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Sachin Tendulkar has suggested that every Ranji Trophy game be played on two different pitches with two different balls to prepare the Test team for bigger challenges in overseas conditions

PTI03-Dec-2016Sachin Tendulkar has suggested that every Ranji Trophy game be played on two different pitches to prepare a better Test team for overseas assignments.He also suggested that bilateral Test series could be made more engaging by having back-to-back home-and-away rubbers so that the strength of two teams remains mostly constant but the varying conditions pose a bigger challenge.”I have thought a lot about neutral venues in Ranji Trophy [which is being tried this season],” Tendulkar said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in Delhi.”I have a suggestion which can be radical. When we go to places like Australia, New Zealand, West Indies and South Africa, we play with Kookaburra balls which swing early. Think about a young Ranji batsman playing with SG Test ball in India and then facing difficulty overseas.”Let us have the first innings on a greentop with Kookaburra balls, which would give openers a challenge. Even the bowlers will have something. Our spinners will also learn how to bowl with the Kookaburra on greentops.”Now let there be a pitch adjacent to the greentop which would be a rank turner. Now the second innings will be played on that track with the SG Test ball which would also help our batsmen play against quality spin bowling. We have been too focussed on playing pace in overseas conditions but we should not forget how to play spin bowling.”Tendulkar felt the use of two different pitches and two different balls would nullify the toss factor.”A captain would start thinking that winning the toss will give him only 10 percent advantage that is his right to choose first,” he said. “But if he chooses to bowl on greentop he should remember that he would need to bat on a turner in the fourth innings.”BCCI president Anurag Thakur was also among the audience.

Ricky Ponting, the former Australia captain, told a London court that he was present with Brendon McCullum when he allegedly received a call from Chris Cairns inviting him to discuss a ‘business proposition’

ESPNcricinfo staff20-Oct-2015Ricky Ponting, the former Australia captain, has described to a court how he was present in a hotel room in India during the 2008 IPL when Brendon McCullum received a call from Chris Cairns that McCullum described as “a business proposition”.Ponting was appearing at Southwark Crown Court in London via a video link from Australia as the latest prosecution witness against Cairns, who is charged with perjury for allegedly lying under oath in a libel trial, saying he had “never” cheated at cricket.At the time Ponting and McCullum were team-mates for Kolkata Knight Riders in the first year of IPL.”I was staying with Brendon in the team hotel in Kolkata in 2008 on the eve of the first IPL tournament,” Ponting recalled. “We were just sitting, sharing a drink, when he received a phone call – his phone rang. It was a very brief phone conversation, probably less than five minutes. He put the phone down, hung up and said it was Cairnsy and he ‘just made me a business proposition’.””We stayed together for a short time. I didn’t ask any more questions … As soon as I heard it was about business, I wasn’t interested anymore.”Giving evidence last week McCullum, 34, had claimed Cairns sent him a car which took him to his hotel, where McCullum alleged spot-fixing was discussed.Ponting, whose long-time nickname of ‘Punter’ was given to him by Shane Warne, was asked by Orlando Pownall QC, for the defence, whether he considered McCullum knew about match-fixing, and would have understood terms like “spot-fixing” and “spread betting”.He replied: “Right now I would; in 2008, maybe not as much.”Leanne McGoldrick, a players’ agent, also took the witness box on Tuesday, to describe an evening when McCullum, who she was managing at the time, had asked at a dinner at her Christchurch home after New Zealand’s 2008 tour of England whether she thought Cairns was involved in match-fixing.It was on that tour where McCullum gave evidence last week that he had had breakfast with Cairns in a Worcester café where Cairns allegedly made a second approach to him to spot-fix.McGoldrick said McCullum had first asked if she thought any New Zealand players were match-fixing. When she said she didn’t think so, he asked about Cairns. She said she did not think he was.”He said he’d had an occasion in England – in a bar or cafe, I can’t remember which – with Chris, and Chris had asked him whether he knew how to spot-fix.”McGoldrick said: “I was completely shocked … I couldn’t believe what he was saying.”She told McCullum to report the approach and he said he would, but their business relationship ended soon after.The trial continues.

