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New Zealand will look to continue their supreme run in the series, while Sri Lanka will hope for one their senior batsmen to take control of the match

The Preview by Andrew Fidel Fernando27-Dec-2015

Match facts

December 28, 2015
Start time 1100 local (2200 GMT, previous day)Sri Lanka will be expecting a strong performance from Dinesh Chandimal, their most successful batsman in the Test series•ICC

Big picture

Beaten in the Tests and walloped in the first ODI, a beleaguered Sri Lanka have 40 hours to rebound in Christchurch. In the Tests, it was the short delivery that got them. On Saturday, it was the moving ball. Milinda Siriwardana and Nuwan Kulasekara played manful innings, but the match had virtually been decided in the first 10 overs.Even on a batting-friendly pitch, and without their two usual new-ball quicks, Tim Southee and Trent Boult, New Zealand’s four-pronged seam attack appears formidable. Adam Milne and Matt Henry provide intensity with the new ball; Milne a shade quicker, Henry a better exponent of seam movement. Then the hit-the-deck bustle of Mitchell McClenaghan and Doug Bracewell probe Sri Lanka’s top order from a new angle.Mitchell Santner’s left-arm spin seems New Zealand’s most vulnerable frontline bowling option, but if the seamers get through their first spells as clinically as they did on Saturday, Sri Lanka will not risk taking Santner on. Both teams’ attacks have been depleted for this series, but New Zealand seem to have greater depth, in addition to familiarity with the conditions.What Sri Lanka desperately need is for their experienced batsmen to take control of a match. Five innings into the tour, the visitors are yet to hit a century. Tillakaratne Dilshan seems the likeliest candidate, but having been in good form through the Tests, team-mates will look to Dinesh Chandimal as well.New Zealand, meanwhile, will not want to change much for Monday’s match. With Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill having bludgeoned the visiting bowlers into submission in the first game, they may feel confident enough to continue smuggling inexperience in that middle order.

Form guide

New Zealand: WLWLW (last five matches, most recent first)Sri Lanka: LWWWW

In the spotlight

With his 79 from 56 balls on Saturday, Martin Guptill became the top ODI run-scorer for 2015. Less than 12 months ago, he was searching for runs in the seven-match ODI series in Sri Lanka, his place in the team in some jeopardy. Then he went to the World Cup and top-scored, hitting an incredible 237 not out in the quarter-final against West Indies. New Zealand have now become accustomed to good ODI starts from Guptill. He is 49 runs ahead of Kane Williamson for the year, and one more good innings will probably safeguard his top position.In a bleak 2015, Milinda Siriwardana has been one of Sri Lanka’s few rays of sunshine. Merely a good domestic performer for several years, Siriwardana’s cricket has progressed quickly in the last 18 months. An excellent first-class season – in which he was the top run-getter – paved his route to the national side, and his combative batting has since seemed at home there. Should the top order ever begin to score runs, Siriwardana appears increasingly capable of providing the kinds of finishes Sri Lanka have missed in the past 18 months.

Teams news

Nuwan Kulasekara might make it into the XI based on his batting performance alone, but as his bowling was limp in the first ODI, Sri Lanka may consider bringing Thisara Perera into the side. With Ajantha Mendis having been hit for more than nine an over, Sachithra Senanayake could also make an appearance.Sri Lanka (probable): 1 Tillakaratne Dilshan, 2 Danushka Gunathilaka , 3 Lahiru Thirimanne, 4 Dinesh Chandimal (wk), 5 Angelo Mathews (capt), 6 Milinda Siriwardana, 7 Chamara Kapugedara, 8 Nuwan Kulasekara, 9 Sachithra Senanayake, 10 Dushmantha Chameera, 11 Suranga LakmalKane Williamson’s knee niggle will be assessed on the day of the match. New Zealand are unlikely to risk him with such a busy summer ahead. Expect a very similar XI otherwise.New Zealand (probable): 1 Brendon McCullum (capt), 2 Martin Guptill, 3 Tom Latham, 4 Ross Taylor, 5 Henry Nicholls, 6 Mitchell Santner, 7 Luke Ronchi (wk), 8 Doug Bracewell, 9 Adam Milne, 10 Matt Henry, 11 Mitchell McClenaghan

Pitch and conditions

The Hagley Oval strip would have worn slightly on Saturday, but is likely to hold together for the entirety of Monday’s game. Good batting conditions are expected again. The weather is forecast to be somewhat cloudy but dry. Temperatures are expected to hover in the high teens.

