The Indian squad will undergo a two-day camp in Kolkata from November 2 in preparation for the home series against Pakistan, which includes five ODIs and three Tests.A spokesman for the Cricket Association of Bengal told that the camp would be held at the Calcutta Cricket and Football Cricket (CCFC) as Eden Gardens, Kolkata’s main venue, will be hosting the Ranji Trophy Super League match between Bengal and Hyderabad from November 3.However, unlike the Eden Gardens, the CCFC doesn’t have floodlights. Three of the five ODIs against Pakistan are day-night affairs, and perhaps a camp in daylight might not be the ideal way to prepare.The CCFC hosted the Indian team prior to the 1996 World Cup, and more recently, the England squad, which held a week-long camp in 2002.The Indian squad will leave for Guwahati on November 4, a day ahead ahead of the first ODI.

After a year which included the disastrous Ashes campaign and a hernia operation which kept him out of the series against India, Steve Harmison says he understands his bowling better and is “desperate” to play for England again.”It has been a nightmare year,” he told the . “But what I believe I’ve learned is that I need to stop worrying and start enjoying my cricket again, playing with a smile not a frown.”While he was sidelined due to hernia, Ryan Sidebottom, Stuart Broad and James Anderson all turned in strong performances to stake their claim for fast-bowling slots in the Test side.”Maybe I’ve got to accept that with my action and the way I bowl I’m going to have wayward spells, and instead of beating myself up about sending one way down leg side, I should concentrate on where the next one is going.”Harmison, who has been playing for the Highveldt Lions in a bid to get match fit for the Test series against Sri Lanka, gave the example of last week’s match against the Cape Cobras to explain his new approach to bowling.”In the past I would probably have agonised too much over the rubbish, but now I was thinking ‘Give me the ball because I’m also bowling some top stuff’. By sticking at it I bowled better as the match went on and ended up with nine wickets and a great deal of confidence.”Harmison said the advice of Allan Donald, who was a bowling consultant with England in the summer, was also extremely helpful.Harmison, 29, also reiterated his desire to play for England but added, “if I’m supposed to be in the side for line and length consistency I shouldn’t be. Let’s be honest, I’m not the best 83mph bowler available to England or the best at 85mph. But when things are going right, with my height and bounce, I can be the best 90mph-plus bowler.”He will join his England team-mates in Sri Lanka on Tuesday and the first Test starts in Kandy on December 1.

Delhi middle-order batsman Virat Kohli will lead India Under-19 in their tour to South Africa early next year. He will have Saurashtra’s Ravinder Jadeja as the vice-captain, in a tour that includes two three-day games and a tri-series with Bangladesh as the third side.The squad included familiar names who have been hitting the right notes in the ongoing Ranji Trophy. Tamil Nadu’s Abhinav Mukund and Maharashtra’s Harshad Khadiwale were rewarded for a string of good scores and Pradeep Sangwan, the left-arm seamer from Delhi, picked himself with a fine season so far.KP Appanna and Iqbal Abdulla, left-arm spinners from Karnataka and Mumbai respectively, made the cut. There was also space for batsmen shining in the age-group levels like Manish Pandey, and Siva Kumar Duvarapu.The junior selection committee also chose 30 probables for the Under-19 World Cup, set for Malaysia in February next year.U-19 squad for tour to South Africa
Virat Kohli, (capt, Delhi) P Sangwan (Delhi) Ravinder Jadeja (vice-capt, Saurashtra), Abhinav Mukund (TN), Tanmay Srivastava (UP) Saurabh Tiwari (Jharkhand), KP Appanna, (Karnataka), Manish Pandey (Karnataka) Taruwar Kohli (Punjab), Amanpreet Singh (Punjab), Sreevats Goswami (Bengal) Siva Kumar Duvarapu, GVS Prasad (AP), Mohammad Arif (Rajasthan), Iqbal Abdullah (Mumbai), Harshad Khadiwale (Maharashtra).Stand-byes: Ajitesh Argal (Baroda) Perry Goel (Punjab) D Prabhu Kiran (AP) N Einstein (TN).Probables for the U-19 World Cup
Abhinav Mukund (Tamil Nadu), Harshad Khadiwale (Maharashtra), Manish Sharma (Rajasthan), Rohan Banerjee (Bengal), Virat Kohli (Delhi), Manish Pandey (Karnataka), Taruwar Kohli (Punjab), D. Parabhu Kiran (Andhra Pardesh), N Einstein (Tamil Nadu), Saurabh Tiwari (Delhi), Manprit Juneja (Gujarat), Ankit Tiwari (Uttar Pradesh), Tanmay Srivastava (Uttar Pradesh), Sreevats Goswami (Bengal), Rubin Dalwadi (Baroda), Perry Goyal (Punjab), Amanpreet Singh (Punjab), Pardeep Sangwan (Delhi), Mohammed Arif (Rajasthan), Dhawal Kulkarni (Mumbai), Ajitesh Argal (Baroda), Siddarth Kaul (Punjab), Siva Kumar Duvarapu (Andhra Pardesh), Ravinder Jadeja (Saurashtra), Sumit Khatri (Rajasthan), Yogesh Nagar (Delhi), GVS. Parsad (Andhra Pardesh), KP Appanna (Karnataka), Iqbal Abdullah (Mumbai) and Swapnil Singh (Baroda).

