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Delhi Daredevils are at the bottom of the IPL points table after four matches, and their biggest signing at the auction, allrounder Irfan Pathan, has been struggling to justify his US $1.9m price tag. Delhi captain Virender Sehwag, though, defended Irfan, who has so far taken only two wickets at nearly eight runs an over and scored 28 runs at less than a run a ball.”He is coming from injury and will take some time,” Sehwag said. “He is coming back after a one-year lay-off.” Irfan had a back injury which kept him out of competitive cricket since last season’s IPL, and returned to the top-flight only at the start of this year’s IPL.”He picked up an early wicket. He gave just about 30 runs in four overs,” Sehwag said of Irfan’s performance against Deccan Chargers on Tuesday. “He is getting better day by day.”After the loss to Deccan, Sehwag said one of the reasons for Delhi struggling at home was the slow track. “Kotla has always been like this over the last few years. It was always difficult to chase down a total of 160-170 on this track. With the ball keeping low it was tough to push things along late in the match.”Delhi have now been defeated in both their matches at Feroz Shah Kotla, and their next game is also at home, against Kings XI Punjab on Saturday. Sehwag hoped the track for the remaining matches at the Kotla would be more helpful to their pace-heavy attack. “We have indeed asked them to prepare a couple of green wickets here.”

ScorecardIan Blackwell enjoyed a wonderful match as Durham won comfortably•Getty Images

Ian Blackwell smashed 98 off 64 balls and then took three wickets to lead Durham to a 69-run victory over Leicestershire in the Clydesdale Bank 40 Group B clash at Grace Road.Put into bat, Durham totalled 285 for 9, helped by Blackwell’s boundary-laden innings plus six additional runs awarded because of the Foxes’ failure to complete their overs in the allotted time. Blackwell then claimed three of the first four Leicestershire wickets to fall, including that of Josh Cobb, who hit a limited-overs best score of 87.Cobb’s effort, however, was not enough to keep the Foxes in contention and they were dismissed for 216 with 16 balls still remaining to give the Dynamos their second win of the season.Durham did not make the best of starts to their innings, with Kyle Coetzer caught at cover off Alex Wyatt in the third over. But a half-century off 39 balls from 19-year-old Ben Stokes launched the recovery, with Gordon Muchall also chipping in with a useful 32. But the innings only really took off when Blackwell arrived at the wicket. He made his intentions clear with two early sixes off Cobb and Wayne White and, after surviving a difficult chance to wicketkeeper Paul Dixey, reached 50 off 41 balls.The scoring rate then rocketed when the Dynamos took the batting powerplay. Blackwell and Gareth Breese hammered 54 off the four overs, with both batsmen piercing the field with a succession of boundaries, including further sixes. When Breese eventually skied a catch to long-on, the sixth-wicket pair had put on a record stand of 144 in 17 overs. Breese’s share was 44, with three fours and a six.Blackwell looked set for a century but, two runs short of it, popped up a return catch off a slower ball from Wyatt, having hit five sixes and seven fours in his blistering 64-ball innings. It was his best limited-overs score for Durham and his best for six years.Graham Onions claimed a quick wicket when the Foxes replied, but a second-wicket partnership of 97 between Cobb and James Taylor put them back into the game, with Cobb twice pulling Onions for six over square leg. However, Blackwell once again changed the course of the match with the wickets of Taylor, Paul Nixon and then Cobb, who he bowled for 87. Cobb hit two sixes and seven fours in his 78-ball knock.That ended Leicestershire’s hopes and Stokes also completed an excellent all-round performance, claiming three late wickets for six runs as the Foxes collapsed to 216 all out with 2.4 overs remaining.

Andrew Strauss pinpointed the evening dew in Chittagong as a factor that severely hampered England as they slipped to a two-wicket defeat but refused to blame his team’s loss on the conditions. In the first half of Bangladesh’s chase the dampness caused major problems, especially to Graeme Swann, and meant England had a lot of ground to claw back.Although Strauss said that these were not win-toss-win-match conditions, he also believe it wasn’t right that the spinner’s role was effected so heavily. “Something [is] not quite right when a spinner can’t grip the ball in these conditions, in these parts of the world, where spin plays such an important role.”As a result of the dew, England couldn’t use Swann, the only spinner in the side, exactly the way they would have wanted to. “There was a 20-over period when it was very very bad,” Strauss said. “Obviously Graeme couldn’t grip the ball. That was hard work for us. It wasn’t the reason we lost the game, I don’t think, but certainly there was quite considerable dew there.”With the ball getting wet, Swann got into an argument with umpire Daryl Harper, who refused to have the ball changed as often as Swann wanted. Including the mandatory change at 34 overs, the ball was switched three times according to Strauss. Swann was later fined 10 percent of his match fee for violating the ICC’s Code of Conduct. He was deemed to have breached article 2.1.4, which relates to “Using language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or insulting during an international match.””Graeme was obviously very frustrated that he couldn’t grip the ball,” Strauss said. “He felt he had a big role to play in the game. For a period we had to take him off, until later on when he could grip it. It was frustrating for him, it was frustrating for all of us that the ball got as wet as it did. That happens, that’s the conditions we encounter.”Graeme Swann became very animated with Daryl Harper over the damp ball•Getty Images

