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If anyone believed the Championship race was over after the first day of the final round of matches, their views must surely have been dispelled by day two

George Dobell at Taunton13-Sep-2011
Scorecard
Paul Horton helped Lancashire make a positive start to their innings•PA Photos

If anyone believed the Championship race was over after the first day of the final round of matches, their views must surely have been dispelled by day two.Had Lancashire scripted the second day of this match, it could scarcely have gone better for them. After taking the final five Somerset wickets for just 66 runs in the morning they scored at nearly four an over for much of their reply and were only slowed in the last hour as Somerset’s spinners found their line.As things stand, however, Lancashire could still win this game and fail to clinch the Championship. They could lose this game and still win the Championship. Warwickshire and even Durham remain in contention. There’s much to unfold over the next two days.That Lancashire remain in contention going into the penultimate day of the campaign speaks volumes for their resilience as a team. Many of their rivals would have lost heart after a trying first day, or lost focus amid the unfolding drama.Lancashire did neither. Their top order accumulated runs nicely without ever betraying any of the anxiety that might have caused them to falter and they go into the third day with their dream of a first outright Championship title for 77 years still alive. And they did it all without their captain, Glen Chapple, whose hamstring injury prevented him from taking the field all day.It took only a few minutes to claim another bonus point in the morning session. With just 13 balls left of the 110 overs, Kyle Hogg produced a surprisingly sharp bouncer that took the glove of Craig Meschede on its way to the keeper.Somerset’s tail folded rather meekly. James Hildreth’s excellent innings ended when he aimed a footless waft at one well outside his off stump and only succeeded in edging to slip, while the spinners made quick work of the final three batsmen for the addition of just eight runs. Gary Keedy, who might be playing his final game for Lancashire if Warwickshire are successful in luring him to Edgbaston, finished with 4 for 57 and now has 60 wickets in the Championship season. Somerset’s final total – 380 – looked someway below par on this pitch.That thought was soon underlined as Lancashire’s openers started brightly in reply. Paul Horton, driving beautifully, raced to 50 and passed 1,000 first-class runs this season – though without a century – while Stephen Moore played the anchor role and helped post an opening stand of 104.Though Horton’s pleasing innings ended when he edged an attempted cut and Moore pulled a filthy long-hop to deep midwicket, Karl Brown also timed the ball sweetly in becoming the third Lancashire batsman to record a half-century. He and Moore added another 102 for the second wicket.Somerset, meanwhile, were not quite at their best. While Steve Kirby and Alfonso Thomas both bowled decently, Geemal Hussain looked so out of his depth it was tempting to throw him a rubber ring. When he didn’t drift down the leg side, he bowled too short and his record since arriving at Taunton – 20 Championship wickets at 47 apiece – represents a major fall to earth after his success with Gloucestershire.Murali Kartik also struggled. Reduced to bowling in the rough outside the right-handers’ leg stump in an attempt to frustrate the batsmen, he also delivered five no-balls – though one was for allowing a third fielder to slip behind square on the leg side – and afterwards commented, while rolling his eyes: “To say it’s a flat pitch is an understatement. It’s an old school Taunton wicket.” He could, at least, take some satisfaction with the wicket of Brown, who prodded forward and edged one that turned and left him.Somerset also missed Charl Willoughby. The 36-year-old left-arm seamer is Somerset’s leading wicket-taker in first-class cricket this season with 53 victims but he was left out after it was concluded he lacked penetration with the new ball. He has one year remaining on his contract at Taunton but it seems that he may well be on the move. Essex could well be his new home.Meanwhile both Kartik and Brown could find themselves in some trouble with the ECB. Kartik was reported by the umpires after an incident where Horton played the ball back to Kartik who, in attempting to threw down the stumps, threw the ball very close to Horton’s head. It surely wasn’t intentional, but it didn’t look pretty.Brown was called in to see the umpires after appearing to question whether his edge to Trego had carried. To be fair, he appeared to be asking for clarification rather than showing dissent.”We’ve given ourselves a chance of winning it,” Moore said. “We can’t control what’s going on elsewhere, so all we’re aiming to do is focus on our own cricket. Our target was to bowl them out for under 400. It’s obviously a good pitch and you can score quickly here, so we’re in a very good position.”Indeed they are. Their first priority on day three is simply to claim maximum batting bonus points (for 400 runs within 110 overs), though they could decide to accumulate a vast first innings total and bat just once in the match. While the pitch might be expected to turn a little more as the match progresses, however, it’s worth noting that Somerset chased down 228 in 40 overs without losing a wicket here against Yorkshire earlier in the Championship season. Anything is still possible in this absorbing title race.

