Cricket-Pakistan’s Shoaib banned for 13 matches

Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar has been banned for 13 international matches and fined 3.4 million rupees ($56,000) by the disciplinary committee of the country’s cricket board for four breaches of the code of conduct.The committee also placed the fast bowler on a two-year probation period during which if he is found guilty of violating the code of conduct he could be banned for life..

However, chairman of the committee Shafqat Naghmi said on Thursday Shoaib’s suspension would be counted from the Twenty20 World Cup held in South Africa last month, so having missed seven matches he would be banned for five more games.

“He will not be considered for the five-match one-day series against South Africa but can make himself available for selection for the Indian tour (in November),” Naghmi told reporters.

Shoaib, who was present at the news conference, said he would not be filing an appeal and that he had learnt his lesson.

“I am just happy the nightmare is over for me and my main goal is now playing for Pakistan again. I have apologised to Asif and the board for the incident in South Africa. I have suffered enough,” he said.

The 13-match ban and fine of 3.4 million is the highest imposed on any player in Pakistan cricket history.

Shoaib was sent back from the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa by the team management after he hit Mohammad Asif with a bat.

Williams wants it

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) will hold their next Board Meeting at the Turtle Beach Hotel in Barbados on October 20.

And one of the items on the agenda will be the Cricket Committee’s recommendations for a new coach and assistant coach. David Williams, the Trinidad and Tobago coach, is hoping his credentials will be favourably received then.

Williams, currently preparing his local charges to defend their KFC Cup regional 50-overs title, is a confirmed candidate for the post vacated by Australian Bennett King.

The West Indies team have been without a permanent coach since King, Caribbean cricket’s first foreign coach gave up the post in April this year following the side’s exit from the ICC Cricket World Cup at the Super Eight Stage.

Since then, King’s former assistant, David Moore has taken charge of the team on the tour of England where the West Indies lost the Test series 3-0, shared a Twenty/20 rubber 1-1 and won the 50-over series 2-1.

However, Williams, who was Moore’s assistant for the brief 20/20 World Cup assignment in South Africa last month, is one of a number of West Indians vying for the post.

One potential foreign candidate, the former Sri Lanka and Bangladesh coach, who was said to be on a short-list for the job, has since accepted an offer to head India’s National Cricket Academy.

Former West Indies players Eldine Baptiste, Otis Gibson and even Williams’ former T&T and Windies teammate Phil Simmons have been rumoured to be interested in the job.

However, Williams feels he has a few things in his favour.

“One of the advantages I have is that I have played with most and against most of them (current players),” he told the Express yesterday. “They know me pretty well. Having said that, it should be a lot easier to get through to these guys.”

However, Williams, winner of five regional trophies in four seasons with T&T, also admitted that his World Cup experience in South Africa was revealing.

“It helped me to identify a few things,” he said. “I don’t think the attitude of some of the players was right. It opened up my eyes to a lot of things, the lack of consistency and attitude.”

The West Indies left the tournament early after losing both their group games to hosts South Africa and Bangladesh.

Still, Williams, boss of the WI ‘A’ team last year against Sri Lanka ‘A,’ says the experience has not lessened his desire to be the head coach.

“Of course not. It’s a challenge. It’s something that you want to see improve.”

Among some of the other matters on the WICB agenda for the meeting will be the appointment of the team management for the forthcoming tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa; the report on a debriefing of the team management on the England and South African ICC Twenty/20 tours; the Stanford 20/20 regional series; the development of a Professional League; and a report on the Cricket Academy.

Additionally, the CEO selection panel, will present their report and recommendation to the Board.

The agenda also includes the Governance Committee report.  That Committee, headed by former Jamaica prime minister P.J Patterson held their first meeting on March 14, 2007 and completed their Interim Report in the form of an Aide Memoire on June 27, 2007.  The Committee’s final report was due on September 15, 2007.

Hair today, gone tomorrow as cricket’s governing body bottles it

We knew it couldn’t last. The tiny bit of warm afterglow that everyone was enjoying following the ICC Twenty20 championship has evaporated in the cold, harsh light of Darrell Hair’s employment tribunal hearing. Hair’s charge of racial discrimination against his employers, the ICC, has been dropped, but not before the already tarnished reputation of the ICC Board was given another battering.