At one point the exhange Swann was threatening to boil over in his frustration and Strauss had to step in. “Graeme was asking to change the ball. I wasn’t there, I don’t know what was said between the two of them,” Strauss said. “Once the exchange happened, I told Graeme to calm down and get on with it, and he did do so.”Strauss knew, though, that dew wasn’t why England lost their second group match of a rollercoaster campaign. “Losing three wickets early certainly didn’t help us,” he said. “It was a pretty low, slow, stodgy wicket this afternoon. We needed wickets in hand to get to 240-250, which would have been a very good score.”As it was, Eoin Morgan played exceptionally well I thought, and obviously Jonathan Trott stuck in there. We thought it was a par score, we thought we could defend it, and we got ourselves into a great performance to defend it. In the end we weren’t able to take those last two wickets, which is desperately disappointing for us.”However, Strauss did make a pertinent observation about the dew. “One thing I would say is, it feels slightly strange to have the first ever day-nighter at a certain ground in a World Cup. So perhaps a lesson to be learned there.” That obviously hasn’t been a consideration in the tournament: the teams in Group A are playing at venues in Sri Lanka that are hosting their first matches, day-night or otherwise.

Online tickets for the knockout rounds of the World Cup will be available via an online lottery system after a heavy load crashed the tournament’s official ticketing website on Monday.Organisers are working out the exact schedule and details for the online lottery by which people will be given an extended period in which to put their names into the ballot on the World Cup’s official ticketing website, Kyazoonga.com. The lottery will take place after the period to register is completed. This will be the first time that there will be an online lottery for a sports event held in the subcontinent.Organisers say the lottery is a common practice at other global sporting events where there is a heavy demand for tickets. The lottery for the London Olympic Games in 2012, for example, opens on March 15, 2011. Each winner will be restricted to just two tickets, however. “This way at least more people will have a chance to get the tickets,” Ratnakar Shetty, the tournament director, told .Kyazoonga says that they had suggested a lottery system at the start of the tournament as one means of ticket distribution, but the idea had been rejected because of its novelty in the subcontinent. At one stage on Monday, the website had 500,000 concurrent users trying to buy tickets to the World Cup final. Of the 4000 tickets being put on sale for the game, only 1000 will be available online.

The exclusion of middle-order batsman Rohit Sharma was the surprise in India’s 15-man World Cup squad announced in Chennai. The other bone of contention had been the second specialist spinner’s slot, and the selectors have picked both offspinner R Ashwin and legspinner Piyush Chawla, ahead of left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha. Most of the other names in the squad were along expected lines.India’s major concern ahead of the team selection was the injuries to four first-choice players – Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and quick bowler Praveen Kumar – but the selectors picked all four, confident that they will be fit in time for the tournament which starts on February 19.India’s bowling attack for the World Cup will be significantly different from their standard Test attack, with only Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh being named. The fast bowling pair of Sreesanth and Ishant Sharma, and Ojha are all excluded while Munaf Patel, who helped India to a series-levelling victory over South Africa on Saturday, has found a place as the fourth seamer.The selectors have gone in for a well-stocked slow bowling department, expecting traditional subcontinent tracks for the World Cup. Besides Harbhajan, there are two specialists in Ashwin and Chawla, an allrounder in Yusuf Pathan besides the part-time offerings of Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina and Virender Sehwag.Chawla was also something of a surprise pick, though he is part of the one-day squad currently touring South Africa. He hasn’t played any one-dayers for India since the Asia Cup in July 2008, and none of his 21 ODIs have been at home.The squad also has only seven specialist batsmen, including MS Dhoni, which might be a worry in case of injuries. India haven’t played their full-strength one-day side since the New Zealand tour in early 2009. There is no reserve keeper in the squad either, but that shouldn’t be a concern as they can have one travel with them in case he is needed at short notice.Kris Srikkanth, chairman of the national selection committee, was confident India could end their 28-year wait for a one-day World Cup. “This particular Indian team is doing brilliantly for the past couple of years in both Test and ODI cricket. They are playing consistently not only in India but outside,” he told reporters after the team was announced. “We are confident this team will do well and win the World Cup for us in front of the home crowd.”He also defended the large spin contingent in the squad. “Don’t forget that you are playing in India. The spinners probably play a very major role on the turning wickets. I am confident that the kind of balance we have, the kind of batting line-up we have, this team led by Dhoni will do the job for us.”Squad: MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Praveen Kumar, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel, Piyush Chawla, R Ashwin