Governments in Australia and abroad have asserted the importance of finding ways for sport to return

Daniel Brettig24-Apr-2020International exemptions to allow an India touring party to arrive in Australia next summer would be seriously considered by the federal government in the event of wider travel bans, strongly suggesting that Cricket Australia will be able to avoid losing up to A$300 million in revenue in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.While the vast majority of CA’s staff continue to reel from being asked to stand down on 20% of their regular pay from next week, while executives and a skeleton staff remain on 80% of their salaries, the governing body is understood to have received highly encouraging news about their outlook, at least as far as the lucrative India tour is concerned.On Friday, the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced work on establishing a set of national principles for sport and recreation to assist state governments. “What is a safe way to be able to do that, and to get as much consistency as we possibly can across all the states and territories,” Morrison said. “That was strongly supported today by all the states and territories, having something along those lines they would find very helpful.”In terms of the big codes – AFL, NRL, things like that – they’re both working through states and territories presently. And what we’ll be doing, and particularly what the medical expert panel will be doing, will be drawing their proposals together. My understanding is that they have already had quite a lot of expert advice going into their plans. That will probably present a lot of the homework that needs to be done to support the expert panel in setting out what some of those principles are.”ALSO READ: BCCI suggests deferring World Test ChampionshipGovernments both in Australia and abroad have asserted the importance of finding ways for sport to return, not only as revenue raisers for sporting bodies and broadcasters but also as a means of aiding the morale of the wider public. The ECB chief executive, Tom Harrison, is believed to have hammered home this message to Kevin Roberts and other board chiefs during conference call discussions this week, and it will be especially true if restrictions on large public gatherings mean that sport can only be viewed via television screens for quite some time.Such a scenario would likely leave CA with a hole of around A$50 million in its annual revenue of nearly A$500 million, but nowhere near the sort of blow they could have expected without being able to welcome India for a series of Test and limited overs matches due to pull the organisation out of the low point of its four-year revenue cycle.It will also raise further questions about how and why the CA chief executive Roberts – in moves endorsed by his board – chose drastic measures to stand down his staff a little more than a week ago while also pushing for deep cuts to the money CA distributes to its state association owners and the players represented by the Australian Cricket Association. CA is believed to have been advised by its auditors at PricewaterhouseCoopers that it is likely to qualify for the government’s JobKeeper scheme.On the players’ front, board to board meetings between a CA delegation of chairman Earl Eddings and board directors Michelle Tredenick and Paul Green, and an ACA cohort of its president Greg Dyer, chairman Shane Watson and board member Neil Maxwell, are believed to be imminent.However the states have been frustrated not only by a lack of financial information being provided but also by being asked to deal formally not with Roberts but his chief operating officer, Scott Grant.Information handed over by CA so far is believed to have been heavy on graphics and pictures but light on detail, not recalling a financial document so much as a brochure. Similar handouts were delivered by CA to the ACA during the 2017 pay dispute when Roberts led the governing body’s effort to break the players’ revenue sharing model until he was sidelined late in the process due to time running out, leaving the final dealings to his predecessor James Sutherland and also the former team performance manager Pat Howard.While the ACA is a partner in the game with CA, the state associations’ standing as CA’s structural owners and revenue beneficiaries is contributing to a rapid rise in frustration with the central governing body’s approach. Alienation of the state associations was one of the strongest themes running through the independent cultural review of CA that took place in 2018 in the wake of the Newlands ball-tampering scandal, an area that Roberts had previously been directly responsible for as CA’s head of people and “One Team”, ostensibly devised to bring all parties closer.

CA’s head of community cricket knows there are challenges to come due to Covid-19

