Ashley Giles, the England left-arm spinner, has flown home to England and will play no further part of the Ashes following news that his wife, Stine, is suffering from a brain tumour.Jamie Dalrymple, the Middlesex allrounder, has been drafted in from the England Academy in Perth. He is the second Academy player to join the senior squad after Ed Joyce replaced Marcus Trescothick who flew home at the beginning of the tour.”The news came to me [last night] that his wife had a bit of a problem,” Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, said. “And it was confirmed that it could be a potentially very serious problem, so he asked to go home. Our thoughts and sympathy are with him and he flew out this morning. We’ve called up Jamie Dalrymple and he’ll join up with us on the Melbourne leg.””I’ve been involved with England for seven years and I rate him probably the most professional cricketer I’ve dealt with in England, or in the top three,” added Fletcher. “He really wanted to play, he got upset when he wasn’t, but he came back and took the flak. And so this news must be hard, but he handled it very very well. When he left last night, we wished them well, and hope everything turns out fine for the family.On a day when England’s Ashes hopes were brutally extinguished this is a further blow to their morale.

Shahid Afridi and Imran Nazir made suprise returns to the Pakistan ODI squad to play South Africa while Abdul Rehman, Shabbir Ahmed and the fit-again Abdul Razzaq have also received expected call-ups for the five-match series, which gets underway with a Twenty20 game from February 2.Afridi has been the subject of much debate in Pakistan recently. The two main English language dailies, Dawn and , captured the divided opinions perfectly, one running stories on his imminent recall, the other on his equally imminent axing. He has averaged under ten in his last 25 matches though he can point to constant shuffling up and down the order.Afridi told AFP, however, that he was confident he would regain his touch in South Africa where he performed well for Griqualand West as an overseas player two years ago. “I know I have to lift my game before the World Cup and I am hopeful that I will be able to do that because I know the South African grounds well.”Shabbir and Razzaq are fit again, the latter recovering from a thigh injury that ruled him out of the Test series and the former returning to international cricket for the first time in over a year, after he was banned by the ICC for an illegal action.Wasim Bari, chairman of selectors, said that both players were fully fit now, acutely aware of the problems Pakistan had faced on this tour with injured players. “We hope that these players will boost (the) Pakistan team for the one-day series and Razzaq and Ahmed have proved their fitness before our physiotherapist Grant Compton,” Bari said.Nazir, 25, meanwhile returns for his first international action in two and a half years, mainly on the back of strong performances in domestic competitions. “Nazir has shown he has overcome his poor form and we have rewarded him for his good showing in the local competitions,” said Bari.Nazir, who last played one-dayers in the 2004 Asia Cup in Colombo, has a healthy first-class average of 40.20 from three matches this season but his domestic one-day average last season was relatively poor at 18.33 from six matches.Danish Kaneria, Asim Kamal, Faisal Iqbal and Shahid Nazir, part of the Test squad, will return home after the Test at Cape Town. Additionally, Shoaib Akhtar and Umar Gul have already returned, after picking up injuries while on tour. Shoaib Malik who missed the Tests with an ankle injury is expected to be fit for the ODI series. One more player, unidentified as yet, will return home after the Test series, leaving Pakistan eventually with a 16-man squad.Pakistan one-day squad:
Inzamam-ul-Haq (capt), Younis Khan (vice-captain), Mohammad Hafeez, Yasir Hameed, Imran Nazir, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Yousuf, Shahid Afridi, Kamran Akmal (wk), Abdul Razzaq, Zulqarnain Haider (wk), Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Mohammad Asif, Abdul Rehman, Shabbir Ahmed, Imran Farhat and Mohammad Sami

After the useful workout for the batsmen, Scotland’s bowlers managed to find their groove before rain brought an early finish to their two-day warm-up match against a UAE Development XI in Sharjah.The Scottish attack produced an efficient display as the UAE side were dismissed for 196, handing the visitors a lead of 112. The wickets were shared around with Glenn Rogers, a left-arm spinner, taking 3 for 36. John Blain, the paceman, took 2 for 25 and Ross Lyons finished with the same figures.Scotland had just started their second innings when the rain arrived and their next outing is the vital Intercontinental Cup meeting with UAE, which starts on Thursday and will decide if Scotland progress to the final.

