England’s batsmen will have a definite chance for exoneration if the weather gods are kind to them on the last day of their National Bank tour match with Otago at Queenstown’s Events Centre tomorrow.Due to the extended hours caused by loss of play today, there could be a minimum of 105 overs to be played, and with Otago finishing day two only three runs behind England’s first innings total there is every chance of, at the best a lively finish and at the least, a lengthy batting display from England’s Test contenders.England were dismissed for 153 and by stumps, Otago were 150/6, the main note of satisfaction being the bowling of Andy Caddick, Andrew Flintoff and Craig White.Caddick especially, after being dropped from the one-day side after the first match against New Zealand, made the most of his chance.He took four for 42 from his 18 overs.He bowled seven overs before finally finding his rhythm, a significant step in the side’s preparation for the first Test starting next week.”It took me about seven overs to really hit my straps and get myself going but it finally came through and in the last few overs I got myself back into rhythm,” Caddick said.”I was struggling to get my rhythm going, trying this, trying that to get it clicked in,” he said.”I’m looking forward just continuing bowling for the next couple of days,” he said.Conditions would be better for England batting a second time as the pitch had dried out and wasn’t moving as much off it, although there was still some swing in the air.”I missed out on the one-dayers and that was my sort of training ground for the Test matches coming up but that happens,” Caddick said.”Matthew Hoggard did a great job in the one-dayers but not it is my turn to get stuck in for the Tests.”You can bowl in the nets as much as you want but when you are bowling against the opposition and totally different batsmen than your team-mates, it does help to get out there and bowl against them,” he said.The start to England’s day which saw 75 overs bowled, was notable mainly for some lower order substance to their batting, provided by Warren Hegg and Richard Dawson.They added 43 runs for the eighth wicket before Otago’s man of the moment, Craig Pryor had Hegg caught at second slip by Simon Beare for 32, and the dismissal was repeated next ball when James Ormond produced a copy cat shot.Dawson hit out with Caddick as his last batting partner and 22 runs were added before Caddick was finally out, caught at second slip by Nathan Morland for six while Dawson was not out 24, scored off 39 balls.Pryor proved the destroyer for Otago and ended the innings with the fourth five wicket bag of his career, taking five for 45 from his 12 overs.Caddick said the benefits to England of his missing the one-day games had been Hoggard’s acquisition of experience that would be put to use in the side’s future.”My spot was taken by a young man who’s come in and he’s experienced one-day cricket against two very good sides.”Matthew did very well, he knows what is required in the future and the way I view it is, that OK I missed out, but in hindsight you can turn it around and say the guy has learnt a lot and he can push his way into being a regular in the one-day series.”You need that little bit of competition and that doesn’t bother me whatever, I’ve been there and done that and I know what I’ve got to do to get back into it. It’s good that somebody’s there learning from the experience,” he said.The real test for the English attack now was to learn to work together, especially in the absence of frontline bowler Darren Gough who returned home after the one-day series.”It’s going to be an experience for everyone to learn how to bowl with each other,” Caddick said.

Auckland lifted themselves off the bottom of the State Shield ladder after a solid three-wicket win over Canterbury on the much-maligned Boxing Day portable pitch at Eden Park in the third round of the Shield.Aaron Barnes (56) and Llorne Howell (51) led the Auckland assault on Canterbury’s 197 for eight, a total that had looked doubtful until a late-innings flurry and was helped by the contribution of 14 wides by the Auckland bowlers.Barnes’ effort was particularly valuable, arriving as he did when the Auckland innings had started to get the shudders. With Craig Pryor (21 not out), he contributed to an 85-run partnership that was only broken in the shadow of victory.Timing – or the lack of it – was the key to most of Canterbury’s innings. Michael Papps worked his way to 57 but it took 117 balls. And that was a reflection of the Canterbury top order. Chris Harris was next in the scoring stakes with 33 but not a very comfortable 33 at that.It was the medium pace of Barnes and the leg-spin of Brooke Walker that provided the most difficulty. Barnes took the wickets, three for 42 from eight overs, while Walker put the clamps on, his one wicket costing just 26 off his 10 overs.If there were demons in the Boxing Day pitch, Cleighten Cornelius put them to rest, a rollicking undefeated 31 late in the innings pushing Canterbury to a defendable total.Howell followed his example at the top of the Auckland innings, an occasionally lucky, often skillful but always belligerent 51 coming from 60 balls. But, with his departure and that of Matt Horne for 34 and Lou Vincent (0) and Rob Nicol (five) in quick succession, a rebuilding job was required.Barnes and Pryor were the men for the job. With diligent use of singles into the wide open spaces and the occasional smite in anger, particularly by Barnes, they cruised to the shadow of victory in an 85-run partnership before Barnes departed for 56 from 66 balls.The Canterbury bowling attack was limited by the absence of Paul Wiseman, injured as he took his first runs of the day when opening the batting. The wickets were shared around and so were the runs – except for Harris, celebrating his recall to the New Zealand squad with one for 26 from his 10 overs, the same as his Auckland spinning counterpart. Carl Anderson and Stephen Cunis picked up two apiece but were never on top of the batsmen.Calm accumulation of singles with the occasional strike in anger saw Auckland home with an over and a ball to spare in a textbook lesson of pacing a run chase, ending on 201 for seven.

