Stats preview for the first Test between South Africa and India in Johannesburg

Kanishkaa Balachandran14-Dec-2006

Saturday could be the last time we will watch Brian Lara in an international match. West Indian cricket is unlikely to miss him

Sambit Bal19-Apr-2007

Saturday could be the last time we watch Brian Lara in an international match. Anyone who has a feel for cricket will mourn his loss, for no batsman in the last 15 years has brought more joy to spectators. But paradoxically, West Indian cricket is unlikely to miss him.Lara’s legacy will be deeply flawed as he has been the most mortal of geniuses. Any human, however talented, must be granted his indiscretions, and Lara has always been a complex character. His batting, a hostage to his moods, has touched extraordinary highs and inexplicable lows. But that’s the essence of Lara and the peaks have been so rewarding that it’s been easy to overlook the troughs.To judge Lara’s contribution to West Indian cricket, it is essential to separate his batting from his leadership. Lara the batsman is peerless, light years ahead of his compatriots who have struggled to match the deeds of their predecessors. Lara the leader has been diametrically opposite. Aloof and whimsical are the mild words used to describe him. The stronger ones are selfish, vindictive and unbecoming.It is hardly a secret that Lara was foisted as captain by Ken Gordon, the president of the West Indies Cricket Board and a fellow Trinidadian, after the infamous row between the board and the players over sponsorship in 2005. A majority of the then selection committee didn’t want him and none of the members of the present one want him either. But Gordon, in a move that will be familiar to most cricket fans in the subcontinent, imposed his will on them, and might want to do so again. However, his hold on the board has been weakened following the World Cup debacle, and if the selectors have their way, Lara will not make the West Indian touring party for the trip to England in May. Not as captain, not even as player.While it would be unfair to blame one person, however powerful, for the abjectness of an entire team, those in the know firmly believe that the rot begins right at the top. Lara, they say, has never allowed the team to settle down, and worse, done his best to undermine any player who has crossed his path.Of course, barring occasional outbursts against the selectors, he has been a model of rectitude and decorum in public, always choosing the right words, and hitting the right notes. In his press conference before the game against Bangladesh at Kensington Oval on Thursday, he repeated his apology to cricket fans and talked about the disappointment of the Caribbean nations. “The need to show character” was a phrase that came up repeatedly.

Yet, Lara, who will retire from one-day internationals after the tournament, stands accused of destroying the character of the team more than anyone else. On the field, he has been eccentric and unpredictable and some of his tactics have bordered on the bizarre. Some of his improvisations, like opening the bowling with Wavell Hinds and Dwayne Smith, have borne fruit, and he has been persuasive in arguing that he has used innovation as a surprise weapon due to the lack of too many real ones at his disposal. “I wouldn’t have needed to experiment if I was leading Australia,” he said during last year’s Champions Trophy.But some of the selections defied logic and cricket sense. For much of last year, Ian Bradshaw and Jerome Taylor were the team’s best one-day bowlers. Bradshaw was outstanding with the new ball, often bowled his overs through and conceded about 40 runs. Taylor was beginning to master operating at the death, delivering at pace and firing in yorkers. Both have found themselves dropped repeatedly and Bradshaw has been used at first change and sometimes even at the death where he has been easy meat at his pace.Lara picked the rookie Lendl Simmons as a batsman in the World Cup and put him at No. 8, and in the crucial, near knock-out match against New Zealand, he chose to hand a one-day debut to the 19-year-old Keiron Pollard while dropping Marlon Samuels, in whom he had expressed faith only a few weeks earlier.Off the field, he has set a poor example to his team-mates when it comes to behaviour and personal work ethic. Genius must receive an allowance, and tales of Garry Sobers turning up at a match after a night of revelry abound in these parts. But Sobers played in a different era and he was captain for only a short part of his career. Lara has led a bunch of impressionable and far less talented individuals much prone to the risk of being led astray.And he has been severe on the players who he has come to dislike. Ramnaresh Sarwan, a captaincy candidate who has a far better record in both forms of the game than most current players, had the mortification of being dropped on the tour of Pakistan and others have had their batting positions shuffled. Some are believed to be dead against him, while many others live in fear. It is not only a team lacking faith in its own ability, but lacking faith in their leader.The cricket world will be poorer for Lara’s departure, but for West Indian cricket it could be the way forward. It’s a tragedy. Lara ought to be remembered as one of the most special batsmen in the history of the game and not a captain whose whims and sullenness destabilised an already feeble team.

