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Irfan Pathan, currently on Ranji Trophy duty for Baroda, was woken up in the dead of night with the news that he had found a place in the 16-man squad that embarks on a tour of Australia later this month. However, there was no place for Murali Kartik, as the think-tank elected to go with five pace bowlers and only two spinners, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.The selection committee, led by Syed Kirmani, has given the team management an extra opening batting option by including Sadagoppan Ramesh, and there’s also wicketkeeping back-up in the shape of Deep Dasgupta. Patel has been designated as first-choice keeper, but any serious gaffes in the warm-up matches could see the gloves handed over.Ajit Agarkar and Zaheer Khan lead an inexperienced pace bowling attack that can only boast of 55 caps between them. Aavishkar Salvi and Irfan Pathan can look forward to making their Test debuts, if selected, against the strongest batting line-up in modern times.The batting order more or less picks itself, though Ramesh will certainly push Akash Chopra hard for the opportunity to be Virender Sehwag’s partner at the top of the order. Of the seven batsmen selected, Chopra and Sehwag are the only ones without experience of Australian conditions.Despite plenty of speculation to the contrary, it was as you were in the slow bowling department. Harbhajan has never played in Australia, while Kumble’s lone tour there – in 1999-2000 – ended with a paltry five wickets at a cost of 450 runs.India have toured Australia seven times since 1947-48, winning just three Tests matches out of 28. Of those, only one came against a full-strength Australian side – a sobering figure that the select 16 would do well to forget as they set out on the hardest assignment that any cricketer can ever undertake.Squad Sourav Ganguly (capt), Akash Chopra, Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Parthiv Patel (wk), Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Ajit Agarkar, Sadagoppan Ramesh, Aavishkar Salvi, Deep Dasgupta (wk) and Irfan Pathan.Comment: No real surprises, except for the inclusion of Pathan, whose 87 wickets in 29 first-class games is hardly the stuff of legend. L Balaji has been knocking over batsmen for fun in domestic cricket, but Pathan’s potential to bowl quicker – allied to some sterling performances for the U-19 side – got him the nod.Reputation, rather than form, was the criteria, when it came to picking the spinners. Kartik bowled quite beautifully when given limited opportunities in the TVS Cup, but the selectors plumped instead for a woefully out-of-sorts Harbhajan, and Kumble, whose overseas record won’t have the Australians quaking in their size-12 boots.Privately, they reckon they’ve worked out both men, and if proof is provided in Brisbane three weeks from now, India could be on a hiding to nothing. The pace bowlers will have to bowl out of their skins to trouble Australia’s top seven, and this time, there will be no Javagal Srinath to look to for advice.All in all, a pretty conservative selection, which goes to illustrate that world-class talent is a lot thinner on the ground than the team’s cheerleaders would have you believe. Any smidgen of hope will rest on Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and Ganguly piling up the runs. If that fails, even Santeria won’t help…

For much of the day, Justin Langer played second fiddle to the batsmen at the other end, but he came into his own later in the day. Especially impressive was the manner in which he handled Harbhajan Singh. Of the 68 runs that Harbhajan conceded, 47 came from the bat of Langer, most of them through sweeps – Langer attempted that stroke 19 times, and it fetched him 26 runs.

Harbhajan seldom looked threatening, but on a first-day pitch, the onus of taking wickets clearly lay on the three seamers. Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and Ajit Agarkar bowled a few good deliveries, but it was largely a case of serving up far too many four-balls – the three seamers bowled 28 half-volleys, which were creamed away for 45 runs. Agarkar was the worst offender, bowling 15 of those.

If Agarkar bowled plenty of tripe, he also came up with an extremely incisive second spell of seven overs – most of which he bowled to Ponting – in which he conceded just 19 runs, quite a contrast from his first spell of five overs for 40, including one over when he was smashed for three fours by Ponting. During his second spell Agarkar beat the bat seven times, and achieved a not-in-control percentage of almost 29 – that’s nearly three times in ten deliveries. The Australians survived that spell, though, and are now in a position to force the issue on the second day.

