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After two comprehensive wins in three days – including one over old rivals England – the swagger and the supreme confidence is back for the Australians. Their start to the tournament was an absolute shocker, but now they’ve put the favourites’ tag back on themselves. Stuart Clark was full of beans and extremely confident of his team’s chances to go all the way in yet another World Cup.”We’re starting to get into a bit of a rhythm,” he said on the eve of their game against Pakistan. “We’re enjoying it and the guys’ skills are slowly getting better.”Australia are now in pretty good shape, but only four days back they were one defeat away from elimination when they took on England at Cape Town. The result was a comprehensive eight-wicket win. “Any win over England is a good win,” Clark said, looking back at that result. “There was talk of humiliation in the papers [before the game]. I don’t feel humiliated today.”Looking ahead to the Pakistan game, Clark was confident Australia would handle that challenge. “I don’t think the Australian cricket team fears anyone. They [Pakistan] are a very good team with very good players, so we’re looking forward to the game.”Clark’s own bowling has stood up very well to the Twenty20 challenge: in three matches, he has outstanding figures of 5 for 59 from 12 overs. Not surprisingly, he was happy with his form: “It’s been a new challenge. I hadn’t played much Twenty20 cricket. The wicket’s been a bit different to what I was expecting. I’ve had to adapt. But I’m pretty happy with how I’m going.”It’s more like bowling at the death of a one-day game – slower balls, a few yorkers, there’s no magical secret to it. Nathan Bracken and Shaun Tait showed it during the World Cup – it doesn’t matter what skill you have but if you do it well you’re pretty hard to get away.”Clark also reckoned playing the county season in England helped him get the variations right. “It’s one of the reasons I went to England – to work on a few different things. It seems to be going alright at the moment.”About the format itself, Clark admitted there wasn’t much in it for the bowlers, but they still had the opportunity to make a difference. “It’s a game designed for batsmen, but the bowlers can make a difference if they have two or three really good overs. If you pick up a couple of wickets or don’t go for many, you can change the outcome of the game. It’s not all just batters, there’s room for bowlers – not too much, but just a little bit.”Clark was emphatic that Twenty20 should never take the place of one-day internationals entirely. “I’d hate to see 50-over cricket replaced because of what it’s done for the game,” he said. “Even if the World Cup [in the Caribbean] went on for a week too long, it’s still the pinnacle of one-day cricket and world cricket.”This tournament is different – it’s a bit new, it’s fresh, but there’s definitely place for it in the cricket world. It’s a thriving game and will become more and more popular the more it’s played – whether it’s international, domestic or some of these new leagues that Cricket Australia is putting together.”The issue of the bowl-out drew a laugh from him, but he was fairly guarded in his opinion of the tie-breaker: “I haven’t actually been involved in one. We had a mock one in one of the practice matches, and I’ll reserve my judgment till I actually have to go into one.”

County Championship
Two-up, two-down is the right balance for two leagues of nine teams. So, 2005 was a good season to get promoted back to the top flight as Lancashire, Yorkshire and Durham managed, but not such a great time to go the other way like Glamorgan, Surrey and Gloucestershire. The points system remains the same, but there should be some attacking cricket in the second division with just two promotion spots up for grabs, although safety in division one is now even more attainable with high-scoring draws.C&G Trophy
This is an interesting one. Previously the premier one-day tournament has been a knock-out format, under various sponsors, and dubbed the ‘FA Cup of cricket’. Now it has been changed into a league format, with two groups, leading straight to a Lord’s final. Each group – tagged North and South – consists of 10 teams. Scotland join nine counties in the north while Ireland take their place with the south. Each team plays each other once and the top team in each group progresses to Lord’s on August 26. But the changes appear to not have really been thought through. The idea was to give more 50-over cricket, the international standard, to county sides before the Natwest Series starts, therefore giving players a chance to hone skills and press claims for selection. However, because there are no quarter or semi-finals there will be a lot of dead matches with many teams out of the running for the final early on. In a busy season, counties could see these games as a chance to rest players therefore defeating the object of high-standard 50-over matches. C&G are not thrilled about the changes, apparently: they have already pulled their sponsorship for next season.Twenty20
This is quickly becoming the lifeblood of the domestic game and will again form the major entertainment in mid-summer. However, it will have to compete with the football World Cup so the attraction of Twenty20 will be given a eral – and tough – test. The group matches will be played from June 27 to July 11, with the quarter-finals two weeks later and Finals Day at Trent Bridge, the inaugural venue in 2003, on August 12.Pro40
If in doubt, stick ‘Pro’ somewhere near a one-day tournament and people will come flocking through the gates. Well, maybe not, but the ECB haven’t been able to find a new sponsor for the re-jigged, and in many ways downgraded, National League. It has been shunted to the back third of the season, following the C&G and Twenty20, and reduced to a 40-over contest where each team plays the others once. There are still two divisions with promotion and relegation and like the Championship this has been amended to two-up, two-down. However, a play-off between the seventh-placed team in Division One and the third-placed team in Division Two has been added and will provide the finale to the county season on September 24.Now, if you understand all that, you are ready for the 2006 season.