The Konica Queensland Fire face a must-win series against Victoria thisweekend if they are to feature in this season’s Women’s National CricketLeague Finals.Queensland is fourth coming into the final round of matches but couldsnatch a spot in the Final later this month if they can win both oftheir games against second-placed Victoria in Geelong this weekend.Third-placed NSW play the winless Western Fury and could potentiallyfinish ahead of current competition leaders Southern Scorpions.The Queensland selectors have omitted Jodie Purves from the team andrecalled allrounder Kelly Klibbe in the only change to the team thatlost both of its matches to NSW before Christmas.Queensland will hope that the Konica Queensland Under-19 trio of KaseeMarxsen, Belinda Matheson and Kirsten Pike will bring with them some ofthe form they have displayed at the Australian Under-19 championships inCanberra this week.The unbeaten Queensland combination will meet NSW in the Final tomorrow,with Marxsen, Matheson and Pike all producing outstanding performancesso far in the championships.Marxsen has scored 261 runs at 65.25, including a championship record126 off 118 balls, while off-spinner Matheson and pace bowler Pike areamong the leading wicket-takers for Queensland.This weekend also represents one of the last chances for the Fireplayers to press their representative claims with the Commonwealth BankSouthern Stars team and Shooting Stars Youth teams to be named after theWNCL Finals from January 17-19.The Southern Stars will play a four-way international series in NewZealand at the end of January and next month featuring New Zealand,England, India and Australia.Australia will then play England in an Ashes Test series, with the FirstTest being held at the Gabba from February 15-18.Konica Queensland Fire v Victorian Spirit, Geelong, January 11, 12:Julia Price (c), Belinda Matheson, Melissa Bulow, Joanne Broadbent,Sally Cooper, Tricia Brown, Kasee Marxsen, Megan White, Kelly Klibbe,Cindy Kross, Renee Lee, Kristen Pike. Coach: Richard McInnes.

If it were not for the nature of the teams involved, Saturday’s Pool A match would already be written off as a no-contest, SuperSport Park, Centurion, would be half-filled at best, and journalists would be tempted to use agency reports in place of meticulously written previews.But memories are still fresh of one particular series – also written off as a no-contest – between Australia and India in which the latter bounced back from one Test down to deny their rivals the series win that would have been the ultimate prize for a team with a cabinet already stuffed to bursting with silverware. To boot, Australia are hardly as potent in one-day cricket as in the longer version, India are more likely to play out of their skins in a World Cup game, and as the television pundits don’t miss any chance of informing us, anything can happen in one-day cricket.Even, it appeared for a brief period on Wednesday, a defeat of India by the Netherlands, and that performance must still be preying on John Wright’s mind. India’s prime intent, after a tour of New Zealand that must have left deep psychological scars on the batsmen, would have been to get big runs against Holland’s bowling – gather up Dutch courage, so to speak, before they padded up against McGrath and Co.Instead, India mustered only 204, and only Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble – experienced bowlers, almost mechanical in demolishing the Netherlands’ batting – prevented the first Goliath-slaying incident of the 2003 World Cup. But the subsequent victory would hardly have allayed the jitters that Indian fans felt as they saw the wicket-to-wicket seam-up military medium-pace of Tim de Leede knock over stalwarts like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid.The Indian captain, for one, recognises the endemic weaknesses riddling the batting, and Sourav Ganguly will depend even more on his bowlers against Australia. “We have to play to our strengths, and we have two high-quality spinners in Harbhajan (Singh) and (Anil) Kumble,” he said on Thursday. “We have to make the best possible use of them.”That remark is perhaps a pointer to India also playing an unchanged team at Centurion, and indeed after Wednesday, Ganguly could only feel that they need the seventh batsman more than the fifth front-line bowler. It is also a foregone conclusion that Dravid will don the wicket-keeping gloves yet again.Australia, however, are targetting primarily one of those seven batsmen, one who has enjoyed immense one-day success against them. “We haven’t played against him for a while, but every time we have played against him he’s done extremely well, he’s played brilliantly,” said Australian captain Ricky Ponting. “We’ve had lots of plans and different things we’ve tried against him, and none of them have really worked.”Ponting regarded Tendulkar’s recent poor form – the 52 against the Netherlands notwithstanding – as ominous rather than promising. “I would rather have him score a lot of runs coming into the game against us,” he said. “He seems to save his best for us!” With Ganguly confirming that Tendulkar would continue to open, the first few overs of the Indian innings may just be the most explosive.Tendulkar himself may rue the fact that a dear opponent will not be trundling in to bowl at SuperSport Park. The absence of Shane Warne, an immense source of relief to most teams, will impact India to a lesser extent; their success against the leg-spinner may have actually given them an edge, although the presence of Brad Hogg as sole spinner will not exactly set them quivering in their boots either.The Indians will be encouraged by SuperSport Park’s tradition of encouraging big strokes and big totals. Only two scores of below 150 have been registered in 15 games, and the ball comes on well to the bat – a fact that strokemakers like Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar will undoubtedly relish.But the track also offers assistance to bowlers willing to bend their back, and few are as willing as Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Brett Lee. In the final analysis, it will be India’s display against Australia’s pacemen that will either let them down or – in a more optimistic scenario – convince a billion backers of their unalloyed potential.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has released the itinerary for the England Senior team’s tour to the West Indies in 2004. The team will contest a four-match Test Series, followed by a seven-match One-Day International Series.The international matches, as detailed below, are confirmed. A full itinerary, including other tour matches, will be released when available.In the 2003-4 winter, England will also tour Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In October / November 2003, England will play two Test Matches and three One-Day Internationals in Bangladesh, before traveling to Sri Lanka to play three One-Day Internationals and finally three Test Matches before Christmas. Full details to be announced in due course.England’s 2004 tour to the West Indies

