The former captain was expected to bowl in this game, but that now appears unlikely

Andrew Fidel Fernando30-Nov-2021Angelo Mathews’ role in the ongoing second Test against West Indies in Galle could be substantially restricted after he picked up a thigh strain on the second morning.He sustained the injury while running a single in Sri Lanka’s first innings, and ended up having to retire hurt, when on 12, presumably to receive further treatment in the dressing room.Mathews did return to bat after a gap of just under eight overs, during which four Sri Lanka wickets fell. Coming in essentially at No. 10, Mathews completed only one hobbled single, choosing instead to remain in his crease and try to clobber boundaries. He hit two straight sixes and a four in the company of the tail, before becoming the last batter to be dismissed, scoring 29 of Sri Lanka’s 204.When West Indies came out to bat, Mathews did not take the field. He had been expected to bowl in this match, but that now looks unlikely. He will be assessed over the next 24 hours, but given his long-standing problems with hamstring, quad, and calf injuries, it is possible that he will not field, and only bat if required.This is Mathews’ first international series since May. In the first Test, he had hit 3 and 69 not out.

Jhye Richardson and Marcus Harris will remain with the Test team as concussion/Covid-19 stand-bys

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Jan-2022Perth Scorchers and Brisbane Heat have received a boost with Mitchell Marsh, Josh Inglis, Mitchell Swepson and Michael Neser released from Australia’s Test squad to play in the BBL.The quartet will take a charter flight from Hobart to Melbourne on Sunday to join their respective squads with Swepson and Neser set to be available for Heat’s clash against Melbourne Stars on Sunday night at the MCG.Jhye Richardson and Marcus Harris will remain with the Test team in Hobart until the end of the fifth Test as concussion/Covid-19 stand-bys.Swepson and Neser will provide a boost for Heat who are languishing second last on the table with three games to go. They would need to win all three with Bash Boost points in each game and have other results go their way to play finals.The Scorchers look set to lock away top spot and the return of Marsh and Inglis only makes them stronger favourites for the title. Marsh was the Player of the Match in three of five BBL matches he played before being called up to the Test squad with scores 100 not out, 86, 42 not out to go with four wickets.

Five players, all between 20 and 26 of age, have given the visiting side a rare day to remember in New Zealand

Mohammad Isam02-Jan-2022Bangladesh were desperate to have their batters go about their work in a (calm) way, and find some joy in the process after a tough 2021. Appropriately, Najmul Hossain Shanto and Mahmudul Hasan Joy, with a patient 104-run second-wicket stand, did the needful in the first Test against New Zealand in Mount Maunganui.New Zealand are the Test world champions, especially formidable at home. Therefore, to bowl them out for 328 and then finish the second day on 175 for 2 – just 153 short – with the runs coming from two young batters means a lot for a struggling Test side like Bangladesh.”The younger guys today played phenomenally,” Neil Wagner, who has picked up both the Bangladesh wickets to fall so far, said after the day’s play. “I thought they played patiently. They didn’t really give too many opportunities. They hung in there. They were prepared to dig in. They left the ball quite a lot. It made us ask more questions, and take wickets. It gave them the opportunity to score.Related

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“I thought that they played really well. Full credit to them. I thought when the ball was there to be scored, they scored. They also left well and defended well.”But, to make it Bangladesh’s day, it needed more than just those runs. Shoriful Islam, the 20-year-old left-arm quick, added Rachin Ravindra’s wicket to the two he had on the first day to get Bangladesh going on the second morning, and offspinner Mehidy Hasan Miraz, very experienced despite being just 24, got rid of most of the tail. This was the first time New Zealand were bowled out for less than 350 by Bangladesh on home turf.That put the onus on the batters. If they failed to build on the bowlers’ work, the pressure would be right back on the top four, who were woeful at home against Pakistan recently.Shadman Islam, older than the others at 26, 23-year-old Shanto and 21-year-old Joy were part of the top four that looked incapable of buying a run against the likes of Shaheen Shah Afridi and Hasan Ali, and were expected to be under fire against New Zealand’s quicks. On the day, they were not.Shadman and Joy added 43 for the first wicket to set a platform, but Shanto batted like the ideal No. 3, mixing defence and attack smartly. He was the aggressor of the two during their big stand, driving beautifully – he hit Neil Wagner, Trent Boult and Kyle Jamieson for fours straight down the ground.Shoriful Islam picked up three crucial wickets•Getty Images