It is difficult to imagine any positives will come from yet another public airing of the cricket world’s dirty laundry. The back-story to Hair’s fall from grace is well documented. He was a central character in the abandoned England-Pakistan Test match at The Oval in 2006. He wasn’t the only character, but he has taken the brunt of the fallout from that disgraceful episode.

But Hair’s charge that his treatment was the result of racist influence of ICC board members was never going to fly. There is no doubt that race is a big issue with the ICC, but it is unlikely that it was the motivation behind the treatment of Hair. Corruption or ineptitude is a much more likely culprit.

The ICC board have been exposed as the Machiavellian b**tards that we have long suspected. The way Hair was set up after the debacle at The Oval was a masterful display of manipulation. While publicly declaring his support for Hair, chief executive Malcolm Speed was ensuring that he was nobbled with some deft behind-the-scenes touches.

The ball-tampering case was made to go away by charging Inzamam ul-Haq instead of the most likely culprit, Mohammad Asif. Charging Inzie made it easy for the hand-picked referee, Rohan Madugalle, to dismiss the charge. As an insurance policy, Hair was convinced to set out a deal under which he would make the whole problem go away. His offer was then exposed in a callous display designed solely to undermine his credibility.

Once Hair’s reputation was left in tatters, his future was decided by three men over lunch in what has been called a sub-committee meeting. No minutes were taken, indeed it would take some clever forensic investigation to actually determine that a meeting had taken place. But the real gold thread in the stitching up of Hair was the composition of this “sub-committee”.

This erstwhile group comprised Sir John Anderson from New Zealand, Nasim Ashraf, the Pakistan Board chairman – that’s right, the side that Hair made the accusation against and the same bloke who OK’d two of his star bowlers using steroids – and Peter Chingoka, the president of Zimbabwe Cricket and mouthpiece of Robert Mugabe’s corrupt regime. Any chance that Hair had a fair hearing? I don’t think so.

So Hair is on the way out. Ignoring the intimation from Ray Mali that Hair could one day return to Test match umpiring, there can be no doubt he will be quietly pushed away and at some point  will be given a ‘golden handshake’. This whole disgraceful episode will start gathering dust in the history books and one of the great injustices in the game of cricket will have been allowed to pass unchallenged. Hair will not umpire again at Test level and the game will be so much poorer for it.

Whatever people think of Hair or his approach to umpiring, the handling of the aftermath by the ICC was an unmitigated disaster. The fix was in because Hair was willing to say that the emperor had no clothes, he was willing to make calls that embarrassed national heroes, he acted according to what he thought was right, without first thinking through the potential consequences.

And that’s the whole point of an umpire. They shouldn’t have to be politicians or diplomats, they should make the calls as they see them. It is the job of the administrators to sort out the peripheral issues, perhaps making an effort to stamp out ball tampering or working to ensure dodgy bowling actions don’t make it to Test level.

If the ICC did their job properly, umpires would not need to start international incidents when they make a call, and could get on and do the job they are paid to do – umpire a game of cricket impartially, without fear or favour.  Not much chance of that happening now.

WICB warns players to seek direction before joining ICL

West Indies Cricket Board president, Julian Hunte, has warned regional players to seek legal advice before signing up for the controversial Indian Cricket League.

It has been rumoured that five West Indies cricketers have been offered contracts to play in the ICL, a league which the Indian Cricket Board has refused to sanction.

“I have heard rumours of players being made substantial offers. Nothing has come to me formally,” said Hunte speaking on KLAS Sports Radio evening programme, Scoreboard, here this week.

“I only hope that those players who have been made offers, get legal advice and our advice as to how they need to go about this.”

The ICL, funded by Indian media giants, the Essel Group, is set to bowl off later this year and will feature several big names in the sport, including West Indies batting great, Brian Lara.

He is expected to be joined by Pakistani batsman, Inzamam-ul-Haq, and former Australian batsman, Damien Martyn, as the big names among several international players down to participate.

