Shahid Afridi Named World Cup captain
Shahid Afridi has been named captain of Pakistan's World Cup squad, a decision that ends weeks of uncertainty over who will lead the side in the global tournament starting later this month.
Pakistan were the only side of the 14 participating teams not to have named their captain when the World Cup squads were announced in January, fuelling debate over whether Misbah-ul-Haq, the Test captain, could take over from limited-overs leader Afridi. Misbah was named vice-captain of the World Cup squad.
Afridi has been Pakistan's ODI captain over the last year but, just before the ongoing New Zealand tour, a number of key players and team management officials raised concerns with the board over his captaincy. The development placed the board in a quandary, caught between players and the captain, ultimately compelling them to delay the announcement of a leader.
PCB chairman Ijaz Butt travelled earlier this week to New Zealand, where the team has just recorded its first one-day series win in more than two years, to hold discussions with Afridi, senior players and management officials over who should lead the side.
"I had detailed discussions with team management and players in New Zealand regarding captain and vice captain," Butt said, "and am pleased to state that everyone fully endorsed these decisions."
Pakistan play the final match of their six-ODI series against New Zealand on Saturday in Auckland.
CHANDIGARH: Distance makes a rivalry grow fiercer. Proving that would be Indian and Pakistani teams, when they clash at Punjab Cricket Association Stadium on March 30 for a place in the final of the ICC World Cup.
It has been a about four years since the two teams played each other and fans have missed the rush of blood such a game brings about. And the fact that this is a high pressure and high stake knockout match, promises to make it one humungous sporting occasion.
The two teams beat defending champions Australia in their respective games of the tournament and are said to be in top form.
The high expectations from the match have Tricity youths all excited and most are willing to skip classes to follow the game, be it in hostel common rooms, friends' houses or restaurants.
''The mix of good food and cricket is always nice, especially when it is India playing Pakistan in a world cup. I will go to a good eatery with my friends to watch it,'' said Rishi Sharma, student of a private university.
''This was the clash we were waiting for since the beginning of the tournament. None of us would like to miss the action,'' said Tenzin a student of Panjab University.
Vaibhav Dahiya, another PU student, said he and
his friends were planning
to watch the action in the stadium, but as they could not manage to get tickets, they would see the match in hostel common room.
''In hostels, the environment is much like a stadium as there is a large crowd watching television and enthusiasm is also there. This is the final for us, no matter who lifts the cup,'' he added.
Harish Thakur, a research scholar, said cricket mania had gripped Tricity and it was only cricket, which was the talking point in every conversation.
Anu Pun a resident of Sector 15, said he was confident that India would win in Mohali. ''Players like Sachin, Yuvi and Raina are in great form, this time world cup will be ours,'' he adds.
''It is Sachin's dream to win the world cup and I am very sure that it will come true. I am just waiting to see the god of cricket play the semifinals,'' Anuj Bhalla, a resident of Sector 20.
Muttiah Muralitharan a valedictory victory
Saturday will be Muttiah Muralitharan’s last day of international cricket – if England have 11 physically and psychologically fit players left, if more than a couple of them can follow the Rorke’s Drift sang froid of their captain, and if they win the toss and bat well in brain-scrambling heat and humidity (more rain in Colombo on Friday) against the man who holds the world’s most significant bowling records.
Muttiah Muralitharan could be playing his last game of international cricket when Sri Lanka take on England on Saturday Photo: AP
Murali has taken 793 Test wickets for Sri Lanka, and seven for the Rest of the World against Australia in a game the ICC labelled a Test for commercial expediency: a total of 800 wickets that will surely not be surpassed because nobody ever again will bowl more than 44,000 balls in Test cricket, administrators now preferring to overload the calendar with 50- and 20-over games.
Rather more pertinent to the fourth of the World Cup quarter-finals today, and to England’s prospects of winning it, is the statistic that Murali has taken 530 wickets in one-day internationals.
This is more than the whole of the England party put together, including all those players who have been in and out of their benighted squad: Stuart Broad, Kevin Pietersen, Ajmal Shahzad and, finally, Mike Yardy.
