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The team has been selected in consultation with BBL clubs to minimise disruption

ESPNcricinfo staff02-Dec-2022Teague Wyllie, the 18-year-old Western Australia batter who scored his maiden first-class century earlier this season, has been selected as part of a Cricket Australia XI to face South Africa in their warm-up match later this month.The match, which will be played between December 9-12 at Allan Border Field in Brisbane, has been downgraded from a full Australia A first-class fixture so that South Africa can use their full squad. The home side has been selected in conjunction with BBL clubs to minimise disruption to the start of that competition which begins on December 13.Related

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Peter Handscomb, who does not currently have a BBL deal, will captain the side having also been part of the Prime Minister’s XI against West Indies in Canberra. Henry Hunt will also get another opportunity to impress the selectors while Tasmania’s Tim Ward has the chance to showcase his consistent Sheffield Shield form.Alongside Wyllie, the 20-year-old Campbell Kellaway, who plays for Victoria, has been selected.Matthew Kuhnemann, the left-arm spinner who played ODIs in Sri Lanka earlier this year, is part of the squad.”It’s an exciting opportunity for Teague Wyllie and Campbell Kellaway to play alongside and learn from established domestic cricketers against an international team of South Africa’s quality,” national selector George Bailey said.CA XI squad Peter Handscomb (capt), Sam Whiteman, Henry Hunt, Tim Ward, Teague Wyllie, Campbell Kellaway, Matthew Kuhnemann, Jake Doran, Jack Clayton, Lawrence Neil-Smith, Chris Tremain, Jordan Buckingham, Liam Hatcher

He also went on to liken England’s top order to Australia’s all-conquering top three of Hayden, Gilchrist and Ponting

Melinda Farrell at Trent Bridge20-Jun-20181:37

Australia’s new ODI low

Justin Langer described Australia’s record loss to England as “brutal” and “a shock” and said his players could not have had a worse day as they slumped to a third straight loss, handing the five-match ODI series to England.A year out from the World Cup, Australia are ranked sixth, their lowest ranking since 1984, and the 242-run thumping at Trent Bridge was a harsh reality check for the reigning champions.”It’s a shock,” said Langer after the game at Trent Bridge. “That is literally England at its best. It’s no fluke that they are No.1 in the world.”I’ve never seen nothing like that today. I was in Johannesburg when Australia got 400 [434 for 4] and South Africa then got it, but that was just brutal. Hopefully our young guys can learn from it. It doesn’t get harder than that.”None of Australia’s bowlers – and Tim Paine used eight in total – escaped the caning handed out by England’s top order, although Ashton Agar conceded a comparably ‘frugal’ seven runs per over. Andrew Tye suffered the worst punishment, his nine wicketless overs going for 100 runs.”He’s probably one of the best people I have ever met in the game of cricket,” said Langer. “He’ll stay up but what I’ve said to him, like our batters, he’s got to learn how to bowl at the first 10 overs, the second 10 overs, and at the death.”After a match where England scored 481, smashing the previous highest total by 37 runs, Langer compared England’s batting line-up to the Australian side that won the 2003 and 2007 World Cups, led by Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting.”I’ve got massive respect for England and the way they are playing their cricket,” said Langer. “Their top three are brutal. The way they are playing is reminiscent of how we used to play in our day with Gilly, Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting at the top.”They have the England Test captain Joe Root batting at four and Eoin Morgan, England’s highest ever one-day scorer coming in at five, Jos Buttler who is as dynamic as anyone at the moment and Moeen Ali who is beating us with the bat and the ball – well maybe not so much the ball, but he gives them some depth. It’s a pretty sad dressing room there because you expect to win.”In his first series as national coach, a job handed to him in the wake of an enormous upheaval that has shaken Australia on and off the field, Langer says his first job is to help the team rebuild.”I’ve known what the task is before this game, it’s to build a team and to get better,” said Langer. “One thing I will say is that I have been impressed by their camaraderie and preparation. I mean they are young and we recognise that.”What I do know is that you can work hard to gain at confidence. It’s a bit like working hard to gain respect. To do that we are going to have to go through some tough days like this.”With the series lost, the remaining two games give Australia the chance to experiment further. Langer indicated he may look to bring Nathan Lyon into the side and consider playing Alex Carey as a specialist batsman. Australia have yet to bat out their 50 overs in the series so far, and while they will regain significant strike power with the return of Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, their top six looks far from settled, in terms of personnel and batting order.”We’ve got to bat against the top and against spin,” said Langer. “We need to have more rounded players. In 20-overs cricket you can get away with it as it’s more condensed, but in 50 overs you have a lot more time in the game than you think.”For us to get bowled out in the 37th over on the best batting track in the world – there were huge missed opportunities there for some of our batters.”Can’t have had a worse day.”But for Langer, the immediate challenge is to take a group of young men, clearly hurting and low on confidence after such a massive defeat, pick them up, dust them off and send them out again at Chester-le-Street for the fourth ODI.”I have to look after them all,” said Langer. “These are the days when you are like a dad, not a headmaster. We’ll look after them. It was a tough day but we’ll keep chipping away at it tomorrow.”