Wasim Jaffer, the Mumbai captain, has admitted that his team were complacent and arrogant in their Ranji Trophy quarter-final against Rajasthan, who were promoted from the Plate League. Rajasthan knocked out the defending champions, bowling them out for 252 and then surging to 589 on the back of three centuries. Jaffer, however, denied that Mumbai had taken Rajasthan lightly. “It is very shocking indeed when I look back. They (Rajasthan) are professional players and have come up the hard way,” Jaffer told . “In fact they were on par with some of the Elite Division teams. But we never expected that this would happen. We were a bit complacent and arrogant too.”The conditions were helpful for the fast bowlers on the opening day, Jaffer said, and he felt that bowling first would have been the correct decision. Mumbai, however, opted to bat, and seamer Pankaj Singh ran through the line-up to skittle them out for a below-par score. “There are no ifs and buts. We have always batted first whenever we won the toss and we usually put up a big score. We don’t normally field first unless the pitch is really green. Even in last year’s final in Mysore, we batted first. But I would admit that we did not bat well and 250 certainly was not enough. We had recovered from tough situations before, but this time we couldn’t.”Jaffer blamed Mumbai’s early demise this season on his batsmen throwing away their wickets after getting starts. “You could see that throughout the tournament, runs were scored but then they were not converted into big scores. Against Railways, (Ajinkya) Rahane scored 94 but he did not see the team through, and the rest of the batsmen had to rescue us. In this match too, he and (Abhishek) Nayar scored 60, but they could not get big scores, which would have helped us. The lack of conversion was one of the reasons for our loss.”Despite the core players like Jaffer, Rahane, Nayar, Rohit Sharma, Ajit Agarkar, Iqbal Abdulla, and Ramesh Powar playing most games, Mumbai tried out 23 players in all during their eight Ranji games, and Jaffer felt that they lacked bench strength. “We don’t have suitable fast bowlers who can replace Dhawal (Kulkarni), Ajit or Aavishkar (Salvi) when they are injured. We also need to have a back-up of good spinners. Batting is another area where we need bench strength. Players have come in but none of them have impressed in the given opportunities. You have to at least score a hundred or a double to cement your place instead of 30s or 50s.”Not making even the semi-finals is a huge letdown for the 39-time champions, who take immense pride in their Ranji record, and Jaffer said that it hurt to be out of the tournament “so early.” “Every year our aim is to win the title, nothing less than that. Everyone was confident from the staff to the team management. But when you are playing the knockout stage you may have one bad session or bad day and you have to deal with that. However, we could not overcome that this time.”

Scorecard
Alex Blackwell top-scored for Australia with 42•Getty Images

In the absence of the injured Claire Taylor, England’s batsmen floundered against a determined Australian attack to slip to a 33-run defeat in the rain-shortened first match of their one-day series.A third-wicket partnership worth 77 between captain Alex Blackwell and Leah Poulton was the mainstay of Australia’s innings as they reached 7 for 194 in 44 overs. England captain Charlotte Edwards registered a 34th ODI fifty in response but was given precious little support as the visitors ended on 9 for 151.Taylor, 35, was unavailable due to a shoulder injury sustained during England’s second warm-up match against Western Australia on Monday, and was sorely missed as Australia chipped steadily away at the England line-up. Both new-ball bowlers, Ellyse Perry and Rene Farrell, struck early to reduce England to 2 for 5 before Edwards and left-hander Lydia Greenway fought back with a 66-run stand.When Greenway departed as the first of two quick wickets for offspinning allrounder Lisa Sthalekar, England’s slide began in earnest. Jenny Gunn and Beth Morgan were dismissed from consecutive deliveries, but the decisive blow came when Edwards, shortly after raising her half-century, was caught by Sthalekar off debutant Sarah Coyte’s medium pace in the 34th over with the required rate rising steadily.Katherine Brunt was stumped off Shelley Nitschke in between two run-outs by Perry, and despite some bright hitting by Holly Colvin and Lauren Griffiths England were well short of the par Duckworth/Lewis score when rain forced an end to play midway through the 40th over.Australia’s opening batsmen had earlier justified their captains decision to bat first with a watchful 47-run opening stand. Both were dismissed in the 20s by Gunn’s impressive seamers, but Poulton and Blackwell’s partnership – the highest on either side – then laid the platform for the innings.Blackwell took her team past 150 after Poulton’s departure and looked set for a 12th ODI fifty before she was stumped off Edwards for 42. Sthalekar didn’t last long before becoming Gunn’s third victim, but a pair of rapid cameos from Rachael Haynes and Jess Cameron provided the impetus for Australia’s charge.”It was first of all nice to get the series started and then to have a win was excellent for us and hopefully we can continue this form and this momentum through the rest of the series,” said Player of the Match Nitschke.”We would have liked a few more runs but we had a lot of contributors with the bat which was really good and hopefully that’s a good sign moving forward. We’ll take some confidence out of this win; we were in England a couple of years ago and had a pretty ordinary series against them so hopefully we can keep this momentum and continue to improve.”Farrell and Perry bowled really well at the start, especially Rene, she moves the ball quite a bit and it was quite humid out there and those conditions really assisted her. Our girls did a really good job and used the conditions extremely well early, they probably just needed a bit more luck.”The two teams meet in the second ODI at the WACA on Friday. The extent of Taylor’s injury will be reviewed before that game..

