-wicket haul.The momentum though had shifted by then and Sialkot, once hoping to face a total of under 300, were now left with a mini-mountain to overcome. They got off to the worst possible start, Ramesh dismissing Majid Jahangir and highly-rated Shahid Yousuf in successive balls when Sialkot were only on 14.Thereafter, it didn’t get much better; Tariq Mahmood, former Pakistan U-19 World Cup winner and offspinner with the Murali action, was promoted up the order and crawled to a 44-ball, 76-minute two. Javed eventually sent him back, as well as Atiq-ur-Rehman who provided solitary, futile resistance. When Ayub Dogar also fell, Sialkot were tottering at 71 for five. Ijaz Ahmed, captain and former Pakistan one-down legend, came out firing and was unbeaten on 19 as the day drew to a close.He will need to roll back the years if Sialkot are to have any chance of preventing Karachi from adding to their record Quaid haul of 17 wins.

Chennai, and not Ahmedabad, should have been allotted a Test match against England, Cricinfo has learned. The last few weeks have been filled with vociferous complaints from the England and Wales Cricket Board, and the English media, over the itinerary for England’s forthcoming tour of India. While, on the surface, the Board of Control for Cricket in India is strictly adhering to its rotation policy, deeper investigation reveals that something questionable has indeed occurred.The Tour Programmes and Fixtures Committee of the BCCI, which chalks out itineraries for all home matches, met in Mumbai on September 6 to sort out the schedule for the forthcoming season. At the time, however, the committee only decided on the venues for the one-day internationals that were coming up against Sri Lanka and South Africa. Why this was done, no-one is able to answer satisfactorily. And this has made a big difference to how the rotation policy has been applied.According to the rules followed by the board, the Test and ODI rotations run parallel. This means that a situation could arise where it could be a venue’s turn to host both a Test and an ODI in a series. When this happens, it has been the practice that the venue must stage the Test, and wait its turn for the next series for the ODI.Therefore, if the Programmes and Fixtures Committee had worked out for the venues for the forthcoming ODIs and Tests, then Ahmedabad would have been forced to stage a Sri Lanka Test match (Sri Lanka are now playing at Chennai, Delhi and Kanpur). This would have meant that when England’s turn came around, Chennai would have been an automatic allotment for a Test match.There has also been some discrepancy in the allotment of practice matches to the North-Eastern centres of Jamshedpur and Agartala. The fixtures committee met in Delhi to allot the venues for the England Tests and ODIs but did not rule on the warm-up matches. In the past, on most occasions when the Test and ODI fixtures are announced the committee also announces the venues for the side games. In this case, however, it appears that that the chairman of the Tour Programmes and Fixtures Committee, in consultation with the BCCI president, has later allotted the venues to Jamshedpur, Agartala, and Dharamsala for a practice match before the ODIs, which only came to light when representatives of the ECB visited Kolkata for discussions on the itinerary.Staging a three-day game against a touring team is the first step in a venue’s movement towards becoming an international venue. If they stage this warm-up match against England, Agartala will be in a strong position to stake a claim to holding an ODI in a couple of years’ time, a board source told Cricinfo. Dharamsala has already staged a tour match, against Pakistan, and this will only strengthen their case. The most recent instance of this happening is Vijayawada, who hosted a warm-up match when the Zimbabweans toured in early 2002. Just nine months later they were handed their first, and so far only, ODI when West Indies toured.It has also been reported, in that there was some uncertainty over Kanpur hosting the Sri Lanka Test match in December this year owing to a money dispute with the Kanpur District Association, who own the ground. However, as a permanent Test venue, Kanpur has already refused to host Tests in the past, on grounds that the stadium was not ready for play. When New Zealand toured India in 2003 Kanpur was to host a Test, but refused to do so.The BCCI pressurised Kanpur to stage the game, but the Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association refused to relent, fearing that if they did stage the game in substandard conditions (poor pitch, outfield, facilities) then they were in danger of being blacklisted as a venue by the ICC. But a long time has passed since 2003 and the BCCI refused to relent this time round, rightly contending that the UPCA had enough time to get its act together. Soon after it was decided, Cricinfo has learned, that if Kanpur was to attempt to forego a Test again when its turn came, stern action would be taken that could have resulted in it being stripped of Test status, which would be accompanied by a loss of a place in the working committee. Therefore it was a fait accompli that Kanpur hosted a Test against Sri Lanka.