South Africa made full use of the second new ball to rip through Sri Lanka’s last five wickets and complete a 206-run win in Port Elizabeth, an hour and 10 minutes into day five

The Report by Karthik Krishnaswamy30-Dec-2016
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details5:25

Five things we learned in Port Elizabeth

Abject SL, awesome Rabada

• 9 Number of losses from 11 Tests for Sri Lanka in South Africa. They have the third-worst loss percentage in the country behind Zimbabwe and Bangladesh who are yet to win in South Africa.

• 2.5 Win-loss ratio for South Africa in 2016. They end the year as the second-most successful team after India. South Africa have won five Tests and lost two.

• 68.22 Average of Angelo Mathews in the fourth innings of Test matches. Only Bruce Mitchell, Jeffrey Stollmeyer and Don Bradman average more (min 500 runs). Mathews top-scored for Sri Lanka with 59.

• 36.6 Strike rate of Kagiso Rabada in 2016 – the best for any fast bowler this year (min:20 wickets). He also has four five-wicket hauls, which is also the most for any fast bowler in 2016.

South Africa made full use of the second new ball to rip through Sri Lanka’s last five wickets and complete a 206-run win in Port Elizabeth, an hour and 10 minutes into day five. Once Kyle Abbott broke through early to dismiss Angelo Mathews and Dhananjaya de Silva, there was little Sri Lanka’s lower order could do. The margin of Sri Lanka’s defeat belied how comfortable their top-order batsmen had looked on day four, and reflected how so many of them had thrown their wickets away.Chasing 488, Sri Lanka started the final day 248 adrift with five wickets in hand and their last two recognised batsmen at the crease, one of them batting on 58. That man, Mathews, had added only one run to his score when Abbott nipped one in sharply and had a loud lbw shout upheld. Mathews had taken guard on off stump right through the Test match, and this probably played a major role in his dismissal. Jumping back and across, Mathews had to open up to access the ball that was jagging back into the stumps, and before his bat could come across to meet it, the ball had struck his retreating front pad, right in front. He reviewed more in desperation than hope.A near-replay, down to the failed review, sent de Silva on his way 3.5 overs later. Again the batsman was standing on off stump, and again was forced to play across the line. Again the review returned an umpire’s call verdict on height.In between, Abbott had also dealt Rangana Herath a blow with a sharp lifter that struck him on the bottom hand. Having strapped up his fingers, Herath lasted a further nine balls before Vernon Philander had him caught and bowled, diving across the pitch to catch it low to his left, landing painfully on his arm, after getting the ball to stop on the batsman.Kagiso Rabada got into the act next, finding away seam movement and extra bounce in the corridor to catch the shoulder of Dushmantha Chameera’s bat. The last wicket went to Keshav Maharaj, who finished with a three-wicket haul that was reward for some skillful, tight bowling while getting through 29 overs on day four. He only needed to bowl nine balls on day five, the ninth an absolute ripper, turning past the outside edge of Nuwan Pradeep’s defensive bat to knock back off stump.

Liton Das’ maiden double-century set up East Zone’s nine-wicket win over Central Zone

ESPNcricinfo staff30-Jan-2017Liton Das’ maiden double-century set up East Zone‘s nine-wicket win over Central Zone in the opening round of the Bangladesh Cricket League first-class competition in Bogra.Liton made 219 off just 241 balls, including 26 fours and four sixes as East Zone made 367 in reply to Central Zone’s 224 all out which was hastened by Abu Jayed’s five-wicket haul. Only three other batsmen, apart from Liton, reached double-figures in the East Zone innings.Trailing by 143 runs, Central Zone were then bowled out for 198 in the second innings. Abul Hasan and Saqlain Sajib took three wickets each while Jayed and Ebadot Hossain picked up two wickets each.East Zone reached their target of 56 runs on the third afternoon, losing one wicket in the process.Liton was adjudged player-of-the-match for his effort, an innings that will keep him in the mind of the national selectors with so much cricket ahead of Bangladesh this year.

