Wickets tumble as hosts reach small target to keep pressure on Surrey at top of Division One

ECB Reporters Network22-Jul-2023

Essex 458 for 8 dec (Critchley 117, A Cook 87, Harmer 83*, Arshdeep 3-58) and 30 for 3 beat Kent 207 (Compton 47, S Cook 3-19) and 280 (Finch 114, Evison 58, S Cook 4-46, Harmer 4-72) by seven wicketsEssex made heavy weather of scoring the 30 runs required to beat Kent by seven wickets and secure their fourth successive LV= Insurance County Championship victory. It needed Paul Walter to keep his head when others around him were losing theirs and stroke the winning runs 23 balls into what turned into a more difficult run chase than necessary.Essex attempted to make light work of reaching the target and were halfway there from the first over bowled by Hamid Qadri. But that was the prelude to the drama. Dan Lawrence was first to go when he tried to hit Grant Stewart’s first ball out of the ground but only skied to mid-on.Adam Rossington followed in the next over, lbw attempting to reverse sweep Qadri, and first-innings centurion Matt Critchley departed first ball to a caught-and-bowled by the offspinner, taken running back and over his head at mid-on. That was 23 for 3 in the third over, but Essex managed to get over the line in the next over to take 21 points and keep up the pressure on Championship leaders Surrey.With the threat of rain around later in the day, Essex needed eight overs before breaking the stubborn overnight partnership. But once Qadri departed to a smart catch at short square leg by Simon Harmer the innings collapsed in just six balls.Sam Cook added a second of the morning three balls later when Matt Quinn played on and Joey Evison fell lbw to the first ball of Harmer’s 44th over of the innings. Harmer finished with 4 for 72 to take his season’s tally to 41 wickets and Cook had figures of 4 for 46.

Phoebe Franklin’s half-century in vain as Nadine de Klerk and Nat Sciver-Brunt claim five wickets between them

ECB Reporters Network20-May-2023Georgie Boyce hit a brilliant unbeaten 63 to steer The Blaze to a five-wicket victory over the South East Stars in the opening round of the Charlotte Edwards Cup at Beckenham.Boyce played a pivotal innings as the visitors recovered from a mid-innings wobble to win with four balls to spare, cashing in on a number of dropped chances to close on 161 for 5 in reply to the Stars’ 160 for 8.Phoebe Franklin was the Stars’ top scorer, hitting 53 from 32 balls and when she removed Tammy Beaumont for 48 it sparked a mini-collapse that had made the hosts look favourites until Boyce intervened.Nadine de Klerk had The Blaze’s best bowling figures with 3 for 21 while Nat Sciver-Brunt took 2 for 46.The Blaze won the toss and chose to bowl at a blustery, overcast New County Ground, a decision that looked questionable when Bryony Smith smacked 14 off Grace Ballinger’s first over, but her quickfire innings came to an end when Kirstie Gordon had her caught on the long on boundary by Marie Kelly for 18.Ballinger then trapped Tash Farrant for a three-ball duck and Paige Scholfield was out for four, driving Scivrer-Brunt’s second ball to Sarah Glenn at cover.Sophia Dunkley led an aggressive but short-lived counterattack until Sarah Glenn bowled her for 20 and it was left to Franklin and Kira Chathli to rebuild the innings with a partnership of 68.Chathli should have been out for 22 but Glenn dropped a dolly off her own bowling, though she fell soon after when she tried to scoop de Klerk and was bowled for 24.Franklin brought up her 50 when she pulled Gordon through midwicket for a single but she was finally out in the 19th over when she dragged a Sciver-Brunt delivery onto her stumps.Alice Davidson-Richards took the Stars past 150 with an elegant pull off Sciver-Brunt for four, but she was bowled by de Klerk in the final over, also for 24.De Klerk’s next delivery pinged back Kalea Moore’s leg stump and although Freya Davies blocked out the hat-trick ball, she couldn’t scramble any additional runs.It looked a challenging total but Beaumont made an electrifying start to the chase, which included a huge six over cow corner. Her opening stand of 30 with Kelly was broken when the latter was snared by Davidson-Richards off Scholfield for five.Beaumont was on 42 when she misjudged a Franklin delivery and although Davies couldn’t take a difficult chance, a cluster of wickets tilted the momentum back in the Stars’ favour.The Blaze were on 6 for 1 in the ninth over when Scholfield had Sciver-Brunt caught for 19 near the midwicket boundary by Farrant and in the tenth Ryana MacDonald-Gay claimed the key wicket of Beaumont, who fell to a brilliant diving catch by Smith.In the 11th Davidson-Richards had Kathryn Bryce caught behind and Glenn then holed to Franklin and was caught on the boundary by Davidson-Richards for four.At 91 for 5 the Blaze were in deep trouble, but Boyce then took centre stage, reaching her 50 with a drive off Davies that was nearly caught at deep cover but went for two.De Klerk played the anchor role at the other end and herself survived a tough chance for caught behind off Davidson-Richards.The Blaze needed just two from the final over and de Klerk hit the winning runs when she carved Davidson-Richards through the covers.

