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Showing posts from July 31, 2011

Anderson leads dominant England to big win

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England's bowlers fought through dogged batting, the absence of DRS for lbws and some sloppy catching to avoid a repeat of Lord's 2007 - when India saved the Test - and completed a comprehensive win 28.3 overs before the scheduled close of a gruelling final-day scrap. India's four big hopes survived 93, 113, 56 and 68 deliveries, which meant England had to work for wickets and also that they never let those batsmen feel they were in. James Anderson took out Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar, although it could be argued that he struck the knockout blows after Stuart Broad and Chris Tremlett had softened the batsmen up. Although there were two dropped catches and two controversial not-out lbw decisions, it all went down in a manner suggesting England had scripted it thus. They wouldn't have budgeted for the strongest resistance to come from Suresh Raina, who proved he belonged with a fighting 78, but by the final session Anderson was in red-hot form. He compl

No guarantees for Hayden investment

Matthew Hayden's plans to become a part-owner of the Brisbane Heat Twenty20 franchise are far from guaranteed, despite the air of inevitability that hung over the announcement of his signature to play for the team in next summer's expanded Big Bash League. So far only the Melbourne Renegades and the Sydney Thunder have got approval to seek minority private ownership of up to 49%, a process that is currently being overseen by the financial services company Credit Suisse. Other teams are presently allowed to negotiate unofficially with potential investors, but that moratorium will end once the Sydney and Melbourne deals are settled. In addition to playing, Hayden wants to align his company The Hayden Way with the Heat as part of what he breathlessly called "a leisure-tainment and entertainment package that has never yet been seen on our shores in cricket". However Cricket Australia will have to be satisfied, when the time for private investment in the Heat is allowed,

Harris key to Australia's attack - Bayliss

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Trevor Bayliss, the former Sri Lanka coach, has nominated Ryan Harris as the Australian bowler most likely to trouble a formidable home batting line-up during next month's Test series in the island nation. Harris is one of numerous Australian players waiting nervously to discover whether they will be chosen in the first Test squad to be led by the new captain Michael Clarke, after the Australia A tour of Zimbabwe clouded the selectors' options almost as much as it shed light on them. The squad will be announced on Tuesday morning. Told earlier this year that he was being considered as more of a Test match bowler, Harris, 31, was omitted from the limited-overs squad for the Sri Lanka tour despite showing he had returned to full fitness during the Indian Premier League. Bayliss said Harris' combination of speed, skid and movement both ways would make him the sort of bowler capable of troubling the likes of Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. "From a pace point of v

India wary of over-rate problem

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India have made a conscious effort to speed up their over-rate to help the captain, MS Dhoni, avoid being banned for the next Test at Trent Bridge. Dhoni is currently sitting on two fines having previously been penalised against South Africa and West Indies leaving him one away from a suspension. Although no official figures are yet available, as any over-rate penalties are only confirmed at the end of a Test, it is believed that India are significantly below the required 15 overs per hour that Test teams should be reaching. England aren't blameless - few sides reach the minimum requirement these days - but unlike Dhoni, Andrew Strauss doesn't currently have a record. India's over-rate hasn't been helped by Dhoni himself deciding to bowl at various stages during the game, which meant changing equipment with Rahul Dravid, and Ishant Sharma admitted it was something the bowlers were being reminded of. "We did talk a lot about the over-rates," he said. "Dho

Ishant shines, Stuart sizzles

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Spell of the day Would England bat comfortably through the morning session to set up their lead? That wasn't in India's plans and they hauled themselves back into the Test through Ishant Sharma's spine-tingling spell of three wickets for one run in 16 balls. He began with possibly the ball of the match to remove Kevin Pietersen who gloved a bouncer to the wicketkeeper. Then, five balls later, Ishant found the edge of Ian Bell's bat with a lovely leg cutter and soon claimed his third when he speared one through Jonathan Trott's flat-footed drive. If he could have added a fourth then the match was there for India, but by the time he claimed Eoin Morgan the sting had gone from the visitors. Catch of the day Morgan's dismissal, however, did spark the one moment of minor controversy in the day. He spliced a pull to midwicket where Gautam Gambhir dived forward to take a fine, low catch. Morgan, though, stood his ground and neither of the on-field umpires were willi

Sri Lanka Cricket to cut down staff

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In an effort to cut costs, Sri Lanka Cricket's new interim committee, headed by Upali Dharmadasa, has decided to cut down on the staff at SLC headquarters in Colombo. The board has been in a financial crisis since the 2011 World Cup, for which they built two new stadiums, at Hambantota and Pallekele. When the new committee was appointed on July 1, the main task Sri Lanka's sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage set for them was to keep an eye on the board's finances. "Presently we intend to cut the staff at Sri Lanka Cricket headquarters from 82 to 50," Dharmadasa said. "Our target is to eventually minimise it to 30 employees, which will still be more than enough to run cricket. "I don't want to touch the rest of the staff employed in various parts of the country because there is an Australia tour coming up next month and an inter-provincial Twenty20 tournament currently on. We don't want to upset the mechanism at present but I will personally

Motorola XPRT Review

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Welcome to the Motorola XPRT review, this is Motorola’s second attempt at a business class BlackBerry killer and its almost identical to the first but with a bigger battery. The first being the DROID Pro and here is our full review. They are very similar devices so we’ll just run down the specs and performance for you all to enjoy in case that BlackBerry of yours isn’t making the cut anymore. As always we will start this off with the hands-on and unboxing video so you can a feel for the phone, here is the video below. Motorola XPRT Hands-On & Unbox Hardware To start I wanted to post that photo up for everyone to see as the keyboards are almost identical so for those wanting to make the switch from BlackBerry to Android and its huge growing list of supporters and applications this could be the perfect phone. Hardware we have a 3.1″ multi-touch display but with a 320×480 resolution, as well as the hardware keyboard. Comes with a 1 Ghz processor and a measly 2GB SD card is included fo