Scorecard

Aimee Mason picked a perfect time to post her maiden one-day hundred before she floored Australia with the ball as New Zealand levelled the five-match Rose Bowl series at 1-1. Mason’s previous high in 57 matches was 71, but she comfortably extended her career best with 102 and went within an over of carrying her bat in Darwin.The performance was the only New Zealand score above Sara McGlashan’s 28 and it was responsible for the challenging total of 209. After hitting 13 fours and a six from her 128 balls, Mason then captured the wickets of Shelley Nitschke (24), Kate Blackwell and Sarah Edwards to gain figures of 3 for 15 off ten overs and give Australia some severe headaches.Karen Rolton, the captain, tried to steer her side back into contention, but when she departed for 27 Australia were in serious trouble at 6 for 134 and they fell 35 runs short. Sarah Tsukigawa was on a hat-trick after removing Sarah Andrews and Clea Smith – consecutive wides stopped her adding a third victim in a row – and she ended with 3 for 27.Australia’s main bright spot was the performance of Ellyse Perry, who at 16 years and 261 days became the country’s youngest debutant in a national cricket team. Perry bowled eight overs for 37, picking up the wickets of Maria Fahey and McGlashan, chipped in with the run out of Rowan Milburn and scored 19 before she was last out.”I was a little nervous before I came on to bowl,” Perry told . “It was good to get my first wicket because it gave me more confidence with my bowling and helped me to get through it. It was very exciting and great fun.”

Nathan Bracken has bowled himself back into contention for the first Ashes Test with a solid performance in the Champions Trophy. Bracken has seven wickets in the tournament – second only to Glenn McGrath for Australia – and has thrown his name into the mix for the third Ashes fast-bowling place, which many believed was down to Mitchell Johnson and Stuart Clark.Bracken took 2 for 36 in the semi-final against New Zealand including the vital wicket of Stephen Fleming and earned praise from Ricky Ponting. “I’m sure his name will come up,” Ponting told . “We all know the ball is going to swing a bit in Brisbane, and he took his best Test figures in that game up there last year. He’s bowling well. He certainly hasn’t been pigeon-holed as a one-day player.”The former fast bowler Geoff Lawson said Bracken had shown enough at the Champions Trophy to suggest Johnson was not the only left-armer who could offer Australia variety. “Johnson is supposedly an express quick, but he’s been bowling at around 135kph. He’s not quick,” Lawson said in . “Bracken was bowling at 125-130kph and getting it to swing considerably. I thought Bracken bowled very well and should definitely be in the mix for the Test.”The first Ashes Test will start on November 23 at the Gabba, the only ground where Bracken has played two Tests. Last year at Brisbane, Bracken claimed 4 for 48 including the key wickets of Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul. In 2003-04 he dismissed Virender Sehwag in each innings of the Gabba Test.Ian Chappell has also pushed for the selectors to consider Bracken.