By 10am, the queue for entry at Lord’s North Gate was quite frankly eye-popping. It stretched past the Wellington Hospital, past the BP garage, down towards the road that provides a shortcut to the Beatles’ zebra crossing. But for the buses tiptoeing past those punters who had spilled off the pavements, it would have wormed all the way across the road to the aisles of Panzer’s delicatessen, from whence more than a few of today’s Nursery Ground picnics are sure to have been picked up.And to view the splendid scene that lay beyond those gates – with near-packed stands on all four sides of the ground, and the sun burning through in the early afternoon to complement that uniquely contented hum that passes for atmosphere at Lord’s – you’d be forgiven for assuming that you were watching a sport in the rudest of health. Until, that is, you drilled down into the actual details of the contest.But no! Don’t go peering behind the curtain … that’ll only spoil the illusion. And yet, everything that was right about the Lord’s experience today – the steady flow at the bars and the happy chat of reunited friends, and out in the middle, that languid sense of life gently meandering before you, like an afternoon’s fishing on a quiet corner of the Thames – was everything that’s wrong with the contemporary Test experience. And startlingly, that fact remained true even though England laid on a(nother) batting display of historic, genre-bending, dominance.Related

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Have we been spoilt by the exploits of Ben Stokes’ rebooted Test team? I’m not convinced it’s that simple, for you’d be hard-pressed to find any genuine criticism of the manner in which England have overwhelmed their opponents.In his notes for the souvenir match programme, Stokes restated his team’s battleplan in the same stark, uncompromising tones that they have so far served up for the scorecard. “We’re out here to score runs, take wickets and win games – and we like to do all three as quickly as we can,” he wrote. And on the evidence to date, there’s little reason to believe England will be detained much beyond lunch on Saturday afternoon. Job done, a round of golf and the FA Cup final awaits.Instead, the worry is that today’s exploits in particular reflect the same levels of privilege that were on display within the walls of Lord’s. It’s easy to ignore the signs that all is not well with the Test world when everything looks quite as serene as it was made to feel this afternoon. And in three weeks’ time, when Australia rock up here for the second Test of the most anticipated Ashes summer since 2005, it would be self-loathingly righteous not to get swept up by the excitement.But if Ireland’s toils on this extraordinary stage don’t give you pause for thought, and reason to reflect on the lot of the less fortunate members of Test cricket’s brotherhood, then not only are you probably dead inside, then your beloved format is likely to follow suit in pretty short order. Never mind being in possession of the most storied ground in the world, with the right to turn a vast profit from two Tests per summer. England’s opponents right now are a team that burned €1 million on hosting their first Test match in temporary facilities back in 2018, and have been so scarred by the experience, they’ve barely dared to carry any hosting costs since.And so there’s no point in complaining, either, that Ireland are not worthy of their Test status. The reasons are writ large in the back-story to this contest, and so are the wealth of mitigations. And, as one or two of the jazz-hatters in the crowd today ought to know if they’ve ever donned the black, red and gold colours of another famously nomadic team, I Zingari, if you plan to get out of the darkness and reach the light, you generally have to walk through the fire. There’s only one way for Ireland to get the experience they need to compete in the future, and that’s the hard way.”What is cricket without its fans?” Ben Stokes said in his first pre-match comments as captain•Gareth Copley/Getty Images

The cracks in the façade were clearly visible last year, even at Lord’s. Prior to England’s five-wicket win over New Zealand in the first Test of the summer – the contest that kicked off the Bazmania that followed – there was more than a little disquiet about the price of entry for that match. Most tickets then ranged between £100 and £160, and there were still some 16,000 seats unsold in the week before the game. “What is cricket without its fans?” Stokes said in his first pre-match comments as captain. “What is sport without its fans?”It is clearly to MCC’s credit that they reduced their prices for this Ireland Test – between £70 and £90 in the main, with Under-16s at £20 – although you’d have to assume that England’s style of play was the decisive factor in today being so packed out. But amid the ongoing tussle over the ICC’s future revenue distribution, there’s an onus on England in particular to provide more than just a glorious stage on which their less-well-off opponents can get beaten – because if Stokes’ fantastic team is to succeed in its mission to make Test cricket great again, they will need more than just India and Australia to give them a run for their money.This fact was brought home to the ECB in no uncertain terms during the pandemic, when many of the same England players produced mental miracles to “keep the lights on”. But they were only able to do so thanks to the goodwill of their opponents that summer – most particularly West Indies and Pakistan who endured lengthy bio-bubbles for the Test series, although Ireland were also an important factor as they, along with Australia, agreed to fulfil their white-ball obligations.The extent of England’s subsequent gratitude, however, has been mixed. Both West Indies and Pakistan benefitted from being able to host extended T20 series last year, but not before Pakistan had been outrageously fobbed off by the unilateral cancellation of England’s goodwill stop-over in 2021-22 – a shameful episode that led to the departure of the previous ECB chairman, Ian Watmore.Happily, the new chair and CEO combo, the former Surrey pairing of Richard Thompson and Richard Gould, seem to be more attuned to the true needs of the sport – with Gould acknowledging on a recent Final Word podcast that the time is nigh to pay visiting teams a fee for fulfilling their side of a bilateral agreement, to “encourage people not just to play Tests but make sure they can pay their players, and pay them well, so that they want to play Test cricket again.”It’s surely a critical step in shoring up a creaking format. But if an unprecedented run-rate of 6.34 across 82.4 overs in a home England Test is insufficient to set pulses racing, it may be that the sport has already been bled too dry to save those sides on the extremity.