Stats and trivia

• New Zealand have played four matches across formats at Hagley Oval – all against Sri Lanka – and won comfortably on each occasion.
• Guptill has played five more innings than Williamson this year. In fact, no batsman has played as many as Guptill’s 30 innings in 2015.
• Of the current Sri Lankan side, Lahiru Thirimanne has the best average in New Zealand. He has hit 353 runs at 44.12

Quotes

“Last year was a big contrast to the way I started this year. I was very defensive last year, but this year I’ve got more confidence and am hitting the ball a lot better. I think I’ve played the most games of anyone in the world so I would hope to be at top of the list.”

Usman Khawaja believes his hamstrings are stronger than they have been for three years, after he spent a month on the sidelines recovering from a strain to his left hamstring

Brydon Coverdale21-Dec-20151:12

‘Pleased to get some runs in the middle’ – Khawaja

Usman Khawaja believes his hamstrings are stronger than they have been for three years, after he spent a month on the sidelines recovering from a strain to his left hamstring. Khawaja suffered the injury in the second Test against New Zealand in Perth and is set to return for the Boxing Day Test against West Indies, after proving his fitness with a BBL hundred at the MCG on Sunday night.Khawaja batted through the Sydney Thunder innings and showed his remarkable form had not diminished despite missing Australia’s last two Tests. He has been working with staff at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane since sustaining the injury and was able to bat in the nets for most of that time. On Monday, he said he had recovered well after his unbeaten 109 of the previous evening.”I’m stoked I got some batting time,” he said. “To score a hundred in a T20 game is not an easy thing to do, so I’m just very happy with how things are working out. But there’s still a lot of work to do so I’m trying to keep my head down. I feel really good, just normal, general soreness … I pushed myself pretty hard, in terms of my hammy rehab, in terms of my running, in terms of my conditioning work.”My hamstrings are definitely stronger than they have been in the last three years. The last testing I had to do on Friday was a hamstring strength test and my hamstrings came up stronger than they have been in the last three years. I did a lot of hard work in the last four weeks. The trainers up at the NCC pushed me pretty hard. That’s what I needed to do. That’s all I can control.”Khawaja has now scored centuries in his last three games – the Brisbane and Perth Tests against New Zealand, and the T20 match on Sunday. He appears a certain inclusion against West Indies for his first appearance in a Boxing Day Test, which will leave Australia’s selectors with the difficult decision of whether to drop Shaun Marsh after his 182 in the Hobart Test, or opener Joe Burns.Burns scored a century against New Zealand at the Gabba and while he made starts in all three Tests since then, he has not passed fifty since that innings. That means there is a strong chance that Khawaja will be asked to open with David Warner on Boxing Day. Khawaja said coach Darren Lehmann had wanted him to push himself to his limits in the BBL game to replicate as best as possible the wear and tear he would face in a Test.”I just needed to go out there and play as I would any other game,” he said. “I couldn’t go out there and try to nurse it or not go 100% because I know that’s not what Boof wants. I knew I’d done all the hard work so I was always going to go hard no matter what.”In Twenty20, you’re sprinting every ball. In Test match cricket, you’re not sprinting every ball so it’s a little bit different. Five-day cricket is a different type of fatigue. I’m really glad with the way I’ve pulled up after this game. It’s a good indicator of how I would pull up after a five-day game.”Australia’s squad gathers in Melbourne on Tuesday and will have their first training session on Wednesday ahead of the Test, which starts on Saturday. Some of Australia’s squad members have played BBL matches over the past week, while West Indies spent the weekend playing against an under-strength Victoria XI in a two-day match in Geelong.