XXXX Queensland Bulls fast bowler Michael Kasprowicz will throw his weight behind the unsung heroes of cricket in Queensland with the launch today of “Kaspa’s Crew”.Kasprowicz, who recently became the State’s all-time leading first class wicket-taker, will be the public face of the Queensland Cricket Volunteers’ Recognition program, which was officially launched today at Allan Border Field by Queensland Cricket Chairman, Damien Mullins SC.A member of the Australian One Day squad that toured India earlier this season, Kasprowicz said he was honoured to back an initiative that recognised the lifeblood of the game.”It’s been my experience that those people who are the heart and soul of any club do it largely because they enjoy being part of a team environment," he said.”Hopefully the launch of this program will allow us to bring all of our volunteers into their own special team and thank them personally for their efforts,” Kasprowicz said.Queensland has an estimated 8000 volunteers involved in the sport throughout the State, with their unpaid work at a grassroots level representing a major stake in the overall strength of the game.Cricket Australia’s latest strategic plan has identified a decline in volunteerism as a significant challenge to the game, a factor that prompted the initiation of a dedicated Volunteer Recognition Program.Mullins said the workload assumed by volunteers was admirable, with their efforts spread across 85 associations, including 350 clubs and 2200 teams, and affecting approximately 31,000 players.”Having an individual of Michael’s standing in the game will allow Queensland Cricket to provide a degree of acknowledgement and recognition of our volunteers as part of an on-going program,” he said.”We chose Michael to be the face of the program due to his outstanding contribution to cricket on and off the field. He is one of our most popular players due to his generosity of spirit and down-to-earth personality and is widely renowned in cricket circles as a fair and honest player.”Among the components of the program in its initial year will be a signed Christmas card from Kasprowicz to registered volunteers, certificates of appreciation and press advertising throughout Queensland at the end of the season listing every volunteer in their respective region or area, including a message of thanks from Kasprowicz..Mullins also announced that Queensland Cricket major support sponsors Australia Post would extend their corporate support to the program.Kasprowicz revealed at the launch that he had a personal stake in backing the program.”I didn’t have to go far to think of someone who defined the spirit of a volunteer,” he said.”I was fortunate enough when I was starting my senior club career at the University of Queensland to encounter someone who became a very good friend of mine, the late WEP Harris,” he said.”WEP was involved with Uni for nearly 50 years as either a player or an administrator, and he did just about everything there.””He was the first bloke at the ground to take off the covers, he cooked the burgers, looked after the players, collected the subs, and was usually the last bloke to leave after phoning the scores through to the paper.””Before he retired he was a dentist and I know that he used to make club training four nights a week when he was working without fail and then be there for the whole weekend sometimes.””There are people like WEP all over Australia so being involved in something where I can say thanks for their efforts is a pleasure and an honour,” he said.Queensland Cricket has compiled a database of volunteers that will comprise “Kaspa’s Crew”, which will be continually updated as new members are identified.Kasprowicz will be back in action on the playing field tomorrow when the Bulls take on the Southern Redbacks in an ING Cup day/nighter at the Gabba from 2.30pm.

Queensland 362 and 1 for 222 (Perren 82*, Law 126*) lead Weatern Australia 523 (North 130, Campbell 91) by 61 runs
ScorecardStuart Law gave the Gabba crowd a send-off to remember, as he equalled Matthew Hayden’s record of 24 Pura Cup centuries to breathe new life into Queensland’s crucial clash against Western Australia.Law, who has announced his retirement from Australian state cricket, almost broke down in tears as he batted through his final innings in a first-class match at Brisbane. By the close, he had reached 126 not out, after adding 222 for the second wicket with Clinton Perren (82 not out).”I nearly burst into tears,” admitted Law, who will complete his career with Lancashire. “Today was just a great way for me to say thanks to the Brisbane people who have supported me. The fairytale is not quite complete but there’s room for it at the moment.”Queensland had appeared down and out when they conceded a first innings deficit of 161, and Martin Love’s latest batting failure merely compounded their struggles. He was trapped lbw by Darren Wates for a first-ball duck, and with Jimmy Maher sidelined with a hamstring injury, Queensland were effectively 2 for 0. But Law, who has scored 865 runs at 72.8 already this season, attacked from the outset to bring up his 100 from 114 balls.It was a batsman’s day. Western Australia’s wicketkeeper-batsman Ryan Campbell belted 91 from 72 balls to put the finishing touches to a massive first-innings total of 523. Andy Bichel had earlier ended a a match-turning 150-run stand with a sharp return catch off Scott Meuleman (50). He followed up by removing Marcus North (130 from 219 balls) with a superb off-cutter in his next over.