Sri Lanka’s captain and vice-captain, Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, paid tribute to their team-mate and former leader, Sanath Jayasuriya, who bowed out of Test cricket at the age of 38 following his side’s 88-run win over England in the first Test in Kandy.After weeks of speculation in the local media, Jayasuriya made his announcement after scoring 78 in Sri Lanka’s second innings to help put his side on course for victory. He later chipped in with one final wicket, that of Ravi Bopara, to finish his career with 6973 runs at 40.07 and 98 wickets at 34.34 from 110 Tests.Jayasuriya made his ODI debut against Australia in Melbourne in December 1989, and his Test debut 14 monrths later in Hamilton. “It is a tremendous loss when you lose someone who’s played for 18 years,” said Jayawardene after the match. “He’s been a batsman, a senior player, and a bowler, and his loss is going to be huge, especially in the dressing room.”Jayasuriya’s form in Test cricket has been on the wane for the past three years, and it is widely believed that the selectors had been looking to blood a younger opener in his place. But Jayawardene praised his team-mate for going out on his own terms. “I think he’s pretty happy with that decision”, he said. “We just need to make sure that with the youngsters coming through, [that] we build another team and improve ourselves.”Sangakkara was even more flowing in his praise of a man he first saw as a spectator at the Asgiriya Stadium during the 1996 World Cup. “That World Cup win probably inspired not just me, but a whole generation of young cricketers to try and play for Sri Lanka,” said Sangakkara. “He changed the face of world cricket, especially in the one-day arena. He’s a wonderful cricketer, a wonderful man and he’s had a wonderful career.”I think for me personally he’s been a pillar of support,” added Sangakkara. “He was my first captain and when I was struggling to make the side there was always positive re-enforcement from him, and never a negative word. We have the best memories of him in the dressing room. We’ll miss him, but life and cricket moves on, and we’ll look ahead with a new side.”

The final of Sri Lanka’s Inter-Provincial Limited-Overs Tournament will be a repeat of the last qualifying match between Kandurata and Wayamba after the final day of the qualifying stage was affected by bad weather.At the Welagedera Stadium, in a match reduced to 31 overs, table-leaders Kandurata, captained by Kumar Sangakkara, beat Wayamba by eight wickets to finish with a 100% record in the qualifying round.However, despite the defeat, Wayamba, who were captained by Mahela Jayawardene, were tied on 10 points with Basnahira North and went through to the final on superior net run rate.For Kandurate, only Jehan Mubarak, the tall Sri Lanka left-handed middle-order batsman, gotinto double figures after they were asked to bat first in seamers-friendly condition and were eventually bowled out for for 79 in only 21 overs. Mubarak, pushing for a place in the Sri Lanka side for the ODI series in Australia, top-scored with 36 with extras taking the second spot (10). The damage to the Wayamba batting was done by the fast bowlers; Akalanka Ganegama, Kaushal Weeraratne, Thilan Thushara and Chintaka Jayasinghe who captured all ten wickets to fall.Faced with the target of only 80 in 31 overs, Kandurata knocked the runs off in 19 overs to move into the final on Sunday with a great deal of confidence.The bottom of the table clash between Basnahira South and Ruhuna at the Galle International Stadium ended without a ball bowled due to rain.