Sarah Coyte, the South Australia and Adelaide Strikers allrounder, is seeking better balance in life after announcing her retirement from all forms of the game at the age of 25

Daniel Brettig01-Mar-2017Sarah Coyte, the South Australia and Adelaide Strikers allrounder, is seeking better balance in life after announcing her retirement from all forms of the game at the age of 25. Her decision arrived a year after she stepped down from international duty with the Southern Stars to combat mental health issues.Having come from a strong cricket background in New South Wales – her brother Scott also played for the Blues and went on to represent the Sydney Thunder in the Big Bash League – Coyte put together a remarkably consistent record for Australia in ODIs in particular, averaging 22.00 with the bat and 22.27 with the ball over 30 matches beginning in 2011.She excelled largely with the ball in Tests and Twenty20s for Australia, and performed similar feats with NSW and latterly SA. Coyte has spoken publicly in the past of her battles with anorexia nervosa while playing international cricket, and said on Wednesday she had made the decision to quit the game and return home to her family in Sydney to continue working on her personal development and quality of life.”The last two seasons with the Scorpions and the Strikers have been the best and most fun of my career,” she said. “I will miss the girls so much; I have really enjoyed being around them. I want to thank SACA for everything they have done for me and the support they have offered during some hard times.”I am going home to Sydney to be close to my family and restore some balance to my life. I have been realising lately how much I have missed my family and it is finally time for me to go home. I am not going back home to play for New South Wales, I am leaving domestic cricket altogether to refocus on myself and my loved ones.”Coyte took on the mantle of a senior player in SA, offering leadership to others that the Scorpions benefited from enormously – never more so than in the 2015 WNCL final when they snapped a run of 10 consecutive titles for NSW in a memorable final. Coyte contributed a typically tidy spell to tie her former teammates in knots.”Since joining SA, Sarah has had such a great influence over the young players, especially in terms of her commitment to strength and conditioning,” the Scorpions coach Andrea McCauley said. “She really led the way for the younger Scorps and showed them just what it takes to be an elite athlete.”It’s disappointing to lose such a quality player. I have enjoyed having Sarah as part of the group for the past two seasons but it’s so important that she looks after herself and does whatever it is she wants to do with her life next. I truly wish her all the best for this new chapter.”Coyte’s efforts were also recognised by the Cricket Australia chief executive, James Sutherland. “On behalf of the board and everyone at Cricket Australia, we congratulate Sarah on a wonderful career, both internationally and domestically, and thank her for the wonderful contribution she has made to Australian cricket,” he said.”She played a key role in making the Australian team the formidable side it is, and should be proud of her efforts and what she achieved in her career. Sarah always showed a great deal of fight and passion when playing for her country, and we thank her for her commitment to the green and gold.”After she returns to Sydney in April, Coyte will expand her burgeoning career in health and fitness, making use of the many lessons learned while playing elite sport.

K Sriram was part of the Anil Kumble-led Karnataka team that won the Ranji Trophy in 1995-96

ESPNcricinfo staff18-Feb-2017Former Karnataka batsman K Sriram died at the age of 43 in Bangalore on February 16, following a cardiac arrest. Sriram, who was unwell for the last two months, is survived by his wife and two children – a son and a daughter.Sriram played 15 first-class matches for Karnataka and scored 644 runs, including a hundred and a fifty. He was also part of the Anil Kumble-led Karnataka team that won the Ranji Trophy in 1995-96. In the final against Tamil Nadu, Sriram was pitted against his older brother Srinath, who opened the batting and made 85 runs in the first innings.Sriram, who had worked with Canara Bank, was a qualified BCCI level-two coach.

Warwickshire look set to be without fast bowler Olly Stone for longer than originally anticipated in a delay that will bring inevitable disquiet about his long-term prospects