Until the end of the Indian tour of Pakistan, we will be running a daily Paper Round of what newspapers in India and Pakistan, and from around the world, are saying about this series. This is what the media had to say today:Cometh the hour, cometh a pronouncement from Shoaib Akhtar. A year after being savaged by Sachin Tendulkar in a World Cup encounter at Centurion, Akhtar preached the team mantra while looking ahead to the forthcoming series. “The media may bill it as a `Shoaib vs Tendulkar’ contest but this series is much more than that,” he said in an interview to . “We have to go at all the Indian batsmen if we want to win the series. If we play as a team we will win. Cricket is definitely a team game although individuals might dominate it.”He was philosophical about the Centurion hiding. “I think I am a more improved, controlled and focused bowler after that game,” he said. “Both teams have to prove themselves once again … I think it would be a case of how our bowling fares against their strong batting. Because while their bowling is inexperienced our batting is a bit inexperienced.”* * *Hanif Mohammad, the subcontinent’s original Little Master, took a walk down memory lane in the pages of . Speaking about the 1954-55 series, characterised by stifling defensive cricket, he gave insight into a time when winning wasn’t quite everything. “The matches were keenly fought but there was nothing called sledging,” he said. “In fact, during those times bowlers would give way to the batsmen as they ran between the wickets. And if they’d be caught in the middle, they’d apologise. The camaraderie was brilliant.”Hanif, who also remembers being flummoxed by Subhash Gupte’s flipper, suggests that relations between the sides off the pitch were also cordial. “My mother, who was from India , was a cricket buff,” he said. “She insisted that we host a banquet for the Indian team. We used to live at our Garden Road residence at that time. Getting someone who could cook Indian food was a big problem. But after much struggle, we found a cook in Karachi. He prepared delicious Indian food, and mind you separately for the vegetarians in the team.””The party was great fun with dance, music and jokes,” he added. “I still have a picture with my mother, brother Wazir, bhabhi posing with Indian cricketers like Naren Tamhane, [Vijay] Manjrekar and Gupte. That’s a treasure for life.”* * *Polly Umrigar’s view of that same tour is a little different. “Then, as now, there was a fear psychosis about touring an unfriendly country,” he told . “Some players were scared to go, but I wasn’t. There was security. When we went to a cinema there would be cops all around us. But we came back having enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. The culinary fare laid out was straight out of Arabian Nights, biryani with badam, pista and all. There was a marked difference in the hospitality as we moved northwards [in Pakistan]. The south was not so friendly.””When we reached Lahore, there were people taking us to some homes and pointing out `these are yours’ — homes from where the Hindus had fled during Partition. Rickshaw-wallahs would not take money from Indian fans. `Hamare bhai aaye hain’ [our brothers have come], they would say.”Umrigar had mixed memories of events on and off the field. “The warmth was mixed at the ground as well,” he said. “There was no hooting by the crowds, no jeering. There was no cheering when we hit a four. But we didn’t mind. At Lyallpur, the team had to stay in a railway bogey as the city had no hotels. It was quite upsetting to some players. But there were good hotels in the other cities.”Nostalgia isn’t always about rose-tinted glasses though. Never one to mouth empty platitudes, Umrigar went on to say that the cricket played on the tour “tended to be boring”.

After 34 incident-free days, a sour note was struck on the cricket field today when an Indian photographer was assaulted by a police constable at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium during the afternoon session. Local authorities have been prompt in ordering an enquiry pending which the constable has been suspended.Suman Chattopadhyay, a photo-journalist of Pratidin newspaper in Kolkata, was slapped and kicked by the constable. Chattopadhyay was making his way back to the area where photographers are seated, and was accosted by the constable. The photographer explained that he was merely returning to the spot he had occupied all through the first session, and displayed the media badge issued to him by the Pakistan Cricket Board. The badge says clearly `Access to all areas except dressing rooms’.Unsatisfied by this, the constable prevented the photographer from returning to his spot on the pretext that he did not possess a special pass required to enter the perimeter area of the ground. In no other venue in Pakistan has such a pass been necessary, and even here, Chattopadhyay was not stopped when he took his place first thing in the morning.The constable proceeded to slap the photographer and then kicked him, all in full view of other policemen, including his superiors, who made no attempt to stop him. It was only the timely intervention of other photographers, followed quickly by Samiul Hasan and Amrit Mathur, the media managers of Pakistan and India, that broke up the fracas. The constable, identified simply as Imtiaz of the Punjab Police, tried to make a quick getaway from the scene, but that was prevented.The constable then attempted a weak apology, filmed all the while by news channels, in the hope that the matter would be laid to rest. However, news spread to the authorities at the highest levels, and the mayor of Rawalpindi, Raja Tariq Mehboob Kiyani, was forced to apologise. Having done so, Kiyani said that the constable had been suspended and that an inquiry was underway. The PCB, which has done its best to ensure that this tour is conducted successfully in an incident-free manner, expressed its deepest regret at the incident.