The regular Monday column in which Steven Lynch answers your questionsabout (almost) any aspect of cricket. This week it’s a World Cupspecial

Steven Lynch20-Mar-2007The regular Monday column in which Steven Lynch answers your questions about (almost) any aspect of cricket. The World Cup dominates your questions again this week:

Down on luck: Graham Gooch was the bridesmaid in three World Cup finals © Getty Images
Has anyone played in three World Cup-winning teams? asked Michael Docherty from Brisbane
The only team which has won the World Cup three times is Australia (1987-88, 1999 and 2003), and no-one played in all three games. But three members of the current team were on the winning side in both the last two finals – Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Glenn McGrath, who thus stand to become the first three-time winners if Australia can justify their favourites’ tag again this year. Graham Gooch played in three finals for England … and, uniquely, lost the lot.I’m just watching Ireland play and they seem to have a lot on non-Irish-born players. How many of them are there, and what are the qualification rules? asked David Thompson from Huddersfield
The Irish squad includes four players who were born overseas – the captain Trent Johnston, Jeremy Bray and Dave Langford-Smith, who were all in Australia, and Andre Botha (South Africa). The full regulations are rather complicated, but basically a player born outside the country he wishes to represent can do so provided he has lived there for most of the preceding four years (and has not played for any other country in that time). Scotland’s squad also includes four players born outside the country – as does England’s – but the “leaders” in this regard at this World Cup are Canada, who have only three home-born players in their squad (John Davison, Ian Billcliff and Kevin Sandher) and Holland, who have eight players in their squad who were born outside the Netherlands. The full qualification rules can be found on the official ICC siteWho won a World Cup winners’ medal as a player but never played a World Cup match? asked Siddharth Ramesh from Chennai
I think the man you’re looking for has an even more remarkable claim to fame than that: Sunil Valson was in India’s World Cup -winning squad in 1983, but didn’t play in the competition – and in fact never played in a one-day international at all. Valson was a left-arm medium-pacer who took 212 wickets in first-class cricket, most of them for Delhi. In 2002-03 the offspinner Nathan Hauritz replaced Shane Warne in Australia’s squad when Warne was banned after a positive drugs test: Hauritz didn’t play in the tournament, but he has played in eight ODIs outside World Cups.Is Bermuda’s Dwayne Leverock the heaviest man to play international cricket? asked Savar Kashif from Kolkata
Bermuda’s genial left-arm spinner Dwayne Leverock is variously reported as weighing in at between 19 and 20 stone. I’m sure this makes him the heaviest player to appear in a World Cup, and probably in any one-day international, but there’s at least one player who outweighed him in Test cricket: Warwick Armstrong, the Australian captain who inflicted the first Ashes whitewash on England in 1920-21. By the time of the 1921 tour of England, Armstrong – who was known as “The Big Ship” – was thought to weigh around 22 stone. I read in a recent interview that Leverock lives above a curry house – and, he admitted with a twinkle in his eye, “there’s another one next door.” A recent Cricinfo column looked at some other beefy batsmen and bowlers.Ricky Ponting reached 1000 World Cup runs early in his hundred against Scotland. Is he the first Australian to do this? asked Colin Matthews from Perth
Ricky Ponting started this World Cup with 998 runs, and his first scoring shot in this tournament (a four off Dougie Brown) took him into four figures. And his next scoring shot – another boundary off Brown – took him past Mark Waugh (1004 runs) as Australia’s leading scorer in World Cup history. Ponting ended that match with 1111 runs (quadruple Nelson, perhaps?), behind only Sachin Tendulkar (1732) in the World Cup lists at the time. For updated details of the competition’s all-time leading runscorers, click here.Regarding the recent question about the current players who also appeared in the 1992 World Cup, didn’t Sourav Ganguly also do so and score 3 against West Indies … asked Pradyumna Dhore
No, Sourav Ganguly didn’t play in the 1992 World Cup, although I can see why you might have thought he did – he made his one-day international debut in Australia in 1991-92 – against West Indies at Brisbane – and did indeed score 3. But that was in the traditional Australian three-way one-day series, which was played before that season’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Ganguly didn’t make the Indian squad for that tournament – or the 1996 one.