Trevor Bayliss, the England coach, has sought to reassure his top-order batsmen that their modest displays in the victory over South Africa will not necessarily lead to their exclusion

George Dobell27-Jan-2016Trevor Bayliss, the England coach, has sought to reassure his top-order batsmen that their modest displays in the victory over South Africa will not necessarily lead to their exclusion from the Test side that takes on Sri Lanka in England in May.But Bayliss has conceded that, with batsmen unable to cement their positions in the team, “there are possibilities” for players in domestic cricket who start the County Championship season well.Alex Hales and Nick Compton both contributed just one half-century each during the four-Test series against South Africa. But Bayliss saw enough in each of them to retain faith that they could prove valuable players for England, though possibly in different batting positions.Certainly he retains faith in the natural talent of Hales – a key member of the limited-overs squads – and feels that Compton will find greater consistency once he relaxes in the England environment. And while Hales looked vulnerable outside off stump, Bayliss felt some technical work – and perhaps a move down the order – could help him flourish in Test cricket.

Bayliss on…

Kevin Pietersen’s World T20 hopes
“I’ve been concentrating on the guys in the squad. We’ve done pretty well over the last six or seven matches. I don’t think there is any real need to change it at this stage.”
Jonny Bairstow
“He would be more disappointed with missing catches than his team-mates. Anyone who misses a chance feels a little embarrassed. They know how hard their team-mates are working to get the edge. I know he is disappointed. We like to enjoy each other’s success but we must stand by our mates as well when things don’t quite go our way. Everyone who has played the game has some bad days and disappointed your team-mates at certain times. It is just the way it is. So certainly there are some challenges for Jonny but at different times his keeping was very good. And he was starting to look like he belonged as a batter.”
Moeen Ali
“I’m reasonably happy with his spin bowling. Again, he’s a work in progress. On his day, he puts a lot on the ball and gets good spin and good bounce. Probably at times, he lacks a little bit of consistency in length more than anything. It just makes it a little bit easier for the batters to get off strike. That’s something he is aware of and trying to improve on all the time. If you take out the absolute superstars, most spinners became good spinners when they were 30 years old. He is improving since I first saw him.”
Defeat at Centurion
“There’s still a lot of hard work to do and that performance is a bit of a reminder. It was a bit of a kick up the backside to the players that we still have a lot of hard work in front of us. And it is also a message to the fans not to get too far ahead of ourselves. We’re going to go through a few difficult periods as well and disappoint, not just themselves but also the legion of fans. But have confidence that they are working very hard to rectify that. I still think we are probably two or three years away from reaching our absolute best.”