Bowled out for 96 in 46.2 overs, Yorkshire then watched as Chris Nash stroked a pleasing 80 off 87 balls

Paul Edwards at Headingley10-Apr-2013
ScorecardYorkshire’s cricketers were probably full of new-season optimism this morning and losing the toss will surely not have shaken their confidence. By close of play, however, Andrew Gale’s players had received a bracing dollop of what Division One cricket is all about.Bowled out for 96 in 46.2 overs, Yorkshire then watched as Chris Nash stroked a pleasing 80 off 87 balls. When bad light ended play 19 overs early, Sussex were already in the throes of establishing a strong position, albeit that Ryan Sidebottom had taken all three wickets to fall in a predictably unsparing display.”Every attempt is a wholly new start,” wrote TS Eliot in East Coker, and on few days in the sporting calendar does the sentiment seem more true than the first day of the County Championship season. It is nearly seven months since the players left the field in September and a lot of improvements can be made in that time. Spring beckons, albeit a chilly one this year, and at 10.45am on the first morning of the four-day season everyone is top of the averages. (“Bottom of ’em too,” the curmudgeons might reply but how many cricketers listen to them in April?)Andrew Gale made just 2 as Yorkshire’s top four managed 13 between them•PA Photos

In the many interviews they conducted before the start of the season Jason Gillespie and Gale were at pains to say how tough they expected the top tier of English cricket to be. It took less than a session for the Yorkshire hierarchy to be reassured that their judgement was spot on. Facing an attack that offered them very little loose stuff, the much-vaunted Yorkshire top-order, albeit lacking Joe Root, crumbled away like fresh Wensleydale on a wicket which justified Ed Joyce’s decision to bat first. Poorly placed on 40 for 4 at lunch, the batsmen could only add a further 56 in the afternoon session, even on a wicket which eased a tad.The star of the day was the ex-Surrey seamer Chris Jordan. Apparently surplus to requirements at The Oval, Jordan bowled with pace and accuracy to take 6 for 48, the best Championship figures of his career. His first victim, Gale, was a leg-side strangle but his others owed little to luck and much more to Jordan’s admirable rectitude, which proved too much for the techniques of some home players. Gale himself said that he had expected his batsmen to “stand up” and described some of the dismissals as “soft”Perhaps the skipper was thinking of Alex Lees, who battled with immense composure for 79 minutes and 51 balls before chasing a rather wide-ish one from Jordan. More likely he was referring to Jonny Bairstow, who made 29 before edging an attempted pull off James Anyon three overs after lunch. That gave the Sussex new-ball bowler a deserved second success and it began a collapse that saw the last six Yorkshire wickets tumble for 38 runs in less than 14 overs. Jordan made hay and the sun shone. Azeem Rafiq made an inventive 23 and was the last man out but none of bottom half of the home line-up could stay with him.When Sussex batted Nash took five boundaries off seven Jack Brooks deliveries and you could almost hear some of the home spectators muttering about “bloody headbands”. Sidebottom, whose coiffure has also seemed to need constraint at times, cheered the Yorkshire faithful a little more by trapping Luke Wells for 2 and then having Michael Yardy caught behind by Bairstow for 14, although the former skipper had added 76 with Nash by the time that wicket fell. Nash nicked a good ball to Bairstow just before play was halted but Yorkshire are already in need of more wickets early on Thursday. Gale’s men will not be pleased to be reminded that the full Eliot quotation reads: “Every beginning is a wholly new start and a different kind of failure.”