George Dobell30-Mar-2017Warwickshire look set to be without fast bowler Olly Stone for longer than originally anticipated in a delay that will bring inevitable disquiet about his long-term prospects.Stone, signed from Northants towards the end of 2016, damaged his anterior cruciate ligaments last June after falling awkwardly when celebrating the wicket of Moeen Ali.It was originally feared he would be out of cricket for around 12-months but now appears that such an estimation was optimistic.Warwickshire still hope that Stone will play some part in the 2017 season, but they are determined not to rush him and are even phlegmatic about the possibility he may not play his first game for them until 2018.”The important thing is that we give him every chance to make a full recovery,” Warwickshire’s first team coach, Jim Troughton, told ESPNcricinfo. “We hope he will play a part this year, but if it takes longer than that, so be it. We’re not going to risk his long-term career prospects by trying to hurry him.”It is a bitterly disappointing development for Stone, a player of huge potential, Warwickshire saw him as the outstanding fast bowling prospect in the English game when they signed him in the face of competition from eight other clubs last year. To be sidelined for so long from such a freak injury is a cruel blow.Warwickshire are also likely to be without Jeetan Patel for a few weeks. The club are resigned to him being named in New Zealand’s ICC Champions Trophy squad and, as a result expect him to miss at least one Championship game as well as some key matches in the Royal London Cup.They hope that New Zealand might be persuaded to allow him to miss some warm-up games ahead of the tournament, but it seems unavoidable that he will miss the Championship game away at Hampshire – where spin is likely to play a major role – and, if they get that far, the quarter and semi-finals of the Royal London. Warwickshire are the defending champions in that competition.In his place, Warwickshire are likely to provide more opportunities for leg-spinner Josh Poysden and left-arm spinner Sunny Singh.

Centuries by Alastair Cook and Ryan ten Doeschate saw off Sussex after a hat-trick by Jerome Taylor had ripped the heart out of their top order

ECB Reporters Network10-May-2017
ScorecardAlastair Cook was one of two Essex century-makers•Getty Images

Centuries by Alastair Cook and Ryan ten Doeschate steadied Essex to a fourth Royal London Cup victory after a hat-trick by Jerome Taylor had ripped the heart out of their top order.From the depths of 19 for 3, Cook and ten Doeschate ensured Essex posted a competitive 295 off their 50 overs – and that proved too much for Sussex, who finished 11 runs short.Cook took his total to 317 runs in five one-day innings with a 131-ball 109, his second three-figure score of the season. He shared a fifth-wicket stand of 142 with ten Doeschate, who was run out off the last ball for 102 for 91 overs.Chris Nash and Stiaan van Zyl both scored sixties in Sussex’s reply, but no one went on to make the big scores that Cook and ten Doeschate had earlier.Sussex failed to capitalise on a great start when West Indies international Taylor struck with the first three balls of his third over to underline why both captains would have put the other team in.Varun Chopra was the first Essex batsman to go, chasing a wide one to give Michael Burgess a diving catch behind for two.Tom Westley followed, attempting to withdraw his bat but only managing to offer a faint touch to the same combination for his second golden duck in successive innings.Adam Wheater was the hat-trick victim when trapped plumb lbw on the back-foot playing down the wrong line.Taylor’s fourth ball of the over, however, was eased through midwicket by Dan Lawrence for four to offer some inspiration to the shellshocked Essex batsman. When Taylor was rested after his opening six-over salvo he had figures of 3 for 23. By the end he had been on the receiving end of a battering as his 10 overs went for 65 runs.The fourth-wicket pair of Cook and Lawrence set painstakingly about repairing the damage. They put on 65 runs in 15 overs before Lawrence pushed a return catch to spinner Danny Briggs’s fifth ball for 34.When he was 38, ten Doeschate survived what looked a comfortable caught and bowled chance. He hit the ball almost vertically in the air, so high into the stratosphere that Shahzad was able to race down to the striker’s end before dropping the plummeting ball right by the stumps.Luke Wright, Sussex’s captain, did not hide his displeasure. “It came down to that moment when it’s never a bowler’s catch,” he said. “It goes up and it’s straight to a keeper with big gloves on and then he would take the catch.”I think everyone in the ground was shouting, ‘keepers!’ But, look, the bowler wanted it and unfortunately he dropped. At that point it’s a big moment and Tendo made use of it.”Sussex were made to pay as he accelerated with a succession of bludgeoning boundaries mixed with tip-and-run singles turned into twos.Ten Doeschate had just passed fifty – from 57 balls – when Cook swept a hip-high delivery from Shahzad for his 12th four to reach a 122-ball century. He was finally out when he cut Jofra Archer backward of square to Shahzad.Ashar Zaidi had hit Wiese for a straight six before he went for another and was held above his head by Briggs on the square-leg boundary. Ten Doeschate swatted a short delivery from Archer to reach three-figures from the penultimate ball of the innings and was run out from the last. Essex had added 99 in the last 10 overs.Nash and Wright played sensibly as they laid the foundations for the chase with a first-wicket stand of 67 in 14 overs. But the ball after Wright had driven Jamie Porter for a flat, straight six, he hooked straight to Paul Walter at deep fine leg for 32.Harry Finch lasted four balls before he went lbw to one from Zaidi that straightened. After which Sussex became becalmed for a spell, and Nash and Stiaan van Zyl went 36 deliveries between boundaries, during which time they managed just nine singles.Nash went for a 90-ball 66 when he played a cross-batted shot to Matt Quinn and was caught at mid-on. But van Zyl passed fifty from 60 balls with a lofted drive to long leg for four, followed by a six over long-off, before he was caught on the ropes by Walter for 61.
Half the side were out with 108 still required from 10 overs when Burgess was bowled by Simon Harmer. Laurie Evans perished to Cook at wide mid-on for 30 and Wiese fell to another attempted big-hit at long-off by which time the asking rate had passed 12 an over.Sussex gained a second wind when Quinn’s nine-ball over went for 21 runs. Walter restored order with the first ball of the next over when he bowled Briggs. But Archer smashed his second six before Walter ended the 21-ball slog-fest by having the Barbadian caught on the square-leg boundary for 45 and then claimed his third wicket by bowling Taylor.