“Hales is one of the guys who will be disappointed with how he’s gone in this series,” Bayliss said. “I thought the first couple of games, even though he didn’t score a lot of runs in Durban, he looked quite comfortable at the crease and like he belonged.”He’s one of those guys who has shown what he can do at this level. So it’s about knocking off a few of those rough edges. Whether it is as an opener or somewhere else in the order, he is certainly a guy with a lot of talent.”Swapping Compton and Hales is one of those possibilities. Compton has done the job before and I think Hales has batted at No.3 before. That is certainly an option and has been spoken about in the past.”Bayliss admitted there had “been glimpses” of the intensity that that did not always endear Compton to all his colleagues, but suggested he looked “very solid” at times early in the series. And while Compton – perhaps scarred by his previous experiences in the England environment – has seemed somewhat unnerved by talk around his relatively sedate pace of play, Bayliss suggested he should not feel any pressure to change his natural game.”Early in the series, I thought he looked very solid,” Bayliss said. “Yes, he played a few more shots than I thought he would. Whether that’s any different to what he has done in the past, I’m not sure.”Hopefully, he’s not confused with what his role in the team is. He and Alastair Cook are very much blokes the rest of the order can bat around. So if he approaches it his natural way and scores 80, 90 or 100 or more, the rest of the attacking players can bat around him.”I think there were a few glimpses of that intensity. But a few of the coaching staff and people I’ve been talking to were saying that change in him since the first time he played for England was very noticeable. So hopefully he is relaxing as he gets a little older to give himself the best opportunity to succeed. He is trying to do whatever he can and certainly some of the signs were pretty good.”With neither man – or James Taylor, who also made a single fifty in the series – having made an irrepressible case for their continued selection, though, Bayliss said he would be watching the early weeks of the county season with interest. Given England’s almost relentless schedule, and the fact that he was appointed mid-way through last year, Bayliss has seen very little of the talent available in the county game, but did take the opportunity to watch England Lions team training a couple of times while he was in the UAE.”The players we have in South Africa are the best players we have at home,” he said. “But I think it is also a sign to everyone else in county cricket that, if I come out and score runs early in the season, there are possibilities there.”So when I watch county cricket, it will be a little bit with a view towards current selection and a little bit about looking towards the future. From my point of view, it is not necessarily about technique and the number of runs scored. It is the style of player or person. It’s about guys that have got a bit about them, guys who are a little bit tougher.”They always seem to be the guys that can make it at the top level. You don’t necessarily have to have the best technique to score runs or take wickets. It’s how you use the technique that you’ve got and being hard enough and strong enough and smart enough to be able to use that in the right context.”I’ll certainly be making an effort to watch some cricket and start to understand a bit more about the English game.”

Kurtis Patterson’s second century against Western Australia took New South Wales to the safety of a draw in the day/night Sheffield Shield match at the WACA Ground.

ESPNcricinfo staff17-Feb-2016
ScorecardFile photo – Kurtis Patterson scored an unbeaten 129•Getty Images

