The Sri Lankan A and Pakistan A teams will play a triangular one-dayseries in India in November, according to former Board of Control forCricket in India (BCCI) president Raj Singh Dungarpur.Dungarpur told PTI in Mumbai on Friday that both the Pakistan and SriLankan cricket boards have agreed to visit India. "I spoke toPakistan Cricket Board (PCB) director Brig Munawar Rana and Sri LankanBoard CEO Anura Tenekoon and both have agreed in principle,"Dungarpur added.The Indian A team will also play a three-match `Test’ series with thePakistan A team followed by a two-match `Test’ series against SriLanka A.The triangular series will come up for ratification at the BCCI’sworking committee meeting in Mumbai on August 25.

New Zealand A’s successes continued yesterday in the Coromandel King Moin-ud-Dowlah Gold Cup cricket tournament in Hyderabad.New Zealand A qualified for the tournament quarter-finals by beating Associated Banks by 105 runs at the Lal Bahadur Stadium.Making first use of what was described as a perfect batting strip, New Zealand scored 275/9 in their 50 overs. Dominating the innings to show the national selectors, who announce their Test team for Pakistan tomorrow, that he was not out of the frame was opener Matthew Horne.He scored 78 runs off 98 balls. Playing quality cricket shots he also improvised and used his feet well to the Associated Banks’ slower bowlers.Providing him with good support was Hamish Marshall whose 47 was scored from 51 balls. Opening the innings with Horne, Chris Nevin scored 21. Matthew Bell continued the good pace of scoring when hitting 36 from 40 balls.Kyle Mills made early roads into the ABs batting and ended with three for 22. He and Shane Bond used their pace to good effect on what was regarded as a good batting track.Spin bowlers Paul Wiseman and Brooke Walker created indecision among the Indian batsmen to finish with 1-32 and 2-22 respectively and leaving the way clear for Jacob Oram to complete the 40.5 over dismissal for 170 runs. Oram, another contender for the Test side, took three for 13.

Victorian cricket coach John Scholes resigned today, just six days before the state team starts its season with a one-dayer in Sydney against New South Wales.The former state batsman, who had coached the Bushrangers for five years, cited personal reasons for the shock decision.The Victorian Cricket Association faced a long board meeting tonight as it tried to work out how to replace Scholes so quickly.”The timing’s not perfect, although I think the environment and culture that exists will be able to cope with that,” Scholes told Channel Seven.Scholes had just signed a new contract to coach the team for the summer, but it is understood he had been under increasing pressure away from cricket for more than a month.”I just felt to go into the season personally, not being 100 per cent – I’ve just been struggling a little bit and been a bit flat – I didn’t think that was fair to Victorian cricket.”Scholes spoke to each member of the squad after breaking the news this morning to VCA chief executive Kevin Jacobs and chairman of selectors Shaun Graf.”It is a bit of a shock, I haven’t heard a great deal, but certainly it’s disappointing for our team,” said batsman Brad Hodge.Jacobs knew Scholes had been experiencing some problems, but said this afternoon: “It obviously shocked us no end. He said it was something he’d been thinking about for a while.”Jacobs also stressed the resignation had nothing to do with cricket issues.He conceded it was likely Victoria would re-work its current coaching staff, with Mick O’Sullivan and Brian McFadyen the two assistants under Scholes.The team is due to train again on Wednesday, ahead of Friday’s season launch.”We hope to make a decision fairly quickly,” Jacobs said.Jacobs praised Scholes’ contribution to Victorian cricket as a player and coach.”We would welcome him back in some manner,” he said.

With Hansie Cronje’s life ban now confirmed by the Pretoria High Court, the right of cricket’s governing bodies to administer cricket has been reaffirmed. And not a moment too soon, some might believe.Whichever way it is seen, Judge Frank Kirk-Cohen’s judgement simply re-establishes the status quo. Even before argument began in the case, the United Cricket Board had acknowledged that the ban could not and did not extend to activities such as coaching children outside the ambit of the UCB’s structures, working in the media and buying a ticket to watch a cricket match.Crucially, Judge Kirk-Cohen took the view that the matter of accrediting Cronje as a journalist still lay with the UCB. In other words, it is still up to the UCB to decide if and when they see fit to allow Cronje to use their facilities.In other words, nothing has changed. It might be stretching a point to argue that the UCB “won” the case. Certainly, though, Cronje lost.And all of this does rather beg the question of exactly what Cronje believes he is entitled to. By his own admission he dealt with bookmakers over a number of years. So have other cricketers, his supporters have argued, and they haven’t been banned for life.But Cronje took it a step further. He tried to induce his team-mates, most notably Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams to underperform. That the plot failed is neither here nor there. The intention was there and if players deliberately set out to give of less than their best, then what we have, by almost anyone’s reckoning, is match-fixing. Certainly, if players give their wickets away or bowl badly on purpose, then they have deceived their team-mates, their supporters and anyone who has taken the time and trouble to pay attention to their performances.The UCB, no doubt, will heave a sigh of relief. And so, too, will the International Cricket Council. A crisis for cricket has been averted and although most people believe that the scourge of corruption has by no means been eradicated, at least the right of cricket to rid itself of cheats has been confirmed.The match-fixing saga has been a desperately sad affair, both for the game and for Cronje himself. It is to be hoped that he will go away and reflect on what has happened to him and to cricket during the past 18 months or so. What cricket still seeks from him are signs of genuine remorse. While he continues to say that he is sorry for what he has done, his challenge to the ban tended to suggest that what he was really sorry about was being caught.There may, in the future, be a place for him, some kind of role for him, in cricket. The door has never been completely slammed in his face. But he has to accept that any return will come by way of invitation, not by demand.