Mashrafe Mortaza said Bangladesh would be trying to focus on an improved performance in their second group game, rather than an rare win over Australia

Alan Gardner at The Oval04-Jun-2017Bangladesh have only ever beaten Australia once in a full international. Across all formats, starting with their first encounter in an ODI in Sharjah 27 years ago, one victory – and perhaps all the more memorable because of its rarity. The summer of 2005 is much-fabled in English cricket but it held significance for Bangladesh, too.

‘Such things are happening everywhere’

Mashrafe Mortaza has said Bangladesh were unconcerned about the security situation at the Champions Trophy after the terrorist incident in London on Saturday – despite the team’s hotel being close to London Bridge, where the attack took place. He also suggested that the realisation “this is happening all over the world” might encourage teams to tour Bangladesh in future.
In 2015, Australia pulled out of a tour over security concerns, while England’s visit to Bangladesh last year took place without Eoin Morgan, their ODI captain, and Alex Hales. Mashrafe reiterated that Bangladesh had been “grateful” for England coming and said it was up to host countries and the ICC to ensure adequate security measures were in place.
“We stay in the hotel most of the time, and the security is quite good,” he said. “Such things are happening everywhere. I think now people will be encouraged to come to Bangladesh, in a way. These things depend on the hosts and the ICC, who always keep adequate security.
“We have been grateful of England for touring Bangladesh last year, although Morgan and Hales opted out of the tour. Now I think they will understand that it is happening in their country. But these incidents have become hard to stop. But given the security here, I don’t think there will be any problem.”