Sri Lanka Cricket has said it has paid its cricketers their outstanding dues, which had been pending since last year’s World Cup

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Mar-2012Sri Lanka Cricket has said it has paid its cricketers their outstanding dues, which had been pending since the 2011 World Cup. The ICC had paid 42.36% of the dues to the players directly, in December, out of the participation fee due to Sri Lanka from the tournament. SLC announced in February that it would pay the remainder of the dues by the end of the month, after the state-owned Bank of Ceylon agreed to release 600 million rupees (approx US$5.07 million) to the board, following discussions with sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage.The board now said the players “have been paid all their dues in full up to date.””We extend our sincere thanks to the sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage and the secretary, ministry of sports for assisting Sri Lanka Cricket to source these funds at this very difficult time in order to pay our players,” a board release said.The Sri Lanka players had been owed around $4.3 million by SLC in December before the ICC paid part of their dues. The board is in the middle of a major financial crunch after having run up debts of $32.5 million to finance the building of two international stadiums in Hambantota and Pallekele, and to renovate the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, for the World Cup.Edited by Dustin Silgardo

John Davision, the Canada batsman, has said the team is “pretty down” after its two losses but greater self-belief was key to a better performance

Osman Samiuddin in Colombo02-Mar-2011If every player was as honest as Canada’s John Davison, sportsmen might not be ‘professional’ anymore. So couched are most reactions to wins, individual performances, highs and lows, in cliché-built nothings of professionalism, they can be scripted without actually speaking to a player. And if they were as self-deprecating as Davison, then press conferences might become a popular pastime.Davison is soon to be at an age when men start worrying about life ahead of them and buy a flash car to smooth those brows. Perhaps that’s unkind on a 40-year-old but doubts, as he so candidly admits, are creeping in. He has a grand total of zero runs from two innings and nine balls faced as an opener in this World Cup. He first thinks it might be “a little bit of a lack of technique” in his case, though admittedly the ball Thisara Perera did him with at Hambantota wasn’t half-bad.”Personally for me, it’s probably more a mental game,” he said. “I’m 40 years old and probably have those self-doubts that do I have the ability to perform at this level? I’ve been hitting the ball pretty well in the nets and I just need to give myself a little time to get in. I got a good ball against Sri Lanka, I’ll give hats off to the bowler there. But against Zimbabwe I had a game-plan and I wanted to hit [Ray] Price over mid-off early but probably could’ve given myself a few more balls to get in. I don’t think it’s too far away.”He was asked about tomorrow’s likely team and if he had known it he would’ve given it. There is talk, he said, of him moving away from the new ball, as if he was a reporter reporting on his own troubles. “I’m not a 100% sure what the team is tomorrow but there is talk of me shuffling down the order…I haven’t got a leg to stand on so I’ll bat wherever they tell me to right now.”The problem for him, John Davison says, is the mind•AFP

Canada might need Davison version 2003 to bat through positions 1-10 given the kind of form their other batsmen have been in. Their top score is Rizwan Cheema’s 37 in the opening game of the group against Sri Lanka and collectively have crumbled for 122 and 123. There is genuine talent in the squad – in the young slip of a boy Nitish Kumar – and other, rougher delights in Cheema and Hiral Patel, but such is the Associate’s plight. Pakistan’s attack, whatever shape it takes, will not make life any easier.”If you look at the scoreboard you’d probably say yes [the top order has been a problem],” Davison said. “I don’t think necessarily the bowling has been getting us out, possibly in my own case probably a little bit of a lack of technique and a couple of younger guys lacking a bit of self-belief. If you come to watch them in the nets you’ll see they’ve got talent. If they can clear their heads in a certain way to perform in the middle, it’ll give them the best chance to being successful.”This campaign is Davison’s third and “not so great compared to the others.” Canada have on occasion been competitive in the past, at the very least their batting; in 2007 they made 228 and 249 against England and New Zealand respectively, performances they want to repeat. But the side is “pretty down” at the moment.The one, admittedly small, consolation is that they are up against a side tomorrow that Associates must allow themselves to dream against. Pakistan is the ultimate Associate lottery, a game against them the day one man writes his own legend. It has happened twice at the World Cup.”We have to have our best day and they have to have their worst day,” Davison said when asked to rate the chances of an upset. “You always go into the game with some hope of winning it otherwise you don’t turn up. We’ll go into the ground hoping to deliver a good performance and hopefully Pakistan have a poor day which they have done in the past on many occasions.”We haven’t played them before. They’re a great team and a very varied attack. For example we have our challenges in reading their spinners. One of the biggest challenges in the subcontinent is to play reverse-swing in later overs.”The bad news is they haven’t got much help from their two Pakistan-origin players, Cheema and Khurram Chohan. “It’s quite interesting that the two Pakistani guys are quite shy,” Davison said. “It takes a lot of prodding to get a lot of information out of them. Maybe if we sit them down tonight and we prod them they might be able to give us some more information.”