Daniel Brettig26-Jun-2020Knowing well in advance that several of Australian cricket’s states were going to cut a swathe through their community programs did not make the blows any less galling for Cricket Australia’s head of community cricket Belinda Clark.Of more than 150 jobs lost across the states in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and CA’s own calls for major cuts to state distributions – a request still being fought by New South Wales and Queensland – at least half were drawn from the community cricket field forces set-up through directed funding from head office to each of the states. Nowhere were the cuts deeper than in Victoria, where the community cricket staff of more than 40 is now just 12.At the same time as Clark was dealing with these cuts to an area that remains as CA’s biggest strategic priority for the game’s future, she was also having to deal with the reduced budgets her own department was facing as a result of commitments by the former chief executive Kevin Roberts, backed by the CA board, to make deep internal cuts to the governing body.ALSO READ: What’s in the inbox of interim Cricket Australia CEO Nick Hockley?Over a long and torturous process that ultimately saw Roberts sacked, Clark was able to claw things back to a point where community cricket’s departmental head count is the same now as it was in March. Nevertheless, the tribulations of the past three months have left their mark on Clark, and made her more adamant than ever that a collaborative approach is urgently needed.”There’s still plenty of money in cricket,” Clark told ESPNcricinfo. “Our job is to find a way of using that as effectively as we can. I have a strong belief that we’ll be better if we do that together in a collaborative way with the community, and we’ll do everything we can to understand what the community’s after, that we stay in touch with what they’re feeling. So as a sport we need to work together.”We’ve still got more people out in the field than we had 10 years ago. So if you try to take a step back and get some perspective, is this ideal, no, did we want to do it, did we want this to happen, no, has everyone been impacted, yes. What we’re now trying to do is make sure that whatever we’re doing is supporting the people that are actually putting the game on week in, week out, which is the community.”As for dealing with the raft of disillusionment that has flowed down from CA itself to the state associations and out among players and community competitions, Clark said that earlier promises still needed to be kept. “Trust is built by delivering on your promise. Our promise to the community is they’re at the forefront of our thinking in everything we’re trying to do.”We’ll do our best to live up to our promise, which is to say we won’t be able to give the community everything they want, we won’t get everything right, but our intention absolutely is to support them through this, because we know that ultimately they’re providing opportunities at a local level for a young kid to start their journey.”In assessing the decidedly chaotic landscape where New South Wales is alone among states in not making cuts to their state-based community cricket programs, Clark said that while solutions needed to be found, individual associations still needed to take responsibility for their own patches. Given the major reduction in resources for community and rural cricket in Victoria in particular, this leaves a particularly knotty problem still to be solved.”We spent some time and effort putting more staff in and making sure they were directed at clubs,” Clark said of the preceding 18 months. “What we found was that the support they were providing was a positive from the clubs and they enjoyed getting a much closer relationship and support from the state association.”So we know what support they’re after, and we know we’ve now got a decrease in the number of field staff, so what we’ve got to do is find solutions in connecting those things. We’ve upped our effort in the customer service centre in order to supplement and still provide some support. But the reliance is still back at each state and territory level as well to make sure they’re doing what they need to do. It’s a really sad situation we’re in, but we need to keep finding solutions to it.”Clark has flagged that while there will be a “small” overall participation increase for Australian cricket over the summer of 2019-20, Covid-19’s impact had been felt. This was true both in its effect on indoor and winter cricket competitions, and also in reducing the amount of time CA and the states had to capitalise on the wave of enthusiasm created by the women’s T20 World Cup and its showpiece final crowd of more than 86,000 at the MCG on March 8.”Into the future I’m optimistic around where we can get to, we will unashamedly focus our attention on getting kids to play because we know we need to provide those great experiences early in order to keep someone in the game,” Clark said. “People don’t turn up and play cricket at 20 having not participated before, so we will focus our attention on helping clubs and associations get kids in.”To blindly walk forward expecting no impact for overall participation, that would be silly. We will be impacted, but I’m optimistic we can keep the number of kids playing. The only way we can do that is to support volunteers. So that’s where our focus will be.”We’re looking forward to bringing back into people’s minds the awesomeness of 86,000 people watching a women’s final, and turn that into young girls picking up a bat and ball. That’s a challenge, because there’s been a vacuum in between the two things. We’re wanting people to remember how great that was, and how great they felt, and make sure we provide opportunities for kids to pick up a bat and a ball from that.”

Paul Collingwood has ended months of speculation about a possible move away from Durham by signing a three-year contract that will commit him to Chester-le-Street until at least the end of 2014

ESPNcricinfo staff05-Aug-2011Paul Collingwood has ended months of speculation about a possible move away from Durham by signing a three-year contract that will commit him to Chester-le-Street until at least the end of 2014.Collingwood’s international career ended after he lost the Twenty20 captaincy following his retirement from Test cricket at the end of the Ashes and he had been the subject of a 28-day approach from Derbyshire in July, fuelling rumours that he may move on from the North East.But having returned to form with Durham he said he was happy to stay at his home club.”I’m a Durham lad through and through and I’ve really enjoyed being back in the dressing room with the guys,” he said. “The club is ambitious and the quality of the team shows how committed we are to winning more silverware over the coming years and I want to be part of that – bringing more sporting success back to the North East.”Geoff Cook, the Durham coach, said, “We are delighted that Paul has decided to commit his future to Durham – he is a fantastic player with a great attitude and a real desire for the club to continue to move forward. He has consistently produced match-winning performances for us since his return to the side and to have him representing the club, on and off the field, is brilliant.”