Sri Lanka Cricket announced on Friday that Ashantha de Mel, a former fast bowler and selector, would head a new, bloated seven-man selection panel during the coming year. Lalith Kaluperuma, the previous chairman, is the only selector retained in the new panel, which will now sit down to pick Sri Lanka’s squad for the forthcoming tour of Australia.The size of the panel was increased from four to seven after the government, which retains responsibility under the sports law for the appointment ofselectors, rejected a Sri Lanka Cricket-proposed committee.This delayed the announcement of a fresh panel after the previous committee had completed its tenure on April 30. But a compromise agreement was reached bythe inclusion of both the board and government’s choices. Aravinda de Silva, the current vice-president of Sri Lanka Cricket and an influential selector during the past year, made himself unavailable for the new committee.The new selection panelAshantha De Mel
Shabbir Asgerally
KM Nelson
Lalith Kaluperuma
Don Anurasiri
Promodya Wickramasinghe
Ranjith Madurasinghe

The dates for the triangular one-day tournament in Holland in Augusthave finally been announced. The tournament is a warm-up event for theICC Champions Trophy in England in mid-September, although India – one ofthe participating teams – are also playing three one-dayers in Englandbefore the Champions Trophy.All four matches will be played at the VRA Ground in Amstelveen. Thefinal will be held there on August 28.Tournament dates
Aug 21 – India v Pakistan
Aug 23 – Australia v India
Aug 25 – Australia v Pakistan
Aug 28 – Final

Simon Jones has been dealt a double snub by club and country. After being overlooked for the second Test against West Indies at Edgbaston, Jones has been deemed surplus to requirements for Glamorgan’s Championship match against Hampshire at Cardiff.”We had a message from Duncan Fletcher last night,” explained John Derrick, Glamorgan’s coach, “saying that Simon was available to us. But the situation at the club is that there was no room for him in the side.”Jones was omitted from the Test side in favour of James Anderson, and now Glamorgan’s seam combination of Michael Kasprowicz, Alex Wharf and David Harrison have left him kicking his heels for the week.”We are playing on a used pitch which meant we played two spinners andthree seamers,” added Derrick. “Kasprowicz has come back after taking seven wickets in a Test for Australia, David Harrison is our leading wicket-taker and Alex Wharf has put in some good allround performances.”So there was no room for Simon. You can only pick 11 players.” Derrick added that there had been no pressure from above for Jones’s inclusion. “David Graveney said it was our call. He told me: ‘We need him to play but it’s your club – I can’t come down and demand he plays’.””Simon Jones is fit for selection for Glamorgan,” confirmed Graveney, England’s chairman of selectors. “It was up to them whether they picked him or not. We don’t put pressure on counties about who to play. We are not in the business of arm-twisting.”Nevertheless, if Jones is to figure in England’s plans for the third Test at Old Trafford, he will almost certainly have to play in Glamorgan’s next match against Somerset. “The only way Simon is going to get back in the Test team isby playing,” admitted Derrick. “We will have to monitor the situation after this match and talk about it.”

India A 133 for 3 (Gavaskar 57*, Karthik 52*) trail Zimbabwe Select XI 152 (Chibhabha 41, Bahutule 4-27) by 19 runs
ScorecardSairaj Bahutule continued from where he had left off in the previous match, taking 4 for 27 as Zimbabwe Select XI were bundled out for 152 against India A at the Harare Sports Club. The Indians themselves had some early problems with the bat, but Rohan Gavaskar (57 not out) and Dinesh Karthik (52 not out) steadied the ship with an unbroken 107-run stand, ensuring a close-of-play total of 133 for 3.Bahutule had ended up with 10 for 114 in the first four-day game, which India A won by nine wickets, and it was clear that the Zimbabweans hadn’t figured him out yet. The seamers had done the early damage by getting the first four cheaply, including that of Tatenda Taibu, who followed scores of 0 and 5 with just 11. Bahutule then got to work with his legspinners, having Mark Vermeulen stumped for 23. Stuart Matsikenyeri, who shared a 46-run partnership with Vermeulen, was caught by Karthik for 28, and though Justice Chibhabha kept the fight going with 41, the rest of the batsmen were clueless against Bahutule.The Indians got some scares early in their reply. Gautam Gambhir and Dheeraj Jadhav had put together 149 in the previous game, but here they managed only 11 runs between them, as Tinashe Panyangara had them both caught behind. When Sridharam Sriram was trapped in front for a duck, India A had slumped to 26 for 3. Gavaskar and Karthik – playing in this game as a specialist batsman – then got down to repairing the innings, and by the end of the day, the Indians had wrested back the initiative that they had briefly given away.