While some national cricket boards have expressed their reluctance to sanction their players competing in the ICL, Hunte said the WICB were yet to develop a policy, but would do so shortly.

“It would be wrong for me to make any statement, except to say, most of the other Test match playing countries, have in fact, ‘banned’ their players, who have publicly accepted contracts for the ICL,”
Hunte said.

“We have not made any decision on it as yet. this is a matter which we will determine our own position on when we meet on the October 20 in Barbados.”

I have to be guiding force for young spinners: Harbhajan

The absence of Anil Kumble from India’s one-day team has put more responsibility on the shoulders of Harbhajan Singh, now the country’s leading spinner and a man who feels Twenty20 cricket will kill the art of spin.

‘I know I have more responsibilities in the team as a senior bowler and I have to take care of it. I have to be like a guiding force for the young spinners in the team,’ Harbhajan told IANS in an interview.

Harbhajan, 27, is India’s most successful off-spinner and after the retirement of veteran leg-spinner Anil Kumble, the offie is now the front line spinner of the team.

‘Anil bhai’s absence has created a vacuum in the team. But we do have some nice young spinners and they should be given time to mature. A good spinner matures with age,’ said Harbhajan, the first Indian to take a hat trick in a Test.

‘Youngsters like Piyush Chawla and Pragyan Ojha are really talented and I firmly believe that if they are given time they will do the country proud. Even when I started my career, I was very average in the first few matches. But then the selectors had faith in me and persisted with me,’ said the spinner.

But Harbhajan, who was a part of the Twenty20 World Championship winning squad, felt that the new version of the game is going to kill the art of spin.

‘This Twenty20 cricket will kill the art of spin. Why only spin, it will also kill the fast bowlers. It is heavily favoured towards the batsmen and especially towards the pinch-hitters. Even if I bowl a good ball it will vanish into the stands for a six. Twenty20 cricket will obviously have its effect on ODIs and Test cricket.’

In the 2001 home series against Australia, Harbhajan collected 32 wickets in three Tests, including the first Test hat trick by an Indian. He claimed the hat trick in the second match in a historic Test match in Kolkata.

Harbhajan made his international debut in 1998 and since then he has turned out to be a potential match winner and was also the nemesis for the Australians when they toured India in 2001. He has 238 wickets from 57 Test matches and 176 wickets from 154 ODIs – a record that can forces everyone to take notice of the man from Jalandhar.

Asked about the factors that keep motivating him, Harbhajan said: ‘I enjoy my game and that’s what keeps me motivated. Even when I was dropped I kept bowling more and more and got my form back. The more I bowl, the better I get.’

When asked whether India is suffering from a Twenty20 hangover, which resulted in their losses at the start of the ongoing series against Australia, Harbhajan said: ‘No I don’t think so. I personally feel that the win is past. For me the thing ended when we won the World Championship on Sep 24.’

The ‘Turbanator’, as Harbhajan is often called, added: ‘The only problem is that Australians are batting well. We have to be really good against them.’

What to do with the Big Three?

Australia are so damn good that they can make cricket boring. It took a below-par performance from them in Chandigarh – 16 wides were bad enough but that they cost 15 further runs would point to a wretched day for Adam Gilchrist behind the wicket – to bring the series, which was fast becoming a contest only in terms of bad behaviour, alive.

Till then, the Indian supporters, who had only a week to savour the Twenty20 glory, were growing increasingly restless. With each defeat, the cry got more shrill: how long can India carry the Big Three?

Carry? How short the public memory is. In the last one-day series India played, Sachin Tendulkar was their best batsman, playing strokes that seemed to belong to his glorious past; he had two 100-plus partnerships with Sourav Ganguly, who has batted as well in the last few months as he has ever done in his career; and Rahul Dravid shook off his indifferent Test form to play a couple of sublime innings down the order.

Yes, Tendulkar has looked shaky against Brett Lee, Ganguly ponderous, and Dravid is yet to hit his straps. And it’s also true that one-day cricket requires energy, sharp reflexes, lightness of feet, and strong throwing arms. Yet the manner in which Australia resumed normal service in the 50-over game should have been evidence enough that this form requires different skills than Twenty20. In comparison to the shortest form, one-day cricket allows bowlers proper spells and captains to keep men in catching positions. In conditions that are kind to bowlers, it calls for batsmen to buckle down and survive a few overs. In more simplistic terms, there is a greater premium on wickets early on: it’s far easier to recover from 30 for 4 in the 20-over game than in the 50-over one.