Matabeleland Tuskers secured their place in the semi-finals of the Stanbic Bank 20 Series with a 26-run win over reigning champions Mountaineers at Harare Sports Club. Paul Horton’s well-paced 71, his first half-century in Twenty20 cricket, set up Tuskers’ 162 for 6 before their bowlers dented Mountaineers’ top order. Once a brief middle-order counter-attack had been dealt with the wickets tumbled regularly and Mountaineers were bowled out for 136 in the 18th over.Tuskers captain Gavin Ewing spoke about the renewed spirit in his side after the match, and it was certainly a team effort that set up their win. With Horton scoring steadily, Charles Coventry helped Tuskers get over the early loss of Warwickshire allrounder Neil Carter with a typically flamboyant cameo. Both Lance Klusener and Tinashe Panyangara were dispatched with typical panache over the offside boundary, but if Coventry’s shot-making was characteristic so was his dismissal. Not content with racing to 20 from his first nine balls, he tried one shot too many and placed a full ball from Panyangara in Greg Smith’s hands at long-off.Adam Wheater and Sean Williams didn’t last long as Tuskers slipped to 78 for 4, and though Horton kept the scoreboard ticking over they were in danger of setting a sub-par total went Keith Dabengwa chipped Prosper Utseya straight to cover in the 16th over with the score only just past 100.Keegan Meth, whose batting has been the more impressive facet of his game in this tournament, breathed some life into the innings with three boundaries in an over off Klusener and after Horton reached a 47-ball fifty he too opened up. With both batsmen in full flow, 57 runs came off the last four overs to help Tuskers to a competitive score.After a subdued start to Mountaineers’ chase, Hamilton Masakadza and Mark Vermeulen departed in the space of three balls to spark wild celebrations from Njabulo Ncube and Chris Mpofu, the successful bowlers. Twenty-two deliveries then passed without a single boundary, and the required rate was edging towards 10-an-over when South African import Jonathan Beukes aimed a wild swipe at Gavin Ewing’s first ball – a full, flighted offspinner – to depart leg before.With no option but to hit out Sean Ervine and Smith did just that, thrashing three fours and three sixes off the next two overs, from Meth and Ewing, before Smith attempted a reverse sweep to Dabengwa’s left-arm spin and gloved a simple chance to Wheater behind the stumps. His dismissal signalled Mountaineers’ demise, and a procession of batsmen walked to and from the crease as wickets tumbled.The impressive Chris Mpofu ended the game by rattling Panyangara’s stumps with a quick yorker, and while Tuskers have now booked their place in the semi-finals Mountaineers face a must-win match against a strong Southern Rocks side on Friday if they are to survive in the tournament.Tuskers were a disappointment in all formats in their first season, but appear to be a far happier unit this time round and are now one step closer to claiming their first piece of silverware under the new franchise system. As the teams left the field, a smiling John Nyumbu insisted “the mood is a lot better than last year, I can tell you that”.