Two days after praising the variety in his bowling arsenal Ricky Pontingagain applauded his attack, which this time featured four frontline fastmen and no specialist spinner in a five-wicket loss to India. James Hopeswas a late withdrawal with hamstring tightness and it left Australia in atricky situation, deciding whether to replace the allrounder with a bowleror a batsman.They chose to bring in Stuart Clark for his first game of the series andalso replaced Brad Hogg with Brad Haddin in an effort to restore somebalance and add depth to the batting. That part of the gamble didn’t work- Haddin made 5 in Australia’s 159 – but Ponting said his pace attack hadadapted well to their altered roles and the result was not their fault.”There was some pretty poor batting today, 159 on that wicket was justnever enough,” Ponting said. “But the way we stuck at our task with theball and particularly in the field I thought we gave ourselves half achance of winning the game.”When Yuvraj Singh departed at 5 for 102, mistiming a Clarkslower ball, Ponting felt Australia needed to pounce and he went for brokeby reintroducing his strike bowlers Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson. “Wejust had to get a breakthrough then,” he said. “I don’t know how manytimes we went past the outside edge and there were a couple of nicks thatwent in the gap or fell just short.”Lee was fast and furious and his 1 for 42 did not reflect the threat heposed on a bouncy pitch, while Johnson’s ten overs brought 2 for 24 andClark collected 1 for 26 from ten. However, Ponting was left without atop-class slow option and waited until the 34th over to use MichaelClarke.”As it turned out today the part-timers didn’t matter because the gamewasn’t going to go that far,” he said. “But having an allrounder out ofyour side does change the balance.”Clark is third on the ICC’s Test bowling rankings but finds himselfconstantly on the fringe of the world-champion ODI side. Ponting praisedthe pressure that Clark applied, although he still referred to him as “aback-up bowler”. He might be used again if Australia rest their top fastmen later in the series but Ponting said they were handling the workloadwell at the moment.”Mitchell and Brett are both ultra-fit guys,” he said. “Brett bowledprobably one of his quickest spells of the summer tonight. He’s holding upreally well.”We’ll have a look at an opportunity somewhere to give both those guys agame off where we can. But at the moment they’re going well. We’re goingto Perth now, we’re going to need our best bowling attack over there.”The Melbourne result leaves India and Australia each with a win, while SriLanka will search for their first victory in Canberra against India onTuesday. Ponting said Australia would need to stay on top of their game toensure they reach the finals of what will be the last tri-series inAustralia in its current format.”The last few years in Australia there’s been a bit of concern of theseries not being very close,” he said. “But right now we’ve got a reallytight tussle on our hands. All three teams have obviously a very goodchance of playing off in the finals.”

In a country used to being dismissed, perhaps unfairly, as a minor player in world cricket, Stephen Fleming has been a giant. New Zealand’s population of four million is smaller than most of their rivals, they have produced fewer superstars and enjoyed less major tournament triumphs, but they provided one of the most respected captains of the modern era.That Fleming led his team in more Tests than any player other than the indefatigable Allan Border should not be underestimated. That he did so with a winning ratio of 35% in a team that lacked flair and often appeared out-matched on paper, is testament to his skill as a leader.Fleming said last month that although he spent a decade as captain, he felt only the final three or four seasons were really his. In the time leading up to that New Zealand simply had no other options. Even if that were true, repeated failures would not be tolerated and his ability to retain the job for so long made him a rarity in the modern game. During his reign West Indies went through six full-time captains, and even the stable Australia had three.It is true that Fleming was thrust into the top role when New Zealand were running out of options. He was 23 when Lee Germon’s groin injury left the captaincy vacant and Fleming became the youngest man to lead New Zealand in a Test. His appointment was not totally without objection – two years earlier he had been slapped on the wrist for smoking marijuana on a tour of South Africa – but his calm guidance of the squad soon won him admirers. If Border had been Australia’s captain grumpy, Fleming was New Zealand’s captain cool.Fleming had idolised Martin Crowe for his innovation while leading a team thin on natural talent, a situation Fleming would know all too well. Steve Waugh was another who influenced Fleming’s later years, and holding Waugh’s men to a 0-0 draw in 2001-02 ranked as a career highlight. But for some final-day fight from Waugh and Adam Gilchrist in the third Test in Perth, New Zealand might have stolen the series.The result was no fluke. Fleming proved himself a top tactician by asking his fast men, who with the exception of Shane Bond were not that quick, to bowl short at the 36-year-old Waugh twins, taking advantage of their age and slowing reflexes. He also negated the impact of Damien Martyn, who was coming off a highly productive Ashes tour, by setting grouped fields between point and gully that forced the batsman to alter his natural game.It was a classic example of Fleming doing his homework. And like a student whose essays were always handed in ahead of time, Fleming’s thorough preparation calmed him when the real deadline arrived. On the field he gave little away as he often rubbed his chin, deep in thought, but much of his work would have been done in the days leading up to the game.Sometimes his ideas did not work, and he was sorely frustrated not to fare better in the World Cup than to reach semi-finals in 1999 and 2007. But outsiders admired the way he got the most out of a side devoid of superstars. Just as Fleming looked to Crowe and Waugh, a new generation of leaders will surely take inspiration from the Fleming years.