March11-15           First Test Match, Jamaica19-23           Second Test Match, TrinidadApril1-5             Third Test Match, Barbados9-13            Fourth Test, Antigua18              First One-Day International (ODI), Guyana (19 – reserve day)24              Second ODI, Trinidad25              Third ODI, Trinidad28              Fourth ODI, GrenadaMay1               Fifth ODI, St. Lucia2               Sixth ODI, St. Lucia5               Seventh ODI, Barbados

Tamil Nadu hold a slight advantage going into the third day of their five-day Ranji Trophy Elite Group semi-final against hosts Delhi at the Feroz Shah Kotla. The visitors, who made 327 in their first innings, had reduced Delhi to 127 for 4 when play ended on Saturday.Tamil Nadu, who resumed the second day on 252/ 5, added a further 75 runs before being dismissed a short while after lunch. Overnight not out batsmen, Hemang Badani (63, 9X4) and Vasanth Saravanan (39) put on 55 runs for the sixth wicket before being separated (299 for 6).The lower-order batsmen, who followed, though, could not make similar headway against the Delhi bowlers and the final four wickets fell for the addition of just 28 runs. For Delhi, medium-pacer Amit Bhandari and left-arm spinner Rahul Sanghvi claimed three wickets each.The Delhi reply got off to a decent start with openers Akash Chopra (30) and Gautam Gambhir (31) putting on 58 runs for the first wicket. But the dismissal of Virender Sehwag, castled by medium-pacer MR Shrinivas for a duck, saw Tamil Nadu fighting their way back into the game. At stumps on the second day, Mithun Manhas (20*) and skipper Vijay Dahiya (19*) were holding fort with the hosts needing another 201 runs to earn the all-important first-innings lead.

Sri Lanka look set to employ an interim coach for the forthcoming New Zealand Test series following current incumbent Dav Whatmore’s request for early leave from his contract.The Sri Lankan born Australian’s contract expires at the end of May and the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCSL) has yet to decide upon a replacement.With Sri Lanka due to start a two-match Test series against New Zealand on April 25 there appears no other option but to appoint an interim coach.Whatmore communicated his willingness to step down early shortly after being informed that his contract would not be renewed before the Sharjah Cup.On Friday morning he handed over an official letter confirming his position, explaining that it would not be in the interests of the team for him to continue."We want Dav (Whatmore) to continue for the New Zealand tour and the triangular series but he has indicated an unwillingness to do so," said Anura Teenekoon, the BCCSL chief executive.The frontrunner for the temporary post appears to be former Sri Lanka captain Duleep Mendis, who was employed as an advisor during the run-up to the World Cup.Australian Steve Rixon, New Zealander John Bracewell and South African Graham Ford have all been short-listed as potential full-time coaches but a final decision remains some weeks away.Captain Sanath Jayasuriya also confirmed his resignation on Friday morning, handing over a letter to Teenekoon, who then informed the new chairman of the selectors Lalith Kaluperuma.His successor will not be announced until after the Sinhalese New Year but Marvan Atapattu is the clear frontrunner for the high-profile job.