For the first time in its colourful history the Board of Control for Cricket in India is selling tickets online. Fans wishing to go to any match in the Champions Trophy – at Mumbai, Mohali, Jaipur or Ahmedabad – can now log on to www.bcci.tv, take a tour of the seating arrangements and pick the seats they want and pay by credit card.The limit per card is four tickets and only visa card holders can buy tickets online. Visa, which is a one of the sponsors of the Champions Trophy, has exclusivity on online ticketing for the first 15 days.The sale of tickets online began at approximately 8pm on Tuesday evening and within an hour huge numbers had been snapped up. “Rupees one lakh worth of tickets were sold, and that too without an advertisement or an announcement that the sales were live,” Lalit Modi, vice-president of the BCCI, told . “The initial buyers were mostly from overseas – America, the United Kingdom and even some from Australia,” he added.At present the only tickets you cannot buy online are the discounted student tickets and the president’s box. The student tickets require verification of an identification card from an educational institution and will be available at the venues. The tickets to the president’s box have been set aside for the ICC, its guests, and sponsors.To avoid a situation like the one Cricket Australia experienced over sales of the Ashes tickets where a large section of tickets got sold very quickly, servers crashed and disgruntled fans were left empty handed just hours after sales began, the BCCI has decided to stagger the sales of tickets. Initially about 10000 tickets of varying denominations will be available for each ground, and at a later date a further such lot will come up for sale.The back-end for the sales of the tickets is being handled by Ticketmaster, a company that has worked with the ICC in the past. “A team of people from Ticketmaster have been in India over the last two weeks working on the integration of their site and ours. Now that is complete,” said Modi. DHL and Blue Dart are the companies involved in the delivery of the tickets, and the BCCI suggested that orders placed now will be delivered from September 22 onwards.Modi was confident that the sales of tickets would yield substantial revenues, and was especially pleased with how things had gone at Jaipur, where he is the president of the state cricket association – Rajasthan. “We’ve already registered sales worth Rupees eight crore,” he said. “The three key areas that needed work were bathrooms, catering, and where applicable air-conditioning. We’ve spent a considerable amount of money on ensuring that the stadium at Jaipur is world class in these aspects. Since the last game we’ve spent about Rs. 25 crore on infrastructure.”

A South African judge, Justice Albie Sachs, has been appointed to hear a dispute over a six-match ban that was imposed by the International Cricket Council on India’s captain, Sourav Ganguly.Justice Sachs will be the sole member of an ICC disputes resolution committee, which has been instigated as a result of the ban imposed on Ganguly by the match referee, Chris Broad, during the one-day series against Pakistan in April.Ganguly was penalised for persistently slow over-rates, a decision that was upheld by the ICC’s appeals commissioner, Michael Beloff. But the Indian board has asked the ICC for arbitration, citing flaws in the process by which the charge and the appeal were heard.Ganguly, who sat out the last two games of that Pakistan series, will have to miss four matches of a tri-series against West Indies and Sri Lanka starting on July 30, if the ban is not overturned.He incurred the ban after his team took 30 extra minutes to bowl the stipulated 50 overs in two successive games. In November last year, Ganguly was banned for two Tests for a similar offence, but his appeal against match referee Clive Lloyd’s decision was upheld by another ICC commissioner, Tim Castle.Justice Sachs would decide on the format and timeframe for the hearing and, according to the ICC statement, his decision would be final.

Lakshmipathy Balaji, the Indian fast bowler, is making encouraging progress with his recovery from a back injury, according to John Gloster, the Indian team physio. Balaji, who has now actively resumed his fitness training, said that his back had healed well and confirmed that he would attend the fitness camp in Bangalore starting on July 25 with the rest of the Indian squad.”Mr. Gloster was extremely happy with the progress I have made”, Balaji told . “He has given me a schedule to follow and asked me to approach the recovery process in a phased manner. He said there was no need to rush things.”Balaji has been out of competitive cricket since last November, missing almost the entire domestic season. He travelled to Australia in February to diagnose his injury, and doctors adviced him against surgery.He resumed bowling in the nets in May, and took a fitness test under the supervision of Gloster, hoping to make a comeback to the Indian Test squad for the tour of the West Indies. However, Gloster recently told Cricinfo that the purpose of the test was mainly to determine if he was ready to resume bowling, and that it was still early days in his rehabilitation. He added that Balaji is now in the final stages of his recovery from a lumbar spine stress fracture.When asked about his own assessment of his recovery, Balaji said that he is now bowling at 60-70% of his bowling speed. “The important thing is that I am feeling good”, he added. “I will be back.”