Plays of the day from the IPL game between Chennai Super Kings and Kings XI Punjab in Chennai

Siddarth Ravindran at the MA Chidambaram Stadium22-Mar-2010Ramesh Powar had the better of Matthew Hayden and his Mongoose•Associated Press

Where’s your regular bat?
In the absence of regular captain, MS Dhoni, there’s no doubt over who the
Chennai crowd’s favourite player is. They were screaming ‘Hayden, Hayden’
when he emerged for the pre-match warm-ups. When he walked out to bat, he
was greeted with similar chants, mixed with a few cries of ‘Mongoose,
mongoose’. They didn’t have to wait long to see the much-discussed bat; in
the second over Hayden signalled for it when he had a free-hit. To the
fans’ disappointment, he didn’t connect with a big swipe. Worse followed
in the Super Over, when the Mongoose’s larger ‘sweet spot’ proved of
no use, as Hayden was bowled first ball.The Chennai ripple
Fans at the IPL are generally a boisterous bunch, happy to roar their
approval even at a no-particular-reason bugle, and enthusiastic in
counting down the end of time-outs. The MC at the MA Chidambaram Stadium,
though, had a hard time getting a Mexican wave going. Around the 12th over
of the Punjab innings, he implored the spectators in stand D to stand up
and wave to no effect. At his repeated cajoling, a few fans desultorily
got to their feet, prompting desperate cries of ‘Pass it on, pass it on,’
from the MC, but the wave was still-born. Halfway through the chase,
however, at no one’s prompting, a Mexican wave started rolling around the
stadium as the home team seemed headed for a straightforward win.How about that one?
In the ninth over of the chase Ramesh Powar was convinced he had Hayden
lbw, though the massive appeal was turned down by the umpire because the
ball pitched outside leg. Off the very next delivery, he tricked a
charging Hayden by pitching the ball a little shorter, and the ball
crashed into off stump. Before launching into his celebrations though,
Powar made a tongue-in-cheek appeal to ask the umpire whether that was
good enough to be adjudged out.A botched celebration
While Chennai looked to be coasting towards victory for much of the chase,
it started to get a little tense towards the end. Parthiv Patel’s square-driven
four on the first ball off the 18th over provided some relief for the home
team, but he was stumped off Piyush Chawla on the next delivery. Punjab
were back in the game, and Chawla got set for his trademark send-off – get
down on one knee and scream while forcefully punching the air with a
clenched fist. However, as he bent down to start his celebration, his foot
slipped and he ended up on his backside.Multi-skilled players?
Bowlers are becoming increasing adept with their footwork. Over the past
month, both Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard ran out Zimbabwean batsmen by
kicking the ball onto the stumps with their left foot during their
follow-through. While the West Indian allrounders needed angled shots to
hit the target, Juan Theron had a far simpler goalmouth tap-in; with three
stumps to aim at, his right-footed the ball onto the wicket to send back
Suresh Raina.Second-time lucky
Chennai have been one of the better fielding outfits in the IPL, and apart
from Manpreet Gony’s drop, Raina’s team was sharp in the field again, with
the captain showing the way. In the 19th over, Raina just missed a direct
hit from cover to run-out Yuvraj Singh but made amends by knocking down
the stumps from a similar position in the final over to dismiss Theron for
a golden duck.On the ball
Hayden and Parthiv had played steadily for the first three overs,
after which the Australian decided to open up. He launched a Powar
delivery towards long-off but didn’t hit it as well as he would have
liked. The fielder on the boundary, Mohammad Kaif, was so focused on
taking the catch that he lost track of where the rope was, and ended up
tripping over it and fell over as he back-pedalled. The ball
cleared the boundary.