It was in Cardiff, 12 years ago, where Aftab Ahmed hit Jason Gillespie down the ground for six and then inside-edged the winning run, sealing Bangladesh’s chase of 250 in the final over. For England, this was another sign that Australia could be beaten in the tumultuous Ashes series to follow; for Bangladesh, one more staging post on their journey to being recognised as a serious cricketing nation. And Mashrafe Mortaza was there.Mashrafe, now Bangladesh’s captain, was 21 years old and playing his 20th ODI. He remembers removing Adam Gilchrist, lbw for 0, in the first over of the match (how could he forget?) and he also recalls travelling around in a limousine to celebrate victory later that night. No one else from that NatWest Series match will be involved when the two teams meet again in the Champions Trophy on Monday – but Mashrafe will be able to look to his players in the dressing room at The Oval and say he knows how it feels to beat Australia.”Yes, Cardiff – 12 years back,” he said with a smile of recollection at Bangladesh’s pre-match press conference. “Obviously, tomorrow is a new day and it has been a good memory for us. We are confident enough to play against them. We will try our level best.”I can remember only that I got Gilchrist out – and in the night time we were driven in a limousine. It was a great memory for us, especially for me, in this team. That’s what I can remember. But the team has changed. The team is playing good cricket now. So let’s see what happens.”Bangladesh’s meetings with Australia have been infrequent over the years. Their group fixture at the 2015 World Cup was rained off – a threat which lingers over south London, too – and they last contested an ODI in 2011. Steven Smith’s well-intentioned referencing of Mushfiqur Rahim as “a good young player” (Mushfiqur, 29, has played 286 times for his country and debuted on that same Bangladesh tour of England in 2005) before this game hinted at the lack of familiarity.Beyond reminding Australia of who they are, Bangladesh are aiming to make an impact at the Champions Trophy, having missed out on the last two editions of the tournament. They gave a good account of themselves in the first half of their opener against England, posting 305 for 6 thanks to Tamim Iqbal’s hundred, but lacked penetration with the ball in an eight-wicket defeat.In that match, Bangladesh left out Mehedi Hasan, a frontline spinner, in favour of playing Imrul Kayes at No. 3 and asking Mosaddek Hossain, Soumya Sarkar and Sabbir Rahman to deliver ten overs with the ball. Mashrafe conceded that the balance of the side was something they were likely to address, with Mehedi or Sunzamul Islam perhaps likeliest to come in given the game will take place on a used pitch (the same as that for South Africa’s win over Sri Lanka on Saturday).Aftab Ahmed celebrates after leading Bangladesh to victory in Cardiff 12 years ago•Getty Images

“In our previous match, I thought we could defend 305 but we couldn’t get wickets in the middle period,” Mashrafe said. “Getting wickets really matters in cricket, so we definitely have to think about our combination. Since we could score 300-plus with eight batsmen, then why wouldn’t be able to do with seven batsmen? What can happen if we don’t play five bowlers, that is also in our mind.”But one thing is clear, we have to score a large total. Normally 300 in one-day cricket is good enough, but with the [fielding restrictions] they have got now, and if the wicket is like this, you have to rethink it.”Before the start of the Champions Trophy, Bangladesh rose to their highest ODI ranking of No. 6. Since 2015, they have knocked England out of a World Cup, and won bilateral series against India, South Africa and Pakistan. A second-ever victory over Australia would ice the cake nicely – as well as keep alive their hopes of reaching the semi-finals – but Mashrafe, as ever, was focused on deflecting pressure from his side.”Yes, we’re playing so far good cricket,” he said. “But overseas we have to improve a little more. We are learning, and hopefully we’ll cope with all the pressures tomorrow and we will try to deliver our best. Whatever I say, we have to calculate a bit more, which area we need to do a little bit more like batting – an 30 extra runs – or when bowling, for the batters’ benefit, if we can get ourselves into a bowling groove, if we can cut down 30 more runs, that will really help the team win.”Pull it off and Mashrafe’s players can head to Cardiff, where they play New Zealand, with an eye on the last four. Is it too much of a stretch to think they might need that limo again?

Jake Ball has been ruled out of the Lord’s Test against South Africa with a knee strain

ESPNcricinfo staff29-Jun-2017Jake Ball will not be available for England’s first Test against South Africa due to a knee strain. He has also been ruled out of Nottinghamshire’s Royal London Cup final at Lord’s on Saturday, head coach Peter Moores has confirmed.The seamer felt pain in his knee when bowling during the second innings of Nottinghamshire’s Specsavers County Championship game against Kent on Tuesday. He went for a scan on Wednesday to assess the damage and was unable to take to the field when the third day of the day-night match resumed after a rain delay.Ball is set to miss the next two weeks of action, which puts him out of contention for the start of the Investec Test series against South Africa, which begins on 6 July at Lord’s. England are already set to be without Chris Woakes and have worries over the fitness of Stuart Broad, Ball’s Notts team-mate, after he suffered a recurrence of his heel problem last week.Nottinghamshire hope Broad will be able to play in the Royal London Cup final, having sat out the pink-ball match at Trent Bridge.”Jake is naturally very, very disappointed to miss out on the final, having previously been made available to play by the ECB, particularly after missing out on selection when Notts beat Glamorgan at Lord’s in 2013,” Moores said. “He’s given his all in this competition when he’s been available to us, and we’ll miss him for what will be a really tough game against Surrey.”Jake is a very strong character and I’m sure he’ll bounce back from this. I know he’ll be wanting us to beat Surrey as much as anybody.”