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

A typically clinical bowling performance overcame a less distinguished fielding effort as Australia dismantled a star-studded World XI, winning the first of the three Super Series matches by 93 runs under lights, and a roof, at the Telstra Dome while it rained on the rest of Melbourne. Ricky Ponting’s men chose to bat, put 255 on the board, and then made it seem more like 355 with canny bowling.Kumar Sangakkara must have wondered if he was back in Colombo batting for Nondescripts Cricket Club as he ploughed a lone furrow, stitching together a stylish, yet occasionally streaky, half-century while all around him faltered and fell. The target of 256 appeared on the lower side, even accounting for a sluggish outfield, but Glenn McGrath showed why he is still the most lethal thing with a new ball in hand.Virender Sehwag found that you cannot pull McGrath off a length and get away with it, hitting straight to Michael Hussey at midwicket. Jacques Kallis was audacious enough to come down the pitch and hit McGrath over cover, but was soon trapped in front by one that swung in late. Then Brian Lara – a big draw in this team – drove Nathan Bracken straight to short cover. Rahul Dravid battled to steady the ship, but 50 for 3 became 75 for 4 when he mis-hit a pull off Brett Lee, who bowled with pace and bounce in his second spell.Kevin Pietersen, who tormented the Australians all through the Ashes summer, came upon a bowler who he had not taken apart, and was trapped in front by one that Shane Watson got to jag back in. Soon after Watson should also have had Andrew Flintoff, who pulled straight to Lee at deep backward square-leg, but the catch was floored. Watson barely had time to bemoan his luck before inducing another false shot – this time from Sangakkara who cut towards point – only to see Ponting, juggle, fumble and somehow manage to hold on to the ball.If the road ahead looked difficult at 101 for 6, it became next to impossible when Shahid Afridi, the Supersub, was trapped in front for 2 by a flat, quick offbreak from Andrew Symonds. Watson then capped off an excellent display on the field by swooping in from deep backward square-leg, picking the ball up one-handed and throwing the stumps down from outside the thirty-yard circle to find Shaun Pollock short of his crease.Flintoff, like Sangakkara had earlier on, battled on, but without support there was never any real chance of launching an assault on 256 from 118 for 8. Sangakkara’s 65 included some fine strokes as he uninhibitedly took the aerial route whenever offered width outside off, and flicked and drove wristily through the on-side when the ball was full and straight. But it was nowhere near enough. Flintoff kept the crowd interested with 38, but when he holed out to long-on with the score on 150, giving Watson his third wicket, the game was over.Australia’s batting could well have gone the World XI way, with wickets falling at regular intervals after a fine start. Adam Gilchrist and Simon Katich, opening the batting, put on 80, thanks mainly to Gilchrist, who went after the bowling while Katich was content biding his time. Gilchristhad rattled up 45 off just 48 balls before being cleaned up by a full one from Kallis that came in just a touch. Ponting said hello to Flintoff with a cracking pulled six, but played one shot too many and perished on 23, trying to come down the pitch and loft Pollock out of the ground.

Then Muttiah Muralitharan applied the famous Kandy choke. Big spinning offbreaks garnished with the odd fizzing doosra proved too much to digest for Damien Martyn, who tamely chipped to mid-on, and Katich (68) who closed the face of the bat early and popped back a return catch. What Murali began Daniel Vettori ended. The hallmark of quality finger spin is accuracy, and Vettori held the ball virtually on a string, varying his pace, trajectory and angle of delivery like an old master.Vettori accounted for Symonds, Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey and Watson, but not before Symonds and Hussey had compiled invaluable 30s. When the Australian innings ended on 255, thanks to a late flurry from Lee, Vettori would have believed his 4 for 31 had put the World XI on track to victory. Then again, this is Australia, and dominating half the game is often not enough to ensure victory.

AustraliaAdam Gilchrist b Kallis 45 (80 for 1)
Ricky Ponting c Lara b Pollock 23 (128 for 2)
Damien Martyn c Lara b Muralitharan 0 (128 for 3)
Simon Katich c & b Muralitharan 58 (142 for 4)
Michael Clarke c & b Vettori 6 (154 for 5)
Andrew Symonds c Flintoff b Vettori 36 (206 for 6)
Shane Watson c Lara b Vettori 8 (223 for 7)
Michael Hussey c Pietersen b Vettori 33 (231 for 8)
World XI
Virender Sehwag c Hussey b McGrath 6 (18 for 1)
Jacques Kallis lbw b McGrath 8 (45 for 2)
Brian Lara c Symonds b Bracken 0 (50 for 3)
Rahul Dravid c Ponting b Lee 4 (75 for 4)
Kevin Pietersen lbw b Watson 2 (82 for 5)
Kumar Sangakkara c Ponting b Watson 65 (101 for 6)
Shahid Afridi lbw b Symonds 2 (104 for 7)
Shaun Pollock run out (Watson) 5 (118 for 8)
Andrew Flintoff c McGrath b Watson 38 (150 for 9)
Daniel Vettori c Ponting b Lee 15 (162 for 10)