The former Bangladesh captain joins Sazzad Ahmed in the senior women’s selection panel

Mohammad Isam20-Sep-2025The BCB has appointed Salma Khatun as the country’s first woman selector. The former Bangladesh captain will join Sazzad Ahmed in the women’s selection panel. Bangladesh are in the last stage of preparation ahead of the Women’s World Cup next month.Salma was Bangladesh’s first captain in international cricket. She went on to lead the country in 65 WT20Is and 18 WODIs. At the time of her last WT20I, she was Bangladesh’s most-capped women’s T20I cricketer, having played 95 matches. She has also played 46 WODIs.Salma was also the ICC’s No 1 bowler in WT20Is in 2014 and 2015. She took 84 T20I wickets with her offspin at an average of 18.57, with best figures of 4-6 against Sri Lanka.”I think this is a revolutionary decision by our [BCB] president [Aminul Islam], as having someone like Salma involved will provide great support for women’s cricket,” Iftekhar Rahman, the BCB’s media committee chairman, said. “This is the first time such an appointment has been made in Bangladesh.”The board has also promoted Hasibul Hossain to the senior men’s selection panel. He will join chief selector Gazi Ashraf Hossain and Abdur Razzak. The third position had been vacant since Hannan Sarkar left the role in February this year.Hasibul, the former fast bowler, played five Tests and 32 ODIs. He played in Bangladesh’s inaugural Test match against India in 2000, and was involved in the famous leg-bye that won Bangladesh the ICC Trophy final in 1997.Hasibul had been a junior selector in the BCB since July 2016, having worked closely with the Bangladesh Under-19 side that lifted the World Cup in 2020.

Their key players are out of form and that’s not good when they have to face the tournament’s most in-form batting unit

Sreshth Shah30-Mar-20242:46

McClenaghan: Titans rely too much on Gill, may be a batter short

Match details

Gujarat Titans (GT) vs Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH)
Ahmedabad, 1530 IST (1000 GMT)

Big picture

A plethora of subplots from outside the cricket field may have helped Gujarat Titans lift themselves to a come-from-behind win against Mumbai Indians in their season opener, but a 63-run defeat away against Chennai Super Kings begs the question: are the Titans of 2024 championship material?David Miller, for example, has crossed 30 only three times in 15 innings this year and averages 29. His strike rate of 119 this year is also his worst in 13 years, a steep drop from 2023 (135.2) and 2022 (147.2).Another barometer of the Titans’ performance is Rashid Khan. In their wins – they’ve had 12 of those since 2023 – he comes away with an economy rate of 7.35. But in their losses – seven in the same period – Rashid’s economy rate skyrockets to 10.03. It shows that when he struggles, they struggle too. This used to be rare but since last year’s tournament, he has leaked nine runs an over roughly once every three matches (6 out of 19; 5 of those 6 were losses)And that’s where the challenge lies as a rampaging Sunrisers Hyderabad arrive fresh off a performance that rewrote IPL record books. Travis Head has his own love story with Ahmedabad since the ODI World Cup final, Abhishek Sharma has carried his form from the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy well and Heinrich Klaasen is the only man to hit 50 T20 sixes this year. With the Narendra Modi Stadium one of the country’s best surfaces for batters, the Titans will need someone to fill the shoes of Mohammed Shami at both ends of their innings.The Titans, though, can hit back. Barring Pat Cummins, the Sunrisers pacers have gone at 11.93 runs per over in IPL 2024 and it is an area the hosts can exploit, especially their captain Shubman Gill. Ahmedabad is Gill’s favourite venue – 700 runs in 13 innings at an average of nearly 64 and a strike-rate of almost 160 – and with only 37 runs in two innings this season, he will be itching for a sizeable contribution.2:18