New Zealand A stay stuck on 276 for 5 with Dane Cleaver and Daryl Mitchell at the crease

ESPNcricinfo staff08-Feb-2020Stumps It was all rather damp and disappointing across in Lincoln, where the second day of the second and final four-day game between New Zealand A and India A had no cricket whatsoever. That left New Zealand at their overnight 276 for 5, with Dane Cleaver (46*) and Daryl Mitchell (36*) at the crease.On the first day, Cleaver was again the thorn in India’s side, playing a stubborn knock to make sure honours were even when play ended. After choosing to bat, New Zealand were in danger of finishing at a low score when they were 190 for 5, but Cleaver, fresh off his rearguard 196 in the previous game, dug in to keep the visitors at bay.He received good support from Mitchell, who is back in the A team after the T20Is for the senior team against India. Mitchell ended the day with 36 against his name, and the two have so far added 86 for the sixth wicket.The New Zealand top order – with the exception of Rachin Ravindra, who scored 12 – all got starts, but none of them could really carry on to score a big one. Glenn Phillips scored 65, but Hamish Rutherford stopped at 40, Will Young at 26, and Tim Seifert at 30.Mohammed Siraj got India their first wickets, in back-to-back overs, when he ended the 67-run first-wicket stand with Rutherford’s wicket in the 26th over and then accounted for Ravindra in the 28th. Shahbaz Nadeem had Young stumped not long after, and then, after a 76-run stand between Phillips and Seifert, Avesh Khan got into the act, removing both batsmen soon after one another.Many of the India Test squad are taking part in the game – of them, R Ashwin is the only bowler, and he had a fruitless day, bowling 22 overs without success while conceding 63 runs.The first four-day fixture, played at Christchurch’s Hagley Oval, had ended in a draw.

Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, Sri Lanka’s captain and vice-captain respectively, have both warned that Pakistan are a dangerous side that other teams will be wary of in the World Cup

Sa'adi Thawfeeq in Colombo25-Feb-2011Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, Sri Lanka’s captain and vice-captain respectively, have both warned that Pakistan are a dangerous side that other teams will be wary of in the World Cup. Not too many people have tipped Pakistan to win the tournament, after a tumultuous year for them in which they have been plagued by off-field issues, but Jayawardene said he was surprised by the lack of hype around them.”I find it surprising that their name is not bandied about in the mix of potential World Cup winners as they have brilliant match winners with both bat and ball,” Jayawardene wrote on his blog.Sangakkara echoed that sentiment, saying Pakistan’s batsmen were dangerous. “Any opposition is wary of them and we’re not going to take anything lightly or for granted,” he said. He was, however, confident that his bowlers would be up to the task, particularly with what he described as a “vastly improved” pace attack. Lasith Malinga has been Sri Lanka’s most successful bowler in the one-day format over the past year, and Thisara Perera, who seemed to have added a couple of yards of pace to his bowling in Sri Lanka’s opening match against Canada, has been the second highest wicket-taker.”We understand how dangerous the Pakistani batsmen are and that’s the beauty of playing a side like them,” Sangakkara said. “Those challenges I think the bowlers will enjoy. There’s been a vast improvement for us actually to have good fast bowlers in our squad. We’ve got guys who bowl over 140[kph] and we’ve got guys who swing it as well. Both sides have good pace and good spin and I think it’s going to be a battle between two teams who are looking forward to a very keen contest. Every side has a different approach and we’ve got our own, which we’re trying to fine tune as we go along. “Sri Lanka, along with co-hosts India, are being touted as one of the favourites to win the World Cup, but Jayawardene said even though Pakistan may not be hosting any games, they still know the conditions well. “Pakistan are just as familiar with the conditions, so they pose a huge danger to any side, especially in the knockout stage and it should be a good match,” he said. “Despite what people may write or not write, we certainly are fully aware of what this Pakistan side can do to any team with seemingly little effort.”One possible setback for Sri Lanka is that there are still doubts over the readiness of Malinga for the game. He missed the match against Canada with a back strain, though Perera and Nuwan Kulasekara did the job in his absence.”Lasith is improving very fast and we’ll have to look at him,” Sangakkara said. “We don’t want to rush him into a big tournament like this. He is the most important player for us so we want to make sure that he is comfortable and everyone is comfortable with the decision.”The pitch at the R Premadasa has been completely re-laid ahead of the World Cup, but Sri Lanka’s players have the advantage of having played on it during the domestic one-day tournament in January. Sangakkara, who praised the new pitch in Hambantota, said he thought the wicket in Colombo would be as good for batting. “In the match against Canada the wicket was good and we think even this surface will act the same,” he said. “We don’t’ want to think too much about the pitch.”