In a ruling that could have widespread repercussions for cricket administration in India, the Kerala High Court has said the officials of the Kerala Cricket Association (KCA) can be considered public servants, and directed a lower court to continue hearing a complaint alleging misappropriation of funds by the association. The complaint was filed under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, which applies only to public servants.The KCA had argued that it was a private body similar to a club, and therefore did not come under the purview of the act. In its order, the High Court observed that the KCA had a monopoly on cricket in the state and performed a public duty and a public service, and so was liable to be investigated by the vigilance department.The complainant, Balaji Iyengar, a chartered accountant and former Kerala junior cricketer, had filed the original complaint against the KCA in the Vigilance Court two years ago. The court ruled in favour of the KCA, saying its officials were not public servants, but Iyengar challenged the ruling in the High Court. In quashing the lower court’s order, Justice M Shashidharan Nambiar held that the officials do fall under the definition of public servant as laid out in the act.TC Matthew, the KCA secretary, told ESPNcricinfo it would challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court, adding that the decision, if allowed to stand, could result in a number of cases being filed against the BCCI and other sports associations.Indian cricket’s governing body has consistently held it is a private organisation and not accountable to the public but the Kerala ruling could open the door for anyone to challenge the functioning of the BCCI and cricket associations around the country.”It will be a landmark judgement of sorts if upheld by the Supreme Court,” the activist lawyer Rahul Mehra said. “In effect, what you are saying is that these officials are akin to government officials.” Mehra famously pursued public interest litigation against the BCCI in 2000 in an attempt to extract more accountability from the board.The Delhi High Court ruled in Mehra’s favour in 2004, saying that the BCCI was accountable to the public as it performs important public functions. That ruling was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in a case involving television rights between Zee Telefilms, an Indian television company, and the BCCI. This decision takes things another step further, Mehra said. “It has opened a door which I have been trying to open for about five years.”

As he walked away from the presentation ceremony, Warriors’ captain Davy Jacobs turned to MS Dhoni and gave him the thumbs-up sign. Dhoni returned the compliment. It was that kind of a night. Both teams went home happy. It was a strange night in some ways. Neither team extended themselves. Both played within themselves. In the end, both left the arena happy.Let’s take the case of Chennai first. You have to win to qualify for the semi-final and you win the toss. What do you do? Chennai, rightly, decided early that on this slow track where the ball stopped and turned, 160 would be a good score. They showed their positive intent when they went after Nicky Boje in the seventh over. It was fascinating to watch.Here was a spinner’s track where you perhaps expected that they will go after the pacers. But this is a team with batsmen who are good players of spin and they went after Boje. They looted 16 runs from that over to jump to 53 for no loss from 7 overs. Jacobs immediately removed Boje from the attack and introduced his trump card, Justin Kreusch.Prior to this game, Kreusch has bowled just four overs in this tournament. He bowled two overs in one game and a solitary over apiece in the next two. It’s not that he wasn’t successful. He produced the game-breaking moment against Victoria when he yorked David Hussey. He produced a similar delivery in his first over today to remove M Vijay. Unlike the other night, he was given the ball again.”Normally just one over and off and so thrilled to get more than one over,” Kreusch said with a laugh. “But this is obviously my type of wicket and so I knew I will get more than one over. Obviously thrilled that I could contribute and we are in semis.”He bowled cutters, took the pace off the ball, generally kept it full and strangled the batsmen. Chennai lost some wickets in the middle overs and decided to shut shop for a while. It was a brave move. It was risky as well. What if they fell short of a decent total? But what if they went after runs and lost more wickets and ended up with a below-par total? But what was a below-par total? It was that kind of a game. When do you go for the slog?Dhoni felt it had to be delayed. That he was forced to delay it. “I think we just delayed the slog by two overs,” Dhoni said. “We started it in the 17th over, which meant that we had just 18 balls to make as many runs as possible. At the same time you have to see the quality of the bowlers and they didn’t give too many loose deliveries to us. So you don’t really earn 30-35 runs in those 3 overs. And that was the thing that really happened in the middle.”We got up to a decent start. I think there was a miscalculation in the middle and we lost 2-3 wickets together. I think if we would have lost just one wicket at that point of time then the batsmen who are set can take bit of a calculated risk. But when you lose 2-3 wickets all of a sudden then you have to delay the slog which really means that you are losing 10-15 runs crucial on this kind of a track. But we are happy to be on the winning side and qualify for the semis.”It was a sentiment that was shared by Warriors. “We would have probably gone a bit harder at the start if we had to chase 160,” Jacobs said. “We didn’t have to do it but the run out of [Craig] Thyssen set us back a bit – we stopped going after the win after that – but we are happy that we have made it.”The crowd too were happy. The giant screen flashed that Warriors had made to the next stage when they reached 109 and they started to sing, chant, drink and make merry. Warriors went on to lose but that just seemed a minor inconsequential detail tonight.