Pakistan’s national selectors will meet next week to pick the squad for the five-match ODI series against Bangladesh in April. A selector told that the selection committee will start taking inputs from the Pakistan team management before naming the squad.The selectors will be particularly keen on speaking to the management after it emerged that Geoff Lawson, the coach, was unhappy with the selection procedure before the ODI series against Zimbabwe. Lawson said, in a report to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), that despite assurances from the board he was not consulted in the finalisation of the 15-member squad named for the series, which Pakistan won 5-0.There have been reports of friction between coach and selectors earlier but this was the first time Lawson had put it in writing. PCB rules stipulate that national selectors should consult the captain and coach while finalising the squad during a home series. The selectors, though, have the prerogative to pick the final playing eleven, a change from the past when the team management had the authority to do this.Lawson’s grouse was that the selectors had not even consulted him while picking the full squad. In his report on the series against Zimbabwe, Lawson also talked about the 2011 World Cup and his doubts over whether allrounder Shahid Afridi had a role to play in the tournament. “The performance of Shahid Afridi will have to be closely monitored before finalising the likely team for the World Cup 2011,” he wrote.The series against Bangladesh was hurriedly lined up by the PCB after Australia refused to go ahead with the tour scheduled for March-April because of security concerns. Bangladesh are scheduled to arrive in Pakistan on April 6 to play five one-day internationals and a Twenty20 international. According to the unofficial itinerary, the opening match will be played on April 9 in Lahore, which will also host the second one-dayer on April 11. The rest of the ODIs will be played on April 14 in Faisalabad and April 17 and 20 in Rawalpindi. Karachi will host the only Twenty20 match on April 22.

ScorecardAfter a sparkling start, the Ahmedabad Rockets seem to have fizzled out. Their eight-wicket loss to the Kolkata Tigers was their fourth consecutive defeat and leaves them languishing at the bottom of the points table. In a rain-affected tie, the Tigers were set a revised target of 85 in tenovers, which they easily chased down with eight balls to spare.After deciding to bat, the Rockets were in trouble early as captain Damien Martyn and Wavell Hinds fell cheaply. Murray Goodwin and left-hand batsman Parvez Aziz started the recovery, but the run-rate remained less than what would be expected in Twenty20 games. It was left to Sridharan Sriram (52 off 35 balls) to boost the scoring-rate, first with the help of Anshu Jain, and then, providing the final flourish with Martin Sanjeev (22 off 15 balls) as the Rockets posted a competitive 156.The rain came down during the interval, reducing the number of overs available for the Tigers’ chase to ten. They rarely looked in trouble, with the 14-run first over setting the tone, and cantered tovictory to move into fourth spot.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

The ICL India XI may have not reached a target they would have expected after a solid start, but a superb spell of bowling (4-1-10-1) from Syed Mohammed left ICL World XI with a stiff task during their chase, and despite Damien Martyn’s 60, it was India XI that prevailed to clinch the title.India XI, looking for their fourth successive win, decided to bat at the toss. The going was slow, with Johan van der Wath bowling a maiden first up and Daryl Tuffey conceding only one in his opening over. However, from then on, G Vignesh and Ibrahim Khaleel picked up steam as they put on an opening stand of 76.Khaleel, who was later declared the Player of the Series, fell for a run-a-ball 34. Vignesh, dropped early in his innings, was the more aggressive of the openers, and was severe on Andrew Hall, hitting a six and two fours off the South African. Vignesh survived a stumping chance off Upul Chandana on 38, and brought up his fifty as India XI went past the 100-mark, before he fell to the same bowler for 57.However, World XI fought back well in the latter half of the India XI innings, with Russel Arnold conceding only six runs off his two overs. At 104 for 2 after 13 overs, India XI looked poised for a score over 160, but the last seven overs only fetched 44 runs as they were restricted to 148. Hall and Chandana finished with two wickets apiece.Matthew Elliott perished early during World XI’s reply, but Martyn and Vincent kept the runs ticking over and after eight overs, they were at 61 for 1. Mohammed then came into the attack, and his first two overs went for only one run each. Martyn had till then dominated the scoring, and Vincent had begun to gather momentum, hitting a six followed by a four off T Kumaran and Ali Murtaza. However, Mohammed had him stumped in his second over.The runs from then onwards came at less than the required-rate for World XI, and the pressure got to the batsmen, with captain Chris Cairns and Martyn dismissed by run-outs. Despite the best efforts from the rest, the target remained unconquerable; a ten-run win capped a four-match unbeaten streak that helped India XI conquer the title. Vignesh won the match prize, with two wickets to add to his fifty.