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ScorecardChris Read’s century put Notts into the lead•Getty Images

Chris Read helped himself to a second century of the season as Nottinghamshire dominated day three against Middlesex at Trent Bridge. Having passed three figures for the first time this summer in the four-day game between the sides at Lord’s back in April, the Notts captain was at it again, this time on home soil.Having been dropped on 54, Read, the 36-year-old former England wicketkeeper, went on to score 108 from 206 balls as Notts built a useful first innings lead.Resuming on their overnight score of 180 for 4, Notts found themselves in a spot of trouble when Samit Patel was bowled, in the third over of the day, at 184 for 5 and Steven Mullaney holed out to Tim Murtagh off Ollie Rayner 45 runs later. At that stage, they still trailed Middlesex by 145. But despite losing 15 overs to rain, Notts pushed on after lunch with Read and Brett Hutton adding 157 for the seventh wicket.Read, who missed six weeks of the season from the middle of May due to a hamstring injury, struck eight fours in reaching his half century, off 101 balls, and posted three figures for the first time since mid-April, off 190 balls. Having been dropped at slip by Ollie Rayner on 54 – a sharp chance to Rayner’s right hand – he eventually fell to Toby Roland-Jones, at 386 for 7.The captain’s job was made all the more easy by Hutton, who batted beautifully to post his highest first class score of 72. The 22-year-old bowling allrounder brought up his own half-century off 121 balls, with seven fours, and looked comfortable throughout against a Middlesex attack that offered precious little as the day wore on.Hutton continued to bat with due care and attention after his skipper’s departure and with Luke Wood, who was dropped on 0 off the bowling of Dawid Malan, he added 25 for the eighth wicket. But he finally departed at 419 for 9 and at that juncture Notts declared with a first innings lead of 45. Middlesex opener Sam Robson and nightwatchman James Harris successfully negotiated the final two overs of the evening and trail Notts by 38 runs with all 10 second innings wickets in hand.

South Africa will look to continue their successful run against New Zealand with a win in the second ODI in Port Elizabeth. The hosts almost faltered during theirrun-chase in the first ODI in Durban but a win on Friday will give them an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series.Going by current form, South Africa are clear favourites and this iseven without considering their recordin day-night encounters at St. George’s Park – eights win out of tenODIs, with one no result.The hosts will be boosted by the return of Herschelle Gibbs, who hadmissed the Twenty20 international and the first ODI with a kneeinjury. Gibbs’ standby Morne van Wyk has been released from the squad toplay for the Eagles in the SuperSport series.The other dilemma facing the South African selectors surroundstheir pace attack. New Zealand’s batsmen were blown away by Dale Steynduring the two-Test series, and his inclusion in the playing XI coulddent the tourists’ confidence ahead of a must-win game.However, with Shaun Pollock conceding next to nothing in his ten oversand Andre Nel playing a pivotal role with both ball and bat in the firstODI, the axe could fall on Makhaya Ntini, who proved to be expensive,especially at the death in Durban. Johan Botha might play despite unimpressiveshowings in recent ODIs, since the pitch at St. George’s Park couldfavour the slower bowlers.Graeme Smith, the South African captain, hinted at possible changes inthe bowling line-up. “We’ve got to look at the wicket and theconditions, but obviously Dale [Steyn] and [Charl] Langeveldt come intothe equation,” he was quoted as saying on the website SuperCricket. “We’ll seewhat switches we need to make to suit the conditions.”

