Dennis Lillee, the champion former Australian fast bowler, has describedMuttiah Muralitharan’s decision to pull out of next month’s two-Test seriesas “pathetic” and “a real cop-out”.Muralitharan cited “personal reasons” for his decision to pull out of SriLanka’s two Tests against Australia in Darwin and Cairns, starting July 1. Aspokesman for Sri Lanka Cricket told AFP: “He won’t be going to Australiafor personal reasons, and he handed over a formal letter about this to SriLanka Cricket president, Mohan de Silva.”The board agreed unanimously to his request for a short break from the game.”Muttiah Muralitharan is a national asset,” SLC added in a press release.”However, due to the disturbing turn of events which took place since beingreported by Chris Broad, and the various adverse comments in the recent past, he is undergoing tremendous pressure.”According to Ajit Jayasekera, the team manager, Murali’s team-mates havebacked his decision: “We are totally supportive because we have seen thetrauma he has been put through in recent weeks. We understand why he hasmade this decision.”Dennis Lillee was less soothing, telling The West Australian paper: “I was brought up to be wary of people who pick up their batand go home. I think this is a pathetic decision and a real cop-out.”Muralitharan has played all these Tests and taken all these cheap wickets,like against the Zimbabwe 2nd XI, but now he is not fronting up when thegoing gets tough.”Shane Warne, who may also miss the series with a broken bone in his hand, was similarly scathing of Murali’s decision, describing him as “thin-skinned”. Warne told Melbourne’s Sun Herald newspaper: “I think it is the wrong decision not to tour. He has a lot of critics, particularly in Australia, but you can’t afford to let the critics get to you.”However Kim Hughes, the former Australian captain, described Murali’s absence as “a real tragedy”, a view echoed by James Sutherland, Cricket Australia’s chief executive. “We’re disappointed that Murali has decided not to tour Australia for what is an important series between the two countries,” said Sutherland.”It’s disappointing for the people of Darwin and Cairns who were lookingforward to seeing him bowl, and it’s disappointing for the Australian players who relish the opportunity of playing against the best in the world … We hope to have him back in Australia at some stage in the future.”Muralitharan, 32, was not prepared to rule out that prospect last night. “It’s not because I don’t like Australia or anything like that,” he told The Australian . “I might tour Australia again.”On his two previous tours down under Murali was called for throwing by Australian umpires and heckled by spectators, events which made him remarkthat he would never go there again.The break from cricket will allow Murali to take a well-earned rest beforecommencing a non-stop season of international cricket, which starts with theAsia Cup at home in July, followed by South Africa’s visit, the ICC Champions Trophy in England, and tours to Bangladesh and New Zealand before the end of the year.Sri Lanka already have two other spinners in their 15-man squad and no replacement is expected.

The wretched form of Herschelle Gibbs leaves South Africa facing a serious selection dilemma as they try to lift themselves out of a rut – a losing run that stretches back seven games – and keep alive their series hopes in Dambulla on Wednesday.Gibbs, a surefire selection for so long, is in danger of being axed, as Graeme Smith, South Africa’s frustrated captain, admitted after the team’s morning practice session on Tuesday. But Smith also hinted that Gibbs’s matchwinning qualities could save him from the guillotine for the time being.Gibbs’s problems started with an ankle injury, sustained in Pretoria before the tour. It kept him out of the first practice game and the first Test. Then, after he worked feverishly to regain his full fitness, his early-season rustiness was clinically exploited by Sri Lanka’s new-ball bowlers in the second Test.After failures in the first two matches of this one-day series, including a ghastly swipe that left his stumps splayed in the second game, he has a total of 11 runs from four visits to the crease. Two boundaries may be enough for him to regain his touch, but Martin van Jaarsveld, who scored some runs in the Tests, is waiting eagerly on the sidelines.”Herschelle is a world-class player and has been a proven matchwinner time and time again for South Africa,” Smith told reporters. “It is very difficult to leave out a man of his calibre, as we know he could go out any day and win the game in 30 overs. But it is something that has been up for consideration with the selectors.””We have options with a few guys that can bat in the top order,” added Smith, “and Martin [van Jaarsveld] is the likeliest to play if we leave Gibbs out.” But wholesale changes are unlikely: “I don’t expect too many changes though. We have been playing our best team and will give them one more go.”South Africa are drawing inspiration from their magnificent fightback against Pakistan last year, when they stormed back from a similarly dire position to win the series 3-2. However, this time South Africa are under pressure as their run of defeats starts to threaten the ten-match losing streak under Kepler Wessels in 1994.But Smith insists that his team are not lacking in confidence or commitment – they just need a bit of luck to spark a comeback. “We have fallen out of the winning habit and we have been a little tense in the crunch situations. We have spoken about the need to relax a little bit so that we can finish games off more ruthlessly.”Sri Lanka’s squad, in high spirits after the wedding of Nuwan Zoysa yesterday, trained in the afternoon. Although Tillakaratne Dilshan is suffering from a painful ankle, they will be picking from a full squad. Their only dilemma is the balance of the attack: two seamers or three? Farveez Maharoof and Rangana Herath are battling for the final place.