John Buchanan could take up a place on New Zealand’s selection panel as part of his new role as the country’s director of cricket

Brydon Coverdale19-Apr-2011John Buchanan could take up a place on New Zealand’s selection panel as part of his new role as the country’s director of cricket. Buchanan was appointed on Friday to take control of the high-performance sector of New Zealand Cricket and immediate tasks in his wide-ranging brief include overseeing the appointment of a new captain and selectors.The existing three-man panel of Lance Cairns, Mark Greatbatch and chairman Glenn Turner come off contract at the end of the month, and one option would be to make the coach John Wright a selector. However, Buchanan is also considering whether he, as the man with ultimate responsibility for the high-performance programme, should be on the panel himself.”That’s something that I’m tossing around at the moment,” Buchanan told ESPNcricinfo. “There’s every chance, but in the next couple of months it’s going to be very important to listen to a whole range of people and get their views and work out some of the logistics and practicalities of what I do. Certainly it’s an option at the moment.”Buchanan’s four-year deal officially begins next month and he will need to hit the ground running, with the choice of Daniel Vettori’s successor as captain being another key decision. But regardless of who gets the job, Buchanan does not want the captain to be overburdened, as often appeared to be the case with Vettori.”The two front-runners are Ross Taylor and Brendon McCullum,” Buchanan said. “John Wright is going to be pretty critical to that decision, because ultimately the captain and coach are going to have to work very closely together. His advice and his thoughts will be pretty important in terms of making a final decision.”One of the things we’d like to be able to achieve is to create greater leadership capacity in any side that New Zealand puts on the field – whether they’re given a formal title as captain or vice-captain should be almost irrelevant. Individual players should be able to step up, and that means making good decisions more consistently than what they have done currently. That’s one of the targets we’ll be trying to put in place.”That sort of accountability among players, coaches and support staff is likely to be a major plank of Buchanan’s strategy for stretching New Zealand to reach new heights. And although he hopes to leave the day-to-day business of coaching to Wright, he has not entirely ruled out the possibility of having a more active role when New Zealand head to Australia in November for a Test series.”Ideally I’ll be hands-off,” he said. “John Wright is the coach, and we’ll have a captain in place and he’ll have his support staff. Ultimately they need to be accountable for their performances. Hopefully we’re pretty close by that stage with that group of people that I won’t have too much of a role at all. But if not, then I’ll be around.”I see it as having to be a very close partnership [with Wright]. He coaches the pointy end of the high-performance program. If the Black Caps are not performing then it means we’re not doing things the right way. He and I need to work closely together and I’m very confident we can do that.”It will be important for the two men to work out the demarcation between their roles, especially given Buchanan’s history as a head coach. During his eight years at the helm of Australia, Buchanan helped the side win three World Cups and a record 16 consecutive Test matches, but he had at his disposal champion players like Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Adam Gilchrist.Getting the same results from New Zealand might be an unrealistic goal, but Buchanan is looking forward to the challenge of driving the team to punch above its weight. And he believes that merely by creating the director of cricket position, NZC has shown itself to be one of the most forward-thinking organisations in world cricket.”I think it’s a role that’s long overdue in cricket, and whether I got the position or didn’t get the position, I applauded the step that New Zealand have taken,” he said. “They’re a little bit disadvantaged in the way of resources, so they have to be much smarter with what they do have, a little bit more innovative and creative about how they use what they have got.”