McClenaghan on Miller’s poor form: ‘Tough role being a finisher’

Team news and impact player strategy

Gujarat TitansThe Titans are usually predictable with their impact substitutions, so expect fast bowler Mohit Sharma and left-hand batter Sai Sudharsan to swap places. Matthew Wade is also available after missing the first two games playing the Sheffield Shield final. Shahrukh Khan or Abhinav Manohar could be tempting options in the middle order.Probable XII: 1 Shubman Gill (capt), 2 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 3 Sai Sudharsan, 4 Vijay Shankar, 5 David Miller, 6 Azmatullah Omarzai, 7 Rahul Tewatia, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 R Sai Kishore, 10 Spencer Johnson, 11 Umesh Yadav, 12 Mohit SharmaTitans will have their task cut out bowling to Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head and Heinrich Klaasen•BCCI

Sunrisers HyderabadAfter excelling in their season opener, T Natarajan missed Sunrisers’ second game with an unspecified niggle and his availability is unknown. Jaydev Unadkat, his replacement against Mumbai Indians, impressed with his change-ups and could keep his place in the XI. Wanindu Hasaranga has also not yet arrived in India.As for Impact Player options, Sunrisers could start with medium-pacer Nitish Reddy or fast bowler Umran Malik if bowling first, with Travis Head replacing them in the second innings. Washington Sundar could also be a realistic option against left-hand heavy Titans.Probable XII: 1 Mayank Agarwal, 2 Travis Head, 3 Abhishek Sharma, 4 Aiden Markram, 5 Heinrich Klaasen (wk), 6 Abdul Samad, 7 Shahbaz Ahmed, 8 Pat Cummins (capt), 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Mayank Markande, 11 Jaydev Unadkat / T Natarajan, 12 Umran MalikBhuvneshwar Kumar has gone for 104 runs in eight overs in IPL 2024•Associated Press

In the spotlight

In two innings, Vijay Shankar has scored 18 runs in 17 balls. He has not bowled either. Against a high-scoring side like Sunrisers, the Titans could be tempted to play Shahrukh Khan instead to add power to the middle order, especially since he follows a consolidator like Sudharsan at No. 3. Shankar, though, enjoys facing Bhuvneshwar Kumar (16 off 5, strike rate 320) and Jaydev Unadkat (15 off 7, strike rate 214) in T20 cricket.Bhuvneshwar Kumar is yet to take a wicket in his two IPL 2024 outings and has conceded 104 runs in eight overs. Against both Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians, Bhuvneshwar made promising starts to his spell but ended up leaking big runs in the death overs. As the senior-most bowler in a franchise where he has played since 2014, Bhuvneshwar needs to either find wickets or get his runs down. Ideally, he’d want to do both.

Stats that matter

Gill has historically struggled putting Bhuvneshwar away at the IPL, scoring only 50 runs in 48 balls while being dismissed three times in nine innings. He also has a strike-rate of only 94.4 against Unadkat.In 23 balls, Abhishek has hit Rashid for three fours and three sixes, averaging a boundary every 3.6 deliveries. His strike-rate against Rashid is 204 overall and this IPL, he is scoring at 226.Klaasen is hitting a six every 5.4 balls in 2024, behind only Andre Russell’s ball-per-six ratio of 4.6. Fifty of his 53 sixes have come between long-off and deep backward square leg.Since the start of IPL 2023, the team batting first has won six of the ten IPL games played in Ahmedabad.

Pitch and conditions

Ahmedabad usually offers a true batting surface with enough on offer to keep pacers and spinners interested. Spinners can also use the long square boundaries to good effect. The average first-innings winning score here since 2021 in the IPL is 188. In the last outing at the venue, the Titans defended 168 successfully. Expect a hot afternoon with a peak of 35 degrees during toss time.