Kurtis Patterson’s unbeaten 129, his second century against Western Australia took New South Wales to the safety of a draw in the day/night Sheffield Shield match at the WACA Ground.The first had been made at the SCG in November 2011, when an 18-year-old Patterson spanked 157 to become the youngest first-class centurion in Australian cricket history.It has not all been smooth sailing since for the laconic left-hander, but Patterson’s patient defiance of the WA attack showed that at the age of 22 he is maturing into a batsman capable of the stick as well as the twist.Western Australia’s only glimpse of a fourth innings chase for victory had arrived when David Moody bowled Ben Rohrer with sufficient time still left to manufacture a result, but Ryan Carters and Trent Copeland held firm in Patterson’s assured company.

Monty Panesar has been made part of Northamptonshire’s squad for the 2016 season having secured his own funding

George Dobell04-Apr-2016Monty Panesar, the left-arm spinner, has been made part of Northamptonshire’s squad for the 2016 season, although the club have stressed he still faces a challenge to earn selection once he recovers from shoulder surgery.Alex Wakely, the Northants captain, said that some “honest conversations” have been had with Panesar and he will have to prove himself worthy of selection but he sees his presence as a boost.Last month, Panesar paid his own way on Northamptonshire’s pre-season tour of Barbados as he continued his rehabilitation from surgery.He has not signed a contract with the club and is not currently being paid. While he has returned to bowling at something close to full pace, he is still thought to be two or three weeks away from match fitness following shoulder surgery before Christmas.”I would be very excited to have Monty as part of the squad as his Test pedigree and experience will be really helpful to the rest of the lads,” Wakely said. “We’ve all had some honest conversations but he is fitting in really well. He still has to prove his worth and Graeme White is bowling very well at the moment so he still faces some challenges to get a place on a team.”Panesar, who has played 50 Tests for England, the last of which was on the 2013-14 Ashes tour, started his career with Northamptonshire having come through the youth system. In 2009 he moved to Sussex and then in 2015 to Essex but he suffered disciplinary issues at both clubs.David Ripley, the Northants coach, said: “Monty has worked hard at his fitness which is progressing. He joined us on our pre-season tour to Barbados of his own volition where he fitted in well with the rest of the lads. He will now have to prove himself for selection.”Should Panesar perform well, there is nothing to stop another club offering him a contract at any time. Northants’ financial troubles are well documented and, however well he bowls, there is limited scope to pay him the sums he warranted not so long ago.Such concerns are not at the forefront of anyone’s mind at present. After a difficult period in his life, Panesar is focused more on recovering his fitness and his enjoyment for cricket. If he can manage those things, there is no reason he cannot enjoy several more productive years in the game.While a return to the England side is a distant possibility, it continues to serve as a motivation.”I really want to be part of the England set-up,” Panesar told the BBC. “If it doesn’t happen then at least I tried my best. I’m confident I can bowl the way I used to bowl.”There’s a sub-continent winter tour in Bangladesh and India which keeps me motivated and it’s something I want to be part of.”I know I’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of me, but I’m prepared to do that.”