The ICC’s inaugural awards ceremony confirmed Muttiah Muralitharan’s status as a pariah of world cricket. How else can his exclusion from their Test team of the Year be explained?Naturally Australia dominated the world Test XI, with five players named: Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Jason Gillespie and Shane Warne. There was one Sri Lankan: the ever-deserving Chaminda Vaas. But how the voting panel can justify Warne’s inclusion ahead of Muralitharan is beyond comprehension.Selection panel chairman Richie Benaud had a go when he said in a statement: “As a group, we deliberated for some time about the balance of the team – it was no easy task. We considered the players’ performances and the strength or otherwise of the competition these individuals faced over the course of the year.”Then we approached the statistical side of things, and again the competitive nature of matches came under scrutiny. The aim was to produce a well-balanced XI able to win matches played on a good pitch.”As is always the case with only 11 positions to be filled, there will be disappointments. Shane Warne came back and made an immediate impact with 36 wickets in just five games, and deserved his place as the first spinner; leading wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan was unlucky.”But a quick look at the statistics reveals the panel shied away from raw statistics and the strength of the opposition. In the qualifying period – August 1, 2003 to July 31, 2004 – Murali played nine Tests, taking 73 wickets at an average of 18.56. He took his wickets against Australia (28), England (26), South Africa (5) and Zimbabwe (14). Australia and England are the ICC’s two top-ranked teams, and not long ago South Africa was challenging Australia for No. 1 status.Warne, by comparison, missed more than half the qualifying period because he was still serving a one-year doping ban. When he came back he played five Tests – all against Sri Lanka. Admittedly he routed the fifth-ranked Lankans, taking 36 wickets at 22.25, but is that enough? In the year under scrutiny, Murali took twice as many wickets at a better average and played much tougher teams than Warne – beating the Aussie in two of the criteria Benaud listed.Perhaps the debate over which of the two most successful bowlers was more deserving of a place in a World XI reveals some hard truths about world cricket and its bias. Warne appears to have gained his place by virtue of reputation. The fact he was serving a drug ban during the voting period should have been taken into consideration, but Warne is one of those characters whose flaws and misdemeanours are constantly brushed aside or ignored.Murali, whose only fault is a wonky arm, endlessly pays the price for his controversial bowling action. During the voting period he was placed under review and his doosra was banned. He played only one Test with the doosra ban in place – the rest of the matches were effectively legal and he cannot be punished retrospectively. But it seems he has been.Joining Benaud on the selection panel were Ian Botham, Sunil Gavaskar, Michael Holding and Barry Richards. Perhaps someone from New Zealand should have been on the panel. After all, the Kiwis won the inaugural Spirit of Cricket award, and fair play seems to have been missing in this team selection.

Sandeep Patil, who has been coaching various India sides after quitting as Kenya coach in April 2003, has accepted an offer with Oman. The Indian board had not given assurances about his future.Patil, 48, spoke to reporters after the appointment. “I’m taking up this job to coach the Oman national team only because India A don’t have any schedule to look forward to,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate situation. But I have got no assurance from the board despite official reminders. I cannot continue in a scenario where my future is insecure.”Oman’s main target next year will be a good finish in the ICC Trophy, which will rank its participants. They qualified ahead of Hong Kong and Nepal after strong performances in the Asian Cricket Council Trophy – when Patil had coached them in a one-off assignment.