But more relevant still than Murali’s aggregate of one-day wickets is his influence as the 'mystery spinner’. He is not, in fact, so much of a match-winner in one-day internationals as he has been in Tests: his strike-rate in 50-over cricket is actually not so good as Graeme Swann’s (one wicket every 35 balls against Swann’s 32). But Murali’s impact is never confined to his spell of 10 overs.
Because England’s batsmen will be intent on distinguishing between Murali’s off-break and 'doosra’, squirting singles and limiting his damage on a turning pitch, they will be forced to take more risks at the other end.
Assuming Murali gets through this game with his hamstring strain – and he has bowled on one leg before, such is his hunger – his mysteriousness will enhance the value of Sri Lanka’s other bowlers.
Desperate to secure a favourable semi-final at home on Tuesday, Sri Lanka may bring in their second mystery-spinner Ajantha Mendis. (If it is asked where England’s mystery spinners are, the answer is that the only one they have had – Shaftab Khalid, who toured with England A almost a decade ago – is now the pro at Potter’s Bar).
But even the occasional off-breaks of Tillakeratne Dilshan are liable to take the wickets of batmen who have not been brought up to use their feet against spin, who have been focused on trying to stop Murali break into his devilish grin, and who have to up the scoring rate.
Such is the potency of a bowler who has probably journeyed further than any cricketer, of any country.
For when Murali found that his wrist allowed him to spin a ball as much any finger-spinner has ever done, Sri Lanka was engaged in a civil war between its Sinhalese majority and its sizeable Tamil minority, and nobody wanted to play there. Murali, moreover, came from a community that had never produced a cricketer.
It wasn’t so much that, as a Tamil, he was on the wrong side, but on no side at all. The Jaffna Tamils have produced two or three Sri Lankan cricketers, but not the Tamils that the British had ferried into the hill country south of Kandy to do the back-breaking work of picking tea.
Into this despised community – India did not want them back, Sri Lanka would not grant them passports – Murali was born almost 39 years ago. He had one advantage, though: his father, owner of a biscuit factory, sent him to a private school where Murali found a niche with his freakish spin.
School cricket is still so important here that the back page of this week’s newspapers led with news of the quarter-finals, but not in the World Cup: it was about Trinity College’s game, the old school of Sri Lanka’s captain Kumar Sangakkara. Just as Eton v Harrow was more important, socially, than England v Australia in the 1880s.
From this springboard of St Anthony’s in Kandy, Murali has leapt on to the high wire and stayed there for two decades, never falling into the political mire, beside which the controversies about his action have been trivial.
He did not let slip a comment favouring one side or the other in the civil war.
Yet he has helped all sides with the finest humanitarian work that any cricketer has done, driving his lorry to tsunami-hit areas and still funding the Foundation of Goodness which does truly worthwhile work in more than 20 villages.
Ponting: Fate in selectors' hands
Ponting's fighting century during Australia's loss to India on Thursday helped salvage his batting reputation but questions remain over the 36-year-old's playing future as administrators undertake a comprehensive review into the national teams' performance.
"It is fair to say that we need to examine our performances in depth and begin to plan for the future," Ponting wrote in his column in The Australian newspaper.
"A clear-the-decks policy is fraught with danger. Young players need to be nurtured and the best way for that to be done is with senior guys around them.
"If you want to know what experience brings in crucial times, look at the performance of Brett Lee in this tournament," added Ponting, referring to his fast bowler who took 13 wickets to lead the Australian attack.
Ponting led Australia to humiliating defeat in the Ashes on home soil in January, his third series loss to England, sparking growing calls from former players and pundits for him to either relinquish the captaincy, give up one-day cricket or walk away from both forms of the game.
The defiant Tasmanian said it was "safe to say" he had played his last one-day World Cup match, but reiterated that he had no plans to retire from either Test or one-day cricket.
"It is my intention to keep playing cricket, I might not be the best judge of what my contribution to Australian cricket is," he said.
"There are a panel of selectors who have that job and I am happy to accept their judgment.
"My focus now is on what is best for Australian cricket. We need to rally together to review all aspects that have contributed to our performances over the past six months.
"There will be casualties and change come out of this review but I am also confident it will highlight a number of programs, structures and people that remain the best or very close to the best in the world."
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