It was not, Stephen Fleming conceded, quite as heartbreaking as losing a series off the last ball of a match, but it still wasn’t that great a way to go down. Lance Klusener has made something of a habit of wrenching games away from New Zealand and he did it again on Saturday, crashing Shayne O’Connor through midwicket for four to give South Africa victory by three wickets in the sixth and final Standard Bank one-day international at Newlands.On Wednesday Klusener hammered 41 off 21 balls to beat New Zealand at Kingsmead. On Saturday he was positively sluggish by contrast, taking 41 balls for his 59. But then again, his timing could not have been more perfect as New Zealand were again left to curse the sight of him.Fleming said afterwards that plans had been mooted to contain Klusener in such circumstances, but, he acknowledged, they simply hadn’t worked. And New Zealand, he added, weren’t the only team still to come up with a foolproof method of stifling the left-hander.The victory gave South Africa a 5-0 victory in the series, but, as South Africa’s Shaun Pollock conceded, the gap between the two sides wasn’t quite that wide, particularly in the last three matches. As Fleming noted: “You could point out in most games the moments when one player has taken the game away from us and that was the difference at the end of the day.”At Newlands New Zealand probably produced their best cricket of the series, built around a 150-run partnership between Chris Cairns and Roger Twose. Cairns hit the ball every bit as well, if not better, than Klusener for his 84 off 72 balls and Twose finally nailed down the one-day century that had eluded him in 74 previous matches.Cairns’ straight hitting was awesome in its timing and on most days it was an innings good enough to have won a match. Twose’s century, too, was well crafted and welcomed by its fashioner, but as he noted ruefully: “It just doesn’t mean as much if you don’t win the game.”The pair lifted New Zealand out of a mire at 39 for three, but after both had gone the tourists did not kick on well enough, particularly in the last five overs as they added only 19 and lost four wickets.Still, 256 for nine looked a decent enough score and seemed even better when Shayne O’Connor ripped out the first three South African wickets for just 30, the mini-collapse starting when Daryll Cullinan again failed clearly out of position as an opener.When Gary Kirsten was deceived and caught and bowled by Chris Harris at 65, South Africa were wobbling badly, but Jonty Rhodes and Mark Boucher put the innings back together again with a partnership of 106 for the fifth wicket.Even so, New Zealand still had a grip on the match with South Africa needing 71 off the last 10 overs and, more pertinently, 49 off the last five.That, however, was the signal for Klusener to bring the big gun out of his holster. He needed someone to stay with him, however, and the support came from Shafiek Abrahams playing in his first ODI.Abrahams made only 16, but he passed the strike back to Klusener at every opportunity and with the short straight boundaries at Newlands beckoning, Klusener went over them four times. It was studied hitting, but all of it still left South Africa needing seven off the last two balls. No problem. He hit the first two fours of his innings and South Africa were home and dry, if a little sweaty.The tour now turns itself towards the three-Test series, with South Africa able to take a few days off to celebrate while New Zealand bid farewell to their one-day specialists and welcome the Test match reinforcements.Fleming says that it will be easier now for the tourists to make the switch from the one-day game to the serious stuff, given that they will all welcome a change of pace. They have two warmup matches before the first Test in Bloemfontein. How well Fleming can regroup his warriors remains to be seen.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is keen on playing a scheduled tri-series in Sri Lanka between August 15 and 30 instead of September, as was originally proposed by the Sri Lankan board.The request follows India’s decision to play an ODI series against West Indies in September, comprising not more than five matches. The dates for that series have not been finalised yet.”We want the tri-series to be held in August rather than what has been proposed by the Sri Lankan board, which is in September,” Niranjan Shah, the BCCI Secretary, told PTI. “I am going to Colombo to attend the Asian Cricket Council’s Executive Board meeting on May 21 and would take the opportunity to discuss the matter with the Lankan board officials.”The triangular features South Africa as the third team and could be India’s first series of the new season following the ongoing tour of the West Indies.