After being hailed as English spin’s saviour, Panesar has had a less-than-miraculous sophomore term. Sure the talent is still there, but he needs to get his self-belief back, and get out of his shell some

Andrew Miller25-Jan-2008

Like a FTSE-listed victim of the global credit crunch, Monty Panesar’s stock has fallen dramatically of late. He’s slipped from his June high of No. 6 in the world rankings to a lacklustre No. 20, he’s lost the one-day spinner’s role that was his during the World Cup in March, and he’s even had to make do with a third-placed finish in the annual
Beard of the Year awards – the title he scooped during his Ashes zenith last winter.This week his England team-mates jet off to New Zealand for the start
of their spring campaign, but Panesar has been asked to take the
scenic route Down Under. Yesterday he arrived in Mumbai with the
England Lions, where over the next couple of weeks he’ll hone his
skills in the Duleep Trophy, India’s premier domestic competition.
Nobody expects it to be a holiday camp – one on famous occasion on the
last such tour in 2003-04, Rod Marsh’s squad somehow allowed South
Zone to chase 501
for victory in the fourth innings – but for Panesar the trip
represents an urgently needed break from the limelight.His game has been stuck in a rut for the past six months, and in Sri
Lanka before Christmas, the frustration was evident. Monty’s mantra
throughout his brief career has been that most enervating of
cricketing clichés, “Put the ball in the right areas”, but for long
periods in all three Tests, he was palpably unable to do just that.
His impact may have been dulled by the broad blades of Kumar
Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, but instead of backing himself to
bowl maidens and bore his opponents into error, he sacrificed his
established strengths of line and length, and set about searching for
the elusive magic delivery.It was not a recipe for success, personal or collective. Panesar still
finished as England’s leading wicket-taker in the series, but that was
entirely down to the shortcomings of his fellow bowlers. His eight
scalps at 50.62 were his worst return since his debut tour of India in
March 2006, but they mirrored almost exactly the eight at 50.37 he
picked up in his previous outing, the home series against India. If a
mental block is forming in his game, then the selectors should be
praised for spotting the right moment to pull him from the front line.”He didn’t have the best of times in Sri Lanka,” said David Parsons,
the ECB’s performance director, who will oversee the Lions tour. Prior
to his appointment in December, Parsons had worked alongside Panesar
as the England team’s spin coach, and few know the mechanics of his
game better. “Monty’s the sort of guy who wants to play all the time,
so I’m sure he’s looking forward to the trip,” Parsons added. “We all see
this as an opportunity for him to work on his game so he’s ready for
the Test matches in New Zealand.”England’s former coach Duncan Fletcher would doubtless seize upon
this form slump as vindication of his own, controversial, assessment
of Panesar’s talents, but not everyone sees it quite like that. Writing in the Observer, Vic Marks, himself a former England spinner, suggested that Panesar was in need of nothing more than a “10,000-ball check-up”. “Monty is a mechanical bowler rather than an intuitive one, which need not be a major disadvantage,” said Marks.
“But [he] looks as if he’s starting to panic when his tried-and-trusted mechanism is no longer producing the results.”

If a touch of vertigo is setting in after Panesar’s stellar rise in
international cricket, it’s hardly surprising – he has not even
completed two years in the Test team, but he has ridden such a
tidal wave of hype and celebrity, he’s sure to feel weighed down by
inflated expectations. Mind you, his lofty profile is largely
self-inflicted – in 2007, thanks to some pretty avaricious cash-ins
by his team of advisors, he was the face of everything from DVDs to
potato snacks, and even found time for an unfortunately premature
autobiography.”A few people have suggested I might be getting too commercially
motivated, but nothing could be further from the truth,” said Panesar.
“When you become a recognised face, people want to get to know you and
with that can come opportunities, but I am working as hard as ever on
my cricket.”Few who saw him in the nets in Sri Lanka would doubt that
final assertion, but somehow he lacks a spark of belief at present.
His predecessor, Ashley Giles, also struggled to cope with the burden
that is placed on England’s anointed spinner, but in hindsight Giles had
it easy. In an era dominated by three of the greatest (and weightiest)
wicket-taking spinners in history, no one realistically expected him
to match the matchless. Panesar, for one reason or another, does not
have that luxury.In truth, he’s been pretty unfortunate in his timing. Five of his
first seven series (and 15 of his 23 Tests) have featured one of the
big three – Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne and Anil Kumble – who
currently outweigh his wickets tally by the small matter of 25 to 1.
Coming from a culture where deference to one’s elders is ingrained
from birth, that’s quite some mental hurdle to have to overcome.Panesar’s reaction ahead of each of these series has been the same.
“How can the student be a rival to the teacher?” he said of his
impending meetings with both Kumble and Muralitharan last year. The
answer, to judge by his stats, is that he can’t. Monty’s record in
matches involving the big three is 41 wickets at 41.68, compared to 40
at 23.62 against the spin-light opposition of Pakistan and West Indies.
Moreover, he’s contributed to two victories in 15 attempts in the
first bracket, compared to six in eight in the second.