As Alastair Cook reached 64 not out to complete a day of Essex supremacy, for Essex supporters finding their county top of the Championship, the twilight came close to heaven

Paul Edwards at Chelmsford26-Jun-2017
Scorecard”WAIT ON!” The loud bellow echoed around the County Ground just as similar cries of caution have done over the decades. Yet the rich Belfast accent suggested that the Middlesex batsman uttering the warning did not hail from Stanmore or Staines. But Paul Stirling is hardly your normal county cricketer; he is somewhat unconventional in shape and appeared unusual in his response to being dropped at slip: he took 26 off the next nine balls. And perhaps it was fitting that Stirling should be the batsman loudly advising caution, for he was doing so at just gone six o’clock this Monday evening. We were just over halfway through our ration of overs. Normality did not seem the order of the day.And then one looked more closely at the architecture of the opening exchanges in this afternoon/evening game – surely ‘day-night’ sacrifices accuracy to monosyllabic convenience – and one noticed a tall off-spinner whose accuracy and flight paid due honour to the Essex tradition personified in some of the county’s greatest years by David Acfield. If the trailblazing nature of this day’s cricket was captured by Stirling’s 77 off 50 balls, the game’s steadier virtues were personified by Simon Harmer, who took 5 for 77, his third five-for in a week at Chelmsford. The off-spinner is now the leading bowler in Division One and his ability to exploit a pitch offering bounce but little turn is the main reason Essex are in control of this game.The subsidiary explanation for Essex’s dominance – they trail Middlesex by only 140 runs and have all their wickets in hand – was the batting of a tall Test cricketer who was practising against a pink ball in the Essex nets when some of his colleagues and opponents were still going through their lunchtime stretches. Perhaps more than any other cricketer, Alastair Cook exhausts the thesaurus and enervates metaphor. So yes, there was a pull and three cuts in Cook’s first 26 runs; an off-driven reply to a Toby Roland-Jones half-volley was his only break with a routine England supporters would recognise. Clinical, methodical, ruthless. Again.

Pink ball blues

Simon Harmer, Essex spinner:“”The seam is a little bit different. It didn’t spin or turn as consistently as I thought it would, which may be played to my advantage. There was a lot of bounce with the pink ball and it comes off the bat a lot better. All the bowlers felt there was extra bounce with it. We could have done better with the new ball, but it’s going to take time to adjust.”
Paul Stirling, Middlesex batsman: “We expected it to swing for a lot longer than it did and from what we’ve practised with and what the lads have experienced in the Abu Dhabi pink ball games. We thought it would have done a lot more towards the end of the day as well, but it’s done less than we thought.”