“Joy and Shadman gave us a nice platform. It was handy for me. When I joined Joy at the crease, we just focused ball-by-ball, over-by-over and then on to the number of hours,” Shanto said. “We didn’t want to force the issue. We didn’t set big goals, like runs or overs. Joy batted well, but I think it would have been a better day had I remained unbeaten at the end too.”Joy did survive a close lbw shout off Wagner – the New Zealanders thought he had inside-edged the ball, but a review would have sent the batter back. But otherwise, it was a chanceless 211-ball stay for Joy, who ended the day on 70. Shanto got out for 64, but he had done the job before that.Mehidy, who has come up through Bangladesh’s Under-19 system like Joy, Shanto, Shadman and Shoriful, said that the batting performance had given the team a lot of confidence.”It was a very good partnership,” he said. “Our top order wasn’t getting these partnerships recently, so this has given us a lot of confidence. We have to bat well in the first session tomorrow. I think we have a long way to go.”Mehidy was particularly effusive in his praise for Joy’s performance. “His innings is definitely a positive sign for our team,” he said. “His batting definitely helped the team. Joy batted well, took his time. He didn’t look like he was a new player. He adjusted well to the conditions and situation.”He is a member of the Under-19 World Cup-winning team [in 2020]. He did well in South Africa last year, and also made runs in domestic cricket before coming into the senior side. I think he has a lot to give to Bangladesh. The whole team has appreciated his batting.”

The injury-hit club have had their final bid for the Australia batter rejected

AAP28-Jan-2022Steven Smith will not play in the Big Bash League final after another request to make him available for selection was rejected by Cricket Australia.
Besieged by injuries and Covid-19 cases in their playing group, the Sixers made a third appeal for Smith to be able to play in Friday night’s final against the Perth Scorchers.However, AAP has been told that was knocked back late on Thursday, with Smith no longer on stand by for the clash and the Sixers having since moved on.It’s believed officials determined that there was adequate batting cover available for the Sixers in the local replacement pool, despite them being without three players through Covid and up to another two through injury.Josh Philippe, Mickey Edwards and Jack Edwards are all infected by coronavirus while Jordan Silk has been ruled out of the final with a hamstring injury.Related

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Daniel Hughes will need to pass a pre-match fitness test on his ankle to play, after missing Wednesday’s win over the Adelaide Striker due to injury.Captain Moises Henriques and retiring veteran Steve O’Keefe will both play through calf injuries in the decider, after being declared fit to play.It means the Sixers will again use a member of the player replacement pool and assistant coach Jay Lenton behind the stumps.Fellow pool member Jake Carder will play in the final, while a third replacement from the pool in Nick Bertus will also come into the side for Silk if Hughes is unavailable.Sixers had made an application to contract Smith before the finals last week, when he suddenly became available with the New Zealand ODI series postponed.However, that was dismissed by Cricket Australia and the clubs, after it was agreed mid-season new players could only come from the replacement pool set to deal with Covid-19 outbreaks.Steven Smith will not be part of the BBL final•Getty Images

A fresh request was made before the Sixers’ clash with Adelaide when Philippe contracted Covid-19 and Hughes was injured, but it was again knocked back.The spate of injuries from the mid-week match had then prompted a third bid, before its denial on Thursday spelled the end of any hopes of Smith playing.Several Sixers players have voiced their frustration on the issue, with Dan Christian posting a tongue-in-cheek tweet on Thursday asking if anyone could fill in for the club as long as they weren’t a Test player.Henriques admitted he was “clueless” about the situation on Thursday, while Perth captain Ashton Turner claimed he would have liked for Smith to play.Friday’s final will be contested on neutral ground at Marvel Stadium and across-town from Australian Open tennis, with Perth unable to host the BBL game in Western Australia.

Test squad members Dickwella and de Silva added to T20I squad for remaining games

Andrew Fidel Fernando25-Feb-2022Spinner Maheesh Theekshana and Kusal Mendis have been ruled out of the ongoing T20I series against India with hamstring issues, Sri Lanka Cricket confirmed on Friday.Seam bowler Shiran Fernando, who is in the squad and is yet to make his international debut, has been ruled out of the T20Is too, with a glute injury.To bolster the squad, Niroshan Dickwella and Dhananjaya de Silva – members of the Test squad – have been added to the T20 set up for the remaining matches.Related

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There is one piece of better news for Sri Lanka, however. Seamer Binura Fernando, who had tested positive for Covid-19 in Australia, has been medically cleared to begin regular training, and should be available for selection for the two T20Is to be played in Dharamsala.It had appeared unlikely Mendis would’ve been risked in the T20Is with a Test series beginning on March 4 in Mohali. Mendis has not played Tests since January last year, when he was dismissed for four consecutive ducks, but has been in better form since returning to competitive cricket from a six-month ban for breaking Covid protocols. In fact, he was the player of the match in the most recent international he played – the fifth T20I in Australia.Theekshana’s absence is a substantial blow to the T20I side, however, with Wanindu Hasaranga also ruled out having tested positive for Covid. Theekshana had been one of Sri Lanka’s go-to powerplay bowlers over the past six months.Sri Lanka lost the opening encounter while the second and third T20Is are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday with both games to be played in Dharamsala.