To concede 593 for 9 against a county with designs on a third successive Championship, be riven by an injury crisis which saw their coach and analyst pressed into fielding duties on the final day and yet still emerge with a draw was a commendable effort b

David Hopps at Headingley20-Apr-2016
ScorecardAndrew Gale’s 46 steadied Yorkshire after a final-day wobble•Getty Images

To concede 593 for 9 against a county with designs on a third successive Championship, be riven by an injury crisis which saw their coach and analyst pressed into fielding duties on the final day and yet still emerge with a draw was a commendable effort by Hampshire as they braced themselves for the hospital waiting rooms that lie ahead.Fidel Edwards, Hampshire’s talisman as they escaped relegation on the final day last season, was the latest casualty after badly damaging an ankle in the pre-match warm-up and being carried from the outfield. It remained unclear whether the ankle was broken – he remained in Leeds after the match for further tests – but Hampshire are provisionally estimating a lay-off of two months, which equates to half the Championship season.A fortnight into the season, roughly half the Hampshire professional staff has been injured, included six frontline bowlers, a calamitous situation which makes draws against Warwickshire and Yorkshire, two sides with Championship pretensions, quite something.Loan signings are inevitable to see them through the coming weeks, although no Division One side is likely to be overly generous and the quality of any Division Two signing would be dubious. Any agent for Kolpak or dual national signings is likely to receive a call.Considering that Hampshire were also hampered by injuries in this match to Sean Ervine, who will discover back in Southampton whether he has rebroken the finger that disrupted his 2015 season; Liam Dawson, who has an abdominal strain; and Chris Wood, whose knee niggle did relent enough for him to bowl in the second innings, Yorkshire still had an opportunity for victory when Hampshire’s innings ended, 140 behind, half an hour in the final day.But their second innings faltered against excellent Hampshire bowling. From 43 for 4 in the 18th over, when the prodigious run scoring of Jonny Bairstow for once failed to deliver (Ryan McLaren producing a good one to have him caught at the wicket), it became evident that they had abandoned hope of working themselves into a position to declare. Bairstow has averaged close to 100 in the Championship since the start of last season, but he can expect a regular England Test place this summer and Yorkshire need to cover his runs from other sources.”It’s not panic stations – it the first game of the season,” said their captain Andrew Gale. “We were a bit sloppy and a bit soft. We have flagged it up and it won’t happen again. But there’s going to come a time in the season when you can’t rely on your Jonny Bairstows to keep standing up and making unbelievable contributions. The lad is playing a different game to the rest of us I think.”The alibi for Yorkshire’s caution was that this Headingley surface remained too true for any undue risk to be taken.
“A lot of credit to Hampshire who didn’t lie down and die,” Gale said. “I felt it was a good decision of theirs to bowl first on a pitch which flattened out a bit. I didn’t think that there was enough time to set a game up after we had lost a few wickets and we had to concentrate on a solid draw.”That flattening-pitch alibi looked just a little threadbare in the hour before tea, however, as Will Smith’s offspin found enough turn to suggest that it would have been more advantageous for Adil Rashid to be bowling in the final session instead of batting out the overs. It might have benefited Rashid, too – a rare chance to bowl in encouraging conditions at Headingley in April being not exactly a common one. Considering that 21 overs were lost to bad light on the opening day, and unbroken sunshine came to the batsmen’s aid, this surface does not deserve to be talked down.”The wickets we took early probably halted their progress, but with 40 overs to go I thought they might have a crack at us,” said Hampshire’s captain James Vince. “After 150 overs in the field maybe thought it wasn’t worth taking the energy out of their bowlers on a flat wicket.”There are concerns in Yorkshire’s top order, tempered naturally by the fact the season is one game old, including two failures for Alex Lees, the latest when he was lbw during a demanding new-ball spell from James Tomlinson. Lees, as a young one-day captain carrying much responsibility, will hope to reverse last season’s slip in form before life becomes too demanding. As for Tomlinson, he had wondered if his Championship opportunities might be limited after the signing of another left-arm quick, Reece Topley – another early-season casualty – but he was impressive here.It took 12 overs for Yorkshire to find the boundary and even they, two in succession, were leg byes. The most tortuous innings was played by Gary Ballance who took 28 balls to get off the mark and who needed 36 balls for 4, at which point he thrashed Chris Wood to a carefully-stationed short cover. Adam Lyth wafted a wide one to slip. Jack Leaning was beaten in the flight by Smith. Gale’s measured 46 guarded against disaster.Hampshire’s 12th man Mason Crane, coach Dale Benkenstein and analyst Joe Maiden had to field for much of the final day, presumably leaving Hampshire short of data as well as bowlers – just the sort of thing to send shivers through a modern dressing room. But who needs data when they can just wallow in memories of a draw as battling as this, one which leaves them with one defeat in eight since they began the recovery last season that ultimately saw them escape relegation.