The West Indian allrounder played for the franchise for 13 years, winning five IPL titles with them

Nagraj Gollapudi15-Nov-20224:05

Mumbai pay tribute to Pollard

One of the most enduring relationships between a franchise and a player in the IPL has ended. Five-time champions Mumbai Indians have released Kieron Pollard, their most senior player, to end a 13-year playing career that began in 2010, when they signed Pollard for an undisclosed sum via a tie-breaker that broke the deadlock between four teams. While Pollard said he would be calling time as a player in the IPL, his relationship with Mumbai is not ending: he has joined them as a batting coach and will play for MI Emirates, owned by the same group, in the ILT20 in the UAE.

Netherlands suffered a wobble in the middle overs of a small chase, but recovered to win it in the end

Shashank Kishore16-Oct-20221:05

Edwards praises Pringle as Netherlands show fight

Tim Pringle, son of former New Zealand player Chris Pringle, knows a thing or two about playing in the cold, having grown up in the Bay of Plenty. On a cold Geelong evening, when he mistimed the second ball he faced towards extra cover, he briefly gave his Netherlands team-mates the chills.Netherlands were tottering at 76 for 6 in the 14th over of their 112 chase, having lost the wickets of Tom Cooper and Roelof van der Merwe to Junaid Siddique in the space of three deliveries. It looked very much like another wicket was about to fall but luckily for Pringle, UAE captain CP Rizwan put down the catch after doing all the hard work in getting to the ball.Related

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Pringle went on to make 15 crucial runs, taking Netherlands to within nine runs of victory, before Logan van Beek, the Christchurch-born Dutch international, and Scott Edwards, who lives less than a couple of hours from Kardinia Park, took the team home.Pringle made his runs off 16 deliveries, firmly focused on nudging it around rather than looking for the big hits. At a ground where the straight boundaries are long and the slog over midwicket needed to carry 80 metres to clear the fence, this was a smart move.In fact, from the ninth over right to the very end, Netherlands didn’t hit a single boundary, as compared to the seven fours and a six prior to that. It wasn’t for lack of trying though; just that every time they hit out, they lost a wicket. So they needed to come up with a plan B.Scott Edwards played a crucial hand in a tight chase•ICC via Getty Images