That’s not to say he hasn’t had some measure of success in these
games, but at no stage – except arguably in Perth during the Ashes, when
he was pumped to the gunwales with indignation after his earlier
omissions – has he gone in with the same belief that so overwhelmed
West Indies and Pakistan. With that in mind, his next destination,
after the Indian interlude, is an intriguing one. New Zealand’s
captain is Daniel Vettori, the most durable left-arm spinner in the
world today. He’s respected and renowned, but hardly the type to be
revered. In fact, his average of 34.22 is two clicks higher than
Panesar’s, and his strike-rate some ten balls slower.Perhaps that goes to show that Monty’s off-colour moments simply come
with the territory. Despite the hype, he is not the messiah that
England dearly wish him to be. He is merely the best slow bowler that
the country has to offer. A touch more self-belief would not go amiss,
however, and to that end he could doubtless be helped by his captain.
In one of the most candid passages of his autobiography, Panesar tells
of the excitement he felt when selected for his debut against India at
Nagpur. Up he bounded to the room of the then-skipper, Andrew
Flintoff, armed with a bundle of plans and potential field placings.

When I knocked on Flintoff’s door and handed over the results
he seemed a bit bemused.

“This is what I’m thinking of doing,” I said.

“Ah, okay,” he replied, sounding as puzzled as he looked. “No worries
at all, mate. I’ll take it all on board and you have a good night’s
sleep.”

I decided I ought to leave quickly because I wasn’t sure whether he
wanted me in his room

Michael Vaughan, take note. Monty is his own man, and has plenty of
ideas to make his own game work better. But to judge by the passivity
of his recent performances, he could probably do with being coaxed
back out of his shell a touch.

For the Indians who’ve signed up with the ICL, the league is a welcome change from the apathy they’ve had from the BCCI all these years. By Siddhartha Vaidyanathan