Smith’s opposition counterpart Daniel Vettori must be wondering what histeam needs to do to beat this South African side. New Zealand’smain worry through the Tests was the form of their batsmen, but afterthe Durban ODI, the team would be concerned over its bowling optionsas well, besides their poor catching, which Vettori highlighted as the main reason for the last-ball loss at Kingsmead.Kyle Mills’ 5 for 25 in Durban would have done Shane Bond proud but New Zealand could have done with somefirepower at the other end – Mark Gillespie, Chris Martin, ScottStyris and Vettori conceded 220 runs and picked up three wickets.Allrounder Jacob Oram will be a handy addition to the bowlingdepartment. Oram suffered a hamstring strain in thefirst Test, and Vettori indicated the team would play six bowlers.”Jacob’s probably the most important member of our team purely from theroles he fills, batting at number six and able to bowl 10 overs,”Vettori told SuperCricket. “It’s a luxury not many teams have and havinghim back means I can take six bowlers and we get a nice balance whenhe’s playing.”That means wicketkeeper-batsman Gareth Hopkins, who scored a first-ball duck at Kingsmead, is likely to be dropped. The New Zealand captain alsoindicated Jeetan Patel, the offspinner, could get the nod ahead of oneof the quicker bowlers. “The times I’ve played here, I’ve always foundit a low, slow wicket and the guys who’ve been able to take the pace offit have always succeeded here [in Port Elizabeth],” he said. “So seamersstill have an important role to play, but we’ll have a lot of emphasison the slow bowlers.”Vettori admitted his team would be under pressure to win the remainingtwo matches. “We need to win both matches to give ourselves a shot atthe series,” he said. “The way we play tomorrow will be with that inmind, and we definitely will not be playing defensively.”We’ll be chasing that win as hard as we can, but the key thing is thatwhen you are chasing a win, you maybe push a little too hard and forgetabout a few of the simple things you need to do.”However, Smith said he expected South Africa to up their game, and sealthe series. “We want to be more clinical come tomorrow. It would befantastic to close off the series tomorrow,” he said. “The guys get anice break after this weekend, so hopefully we can step it up and playsome really good cricket.”

India’s fine start to the one-day series, where they amassed 338 and held on for a 14-run win, shouldn’t mask some of the problem areas. A key concern facing them, especially with the World Cup around the corner, is the middle overs – both in the batting and bowling departments.Interestingly, the problems in both areas are interlinked. Added to that is a fielding malady where there aren’t any easy solutions. The squad for the last two matches of the series is to be selected on January 25 and tomorrow’s game becomes paramount for more than a few players.In the absence of Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag, the bowling options are severely restricted. Suresh Raina doesn’t offer much while Dinesh Karthik is a wicketkeeper. Raina has already been left out of tomorrow’s clash, replaced with the genuine offspinner Ramesh Powar who is handy with the bat as well.Powar has the flight and the guile to tease the batsmen but he’s only been used sparingly, with Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble jostling for the sole spot. Kumble is expected to return for the last two matches and Powar will have to turn in a special performance tomorrow to retain his place. Ditto for Karthik, who might find it difficult to hold his place if Yuvraj or Sehwag returns.The other concern is the batting in the middle overs. Mahendra Singh Dhoni muscled and Rahul Dravid innovated on Sunday, as 112 runs flowed in the last 10 over, but one shouldn’t ignore the problems that India have had in that area recently. Is Joginder Sharma the answer to the vital allrounder’s slot? We might get an early indication tomorrow in what promises to be a make-or-break game for him. He’s had a great domestic season with both bat and ball but will he be able to bridge the vast gap between the first-class and international levels?In case he isn’t up to scratch, India would do well to fall back on Sehwag. Of course, of late Sehwag has been more vulnerable to phantoms in his psyche than demons on the pitch. But even during that miserable phase in South Africa, he managed a 50-ball 40, with six fours and a six, from the middle order. That pitch, at Cape Town, was taking some spin and that’s what India are likely to encounter in the World Cup. And he can bowl. With Irfan Pathan still struggling to get back his bowling touch, Sehwag and Yuvraj, along with Tendulkar and Ganguly, could handle the allrounder’s duties.Compounding India’s worries is their fielding. They dropped four catches in the first game and Dravid is, understandably, concerned. “We are not natural athletes, especially the senior guys,” Dravid said. “So we have to find that balance between the younger and the senior guys and the seniors have to work on their fielding. We have to still try and get to as good a level as we can. There are some guys in this side who obviously cannot become brilliant. But we have to try and improve and obviously hold all our catches.”We are working very hard on our fielding and we are looking to improvingevery day. But we need to find the balance between picking the youngsters andthe experienced guys. When we pick a lot of youngsters, the criticism was thatthere are not enough experienced players, so when you pick the experiencedplayers you have to accept that the fielding is not going to be brilliant.That’s a fact and you just have to accept it. So we have to look at thepluses and the minuses and we have to get the right balance. Thatis a situation we are faced with and we have to deal with it.”India will grapple with all this and more as they head into the second one-dayer. They will be hoping that Cuttack provides them with some, if not all, of the answers.