“It was just a little bit up and down,” Edwards said of the surface. “Obviously the outfield was super slow, so we probably got a bit carried away with trying to hit boundaries where they showed us in the first innings that it was quite hard to get those boundaries, so you’ve just got to be busy. We got a little bit caught up in that middle period and then sort of consolidated a little bit.”With Rizwan bowling out his trump card Siddique, who finished with figures of 3 for 24, by the 18th over, Netherlands knew they had enough time to win the game in singles. They needed ten from the last 12 balls with four wickets left.”I think it is one of those things that you don’t get ahead of yourselves,” Edwards said. “We had a good powerplay. I think 40 [37] off the first four overs and then we probably just got a little bit carried away thinking it was going to be an easy win. Yeah, we obviously knew from the first game and the first innings of our game that it wasn’t like that.”It was just about taking it as deep as we could, it felt like we could keep it up at run a ball. They obviously had to bowl out a couple of their better bowlers early, so we knew at the back end we had opportunities to score if we needed to.”Edwards lauded Pringle’s maturity and game smarts, not just with the bat but also with the ball. The left-arm spinner finished with figures of 4-0-13-1 earlier in the evening.”For a guy who is only 19 years old [20], he showed a lot of maturity,” Edwards said. “Today was another example of the quality bowler he is. You can always rely on his four overs: they’re always going to be the same. We got a couple of wickets in tying them down. He knows his role perfectly there. And with his batting, he is a powerful man. He didn’t quite get all his shots as he would have liked today but after his first couple of balls, he was pretty calm and collected.”

Yorkshire overwhelmed by ten wickets as rivals claim 21st county title

Vithushan Ehantharajah22-Sep-2022Surrey County Cricket Club, County Champions once more. A second title in four years, a fourth in the 2000s, a 21st in their long and storied history, was claimed in emphatic fashion with victory over Yorkshire by ten wickets.This eighth victory out of 13 in the 2022 season was in parts a microcosm of their overall campaign: everyone pulling their weight with runs and wickets shared around, and the odd sizeable contribution from the likes of Ollie Pope with 136, and Tom Lawes and Dan Worrall, who led the way with four wickets in the first and second innings respectively.Victory by an innings looked on the cards when Yorkshire resumed day three on 89 for two in their follow-on innings, but the wait for victory, confirmed at 2.35pm, only served to underline the professional nature of an outfit who, in a schedule like no other, have called on 22 players this season without looking poorer for it. For a head coach in his maiden season, Gareth Batty deserves immense credit for ensuring all were able to fit in and excel without losing their sense of selves.Winning titles at home is always preferable, though doing so a round early – with a day to spare – meant the Division One trophy was still locked away at Lord’s. It will be back in their possession at the end of their final fixture against Lancashire up at Emirates Old Trafford, and will be presented by their former chair Richard Thompson, no less, in his new role at the ECB.That game may no longer have any consequence, but don’t call it a dead rubber. Surrey still have an unbeaten record to preserve.Yet, as odd as it may sound, no one seemed to miss the golden goblet here.This last home game of the summer was already a week of celebration. The ground was renamed The Micky Stewart Oval to honour the legend following his 90th birthday, and he was awarded the keys to the ground at tea on day two. During the innings break, before the winning runs were sought, news of Hampshire’s 77-run defeat to Kent filtered through to draw more through the gates, some of whom only arrived after Burns, fittingly, had smashed the final runs through midwicket to end the chase in 16 minutes and leave him with a rather spectacular 30 not out off 16. Why the rush, Rory? “I was getting thirsty,” he joked.By 2.49pm, Surrey players and coaching staff had re-emerged onto the ground, beers in hand, to salute the crowd. There’s a small matter of the team’s end-of-season dinner tonight, too. Trophy or not, they’ll be just fine.Jordan Clark was a key contributor to Surrey’s title•Getty Images for Surrey CCC