Stuart Law, Sri Lanka’s interim coach, has labelled England the “best Test team in the world” but promises his team won’t take a backward step during the upcoming series

Andrew McGlashan at Uxbridge16-May-2011Stuart Law, Sri Lanka’s interim coach, has labelled England the “best Test team in the world” but promised his side won’t take a backward step during the upcoming series. Law took charge following the World Cup final which marked the end of Trevor Bayliss’ tenure and he is also working alongside a new captain with Tillakaratne Dilshan having replaced Kumar Sanagkkara.The visitors began their tour with a four-wicket victory against Middlesex, who included Andrew Strauss, but aren’t expected to cause England too many problems over the three Tests. Law accepts his team are seen as underdogs but the determination to prove people wrong is clear.”It’s no easy task going up against the best Test team in the world at the moment, they’ve had a fantastic 18 months,” Law said. “We know we are up against it here but we aren’t here to lose. We can match them if we apply ourselves and keep things simple. We can be a devastating team and that’s what we are planning on doing. We are here to play cricket the way Sri Lanka play cricket and if we do we’ll be successful.”Law also knows a successful tour will do his chances of a full-time position no harm and confirmed he would be keen to taking charge in the long term. “At this stage it’s a wonderful opportunity to work with one of the best teams in the world so, yes, I am keen,” he said. “I’ve got this tour to show what I’m capable of.”Sri Lanka bring with them an inexperienced pace attack but a powerful batting order backed up by some useful spinners who, Law hopes, can flourish if the dry weather continues. The bowlers made an unconvincing start at Uxbridge, conceded 321 for 5 on the first day, but bounced back to skittle the hosts for 161 and set up the run chase on Monday.”These boys bowl in 45 degrees back in Colombo so to ask them to bowl in 10 degrees was a massive ask,” Law said. “When it was a bit warmer [on the last day] they got the ball to swing a little more. Hopefully the sun does shine and if it stays dry our spinners will come into it.”Chandaka Welegedara impressed with 3 for 39 in the second innings and Dilhara Fernando, the designated leader of Sri Lanka’s pace attack, will be available to face England Lions in Derby this week having completed his IPL stint. He is due to arrive on Tuesday evening along with Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Thisara Perera and offspinner Suraj Randiv.Law has few concerns about his two main batsmen being able to adjust to conditions ahead of the first Test in Cardiff on May 26, but admitted it would have been ideal if Fernando, Perera and Randiv were already here.”It’s not ideal but the main players we are talking about, Mahela and Kumar, have played here a million times,” he said. “They know what to expect. It’s a shame the others haven’t been playing much cricket in the IPL so it would have been nice to have them here and for them to get two bites of the cherry. It would be nice to have everyone here two weeks before a big Test match but circumstances don’t allow that these days.”Another player who is likely to face the Lions is Nuwan Pradeep, the 24-year-old fast bowler, who Law has tipped as a potential successor to Lasith Malinga after he retired from Test cricket. “Filling Malinga’s boots will be tough. We’ve got a young kid on our squad who’s similar and hopefully he stands up to take his place. He’s the future. We have to find someone else who wants to play for 10-15 years.”Although Sri Lanka have never won a full Test series in England they have embarrassed the hosts before, notably at The Oval in 1998 and again at Trent Bridge in 2006 when they levelled the series. A drawn contest on this occasion would be a commendable result, but Law isn’t a man to settle for anything less than victory.

George Bailey played the quintessential captain’s innings, scoring an impressive, unbeaten 160, to guide Tasmania to their improbable fourth-innings target of 315 against Victoria at the Bellerive Oval

ESPNcricinfo staff14-Feb-2011
ScorecardGeorge Bailey’s career-best score steered Tasmania to victory•Getty Images

George Bailey played the quintessential captain’s innings, scoring an impressive, unbeaten 160, to guide Tasmania to their improbable fourth-innings target of 315 against Victoria at the Bellerive Oval.Bailey’s tenth first-class ton was also his career-best effort, and came under steady pressure. Resuming at 1 for 1, Tasmania lost opener Nick Kruger with only 21 on the board. Bailey walked out to join Alex Doolan, and the pair set about stemming the rot with a determined stand. They remained together for a ball short of 34 overs, and added 112 runs to take the sting out of Victoria’s bowling, before Peter Siddle got Doolan to edge behind for 54.Mark Cosgrove could not contribute much to the cause, and perished for 12 to give Victoria a chance to target the lower middle order. Travis Birt scored 26, adding 47 with Bailey before Jon Holland trapped him in front, with Tasmania 106 short of the target with five wickets remaining. Things seemed set for a tight finish, but Bailey shut the door on Victoria with an emphatic array of strokes.He waded into the Victoria attack, hitting 18 boundaries in his innings, that spanned 235 balls. James Faulkner steadied his end, with an unbeaten 47 off 77 balls, and the pair finished the game in the 91st over of the day.