It wasn’t pretty watching Tendulkar struggle against Lee in Chandigarh, but without his battling innings India were unlikely to have got to 291. In fact, there was a chance they would have been bowled out for under 200, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who is yet lose his innocence and candour at press conferences, admitted as much. It was easier for a fellow cricketer to see the value in an innings like that.

Yet, India need to start building for the future. There are no two ways about it. They were fortunate in the last decade to be blessed with abundance. Tendulkar is a batsman of a lifetime and Dravid isn’t far behind. And that they had VVS Laxman and Ganguly to back those two up was a rare stroke of luck. It has been a worry for the last couple of years that their departure will leave Indian cricket hollow. Losing them together would be a blow too severe to bear and logic dictates that their departures are phased out.

One-day cricket would be the natural place to start. Laxman and Anil Kumble, another giant who belongs to the same era, are already out of the ODI equation. It can be argued that India can afford to blood younger players in a form that puts less of a premium on traditional cricket skills than Test cricket. Also, one-day cricket provides a natural evolutionary cycle in the form of the World Cup. Countries can plan building their teams around the game’s premier tournament. India need to ask themselves how many of their senior players will be around for the next edition in 2011, and whether the team will not be better served by starting to groom players who will be.

But, as always, the real issues are in danger of being overlooked by a nation heady with the unexpected success in the World Twenty20, one that has begun to chant the anthem of youth with an impatience that has a near-vulgar edge to it. This clamour for youth is based not entirely on cold logic and cricket sense but rather on sentiment. Building for the future should not necessarily mean disregarding the present, and nor should age be the overriding factor in the selection of the team. If Tendulkar must be replaced, he must be replaced by a man worthy of his shoes – he remains a considerable batsman even in his obvious decline.

Nor is it any use picking a team that is unable to compete in the most challenging of arenas. It is true India must be willing to absorb some pain for long-term gain, but just as winning is a habit, so is defeat. The challenge for the Indian selectors is to balance the need for building for the future with the immediate imperative of winning.

Ultimately a cricket team is about the right mix. The ideal blend is a combination of energy and spirit of youth and pedigree, experience and knowledge. India can’t win in one-day cricket consistently without being sharp in the field and between the wickets, but neither can they win if they fail to ride out tough conditions and to bat out 50 overs. One-day cricket is not merely about hustling, it also allows for consolidation and construction, and every now then it requires rescue missions – particularly outside the subcontinent, where pitches offer more movement and bounce.

It is true that India can’t afford too many plodders who need to be hidden in the field. It’s nothing to do with age. Not all of India’s young players are natural athletes; some are, in fact, decidedly clumsy. But that said, having Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid and Zaheer Khan in the playing XI is to perhaps concede far too many easy runs in the field. Indian selectors have to weigh that, and the runs they lose out on by their lack of spring between the wickets, with the value they offer in terms of pure skills.

In the wake of a comment from Dilip Vengsarkar, the chief national selector, that seemed to put his senior colleagues on notice, Dhoni has described them as “indispensable”. Apart what they add on the field, he has spoken about the learnings they can offer the young players by just being around in the dressing room. Dhoni’s defence was perhaps partly motivated by the need to keeping the dressing room healthy, but there was also ring of truth to it.

But Indian cricket will need to take decisions, and that process mustn’t be clouded by what they do or don’t achieve in the series against Australia and the one against Pakistan. Those decisions must be based on sound principles, an eye on the future, and the balance in team composition. Whether this is to be achieved through a rotation of policy or by a gradual phasing-out is a decision the selectors must ponder. And all of this must be accomplished without intrigue, without bowing to popular sentiments, and with transparency and a clear vision. Players, particularly those who have served Indian cricket with distinction, must be taken into confidence and told where they stand.

It’s not a lot to ask for. But the way Indian cricket runs, it will be stretching optimism to expect it.