Yet another big partnership between Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden put Australia in the driving seat at the end of an absorbing and ill-tempered second day of the fourth Test in Antigua.

West Indies, largely thanks to a spirited 68 from Brian Lara, had battled their way to match Australia’s 240, but then Langer and Hayden undid all their hard work with a flying and match-turning stand of 171. And with the wicket slightly deteriorating, Australia ended the day firmly in control of the match.On a day of anger, aggression and temper, Lara showed his frustration late in the day after he dropped Hayden at slip when the stand was worth 122, and he could do little to stem the flow of runs as Hayden and Langer’s imperious driving and cutting.Relations between the two sides throughout the day were hostile, triggered first thing when David Shepherd turned down what Australia thought was an edge from Lara through to Adam Gilchrist off Jason Gillespie.The normally cool Steve Waugh showed what he thought with a curt and frank exchange of views with Lara, and that was followed by a barrage of verbal taunts from Australia’s bowlers. But Lara remained aloof and let his bat do the talking as he passed 8000 Test runs.He hit a first-ball six off Brett Lee over third man, and then while Ramnaresh Sarwan was with him at the crease, he continued to play only the way he can. The expansive back-lift, the shuffle in to line, and the execution of another drive or square cut. It was thrilling to watch. And Sarwan too took his captain’s lead and enjoyed some dashing cover-drives – and some exchanges with the Australian fast bowlers.But, as so often, it was Andy Bichel who did the job for Australia just when it mattered. He only picked up two wickets during the day, but they were those of Lara and Sarwan. Sarwan went first in the morning, Bichel superbly clinging on to a sharp caught and bowled chance.But the celebrations really got underway when Bichel got Lara midway through the afternoon. In one enthralling over, Lara crashed three fours with identical pull shots, but Bichel had the last laugh when Lara got too carried away and mistimed a cover-drive straight to Langer at mid-off for 68. Bichel was delirious, Lara was fuming.

Once Lara, Sarwan and the hapless Ridley Jacobs – who needlessly ran himself out – had gone, Omari Banks continued his impressive allround display with a crucial 16 not out, and with the help of a cameo 14 from Jermaine Lawson, West Indies, for the only time in the series, were on an even keel with the mighty Aussies. But, thanks to Langer and Hayden – that didn’t last long.

On the eve of the launch of the new Twenty20 Cup competition that gets underway at the County Ground this evening when Somerset entertain Warwickshire the county have received some good news regarding one of their favourite adopted sons.Sir Vivian Richards who would have been ideally suited to Twenty20 cricket has announced that he will definitely be a making a nostalgic return to play at the County Ground in Taunton at the age of fifty one when he appears for Lashings Cricket Club against his old county on July 21st.Sir Viv, along with Ian Botham and Joel Garner made up the big three in the Glory Years of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when the county won the Gillette Cup and the Bensons and Hedges Cup on two occasions and the John Player League once.He played for Somerset between 1974 and 1986 and scored nearly 15000 runs at an average of just under 50 which included 322 against Warwickshire in 1985.Chief executive Peter Anderson said yesterday "David Foalb the Lashings coach and managing director has confirmed that Viv Richards will definitely be appearing along with Richie Richardson and Jimmy Adams, which is great news."The great man is also expected to officially open the new Sir Viv Richards Gates that are situated at the Priory Bridge entrance to the County Ground on that day.Tickets for the match against Lashings Cricket Club that will be 45 overs per side and will get underway at 1pm are available from the club office, 01823 272 946.

Frizzell County Championship Division One

Surrey 245 for 3 v Kent at The Oval
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Report to follow at the close of play.Essex 6 for 2 v Lancashire 218 at Chelmsford
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Report to follow at the close of play.Leicestershire 72 for 1 v Warwickshire 253 at Leicester
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Report to follow at the close of play.Frizzell County Championship Division TwoDerbyshire v Yorkshire 314 for 7 at Derby
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Report to follow at the close of play.Northamptonshire 20 for 3 v Hampshire 125 at Northampton
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Report to follow at the close of play.Somerset 100 for 2 v Gloucestershire 228 at Taunton
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Report to follow at the close of play.Worcestershire 218 v Durham 100 for 8 at Worcester
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Report to follow at the close of play.