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan30-Nov-2007

Kiran Powar: ‘Tell me one reason why I shouldn’t join the ICL’ © ICL
About 15 years ago Kiran Powar was a bigger name in Mumbai cricket than his brotherRamesh. A left-hand batsman with a wide array of strokes, Kiran struggled to breakinto a powerful Mumbai batting order and switched allegiance to other states. Hespent a number of seasons in Assam and Goa, during which time he made many long journeys by bus, and often, considering hotels were too much of a luxury, even spent nights in one. Frequently, with reimbursement hard to come by, he paid his own travel expenses. He even wasn’t compensated when he was hospitalised once.Today Powar enjoys the comfort of the Taj hotel in Chandigarh. He shares the same dressing room as Brian Lara and Nathan Astle. When I speak to him, he’s having lunch with Vikram Solanki, Johan van der Wath and Danny Redrup, a South African physio who is “showing me the sort of fitness a cricketer needs”. For the first time in Powar’s life he has a sense of security. “Tell me one reason why I shouldn’t join the ICL” he challenges.Powar’s isn’t an isolated case. The general mood among the Indian domestic playerswho have joined the ICL is one of disgruntlement. “Until today none of us had anoption,” says a player who was picked for India a couple of years ago. “Now we havesomeone to take care of us. Wait for some time and players will just rush in.”The BCCI’s apathy is a sore point. A domestic veteran talks about a prominent state association. “They made a big din about introducing central contracts for players,” he says. “Finally, we said, we’ve got some security. And they give us an annual contract of Rs 25,000 [US$ 500 approximately]. Is that any sort of money for a year?”Even more frustrating has been the handling of injuries. Shalabh Srivatsava, an Under-19 star who went on to do well consistently for Uttar Pradesh, travelled to South Africa for an expensive surgery. He is still waiting to be reimbursed. Rakesh Patel, the Baroda fast bowler who was selected for the Indian one-day side recently, underwent a similar fate. “The biggest problem is we can’t play when we’re injured,” says Powar. “It means no reimbursement and no match fees. How do you survive?”Redrup chips in: “This is exactly how rugby used to be conducted in South Africaduring the amateur days. But things changed with professionalism.”The situation with the coaching staff who have signed up with the ICL isn’t too different. Erapalli Prasanna, the former India offspinner, who was with the BCCI’s ill-fated spin wing had had enough of being ignored. “By sending me to Nagpur and to Kolkata for short periods, the NCA [National Cricket Academy] sent a clear message that I was not required. The other signal I got was that the BCCI wanted to get rid of me. The spin wing is finished.”Sandeep Patil, who is currently coaching the Mumbai Champs, echoes those views. “”I waited for the BCCI to give me a suitable job to serve Indian cricket. Twice I had written to the BCCI president, Sharad Pawar, expressing my interest to be a coach of the India Aside. I was assured a two-year contract, but after waiting for almost one and a halfyears, nothing came of it.”Hurdles, hurdles, hurdles
It’s not been easy for these players and coaches who have signed with the ICL. They are derisively referred to as “money whores”.Reetinder Singh Sodhi, the former India allrounder, speaks about being refusedentry into a ground in Patiala. “Imagine the scene,” he says. “You’ve gone to aground to practise almost every day of your life. And one day they stop you. As ifI’m a criminal or something. I’m still playing cricket only, no?”Bengal’s players faced a similar situation at the Calcutta Cricket and FootballClub, though the Essel Group, which runs the ICL, had a corporate membership at the club. JP Yadav and Mohnish Mishra, two Madhya Pradesh players, were forced to withdraw from a club tournament in Bhopal for a similar reason.Three Hyderabad players with jobs in state banks were apparently transferred toKolkata recently. They’ve to now choose between moving to a new city and losingtheir jobs.All ICL players have been banned from playing in corporate tournaments organised by the BCCI. Those who have jobs have had their terms of employment made more stringent. Madhya Pradesh batsman Abbas Ali, who works with Indian Oil, is required to work from 9am to 5pm every day and struggles to find time for practice.It is the youngsters who are hardest hit. “A young cricketer finds a job by telling his employees that he’s a cricketer,” says JP Yadav, the former India allrounder. “Now, since he can’t play corporate tournaments, how is a company going to give him a job? That’s a big worry.”Another implication is that cricketers may have to give up the option of playing leaguecricket in England – since that requires a minimum qualification of four first-classgames in a season.

Sandeep Patil waited in vain for a job as India A coach before signing with the ICL © ICL
Positives galore
Despite the ostracism the players remain upbeat. When JP Yadav walked into theTau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula, his first reaction was simple: “It’s fine, . You’re talking to someone who’s played cricket all his life at the Karnail Singh Stadium.” That, incidentally, is the headquarters of the Indian Railways side, a first-class ground that’s universally regarded as India’s worst in terms of facilities.The players have been given 12 pairs each of coloured uniforms. They’ve been exposed to physios and trainers streets ahead of the ones they’ve been used to in Indian first-class cricket. They’ve received 25% of the yearly payment promised them (as the base price), and are happy to see sums being deposited every month in Axis Bank accounts that have been opened for them.Some foreign players have been impressed with the local talent and have spoken aboutrecommending them to counties and provinces. “Abhishek Jhunjunwala has beennoticed,” says a senior player with the Bengal Tigers. “He was even asked if he would want to qualify to play for England.”The ICL, for all the talk of being the poor cousin to the Indian board’s Indian Premier League, is still an option that a number of Indian domestic players are seriously considering. As recently as September, a couple of players on the fringes were apparently seriously contemplating joining. Both made their India debuts subsequently and shelved the plan.A number of other players, though, are still in the loop. “I’ve got a call from so many domestic cricketers asking, ‘What’s happening, are they recruiting?” says Yadav. “People are definitely interested. It’s just a matter of taking the leap.” Like several others, he is convinced that the next 15 days will only reinforce their faith.