Scorecard
Plate Group Points Table
Madhya Pradesh ended the second day of their Ranji Plate semi-final on even terms, closing on 191 for 5 in reply to Saurashtra’s 296. Shitanshu Kotak, overnight on 95, brought up his ninth first-class century before Amay Khurasia’s power-packed 80 charged Madhya Pradesh left the match hanging in the balance.Khurasia, who played only two games this season, chose the right moment to come good. After the openers put up a 55-run stand off 16.3 overs Khurasia took charge and the next fifty rolled off in just eight overs before Sandip Maniar removed Sachin Dholpure and knocked off Devendra Bundela, the leading run-getter for MP, for a duck to push them to 106 for 3.Abbas Ali joined Khurasia and the duo steered MP to 182 for 3 before Saurashtra fought back with two wickets. Earlier, Saurashtra resumed on 226 for 6, were propped up by Kotak’s first hundred of the season and 21 from Sandeep Jobanputra, the No 10 batsman.

The Pakistan foreign ministry is understood to have advised the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) against playing a game in Ahmedabad on their forthcoming tour to India, , a Karachi based daily, reported. The Indian board had earlier announced the itinerary for the tour, beginning on February 25, with Mohali, Ahmedabad and Bangalore as the three Test venues.Pakistan’s reluctance to play in Ahmedabad can be traced to the fact that Gujarat has been a communally sensitive state and has experienced religious tensions in the recent past. Shaharyar Khan, the PCB’s chairman, said he would wait for a report from the venues inspection team, that is scheduled to visit India from January 24 to 29, before responding to the proposed venues. “These are proposed venues,” Shaharyar said, “and if we have any reservations over some venues we will talk to the Indian board and our government. Before every tour there is a process of dialogue between the boards and even when India visited Pakistan last year we took into consideration their concerns.”On Saturday, activists of Shiv Sena, the Hindu nationalist party, threatened to disrupt Pakistan’s ODI at Delhi. However, Shaharyar said that the PCB did not consider security as an issue and added, “We have complete faith in the Indian board’s ability to oversee the security arrangements for our team in India. We will go by their assurances.”Meanwhile, Javed Miandad, the former Pakistan captain, feels that the PCB authorities would be better off if they left the entire scheduling to the Indian board but was quick to add a caveat. “This arrangement must be on a reciprocal basis between both the boards. When India next tour Pakistan they must accept the Test and one-day venues proposed by Pakistan. What Pakistan must ensure is that the match venue has adequate facilities like hotelling and ground conditions for a Test or international match.”Obviously, Ahmedabad with its recent background is a bit of a surprise to be picked as a Test venue. But my point is that the home board should have total authority to decide at which venues a touring side should play.”Miandad was optimistic about the smooth progression of the tour and said that his recent visits to India had indicated the improvement of relations. “I don’t think there is even a problem in playing at Mumbai if the Indians select it as a venue,” while reiterating, “Then teams visiting Pakistan should not object to playing at Karachi or Peshawar.”Pakistan will be touring India for a full Test series since early 1999, when they played a two-Test series before contesting in one more game as part of the Asian Test Championship. The crowd response during that series touched both extremes: Pakistan received a rousing applause after completing a thrilling win at Chennai while the last few hours of the third Test, at Kolkata, was played in front of a smattering of spectators as the police were forced to drive several unruly sections away.