Keith Barker hits back with four wickets as Hampshire find late new-ball breakthroughs

Cameron Ponsonby21-Apr-2022Daniel Bell-Drummond’s 12th first-class century dominated day one, but a late collapse and a four-wicket haul from Keith Barker would see Hampshire finish the day slightly on top with the score at 271 for 7.It is easy to forget that Bell-Drummond is still only 28. His professional debut in cricket came over a decade ago and he was just a teenager when England’s new managing director Rob Key dubbed him as a player with the potential to play 100 Tests. And even ten years on, he is still England U19’s all-time leading run-scorer.Key’s prediction seemed particularly astute when Bell-Drummond, aged 21, scored a 92-ball century against Australia in 2015 and followed it up in 2016 with a first-class season where he averaged 68.07. Glory awaited.But then the runs dried up. Whereas he scored nine first-class centuries in the first five years of his career, the following six would add just three more (including today), as his red-ball runs were replaced with white. His form with the bat mirrored the wider pattern of the domestic game, where England’s short-format batting stocks are growing deeper than ever, while anyone with a pulse and Ed Smith’s phone number got a go at the Test team’s batting order. It is a recognition of Bell-Drummond’s lack of form in 2017 (avg 24.39) and 2018 (19.00) that even from the highs of the previous years the call never came.Nevertheless, given the clear potential Bell-Drummond had shown in the first half of his career, and the subsequent England selection policy of backing the potential of youth, you could be excused for wondering whether Bell-Drummond ever felt hard done by that the punt on potential that others have since received was never an opportunity afforded to him a few years earlier.”No, not at all”, Bell-Drummond said at the close of play. “I think if I was good enough then, I should be good enough now. I probably haven’t been as consistent as I’d have liked since 2016, so not at all. If anything, I see it as the opposite. Obviously, everyone loves a cap but I want to make sure I’m good enough if I get to that level. I think times are changing as well, Alastair Cook was playing then and a few runs were being scored. It’s been in the media about the wickets – obviously, we’ve had some really good ones here this year, but I think it’s a really different time. I don’t have any regrets.”It would be too much to describe this innings as a redemption for Bell-Drummond but it will hopefully be a new beginning for a player who only last year had found himself out of the Kent side. And lessons too can be taken from the success of Bell-Drummond’s team-mate Ben Compton, who today scored 27 in his first innings in a Kent shirt that hasn’t finished with him reaching three figures.Compton, a late entrant to the first-class game, has been celebrated as an example of where determination and commitment to a goal can take you. His reward would appear to be the potential of a long professional career now ahead of him. And yet the newbie Compton and the veteran Bell-Drummond are, of course, the same age.”I definitely do take admiration from Compton and how he’s started,” Bell-Drummond said. “It’s been unbelievable, to be honest. Maybe he expected it, but I don’t think we thought we’d signed this calibre of player. But he’s an awesome player and he’ll go from strength to strength.Related

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“But it just shows his ambitions and how strong he is mentally. I take a lot from that. That’s the main thing I’ve learnt. In terms of my career, I just try to take each day as it comes. I know how good I can be, but I just really want to be more consistent. I’ve done really well in white-ball cricket, so now it’s just about adding the red-ball side to it.”Both sets of skills were on show today as Bell-Drummond played the seam of Kyle Abbott, Mohammad Abbas and Keith Barker with patience while targeting the short leg-side boundary when facing the leg spin of Mason Crane.And for as long as Bell-Drummond was at the crease, the day looked set to be a dominant occasion for Kent, whose only brief wobbles with the bat were right at the start of the day when Zak Crawley edged behind off the bowling of Abbas and then, 100 runs later, when Compton and Tawanda Muyeye fell in quick succession.The double breakthrough had sparked some life into Hampshire, with captain James Vince bellowing “150 for 5!” across the ground in both hope and expectation as the hosts stood at 113 for 3.But Bell-Drummond and Jordan Cox, who made 51, would take Kent past 200 and beyond, and it was only in the last hour of the day that Hampshire looked like taking any sheen off their efforts, with Kent sitting pretty at that stage on 239 for 3.But when Bell-Drummond was given lbw off the bowling of Abbott for 149, Kent proceeded to collapse. It is the nature of the four-day game that while good things take a long time to arrive with the bat, bad things can happen very quickly. And in the final hour Kent would lose four wickets for just 26 runs as Barker struck twice with the second new ball to add to his earlier wickets of Muyeye and Compton.”They bowled well with the second new ball so the game’s still in the balance,” Bell-Drummond said. “Obviously we’d have liked to have gone in three-, four- or five-down at the end of the day but we’re still pretty content and for the most part it was a good day.”