Nick Knight was made man of the match and the man of series after England completed their five-match demolition of Zimbabwe with victory in the final one-day international in Bulawayo.Set 229 after Zimbabwe’s Grant Flower had scored a century, England coasted home by seven wickets with six overs and two balls to spare.Knight ended unbeaten on 80, and Paul Collingwood hit a rapid 56 from 46 balls, enabling England to romp home early.”It’s been a great series for me and a great series for the team,” Knight told Sky Sports.”We talked a lot about how we would play this series and it was good to makeit work. It’s been great cricketing weather and we’ve really enjoyed it.The England captain Nasser Hussain was full of praise for his players’ performance.”I was thoroughly pleased with the way we did it today,” he said.”The bowling, especially the last 10 overs, was great. The batting as well,the way we won in the last 10 overs was great. It was about a 250 or 260 wicket so we did what we wanted to by keeping them down.”Hussain is now looking forward to the forthcoming tour of India.”The hard task is to up ourselves an extra 25% for India,” he said. “We realise this is just a starting point. India will be difficult.”Zimbabwe’s stand-in captain Alistair Campbell admitted he was disappointed at the whitewash.”Who knows where we go from here,” he said. “We need to get together and plan our way forward, we need to turn things around. We’ve played non-stop cricket for about 18 months, it would have been great to have some time off.”

After some dramatic moments on the final day at the Aziz Stadium in Chittagong, Zimbabwe made the ten runs they needed before lunch to secure an eight-wicket win in the second and final Test, to take the Coca-Cola series against Bangladesh 1-0.The home team, 227 for 4 overnight, lost their last six wickets while adding only 74 runs. Douglas Marillier created mayhem in Bangladesh middle order, dismissing four batsmen for 55 runs. Bangladesh were all out for 301, leaving Zimbabwe just 10 runs to win, which they achieved for the loss of two batsmen, neither of whom troubled the scorers.Trevor Chappell, optimistic by nature, could hardly take a sip of his morning coffee before one of his overnight batsmen had departed. Travis Friend, against whom the Bangladeshi batsmen showed courage in this Test, dismissed the most dependable, Javed Omar, trapping him lbw with the first ball of the morning.Friend did the trick with swing in the light breeze. Javed’s departure may have had a negative impact on Ashraful, the youngster who had shown commendable patience the previous day, scoring just one run from 53 deliveries. After smashing Marillier for a boundary, he was tempted by a clever leg-break to go for an ambitious shot that fetched up in the hands of the deep mid-wicket fielder.With hopes of avoiding an innings defeat looking remote, Naimur Rahman failed again. Although he hit three fabulous boundaries in his 24, he was then trapped lbw by Marillier. Bangladesh had lost their seventh wicket with the score on 267.Enamul Haque was dismissed for duck as he offered a return catch to Marillier, the hero of the morning. Mashrafe-Bin-Mortaza followed next ball, stumped by Andy Flower as gave Marillier the charge.Mohammed Sharif provided some light relief, hitting Grant Flower for two huge sixes in the same over. With Khaled Masud also scoring two boundaries, the innings defeat was narrowly avoided. Bangladesh finished with 301, leaving Zimbabwe just 11 runs to win.Mashrafe, the fastest of the Bangladesh pacers, clean bowled Dion Ebrahim for a duck with the fifth delivery of the first over, to a roar from his home crowd. Stewart Carlisle then edged a catch to Akram Khan at slip. Travor Gripper then hammered two boundaries and Zimbabwe had won by eight wickets.Grant Flower was adjudged man of the match for his sparkling bowling, which accounted for eight wickets in the match.