PSV's Champions League run is over as the Dutch club's U.S. men's national team stars couldn't save them against Borussia Dortmund.

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Dortmund win 2-0, 3-1 on aggregatePSV exit UCL in devastating lossUSMNT trio all featureGettyWHAT HAPPENED?

Following a 1-1 first-leg draw in the Netherlands, the two sides had it all to play for on Wednesday in Germany. The hosts, though, struck first, and they struck early to set a tone.

The opening goal came just three minutes in, with on-loan winger Jadon Sancho giving his side the advantage. Teed up by Julian Brandt, Sancho was able to pick out a corner with a shot from the edge of the box, giving Dortmund an early advantage while settling nerves both in the team and in the crowd.

Dortmund seemingly doubled their lead in the 77th minute on a goal from Niklas Fullkrug, but a tight offside call saw the finish called back, giving PSV some hope. Unfortunately for them, that hope never turned into a goal, while Dortmund got their own late with Marco Reus putting away a stoppage-time finish to seal a 3-1 aggregate win.

AdvertisementGettyTHE BIGGER PICTURE

With the loss, PSV's focus will now be solely on domestic competitions, having failed to make it out of the Champions League's Round of 16. This season, though, was the first time PSV had made it to the Champions League knockouts since the 2015-16 campaign, when they fell to Atletico Madrid in the same stage.

It was a valiant effort from the Dutch side, and they impressed beyond expectations.

GettyUSMNT IMPACT

As expected, two of the three USMNT stars were in the XI for PSV just an hour or so after all three were confirmed to be in the U.S. squad for the upcoming CONCACAF Nations League. Dest and Tillman were named to PSV's starting XI, while Pepi was named to the bench before coming on late as a second-half sub.

Dest started on the left-hand side at fullback, playing behind Tillman, who took up a spot on the left wing. Of the two, Dest was the more dangerous, as he had one good look at goal and one chance created. Tillman, meanwhile, never quite got going in the attack.

Pepi entered the fray in the 82nd minute with PSV pushing hard for a goal, but it never came as the American got just a few touches of the ball.

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Getty ImagesGOAL'S RATINGS

Sergino Dest (7/10):

Had a few good moments on the left-hand side. Defended fairly well and got forward as he usually does.

Malik Tillman (6/10):

Couldn't quite get anything going in the attack. Passed the ball fairly well and tracked back when needed, but didn't really impact the game.

Ricardo Pepi (N/A):

Thrown in during the final minutes, but couldn't save the day.

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani is so good at baseball that even his mistakes are impressive.

During the Dodgers' 3-0 win over the Seattle Mariners at Dodger Stadium on Monday night, Ohtani found himself in a bit of a pickle after reaching first base on a single in the bottom of the first inning.

The Dodgers star, who ranks second in the majors in stolen bases, took off for second just as Mariners pitcher Bryan Woo delivered a pickoff throw to first base, leaving Ohtani caught in a rundown.

But Ohtani managed to get out of the rundown and slid safely back into first base after outrunning the ball and evading the tag by Mariners first baseman Justin Turner.

Nine times out of 10, Ohtani would have had no way out of the rundown, but the Mariners gave him a bit of an opening and, like the great ones do, he seized his chance. The Dodgers slugger finished the game 1-for-3 with a walk.

While the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Yankees, 4–2, in Game 2 of the World Series on Saturday, it did not come without a cost as Shohei Ohtani was forced to exit after suffering a subluxation of his left shoulder sliding into second base at the end of the seventh inning.

But after the game manager Dave Roberts said the team was "encouraged" by what tests revealed about Ohtani's injury and that he still expected the slugger to be able to suit up in the World Series.

On Sunday, Roberts made that official and told ESPN's Karl Ravech that Ohtani was a go for Game 3 in New York on Monday night.

This is great news for the Dodgers, who are loaded with talent but would miss Ohtani's presence at the plate and on the basepaths. It's also great news for everybody watching. Ohtani is a singular talent and the baseball world should hope he's able to play every inning of his first-ever appearance in the World Series. It will be history, no matter what happens.

Game 3 of the World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees will commence on Monday at 8:08 p.m ET.