Scorecard

Trinidad and Tobago carried their unbeaten run into the KFC Cup final with a tough five-wicket win over Guyana at the Arnos Vale Sports Complex in St Vincent. A good bowling performance bowled Guyana out for 114 in 38 overs, and set a revised target of 109 from 42 overs, T&T chased it down with 14.4 overs to spare.Mervyn Dillon, the international discard, justified his recall to the T&T side with an impressive 4 for 35. He struck in his second over with the wicket of Royston Crandon, removed Travis Dowlin in his sixth, and then got rid of top-scorer Narsingh Deonarine (34). Lendl Simmons affected the run out of Shivnarine Chanderpaul to leave Guyana at 44 for 4, and they were never able to recover from that position. Ravi Rampaul, another bowler with international experience, finished with 2 for 18 from eight overs.In reply, T&T were in similar trouble at 64 for 5, but Sherwin Ganga, the left-handed batsman, and Rayad Emrit, the allrounder, took them to victory with an unbeaten sixth-wicket partnership of 46. Emrit followed up his spell of 1 for 28 from ten overs with an unbeaten 27-ball 30 to win the Man-of-the-Match award. Fast bowlers Esuan Crandon (3 for 29) and Reon King (2 for 39) shared the wickets to fall.Trinidad and Tobago will meet the winner of the second semi-final between Windward Islands and Barbados.

Prior to their departure for the World Cup in the Caribbean yesterday, the two Obuya brothers, David and Collins, landed a significant sponsorship deal worth USD$1500 (Ksh 105,000) with CopyCat, a local office equipment supplier, for the duration of the tournament.Vishal Patel, the CopyCat executive director, presented the pair with the cheque on Wednesday morning at Ruaraka Sports Club in Nairobi.”We are very grateful for the support from CopyCat,” David Obuya said. “It is a show of their confidence in us as individual players and the team in general. It should encourage other local corporate organisations to support the team and the game.”Obuya added that it was “discouraging” that his team are on the verge of their second World Cup yet still without an official sponsor.

ScorcardNeil McKenzie was composure personified as he raced the Lions to a comfortable six-wicket victory with 14 balls to spare in the Pro20 final against the Cape Cobras at the Wanderers. The Cobras were always under pressure after superb Lions bowling ensured wickets fall at regular intervals as the visitors could muster just 147 for nine after being sent in to bat.Garnett Kruger was fast and furious as he took 3 for 32, setting the tone for a brilliant effort in the field by the Lions. Alviro Petersen led a faultless catching display with four catches, including a magnificent effort to catch JP Duminy off a full-blooded pull. Tyron Henderson then came on and took two wickets in his first over as Benji Hector (17) and Henry Davids (21) tried to hit out after they had consolidated the Cobras innings with a third-wicket stand of 30.A dodgy 45 for 4 then became a decidedly bleak 70 for 6 as Friedel de Wet and Eugene Moleon picked up the wickets of Wesley Euley (7) and Warren Swan (6). Vernon Philander and Rory Kleinveldt stemmed the flow of wickets as they scored freely in their seventh-wicket stand of 40 off 34 balls, before strike bowler Kruger returned to dismiss Kleinveldt for 19 and he quickly added the wicket of Con de Lange for a duck in the same over.Philander clubbed 32 runs off the last three overs, ruining star spinner Werner Coetsee’s figures in the process, to race to 56 not out off 47 balls and at least give the Cobras a respectable if mediocre score. After Kruger’s onslaught, Henderson gave nothing away to finish with brilliant figures of two for 19 in his four overs, while Moleon bowled three tight overs for 14 runs. de Wet provided penetration with two for 36.Alan Dawson struck early for the Cobras when he caught-and-bowled the quick-scoring Lions opener Alviro Petersen for two in the first over, before McKenzie and Blake Snijman took control with their stand of 79 off 63 balls. After such a quick start, and with so many wickets in hand, victory was always going to be a formality thereafter and McKenzie’s fine knock almost ushered the Lions all the way.He fell with just two more runs needed, scoring a classy 73 off 55 balls, with eight fours and a six. Adam Bacher struck twice for the Cobras by bowling Snijman for 23 and having Henderson caught in the deep for 9, but Vaughn van Jaarsveld belted him for successive sixes to break the shackles and he had raced to 28 not out off 14 balls by the finish.Left-arm paceman Charl Willoughby served the Cobras well up front with the new ball, conceding just 19 runs in his four overs, but the Lions scored briskly against all the other bowlers.