Test opener Justin Langer is aiming to revitalise his summer in tomorrow’s day-night cricket match between Western Australia and South Australia in Perth.The ING Cup player of last season has failed to fire in recent Test series against minnows Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, scoring just 108 runs in four Tests at an average of 21.6.”I’m looking forward to kick-starting my summer. It has not been a great start to the summer. There are various reasons for that, but I am looking forward to kick-starting from a personal point of view with some runs under my belt,” he said.WA captain Langer said a lack of match practice heading into the recent two-match series against the Africans had not helped his cause.”It didn’t seem to trouble Matty Hayden or Ricky Ponting too much, but everyone’s preparation is different,” he said.”We had a long break leading into the Test series, I probably had 10 or 11 weeks before going straight into a Test match.”I think that is something that has to be looked at in the programming.”Meanwhile, Redbacks captain Greg Blewett said his players just wanted to start erasing memories of their disastrous ING Cup campaign last season, which netted just one win from ten matches.”Last season we just got into a bit of a rut. We were very competitive at the beginning of the season and then basically fell to pieces,” he said.”We were bowled out for scores of a hundred and things like that. I felt we completely lost confidence in that form of the game and it is the start of a new season and hopefully that is all forgotten.”Allrounder Mick Miller is in some doubt with a shoulder injury sustained in SA’s 56-run Pura Cup win over the Warriors at the WACA Ground yesterday.Blewett predicted all-rounders to be the major beneficiaries of Cricket Australia’s move this summer to reduce the number of players from 12 to 11 in the domestic one-day competition.”I think that is to get the allrounders back into the game because you could play the extra player with the 12, and that was generally a batsman or a strike bowler,” he said.”I think with 11 players now, that the allrounders are going to have to come back into it.”However, Langer and WA coach Wayne Clark thought the new “free-hit” rule would not be a major factor in the competition.Under the new rule which has been used in English cricket, if a no-ball is bowled the batsman can only be dismissed by run out or interference on the next delivery.”I am with Justin, it did not happen a lot when I was in England,” the former Yorkshire coach said.WA: Justin Langer (c), Michael Hussey, Jo Angel, Ryan Campbell, Beau Casson, Murray Goodwin, Shaun Marsh, Marcus North, Chris Rogers, Michael Thistle, Callum Thorp, Peter Worthington.SA: Greg Blewett (c), Mark Cleary, John Davison, Shane Deitz, Callum Ferguson, Andy Flower, Mark Higgs, Ben Johnson, Graham Manou, Mick Miller, Paul Rofe, Shaun Tait.

There has been one question occupying the minds of the cricket fraternity ever since the Sehwag row erupted. How far towards the brink was Jagmohan Dalmiya, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, prepared to go before pulling back?The answer came today in a statement from the International Cricket Council to the effect that Dalmiya had agreed that Virender Sehwag would be omitted from the Indian team to face England in the first Test scheduled for Mohali on Monday.Had he not done so, the match would not have been given Test status by the ICC, England would have withdrawn from the series, India might have retaliated by not touring England next summer, and world cricket would have been split down the middle.At the eleventh hour, a deal has been negotiated between the ICC and the BCCI whereby Dalmiya has agreed that Sehwag will be left out of the team, having originally been named in the squad as a direct challenge to ICC’s authority as the governing body of the game after the furore in South Africa.That led to endless negotiations between, on one side, Malcolm Gray, the president, and Malcolm Speed, the chief executive of the ICC, and Dalmiya on the other. These negotiations appear to have borne fruit and the Test and tour can continue as planned.The deal was described as a “victory for common sense” by the ECB chairman Lord MacLaurin. “I am delighted to hear this news. The decision is a victory for common sense, and I congratulate both the ICC and BCCI on reaching an agreement.”As we have made clear the ECB has always been fully supportive of the ICC’sposition throughout this process. The decision will strengthen the ICC’s authority and integrity as the world governing body for cricket — but the family of cricket is the real winner.”Dalmiya said: “Cricket had to survive. In the larger interests of the game, Sehwag had to be dropped in this match.”Tim Lamb, the chief executive of the ECB, echoed his chairman’s views. “This is good news for the millions of cricket followers worldwide and England’s supporters. There is huge expectation about the series, and I am delighted that the tour can now proceed as planned and that the England team can continue their preparations for the first Test in Mohali without any further distractions.”All such deals require some give and take and, while the ICC has received the assurance that Sehwag will not play at Mohali, the governing body has also made some concessions towards the BCCI.There will be a “Referees Commission” established to examine whether the ICC Code of Conduct and proper procedures were followed when Mike Denness imposed the penalties during the second Test in Port Elizabeth.The BCCI will be consulted as to the composition of the commission, but ICC has said that membership will be confined to “persons of the highest reputation and at least two of them will be reputed former cricketers.”At the end of the day, Dalmiya must have realised that the ICC would not accede totally to his demands and could not afford the scheduled Test series against England to be jeopardised. Hence the outcome that gives him a concession to show to his board while the ICC has successfully upheld its authority as the governing body of the game.