The ICC said no evidence had been found of Salgaoncar “actually having been engaged in corruption”, but he has been penalised for for failing to report an approach

ESPNcricinfo staff06-Mar-2018Pandurang Salgaoncar, who was suspended from his role of curator by the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) in October, has also been handed a suspension by the ICC for “failing to report an approach to engage in corrupt conduct”. The issue had emerged ahead of the second ODI between India and New Zealand on October 25, following a sting operation by India Today TV; footage showed the curator telling undercover reporters that the pitch will be full of runs.However, the ICC said, no evidence had been found of Salgaoncar “actually having been engaged in corruption.”Alex Marshall, the ICC’s general manager, anti-corruption, said: “We have carried out an extensive investigation based on the allegations made by India Today and the material they shared with us. I am satisfied that Mr Salgaonkar has no case to answer on the broad allegations of corruption made by India Today.”However, as he is bound by the ICC Anti-Corruption Code as a participant of the sport, he has been charged with breaching section 2.4.4 of the Code for his failure to report an approach to engage in corrupt conduct. Mr Salgaonkar has accepted that he has committed the offence and has received a six-month suspension.”The ICC’s suspension will be backdated to October 25, 2017 – the day he was suspended by the MCA – meaning he can return to work on April 24, 2018.India Today TV had said its reporters shot the video with Salgaoncar over two days (October 23 and 24) leading up to the New Zealand ODI, alleging corrupt activity on his part. In the video, Salgaoncar is seen telling the reporters: “It [the pitch] is very good. It will garner 337 runs. And 337 will be chaseable.” New Zealand made 230 in the match, and India chased down the target four overs to spare on a slowing track.

Fleming also put forward the name of Daniel Vettori – who also works in the T20 format – but made clear he remained impressed by Mike Hesson’s achievements

ESPNcricinfo staff01-Mar-2018Former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming would be keen to work with the national T20 side if there was a push to restructure the coaching set-up to reduce Mike Hesson’s workload.Fleming, who coaches in the IPL and Big Bash League, also put forward the name of Daniel Vettori – another who now works in the T20 format – but made clear he remained impressed by Hesson’s achievements. However, he believes that the packed international schedule will eventually lead to more specialised coach appointments.Simon Doull, the former New Zealand paceman, recently suggested that Hesson – and captain Kane Williamson – should move aside from the T20 international game, while England coach Trevor Bayliss said he would not have a problem if the coaching roles in his team were split.”It’s based on my passion and love for New Zealand cricket,” Fleming told . “I’ve got a very good relationship with Craig McMillan [the current batting coach] and spend a lot of time talking to him about where the game is going and what he sees. So I enjoy passing on that knowledge and it comes back to wanting the New Zealand team to be strong.”I enjoy going away and having a strong New Zealand team performing well around the world, it helps my job and I enjoy getting the New Zealand players in the sides that I’ve got.”At some stage, who knows and I think Daniel would be the same. I’d love to help, but I certainly appreciate and admire the work Mike has done.”At the conclusion of the England series in early April, Hesson will be able to have some downtime as New Zealand do not play again until a series against Pakistan in October, but Fleming still thinks that being in charge of all three formats could become too great a task for one man.”You’ve got to think for a modern day coach these days, to be spending 250-300 days away, or involved in the job, travelling and hotels and being away from the family, that’s unsustainable,” he said.”So Simon [Doull] makes some good points there about looking after your coaches and maybe T20 is one form of the game where there’s an opportunity for the head coach to have some time off.”Whether you develop a Craig McMillan or another young coach coming forward, or you get an old dog in and maybe Vettori or myself come in to spend a bit of time there?”It’s whether it keeps Mike Hesson fresh, it’s whether it falls into line with what Mike wants. But I think it’s worth discussing going forward as the schedule gets more cluttered. What I’ve heard from NZ Cricket and Mike right now is that the balance is pretty good, so he’s pretty happy to continue what he’s doing. But it needs to be explored.”New Zealand’s T20 form took a dive after a strong start earlier in the season. Pakistan came from 1-0 down to take the three-match series in January, when New Zealand conceded their No. 1 ranking, then they managed just a single victory – against England in Wellington – during the T20 tri-series. The next World T20 will take place in Australia in 2020.”If you’re bouncing from each form, sometimes you can miss the subtleties of the game that are developing behind closed doors, because you’re so focused on a Test or one-day series,” Fleming said. “We’ve got to make sure we’re relevant in all forms and have got the selectors, coaches and personnel looking at the right things.”