Ricky Ponting does not believe the Test captaincy has affected his batting, but he intends to finish a "stop-start" year on a high against Pakistan, starting in the first Test at the WACA tomorrow. Entering the match with 505 runs at 36.07 for 2004, Ponting has fallen well short of his career average and his Australian-record haul of 1503 runs at 100.2 last year.Ponting said he understood that he hadn’t set the world on fire since taking over from Steve Waugh, and is still searching for his first century as captain. “I certainly haven’t felt any added pressure there,” he said. "I really don’t let things cloud me at all and I’m not one that thinks too much about cricket when I’m not at training or around the team."Disruptions with a broken thumb and the death of his aunt forced him to miss four Tests this year and he said it affected his form. “It’s been a frustrating sort of Test year for me just because it’s been so stop-start,” Ponting said. "I’ve missed a few games in a few series and obviously missed the first part of an unbelievably satisfying tour to India as well.”Ponting said he had no problem getting starts, but hadn’t gone on to make the big scores like he did in 2003, when he hit three double-centuries against India and West Indies. In the two-Test series against New Zealand he was in a hurry to three figures in the first-innings, settling for 51 and 68, and was an unbeaten 26 before his second Adelaide declaration.”Probably on a few occasions this year I’ve let what could’ve been a big score slip,” he said. “So hopefully that changes around here tomorrow and Boxing Day and I can finish off the year on a good note."

The ECB has given domestic one-day cricket a revamp, starting from 2006. The C&G Trophy will lose its knockout format, but retain the late-August final, while the National League will be played towards the end of the season and its matches will be 40 overs per side. The move follows last month’s announcement that all domestic one-day cricket will be played in coloured clothing from next summer.The C&G Trophy, first as the Gillette Cup and later as the NatWest Trophy, had been a wholly knockout competition since 1963. Its league matches will be scheduled for the start of the summer, much like the old Benson & Hedges Cup, which was replaced in 2003 by Twenty20. There will be two conferences, north and south, made up of the 18 first-class counties, Ireland, and Scotland, who will no longer participate in the National League. The winners of each conference will meet in the final.Surrey’s Mike Soper is the chairman of the domestic structure interim working party which recommended the changes. “I am extremely pleased with the outcome of this report, which was unanimously acclaimed at the recent first-class forum meeting,” he told reporters. “We will now have a strong competition in the C&G Trophy which reflects international cricket.”

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.

As the Zimbabwe squad prepares to travel to South Africa for the forthcoming Test and ODi series, Dean du Plessis, a local analyst, claimed that most players are not fit enough for the demands of international cricket.”The majority of the players need to bulk-up, to play at the highest level," he told the Zimbabwe Standard. "Our bowlers do not benefit from the weight-load that comes with a bigger physique. The other thing is our bowlers are not consistent enough … impressing in one match only to flop in the next. Those were our biggest let-downs in Bangladesh and unless the team improves on those, then we will be in big trouble when we tour South Africa."Zimbabwe led the five-match one-day series against Bangladesh 2-0 before squandering that lead and losing the last three matches. Many blamed the side for not being fit enough and quite literally running out of steam when it mattered.The Standard also quoted Nick Chouhan, a former board member, as saying that the administration lacked professionalism in its approach, making it hard for the team to function to its full potential. He cited the comments made by Richie Kaschula to the effect that the defeats were the fault of coach Phil Simmons as being a prime example."What Kaschula has done is highly unprofessional and deplorable," Chouhan told the paper. "They should have waited for Simmons to present his report on what transpired first and in private, rather than condemn the man in the press. You would not expect such things from a national selector.”