“David served his time like I did. We know he’s a leader around the group, and on and off the field he’s doing a tremendous job”

Andrew McGlashan11-Dec-2022Steven Smith has called David Warner’s lifetime ban from leadership “fundamentally wrong” and conceded that the lengthy saga of trying to get it overturned had been a distraction for him.Warner dropped a dramatic statement on the eve of the second Test against West Indies in Adelaide when he announced he would be withdrawing from the process implemented by Cricket Australia after they had rewritten their code of conduct to allow Warner to appeal the ban.Related

• Ponting: 'Warner deserves the chance to finish the way he wants to finish'

• 'He's eager to continue' – no hint from Warner on impending Test retirement, says McDonald

• Smith hopes to 'get into a nice groove' for South Africa Tests

• Chappell: Good on Warner for telling Cricket Australia where to get off

• Hockley defends CA's handling of Warner's appeal process

“From my point of view, banning for life from leadership is just fundamentally wrong,” Smith said after Australia’s 419-run victory. “David served his time like I did. For us, we know he’s a leader around the group, and on and off the field he’s doing a tremendous job. “Warner, and CA, had wanted a private hearing in front of the independent panel but the commissions ruled that it should be held in public which Warner argued would have become a “lynching” and he wasn’t willing to put his family and team-mates through a retrial of the events at Newlands in 2018.Nick Hockley, the CA chief executive, defended the organisation’s handling of the situation, saying the independent panel was needed for transparency and was “disappointed” Warner had withdrawn. However, Todd Greenberg, his counterpart at the Australian Cricketers’ Association, argued Warner had been left with no choice and expressed the frustration that CA had not handled the appeal themselves.”It’s been a difficult one for him, it’s been a difficult week,” Smith said. “It has been more of a distraction for Davey, no doubt, going through that himself. David has said he’s done and dusted and get on with it. He’s got our full support. Hopefully he can have a really big series for us against South Africa with the bat.”Warner made 21 and 28 in the second Test – after making 5 and 48 in Perth – to continue a lean run in Test cricket over the last two years where he is averaging just 28.12 without a century. He is due to play his 100th Test against South Africa in Melbourne at the end of the month, but questions are being asked as to whether he should be part of the tours to India and England where his record is poor with averages of 24.25 and 26.04 respectively.In the series against West Indies, Warner has twice been out inside-edging the ball onto his stumps•Associated Press

“I didn’t realise it was that lean, to be honest,” former Australia captain Ricky Ponting, speaking on on Saturday, said of Warner’s recent record. “Coming on for two years for a Test-match century. Four half-centuries in his last 26 innings.”You talk about how things are getting tougher for Warner with the attack the South Africans have got. Well, it’s never easy in India either. We know what wickets we will get there. We will get turning pitches. No doubt. It’s never been easy for any Australian batsman going there and trying to play in those conditions. Then on the back of that, what’s after that? The Ashes, in England as well. We will get conditions that will suit [Stuart] Broad, [James] Anderson and [Ollie] Robinson.”Smith, however, believed that more than anything Warner needed a change of luck to see the big runs return. One thing perhaps in his favour is that South Africa are among his most productive opponents with an average of 52.26 from 12 Tests including four centuries although that dips to 40.18 in Australia.His dismissals in this series have been inside edges driving against Alzarri Joseph and Roston Chase, a nick to the keeper chasing a wide delivery, and a bat-pad catch to short leg.”Davey’s a once-in-a-generation player, he’s arguably the best-ever opener for Australia,” he said. “The way he’s able to put pressure on bowlers from the outset helps everyone down the order as well.”He’s been an incredible player for a long period of time, his record suggest that. There’s no reason why he can’t have a big series for us coming this week as well. He’s batting nicely. He hasn’t had a great deal of luck lately either, it seems like every time he gets an inside edge, it goes onto the stumps. A lot of the time when you’re scoring runs you need some luck.”For me it’s in his body language the way he goes out there – he’s really positive and just in a good frame of mind. Particularly yesterday when he went out to bat he was in a good frame of mind, the way his feet were moving was really sharp.”