The ICC has announced that 32 people were chosen to work as part of four national advisory groups charged with implementing USA’s future growth from a strategic framework outline, which was unveiled late last year

Peter Della Penna05-May-2016The ICC head of global development Tim Anderson announced on Wednesday that four national advisory groups have been formed to implement USA’s future growth and development plans from a strategic framework outline, which was unveiled late last year. Thirty-two people have been chosen to be part of the four groups, including several former international players such as Ricardo Powell.

The four advisory groups

Participation
Kinjal Buch, Malika Frank, Shelton Glasgow, Jamie Harrison, Ajay Jhamb, Jamie Lloyd, Rizwan Mohammed, Priya Singh, Michael Voss, Brian Walters
Performance
Julie Abbott, Mir Ali, Aditya Mishra, Sushil Nadkarni, Ricardo Powell, Dean Riddle, Usman Shuja
Fan and Market Development
John Aaron, Lorna Austin, Kevin Hussain, Venu Palaparthi, Masaood Yunus
Sustainable Foundation
Dr. Vincent Adams, Gordon Alphonso, Donna Bowes, Dr. Linden Dodson, Jim Isch, Jagan Jagannathan, Priyantha Liyanage, Shiraz Najam, Syed Shahnawaz, Patricia Whittaker

“If I’m gonna be here in the US, I want to be involved in cricket in some way and I want to be involved in a way in which I know I can help cricket move forward,” Powell told ESPNcricinfo shortly after the announcement. Powell had moved to Florida in 2012 and frequently appeared at various T20 tournaments around the country over the last four years. He is now part of a seven-man group tasked with advising on player performance.”I’ve interacted with so many of the players here in the US and I’ve seen the talent group here,” he said. “I’ve played all over the US and seen the different talent and know what it takes to get to the next level and to be consistent at that level. For me it was ideal to look at the [performance] group because the players respect me as a player and as a person.”I don’t want to be involved in something where it’s a back and forth, things are stagnant or you’re going around in a circle so I wanted to be able to be clear on a direction in terms of what the group is doing or what position I’m going to be taking cricket-wise. Based on my discussion with [ICC Americas administrators] Tom Evans and Ben Kavenagh, I think they have a good idea of how they want to take cricket forward and I feel like I can contribute to that.”Former USA fast bowler Usman Shuja, who was part of the seven-man local advisory group formed last year by the ICC to help develop a strategic framework in the wake of USACA’s suspension, was also named in the seven-man performance committee.”I think the goal is to put a framework for a high performance programme for men, women and the youth team,” Shuja said. “The goal is to give them the right platform in terms of the selection process, the training and support through training and playing ahead of time for tournaments. In an advisory capacity, I think we can advise things that went wrong in the past and things that worked to help guide that and hopefully make a long-term impact.”Besides Shuja and Powell, Dean Riddle – a former England and Yorkshire strength and conditioning coach who now works as an applied sports scientist for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks – will help USA hasten the process of improving high performance objectives. Former USA batsman Aditya Mishra, former USA captain Sushil Nadkarni, former England women’s junior player Julie Abbott and USACA Central East administrator Mir Ali are also part of the group.One of the goals outlined in the strategic framework document released by the ICC is for USA to qualify for both the 2019 World Cup and the 2020 World Twenty20. Those goals have been met outside the USA with a bit of skepticism, considering USA’s current standing in Division Four of the World Cricket League. But Powell, who volunteered as one of the local coaches and talent evaluators assisting at the ICC Combine in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last month, said they are entirely achievable.”I strongly believe it’s possible,” he said. “I’m not disrespecting any of the teams who have qualified to make it to a World Cup but when you look at these teams and countries, the USA has far more talent than these places that are qualifying for T20 World Cups and also the 50-over World Cups. In a country that has 50 states, if you tap into even a quarter of that with a proper system and a properly run programme, we can definitely enhance the talent and get them to qualify.”I’ve had several contacts with these guys, mostly with Usman Shuja and Sushil Nadkarni, who I know quite well and are pretty knowledgable players about the game. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone, getting to know everybody and their ideas and vision for cricket in the USA. With good brains coming together to make a way forward with no politics or favouritism involved and just sticking to the talent, I think this can be a very fruitful journey.”The three other advisory groups – participation, fan and market development, and creating a sustainable foundation – include a mix of long-time US cricket administrators. Two current USACA board members – Florida’s Rizwan Mohammed and New York’s Dr Linden Dodson – and former USACA board member Shelton Glasgow were included. Former American Cricket Federation (ACF) chief executive Jamie Harrison, current ACF board chairman Jagan Jagannathan as well as current ACF and former USACA executive secretary John Aaron were also chosen.Jim Isch, former chief operating officer of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, was included as part of the sustainable foundation advisory group. According to Anderson’s e-mail announcing the move, the sustainable foundation group “will have an important role to play in considering the development of a future constitution for US cricket.” It’s an indication that USACA in its current form may be expelled at June’s ICC annual conference in Edinburgh after making no progress on 39 terms and conditions of reinstatement following last year’s suspension.Some of the other noteworthy names who were appointed by the ICC include Venu Palaparthi, Lorna Austin, Michael Voss, and Patricia Whittaker. Palaparthi is a former vice-president of global trading and market services for the NASDAQ stock exchange and is now a senior vice-president at high-frequency trading firm Virtu Financial in midtown Manhattan. Within the cricket community, he is known as the co-founder of and the DreamCricket Academy in New Jersey.Austin has been an administrator with the NY Public Schools Athletic League for more than 20 years and also serves as the cricket coordinator for the PSAL cricket league, the only high school cricket league in America. Voss is a former South African domestic cricketer for Western Province and now works in real estate development in California while Whittaker is a former West Indies Women’s Test cricketer who has spent more than 25 years as a lawyer in New York.