This was always going to be more Surrey’s day than Yorkshire’s as the latter returned in their second innings on 89 for two, still trailing by 65. Quite how emphatically so was dependent on the goings-on at The Ageas Bowl, where second-place Hampshire, already four-down in their chase, had 269 remaining to secure an unlikely win over Kent. Nevertheless, the best of starts came here when a clerical bowling change brought the first of the final eight wickets needed.Cameron Steel opened proceedings from the Vauxhall End in order to switch Worrall to the Pavilion End after the seamer had bowled the final over of day two. Steel’s final delivery – a googly – snuck through Tom Kohler-Cadmore’s gate, just as it did for Ben Mike’s in the first innings. The only difference was the lack of bounce which drastically reduced Kohler-Cadmore’s chances of keeping it out.With that we returned to the usual opening duo of Kemar Roach and Worrall, and the former should have had Adam Lyth for 37 only for Ryan Patel to fail to scoop up a low chance diving to his right from third slip. Roach channeled his anger to maintain a probing line to the left-hander and, 36 deliveries later, removed him with arguably the best ball of the morning: forcing the left-hander to play in front of middle-and-leg, then nipping the ball off the seam to give Patel a far simpler chance with which to make amends.It was the second breakthrough in three balls, after Clark finished the over before by removing Will Fraine with a bit of extra lift that surprised the right-hander into playing onto his own stumps. With that, Clark’s season tally moved to 30 which, along with his 467 runs at 51.88, underlines how invaluable he has been to the balance of this XI since his arrival from Lancashire in 2018. Fittingly, he was awarded his county cap at the lunch interval.Clark might have ticked over to 31 by then. With Yorkshire trailing by 30, skipper Jonny Tattersall, top-scorer in the first innings with an unbeaten 45, was put down on three off Clark. Again, Patel was the slip fielder though the legitimacy of the catch would have probably been called into question given how low it arrived.Tattersall went on to a dogged 21 but had the misfortune of being caught down the leg side off a delivery from Jamie Overton that looked like being too wide for any trouble. He’d at least got his team within four runs of Surrey’s total, a deficit which was wiped with singles before Jordan Thompson square-drove Overton gloriously through backward point to put Yorkshire four ahead.That lead was 17 (for six) by the end of the first session, at which point the more cynical sorts began fearing a tricky fourth-innings chase, even as an eighth-wicket stand of 63 between James Vince and James Fuller began to chip away at the 169 still needed for victory further down south.Two overs after the restart, Thompson had a bruise and a new helmet after Overton cranked one up from the Pavilion End to strike him on the grille via his right forearm. And, to add insult to injury, he was off four deliveries later when one from Worrall kept low to pin him on the shin in front of off stump. At the same time, Vince holed out to deep midwicket for 73. With that, those in the stands could refocus their attention on what was in front of them.A brisk 22 from five overs was nipped in the bud when Dom Bess was caught down the leg side off Roach for a diligent 43, before Mike’s brisk 14 was ended by a nip-backer from Worrall with the lead at 52. And when Worrall bowled the ever-retreating Ben Coad to give himself four for 61, Surrey’s task was simple – 55 for the win. And then, when Kent took the last Hampshire wicket to confirm a 77-run win during the innings break, confirmation this 55 would be for the Championship.The first over brought 16 of them: Burns guiding two fours to third man between second and third slip, before an imperious clip off the hips through square leg. A botched charge led to four byes in between. A carnival atmosphere ensued in south London.Among the cheers for boundaries was the odd chuckle, notably when Tattersall, having given up keeping duties to Kohler-Cadmore, started with a head-high full toss that Patel trimmed for four of his own (six with the no-ball). A heartier whoop followed when Burns pulled out a perfect reverse sweep for boundary No.5, before the sixth confirmed the inevitable.

Lee accused CSA of failing to offer her any resources to help her lose weight, which the board has denied