Pakistan’s IPC ministry asks for “immediate termination of services of all heads of institutions appointed on political basis”

Danyal Rasool23-Aug-2023

Political developments could make their impact felt on the PCB yet again after Pakistan’s Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) ministry sent a note to the Prime Minister’s office that places the spotlight on the future of PCB head Zaka Ashraf.The letter references guidelines issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan, asking to “ensure immediate termination of services of all heads of institutions appointed on political basis and to send all such cases to the commission for approval of termination or otherwise”. Ashraf is highlighted as the first such case worthy of consideration, denoting him as a political appointee with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).The letter was signed off by the secretary of the IPC, Ahmed Orakzai, on August 15, and was addressed to the caretaker government, but only came to light a week later. The caretaker Prime Minister, Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, was appointed the day before the communication was written. It is worth noting that the IPC, the ministry which sent the note to the PM’s office, does not currently have a sitting minister and in such cases, the PM assumes temporary charge of the ministry; effectively, Kakar is head of the ministry that issued the letter, as well as the one that received it.While caretaker governments have historically shown little desire to interfere with the workings of the PCB, there are reasons to believe it could be different this time around. The primary task of caretaker governments in Pakistan is to facilitate conditions for elections to be held within 90 days. But days after the caretaker government was set up, the Election Commission of Pakistan announced that elections scheduled for no later than November would be postponed by several months. That means this caretaker government could take on the role of a regular government, and make decisions on a wider remit of things beyond just election preparations.While the note was issued over a week ago, serious ramifications have not yet been felt at the PCB. The board officials are confident that Ashraf’s position remains safe, and ESPNcricinfo understands that the government had offered the current PCB setup assurances they were not looking to bring about changes at the top. A PCB source criticised what it called “the recent campaign against the PCB’s head” as “malafide”, and said it was intended “to destabilise Pakistan cricket”.It has been pointed out that Ashraf resigned from the PPP on June 19, and therefore could not be considered a political appointee. It was also pointed out that the PCB has never played any part in Pakistan’s national or federal elections, and thus no caretaker government had any cause to make changes at the board.Ashraf was approved as head of a management committee by former PM Shahbaz Sharif to take charge at the PCB for a period of four months in July, after Najam Sethi resigned from the position. At the time, the political implications of the move were significant, with Sethi specifically citing a desire not to cause a rift between the PML(N)’s leader Shahbaz Sharif, and the PPP leader Asif Zardari, with the latter preferring Ashraf to Sethi as PCB head.In the coalition between the two parties, the sports ministry was held by Zardari’s PPP government, who insisted that meant they had the right to appoint a PCB head of choice. Two weeks later, Ashraf assumed charge at the helm of the PCB.

MatériaMais Notícias

da bwin： O volante Danilo, do Palmeiras, não está com a Seleção Brasileira que vai disputar a Copa do Mundo no Catar, mas já foi convocado pelo técnico Tite para jogos do Brasil antes da lista final com os 26 nomes, mas acabou não entrando em campo.

> Veja a tabela da Copa do Mundo 2022

>Mais um título! Veja quanto o Palmeiras já faturou em premiação com Abel Ferreira

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da premier bet：
De férias após a conquista do Campeonato Brasileiro com o Verdão, o volante acredita no hexacampeonato brasileiro, e também comentou o clima entre os jogadores que estão no Mundial.

– Claro, claro. Acho que vai vir sim. A rapaziada que está lá é muito gente boa e todo mundo lá está focado em conquistar o hexa. Estou com o menino Ney, adulto Ney agora, né? – afirmou o palmeirense, em entrevista ao Band News FM.

A Seleção Brasileira estreia na Copa nesta quinta-feira (24), contra a Sérvia, às 16h (de Brasília). No Grupo G ainda estão Suíça e Camarões.

Spinners, Sams strangle middle order as Phoenix run chase falls flat

ECB Reporters Network19-Aug-2023Trent Rockets boost their own title defence and eliminated Birmingham Phoenix, thumping them by 46 runs in the final Hundred Men’s match of the season at Trent Bridge, watched by a record crowd of 15,551.Offspinner Matt Carter (2 for 15) and Australia allrounder Daniel Sams (3 for 17) stood out with the ball as Phoenix could muster only 116 for 9 despite 38 off 22 balls from Jamie Smith in response to Rockets’ 162 for 6, to which Colin Munro (34 off 17), Sam Hain (30 off 21) and Alex Hales (27 off 14) were the key contributors.The result puts Rockets on seven points, level with Southern Brave and Manchester Originals behind leaders Oval Invincibles on nine but having played a game more. Brave play Invincibles later on Saturday before they face off against Originals in Manchester next Wednesday – after Rockets wrap up away to Invincibles on Monday.