Every other county in the land would wish their openers possessed Cook’s qualities; Middlesex’s batsmen clearly needed them as they wasted the winning of the toss, although this profligacy was not the fault of their openers. Nick Gubbins, beaten all ends up by Mohammed Amir’s fourth ball in an Essex shirt was leg before to the sixth, which speared wickedly into him. Next over Nick Compton was caught behind off a Jamie Porter delivery which pitched just outside off stump and held its own. 2 for 2 and we readied ourselves for pink-ball pandemonium.But our preparations were unnecessary. Instead of a steady relay of glum batsmen there was a fine partnership of 120 runs for the third wicket between Middlesex’s stand-in skipper Dawid Malan, who played a most cultured innings of 60, and Stevie Eskinazi, whose 66 off 111 balls lost little by comparison. Malan’s driving through the covers and on the on-side was a delight and, to a degree, it made the ECB look a trifle silly. For the stated rationale behind the reorganisation of the English season into blocks of Championship, 50-over and T20 cricket was that players should not be asked to move from one format to another in the space of a couple of days. So how might we explain Malan’s stylish innings against a pink-ball attack less than 24 hours after he had dispatched South Africa’s T20 bowlers all around Cathedral Road on his international debut? Might we call it talent, versatility, composure? Middlesex took afternoon tea – Darjeeling and patum peperium perhaps – with the scoreboard reading 106 for 2. It was probably as well they could not glimpse what lay ahead.Middlesex’s decline in the pre-prandial session began when a blameless Malan was superbly caught behind the wicket by James Foster off a ball from Harmer which turned a fair bit and bounced a lot more. Then Eskinazi pushed forward at Porter but only nicked a catch to Cook at slip. John Simpson’s valuable wicket was taken by Amir who arrowed a ball into the wicketkeeper-batsman and almost induced him to walk without waiting for David Millns to don the black cap. John Lever may have watched approvingly from the plush tent where the former players were chewing the fat on President’s Day. JK did as much as anyone to win four titles for Essex and in September he might see them win another.The rest of the session belonged to Harmer, although he had to share some of the headlines with Stirling, who bullocked Paul Walter over the square leg boundary twice in an over and hit five uncomplicated sixes in addition to eight fours. But the off-spinner had both Stirling and Ollie Rayner caught at cover by Ryan ten Doeschate in the same over and Middlesex’s formidable tail could not dam the flow of wickets.Left with 36 overs to bat, the Essex openers exposed the inadequacy of their opponents’ total. When Cook was 48 Gubbins committed the fatal mistake of dropping a two-handed chance at cover off Steven Finn. Such indiscretions generally meet with condign punishment. Cook’s last shot in cool anger was a square cut off Roland-Jones. The light failed a little and we finally noticed the floodlights.Essex ended a close-to-perfect day on 106 for no wicket, Cook 64 not out. It is not a bad time to sport the seaxes on one’s shirt. At dinner time they had named the pavilion in a tribute to that remarkable nonagenarian, Doug Insole. To the honorand’s undoubted delight, Essex are already well placed to win the game and to land their first County Championship since 1992. No wonder, then, that there were precipitate roars of triumph from the popular side in the supper session.Bliss it was this twilight to be alive and to be an Essex supporter was very heaven.

For the second year in a row, the series will be contested through limited-overs fixtures after the traditional multi-day contest was scrapped

Peter Della Penna22-Aug-2017USA will tour Canada for three 50-over matches next month for the 2017 Auty Cup, the culmination of Cricket Canada’s Summer Cricket Festival. It is the second year in a row that the series will be contested through limited-overs fixtures, having scrapped the traditional multi-day contest that dates back to the first meeting between the two sides in 1844, making it the oldest rivalry in international cricket.The matches will be played on September 12, 13 and 14 at the Iceland complex in the west Toronto suburb of Mississauga. Officials initially pursued holding the games on Labor Day holiday weekend, September 1-4, due to the convenience of USA’s amateur players not requiring time off work. However, the majority of national level players on both sides have made a habit of freelancing in lucrative private T20 cash tournaments scattered around the country over the holiday weekend and would have been reluctant to forego a key earning opportunity in the mostly amateur North American structure.The September 1-4 dates also conflicted with the ongoing Caribbean Premier League, with five USA and two Canada players currently tied up with various franchises. The CPL playoffs end on September 10, and holding the first match two days later gives both teams an opportunity to field their full-strength squads.Canada’s preparation for the Auty Cup includes three matches between the Canada High Performance squad and Bermuda on September 5, 7 and 8 at Maple Leaf Cricket Club in King City. USA recently played a pair of exhibition T20s against St Kitts & Nevis Patriots and Jamaica Tallawahs in Florida, and the unavailability of nearly half their first-choice players in part due to their CPL commitments resulted in a pair of underwhelming batting performances.The most recent encounter between USA and Canada took place in Uganda at WCL Division Three in May. Canada won the match by 96 runs behind half-centuries from teenage opener Bhavindu Adhihetty and Dhanuka Pathirana. USA eventually finished in fourth place to stay in Division Three while Canada gained promotion along with Oman into Division Two.The Auty Cup has gone through a series of fits and starts over the years. After being played three years in a row from 2011-13 – under a format of a two-day match, a 50-over match and two T20s – with Canada winning on all three occasions; no Auty Cup was held in 2014 or 2015. The series resumed last October in Los Angeles as Canada retained the trophy after defeating USA 2-1 in a series of three one-dayers.