Firdose Moonda and Alagappan Muthu29-Jul-2022Lizelle Lee has admitted that she did not meet CSA’s fitness requirements, and that is what led to her abrupt retirement from international cricket. In an interview with the BBC’s Stumped podcast, Lee revealed that after she failed to complete aspects of the fitness test, she was on the verge of being withdrawn from South Africa’s current tour of England, and the no-objection certificate to play in overseas leagues would have been denied. She chose to retire from the national side instead, which meant she would no longer need NOCs to play for T20 franchises.The issue came to a head when Lee was required to complete a fitness test before the squad left South Africa. She asked to do it in her parents’ hometown of Ermelo in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa instead of at her provincial base, North-West, or at CSA’s headquarters in Johannesburg because of the cost of travel. Lee weighed herself and sent the results to the team’s fitness trainer, who told her she had to also have her skinfold measured. Lee visited a biokineticist in Ermelo for that test later in the day, but did not weigh herself again because “it fluctuates and it’s small margins”, she said on the podcast. “I’m not going to do it again because if it’s over [the limit] I won’t be eligible for the England tour.” She told the biokineticist she had recorded her weight herself.She was subsequently selected for the tour and retested on arrival in England in early July, where, according to Lee, her “skinfolds were down but the weight wasn’t even close to where I thought it’d be”.CSA asked Lee for an explanation and established that Lee’s weight had not been verified by the biokineticist. In an email to CSA staff on July 5, Lee said she knew that she should have tested her weight again but didn’t, “because I was afraid that it might differ from the morning which might result in me not being selected” and conceded she “that was wrong and that I should have done it there”.The following day – July 6 – Lee was informed via email that she would be withdrawn from the squad. In communication between CSA and Lee, seen by ESPNcricinfo, CSA also said it would exercise its right to withhold an NOC for participation in leagues until she “met and maintained workload and fitness requirements”. CSA has since confirmed it was confident Lee could use the six to eight weeks away from the national squad in June and July ahead of The Hundred to meet the requirements if she returned home. They were also worried about her form and hoped she could work while at home on that too. Prior to the tour, Lee had played seven ODIs in 2022 and scored 81 runs at an average of 11.57, including five single-figure knocks.Related

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Lee, however, was concerned that she would not get an NOC in time for The Hundred, which would have considerable financial implications, especially as she had just become a parent. “It was a lot of money,” she said. “We needed it. We’re a young family. So I just said I was going to retire.”Through CSA, she initially issued a statement saying she was ready to focus on the next phase of her career but, days later, tweeted that national coach Hilton Moreeng was aware of CSA’s intention to deny her the NOC. That was in response to Moreeng telling a press conference he had no knowledge of the Lee situation.Lee accused CSA of failing to offer her any resources to help her lose weight. “I never got any support from CSA with that,” she said. “They never asked me ‘what do you need, what can we do to help you lose weight’. That’s something that I have had to do on my own.” CSA has denied that assertion.Lee recognised that CSA was “in their rights to do that [withhold the NOC] and that’s 100% fine”, but criticised their fitness requirements. She said that bracketing an athlete’s ability to run along with their skin folds and weight is not a true measure of cricketing ability and would prefer that the cardiovascular and body composition components be separated.”I understand the running, if you don’t make the running, they don’t see you as fit enough to play which I think is probably fine,” she said. “The big thing that just got me is that I made fitness physically, I did the running that I had to do. Basically, I’m fit to play, and I had this conversation with them before Ireland because I got dropped in Ireland because of my weight as well, and I told them ‘you’re dropping me because of the way I look and how much I weigh’ and they said ‘no, we’re dropping you because you failed the fitness battery’.In seven ODIs this year, Lizelle Lee had scored 81 runs, with a best of 36•ICC via Getty Images

“I said ‘yes, but if you break the fitness battery down, what did I not make? I made the fitness, the running, but not the weight. So you’re dropping me because of weight’. So as a woman that breaks me.”Lee’s gender is the reason CSA did not make these details public, with several officials citing an understanding of the sensitivity of body-image issues facing women as a reason to keep the matter private.In early 2020, CSA held a conditioning camp for Tabraiz Shamsi, Lungi Ngidi, JJ Smuts and Sisanda Magala targeted at, among other things, their weight. At the end of the camp, all four players took fitness tests and Magala was the only one who did not pass. He was subsequently left out of an ODI squad to play England and his challenges have been well documented. Magala, despite being the leading wicket-taker in the domestic one-day cup in the 2021-22 season, will continue to be unavailable for national selection until he meets the fitness requirements.Lee asked for a complete relook at the process of fitness tests, especially for women. “We have to make sure, especially with women, the things that really count have to count more – like running and skills, all of those things that actually contribute towards winning instead of how people look.”