The Central Districts Women’s Under-21 Team to play in the National Tournament at Christchurch on December 27-January 1 is:Cindy Forsyth (captain, Manawatu), Sarah Duffill (Hawke’s Bay), Philippa Gerrish (Horowhenua Kapiti), Erin McDonald (Hawke’s Bay), Sara McGlashan (Hawke’s Bay), Zara McWilliams (Hawke’s Bay), Aimee Mason (Taranaki), Aroha Northover (Hawke’s Bay), Elizabeth Perry (Wairarapa), Amy Pope (Taranaki), Toni Street (Taranaki), Kelly Sutherland (Hawke’s Bay). Coach: Mario William (Marlborough). Manager: Catherine Brady (Hawke’s Bay).

HAMPSHIRE’S field of dreams has been named as the second best in the country in a survey of cricket grounds.The new multi-million-pound Rose Bowl complex at West End compiled 76 points out of a possible 100.The author Anthony Meredith was so impressed by the setting that he described the new venue as “a thrilling, unambiguous statement of self-belief. I wish I could award it 20 out of 10”.The writer, in his annual report for The Cricketer magazine, gave the club full marks for sign posting and car parks, and was also impressed by its catering, friendliness, and the scope of goods on sale at the ground.But he was critical of Hampshire – as well as many other counties – for their poor promotion of home players, describing their overall anonymity as “disastrous”.He also took every county to task over their marketing of the four-day championship.Canterbury was given the accolade of being the best ground with 86 points. Derby was denigrated as the worst, scoring just 45 points, one more than the home of English cricket, Lords. Both were slammed for their lack of atmosphere.Graham Walker, Hampshire’s chief executive, was encouraged by the results, but warned: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”He added: “It’s like the car hire advert – `we may be number two so we have got to try harder’.”The county have their sights set on achieving Test county status. Durham’s Chester-Le-Street ground, which has been the county’s home for only six-and-a-half years was recently awarded a floodlit one-day game between England and India next summer, and Hampshire have been given ODI status from 2003.Hampshire have just started a £2m fitting out of the pavilion. This will include a Long Room, with a 240-seater restaurant, a members’ bar with seating for 200 people, and the club will be putting some 600 seats on the top deck which will be used for entertaining.The pavilion will also include refurbished players’ and umpires’ dressing rooms, plus an office for the director of cricket.”A lot of people have put a lot of hard work into this ground, but there is still a long way to go,” added Walker. “We didn’t score too highly in the `pizzazz’ and `heroes’ categories in the survey, so we have a lot more work to do.”But I can guarantee we will have a lot more pizzazz next summer.”

The Central Districts side to play Auckland in the next round of State Shield cricket, at Pukekura Park, New Plymouth on Wednesday is:Glen Sulzberger (captain), John Nelson, Mathew Sinclair, Richard King, Ben Smith, Bevan Griggs, Campbell Furlong, Brent Hefford, Michael Mason, Andrew Schwass, Lance Hamilton, Jamie How.

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) – England are not fully prepared for a six-match one-day series against India, which starts on Saturday, due to lack of adequate practice, coach Duncan Fletcher has said.Fletcher had complained earlier in the week about poor facilities in this eastern Indian city, where the first match of the series will be played.”We are pretty under prepared for the one-day series. The reasons for that are obvious,” Fletcher told reporters after England played a practice match with a local team.”We got some practice today. But the opposition was not too difficult, though they did try their best,” he said.England bowled out the Cricket Association of Bengal XI, led by Rohan Gavaskar, son of Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar, for 150 in 42.3 overs and then achieved the target in the 26th over.England are expected to name their team for Saturday’s game after a nets session at the Eden Gardens stadium on Friday.Fletcher declined to comment on the likely composition of the side, which could include a three-pronged pace attack of Andrew Caddick, Darren Gough and Matthew Hoggard.But Durham medium-pacer, Paul Collingwood, 25, could have made a case for himself grabbing three wickets for 18 runs in Thursday’s game despite a stomach problem.”Collingwood bowled well. He had a good game even though he’s not feeling too good,” Fletcher said.Left-handed opener Marcus Trescothick kept wickets on Thursday and Fletcher did not rule out the possibility of him getting the nod ahead of James Foster.”Trescothick had kept wickets at the under-18 level. If needed, he will play as wicket-keeper,” Fletcher said.”That could give us more options.”Trescothick scored 240 runs at an average of 48.00 in last month’s three-Test series last month, which India won 1-0. He has scored 883 runs in 26 one-day internationals for England.The series ends in early February in Bombay, from where the England team will travel to New Zealand for a test and one-day series.