The sight of empty stands at a limited overs match in India, played underlights, in Mumbai, thought to be the spiritual home of Indian cricket, wasa first. Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh and Robin Uthappa were up against each other, in coloured clothing, and apart from a few Cricket Club of India members and their enthusiastic grandchildren, one match observer, some officials and a handful ofjournalists, there was no one watching a game specifically designed todraw audiences to cricket.It was a bit of a first to see Yuvraj, arguably the best fielder in thecountry, fielding at third-man instead of his customary position at pointor cover, but then Twenty20 is different. The strokes batsmen play aredifferent, the intentions of the bowlers, their plans to take wickets, aredifferent from what you see in 50-over cricket. But what even more of afirst was someone in the pavilion yelling out to Yuvraj, asking who wasplaying. “Punjab against Karnataka,” he yelled back, “Punjab are fielding.”The matter of the show-cause notice has been declared closedby the board but Yuvraj was still wary about talking to anyone from themedia. He did, though, share a few thoughts about this new form of the game.”It is a big challenge. You have to go out there and score quickly, but,like one-day cricket, it’s not just about slogging the ball. It’s not aseasy as it looks,” said Yuvraj. “Playing here will helpus acclimatise for the Twenty20 World Championship. This is a format whereallrounders and utility cricketers will have a bigger role to play.”Barring a few of India’s big names, who’ve played domestic cricket at ahigh level in England, Twenty20 cricket is new to most. And given that this is thefirst edition of the tournament, there’s bound to be a fewstatisticians in business, recording the time somethinghas occurred in this form of the game in India.Indeed, there was a first of a different kind on April 7 at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.Indian cricket saw its first bowl out when the match between Gujarat and Saurashtra ended with the scores level. For most of the players, the bowl out – where bowlers attempt to hit the stumps off a normal delivery with no batsman there toprotect them – was a new concept. You would think that men whocan swing the ball and cut it, flight it and spin it, beat batsmen withvariation and guile, should find the job of hitting unprotected stumps relatively easy. Yet it’s not so.Parthiv Patel, captain of the Gujarat team, though, had seen it before. “Iwas playing for a Combined XI in England in 2005 in a competition that had the champion Twenty20 sides from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, besides England,” said Patel, after the event. “”Itwas a rained-out encounter and had to be decided by a bowl out. Unlikeagainst Saurashtra when only five bowlers were given a go, we had 10bowlers, and we won.”Of course, the team Patel was playing for in England was a far moreaccomplished one than the Gujarat side that took the field againstSaurashtra. “My side was quite an experienced side with New Zealand’sStephen Fleming, Phil de Freitas, the former England seamer, our ownRobin Singh and Rohan Gavaskar playing.”And Patel was happy to pass on to his teammates, before the bowl out, what he had learned from his first experience. “I just toldthem not to swing the ball and to try and make things simple. It is not aseasy as it looks from outside. The pressure is high in a bowl-out,” Patelsaid.There are bound to be many more firsts, of various kinds, cricketing andotherwise, but one can only hope that this phenomenon of cricket beingplayed without television coverage or people in the stands watching, isnot a first but a last.