Dhoni also hails the performance of seamers despite CSK suffering an early exit

ESPNcricinfo staff12-May-20222:54

Manjrekar: There’s more to Mukesh Choudhary than just swing

Coming into Thursday night’s game against Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, in all their seasons of the IPL, had never been bowled out for below 100 while batting first. All good runs have to come to an end, however, and Super Kings crumbled to 97 all out in conditions at the Wankhede Stadium where the ball swung right through the first 10 overs of their innings.Super Kings lost the match, as expected, with 31 balls remaining, but they still had positives to take out of it, with their new-ball combination of Mukesh Choudhary and Simarjeet Singh bowling their eight overs in one go and reducing Mumbai to 33 for 4 at one stage.Choudhary picked up 3 for 23, all his wickets the product of the left-armer’s traditional mode of inswing to the right-hander and outswing to the left-hander. Simarjeet finished with 1 for 22, finding Rohit Sharma’s outside edge with a good-length ball that left him late.Related

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MS Dhoni, the Super Kings captain, was full of praise for his new-ball pairing during his post-match interview with .”Irrespective of how the wicket is, anything below 130 is very difficult to defend, but still, what I asked the bowlers was to show a lot of character, put the opposition under pressure, forget about the result, and I feel both the youngsters, both the fast bowlers, they bowled really well,” he said. “So as far as their contribution is concerned, I feel a game like this really helps them. They start believing in themselves by saying, okay, irrespective of the conditions, whenever we start, we need to have the same kind of attitude, and that’s what is needed in the shortest format.”Super Kings’ hopes for IPL 2022 were dealt a major blow even before the season began, with Deepak Chahar – whom they spent INR 14 crore (USD 1.84 million approx) to reacquire at the auction – picking up a back injury that eventually ruled him out of the competition. The prospect of calling on all three of Chahar, Choudhary and Simarjeet next season is one that enthuses Super Kings coach Stephen Fleming.”I thought the new-ball bowling of Simarjeet and Mukesh was outstanding,” he said at his post-match press conference. “They’ve been developing – Mukesh all the way through the season, so for him to now feel confident enough to bowl a spell like that, and Simarjeet’s only three games in, four games in, so they’ve made real gains, so that’s a positive. So with Deepak Chahar to come back into the side, there’s some good options with the new ball.”9:41

Mute Me: Is Umran Malik ready to play for India?

Fleming was heartened that Choudhary and Simarjeet had delivered their new-ball performances in a difficult situation for Super Kings.”Yeah, I thought it was really impressive,” he said. “We could have folded, but they really gave us an opportunity, and both of them bowled well. Mukesh in particular had the ball really swinging well, and Simarjeet’s got some deceptive pace.”So we’re really positive about that pairing going forward. It was just disappointing that we didn’t have more runs to play with, but out of that, out of the ashes, came those two. So it was a good way to look at it.”Choudhary and Simarjeet are among a line of young Indian fast bowlers who have impressed during this IPL season; Umran Malik, Mohsin Khan, Yash Dayal, Kuldeep Sen and Arshdeep Singh are five other uncapped seamers who have caught the eye.”It’s good to have them,” Dhoni said. “We have gone through periods when we never had real extraordinary bench strength of fast bowlers, and also what happens is, with fast bowlers, they take their time to mature. If you are lucky you get somebody who in six months’ time can feature in all the different formats, whether it’s Test cricket, one-day or T20, and I feel that’s what IPL is doing.”It’s an opportunity for them, and a lot of them, they have become slightly more bold, a bit more courageous which I feel is important in a format like this. They want to take the opposition head-on, and that has been the difference. Yet, you see a few who are not those types, who shy away a bit initially, but as they play more games, they get more and more confident and they are able to execute their plans better.”