Eight close contacts of the allrounder, most of them players, are also in isolation

Nagraj Gollapudi27-Jul-2021Krunal Pandya has tested positive for Covid-19, forcing the second T20I between Sri Lanka and India, scheduled for Tuesday evening, to be pushed back by a day.Pandya’s positive test result came not too long before the scheduled start of play – 8pm local time – and eight other members of the Indian contingent have so far been identified as Pandya’s close contacts and asked to isolate in their hotel rooms.It is understood that Pandya complained of a sore throat on Tuesday morning, after which the Indian medical staff asked him to take the rapid antigen test, which came out positive. It is also understood that Pandya also underwent the RT-PCR test, globally recognised as the gold standard in Covid-19 testing, and that came out positive too.Related

• Manchester Test in question after another Covid-positive case in Indian camp

• Dhananjaya de Silva and Chamika Karunaratne seal last-over win to level series

• Krunal Pandya's immediate contacts test negative for Covid-19

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BCCI secretary Jay Shah said in a media release that the entire Indian squad would also undergo the RT-PCR test to “ascertain any further outbreak” in their camp. The BCCI did not identify the eight people who had been asked to isolate along with Pandya, but a board official told PTI that the majority of those were players. “The reports (of today’s tests) will come in the evening (around 6pm) and if everyone is in the clear, we can have the match on Wednesday. Maximum among the eight close contacts who are also in mandatory isolation are players.”It could not be confirmed how long Pandya and the eight others are going to be in isolation, but one person privy to the discussions in the camp said that the period would be determined based on the strain of Covid-19 in question.There are no reports of positive results among the Sri Lankans, who are scheduled to be tested next on Wednesday morning.Professor Arjuna de Silva, who overseas SLC’s bubble protocols for international tours, told ESPNcricinfo that it remained a mystery as to how Pandya could have contracted Covid-19, as there have been no reports of the bubble being broken, nor any other significant irregularities. The series has been played behind closed doors and both teams have been operating out of a bio-secure bubble with their movements restricted to only the team hotel and the ground.The India team has a hotel – the Taj Samudra – to themselves, and even the staff working in the hotel are essentially in the bubble, and undergo frequent testing. de Silva said that no one else, including staff, had tested positive so far.Prithvi Shaw and Suryakumar Yadav were scheduled to leave for England immediately after the Sri Lanka series•Getty Images

This is the second time Covid-19 has forced Sri Lanka Cricket to tweak the itinerary of the six-match series. The ODI series was originally meant to commence on July 13, but had to be pushed to July 18 after a few positive cases emerged in the Sri Lankan group.This is also the second time in the last week that an international match has been postponed because of a positive Covid-19 test: the second West Indies vs Australia ODI in Barbados had to be postponed after the toss had been conducted because a non-playing member in the West Indies camp had tested positive.As things stand, the second and third Sri Lanka T20Is will now be played back-to-back on Wednesday and Thursday. Though Pandya and some other players are likely to be unavailable for the last two games following the latest developments, India have enough back-up to field an XI, as they have travelled with an expanded squad of 20, plus five reserve bowlers.Though the series will end on schedule despite the postponement, the Indian team’s return home, slotted for Thursday, is likely to be delayed. The development is also set to impact plans for Prithvi Shaw and Suryakumar Yadav, the two batters who were selected to join the Indian Test squad in England. Shaw and Yadav were scheduled to travel to England at the end of the tour of Sri Lanka.India, who earlier won the three-match ODI series 2-1 – despite being in Sri Lanka with a squad missing many first-choice players, who are in England to play a five-Test series in August-September – are 1-0 up in the T20I series following their 38-run win in the first fixture.