As the curtain came down on a seven-week adventure that has put Irish cricket firmly on the world map, their outgoing coach, Adrian Birrell, warned that Ireland’s cricket administrators will need to take radical steps to ensure that their top players, many of whom are now contracted to first-class counties, are available for future international engagements. Birrell, who hands over this month to Phil Simmons after five years at the helm, believes that the only solution may lie in playing the bulk of Ireland’s fixtures outside the county season.Ireland’s ninth appearance of the World Cup ended in disappointment as Muttiah Muralitharan and Farvez Maharoof led a demolition job that was all over by the lunch interval, but the achievements of this squad has ensured that the coming season is set to be their busiest yet. In addition to their nine matches against county opposition in the Friends Provident Trophy, Ireland are set to take on Canada in the final of the Intercontinental Cup in May, a triangular one-day series with Holland and West Indies in mid-summer, and two further one-off games against India and South Africa at the end of June.But Birrell said that Ireland would struggle to match their recent achievements, let alone improve on them, without the services of key performers such as Niall O’Brien, who is contracted to Northamptonshire, Eion Morgan (Middlesex) and Boyd Rankin (Derbyshire). Another of their key players, the opener Will Porterfield, is in talks with Gloucestershire, while the captain, Trent Johnston, 32, who works in the textile industry, dropped a broad hint that he would soon be announcing his retirement. Given the unparalleled experience that this squad has enjoyed in recent weeks, he is unlikely to be the only one.”There’s got to be a strategic decision by Irish cricket to hold onto their players, and how they are going to do that I don’t know,” said Birrell. “I don’t see a solution other than playing out-of-season, where there’s no clash [with county cricket]. We are at a disadvantage playing in our season because we will never be at full strength – three or four of best players are playing for counties. Obviously players who are ambitious want to play cricket at the highest level, as in Test cricket. And it’ll be hard to stop them.”It’s a tricky one,” he added. “On the one hand you want to piggy-back onto the counties with their professional game, but on the other you want to have all your players available for every match. Going semi- or fully-professional is the route, but this is all new to us. We’ve only recently got into the Super Eights, and now the world rankings. All of these problems are good problems to have, but I’m sure the ICU will be attending to that very seriously.”In the interim, the solution being advocated by Birrell and Johnston was to postpone the Irish international season until the end of the English county season, with a view to playing fixtures in countries such as UAE, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. If it sounded like an ad-hoc solution to an unexpected conundrum, that’s largely because it was – after all, it’s hardly a move that would establish the sport in the affections of the newly cricket-crazy Irish public. But the confusion reflects the maelstrom into which Irish cricket has been pitched. The road ahead is unlikely to be as full of fairytales as the past few weeks have been.

The Irish Cricket Union has announced that the Irish Senior Cup has been renamed, and will be known as the Bob Kerr Irish Senior Cup in memory of the former ICU chairman and president.Kerr died suddenly in Jamaica where he was supporting Ireland during their recent World Cup campaign. He was president of the ICU in 2004, and chairman from 2000 to 2001. At the time of his death he was also the chairman of the North West Cricket Union.Tom Prior, the ICU president, said: “The ICU is extremely grateful to Hope Kerr for her formal patronage of this prestigious competition. Bob was a great supporter of the Irish Senior Cup and I believe it is very appropriate that his name will now be commemorated in such a manner. The generous contribution made will go specifically towards the development of youth cricket in Ireland.”Hope Kerr said, “My husband Bob was a real enthusiast for cricket, and the All-Ireland dimension of the game was particularly important to him. For that reason I am very pleased to give his name to this Senior All-Ireland Trophy.”The Bob Kerr Irish Senior Cup gets under way on Saturday with 32 teams participating in the opening round.

Jayantha Dharmadasa, the chairman of Sri Lanka Cricket, has expressed disappointment at the withdrawal of Rumesh Ratnayake as assistant coach of the Sri Lankan team.Ratnayake, the former Sri Lankan fast bowler, had signed a four-year contract with Sri Lanka Cricket nearly a month ago to become assistant coach, replacing the outgoing coach Trevor Penney. But in a complete u-turn Ratnayake has stated in a letter that he is unable to accept the position due to family commitments.”I am very disappointed with Rumesh’s decision. We have been trying to get his services for the past two years and when he decided to sign with us to become assistant coach we were extremely happy,” said Dharmadasa. “We have been criticised for not contracting former cricketers for the job of coach. This is what we get in return when we try to open the doors for them.”Dharmadasa said that he had great difficulty in getting Ratnayake released from his present position as development officer of the Asian Cricket Council of which Dharmadasa is the chairman. He said that Trevor Bayliss, who has signed a two-year contract with SLC to become Sri Lanka’s next head coach, will be given the opportunity to find a suitable assistant.