Daryl Tuffey was fined $1000 (US$740) this week for acting against the interests of New Zealand Cricket after he failed to destroy promptly a digital film. Despite doing little else wrong, Tuffey suffered unnecessarily after his case was made public.The facts are simple. Tuffey got caught on video with a woman, doing what adults who fancy one another do, got filmed doing it and, after he realised he had been recorded, didn’t act quickly enough to remove the evidence. NZC said Tuffey had acted against their interests and committed serious misconduct, which he admitted to.It would seem an open and shut case: set the penalty and get on with playing cricket. Yet the formal inquiry dragged on for a week and became the latest hot topic for talkback radio and office gossip. The media widely reported that the matter involved Tuffey and a woman, and a logical inference from the serious nature of the inquiry was that whatever went on was not consensual. But Hugh Rennie QC, who conducted the investigation, found the contact between Tuffey and the woman was consensual and discontinued by them voluntarily.Mr Rennie heard the matter on March 8 and interviewed further witnesses before releasing his report on Tuesday. The need for more questions was odd as Tuffey admitted the charge at the hearing. If it was a criminal matter, the charge would have been read and Tuffey would have been asked to plead. If he admitted the charge, as he did in this case, he would then have been sentenced.Mr Rennie said he received extensive information from people with direct knowledge of the events and that Tuffey had openly and frankly answered all matters raised. “The formal allegation made by NZ Cricket is admitted by Mr Tuffey,” Mr Rennie said in the report. “He took this action immediately and voluntarily.”The last sentence is significant. The implication from Mr Rennie’s report is that Tuffey admitted his guilt when the charge was laid before the hearing. If NZC wanted independent input from that situation Mr Rennie’s role could have been merely to sentence Tuffey rather than put him on trial.The strangest aspect of the report was that it didn’t spell out what the serious misconduct was. Instead of finding the information in the first paragraph, the best description is at the end of the findings where Mr Rennie said Tuffey “acknowledged to me that his conduct was serious misconduct in terms of his agreement with NZ Cricket” and that “from the inquiries I have made, he has acted correctly in making these admissions”. What the matter is really about – Tuffey acting contrary to the interests of NZC – is buried in Mr Rennie’s analysis of the gravity of the offence on page 3.Although Tuffey did little wrong, the $1000 fine is probably justified as he admitted the offence. If his actions were at the serious end of the scale then what penalty would await a player whose misconduct is of a minor nature? The real problem lies in the ambit of a crime. Just as the basic criminal charge of disorderly behaviour catches even the most harmless of activity, it is unavoidable that the expression “contrary to NZC’s interests” will pick up almost any incident.There are no winners here. Tuffey has suffered public humiliation far beyond what his actions justified. NZC may cop flak for bringing up an allegation that the public cannot be faulted for struggling to see what Tuffey did wrong.

Virender Sehwag has said that he was the only batsman capable of leading India to a win in the third Test against Pakistan at Bangalore. In his syndicated column, he has also criticised his fellow batsmen for playing for a draw, and has said that there are many lessons to be learned from it.Speaking about his run-out, the only wicket of the morning session, he has written, "I was upset at that point because I knew that my dismissal meant that we would not win. I saw myself as the only batsman who could score at four-an-over since the rest of our batsmen are more correct and conventional Test cricketers. In my mind I felt that the rest would be able to draw the game but I was the only one capable of winning it."The Indians abruptly went on the defensive after Sehwag was out, and this was a key factor in Pakistan’s ascendence. Inzamam-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s captain, was later to say, "This [India’s change in tactics] helped me to set attacking fields. I did not have to worry about giving away runs, and could concentrate on wickets.”Sehwag elaborated, "Perhaps playing for a draw was not such a good idea since most of our batsmen are cast in the strokeplaying mould. Even at tea, the general mood was that we would scratch out a draw. The possibility of defeat dawned on us when Sachin Tendulkar got out. There were still 20 overs left and we knew that the remaining batsmen would not be able to play out time with umbrella fields in operation."Sourav Ganguly had come under a lot of criticism for both his captaincy and his batting. Sehwag, however, defended him. "I have always found Sourav to be a positive captain," he said. "Whatever his personal form, whatever the media writes about him, he has always been strong, focussed and aggressive at team meetings. Perhaps these are the qualities that make him India’s most successful captain."