Sudhir Naik, the curator at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai, has agreed to withdraw his complaint against India team director Ravi Shastri and bowling coach B Arun over their alleged outbursts after India were thumped by South Africa on October 25 to lose the ODI series 2-3.A Mumbai Cricket Association press release said their vice-president Dilip Vengsarkar had met with Naik and Shastri and advised both parties to “bury the matter” that had come about as a result of a “misunderstanding.”India have been asking for pitches that suited their strength, namely slow turners. But Naik’s complaint claimed he had not received any input from the team management regarding the type of surface they wanted. So a batsman-friendly track was provided and South Africa took full toll. AB de Villiers, Quinton de Kock and Faf du Plessis struck centuries and posted a total of 438 and dealt India their second-biggest loss in terms of runs – 214. The series was also lost 2-3.After the match, Shastri is understood to have sarcastically complimented Naik, saying “Great wicket,” and he allegedly followed that with an expletive, which led to a heated exchange. Shastri, however, denied that he used the expletive.Naik’s letter to the MCA had also mentioned that Arun had complained of the nature of the pitch and it was unnecessary for the bowling coach to have a go at Naik’s assistant Rajesh Mhamunkar, who looks after the Wankhede track for all non-international matches.

Former South Africa left-arm spinner Nicky Boje has agreed to a two-year deal with Northamptonshire after a successful spell with the county last season.”I really enjoyed my time at the club last summer and found some form in all aspects of the game,” Boje said. “I was easily persuaded to make the move on a longer term basis and look forward to being a part of a very strong squad in 2008″”The experience that Nicky brings to the dressing room along with consistent match winning capability as an allrounder in all forms of the game makes him a very valuable asset,” David Capel, the coach, said. “He has a depth of cricket knowledge which our talented young players should learn from”.Boje, who retired from international cricket at the end of 2006, will be registered as a Kolpak player.

Lou Vincent struck a quick hundred to lead Auckland to a 38-run victory against Canterbury at the Village Green in Christchurch. Vincent’s 129 was well supported by aggressive fifties from Richard Jones and Kyle Mills as Auckland piled up 303 for 6. Canterbury were restricted to 265 for 7 in reply.After being asked to bat, Auckland’s openers – Paul Hitchcock and Vincent – added 58 for the first wicket. Hitchcock’s contributed only 7 to that partnership before being caught off Leighton Burtt. Jones joined Vincent in a 106-run partnership for the second wicket which steadily built the momentum. Jones struck 69 off 66 balls with seven fours and two sixes.Wickets began to fall at regular intervals after Jones was dismissed by Iain Robertson, but Vincent held up one end. He struck 19 boundaries, and when he was dismissed with the score on 254 for 5, Kyle Mills took on the responsibility of taking Auckland past 300. Mills crashed six fours and two sixes and raced to 52 off 29 balls.Canterbury’s chase started poorly as they lost their first four wickets for 69 by the 17th over. Chris Harris, who scored 71, and Kruger van Wyk revived the chase with gritty half-centuries but the asking-rate kept increasing. Hitchcock’s vital middle-order strikes ensured that Canterbury ran out of steam in spite of van Wyk’s unbeaten 63 off 56 balls. Hitchcock was the pick of Auckland’s bowlers, finishing with figures of 3 for 56.