Comeback medium pacer Shahid Nazir is aware he doesn’t have the pace of Shoaib Akhtar but promises that Pakistan can expect him to live up to expectations in England this summer.”It is a great challenge for me to fill in for Shoaib Akhtar,” the 28-year-old said in an interview on Friday after being preferred over Rao Iftikhar and Mohammad Khalil as a replacement for the injured Shoaib in the 16-man Pakistan squad for the series against England.”There is no doubt that Shoaib is among the world’s fastest bowlers and is somebody who takes a lot of wickets. But I have a lot of confidence in my abilities and believe that I can play a useful role for my team in England,” said Shahid, who last played a Test for Pakistan way back in 1999.Shahid said his absence from Test cricket has not affected his abilities as a medium pacer. “I have been regularly playing competitive cricket in Pakistan and abroad and in fact never lost hope of playing for Pakistan again,” he said.Shahid is one of the five fast bowlers selected for the tour of England and might spend most of the tour on the sidelines. The player hopes it won’t happen. “I am anxiously waiting for the opportunity to be in the playing line-up,” he said.Shahid was not even part of the 21-man preliminary squad Pakistan selected for the tour of England last month.But his forceful showing on the domestic circuit last season, Shoaib’s injury and Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq’s strong support paved the way for his return to the national team.Shahid added that he has ample experience of playing in England and hopes that it would be of some use for Pakistan.The Faisalabad-born player made his international debut for Pakistan in 1996 but has since played in just eight Tests and 17 One-day Internationals (ODIs).

Matthew Hoggard has managed to test his injured hand during a bowling stint in the nets at Lord’s, raising hopes that he will be fit to take his place in the first Test against Pakistan on Thursday. Hoggard went through the session on during training on Wednesday and was able to match the other bowlers for pace. England will give him until the last minute to prove his fitness.It was his first bowl since suffering the freak injury at Canterbury when his Yorkshire team-mate, Tim Bresnan, stood on his hand while wearing spikes in his boots. Hoggard needed six stitches in his right hand and has spent time in an oxygen chamber to aid his recovery process.”He did some useful work in the nets today and every hour the hand is getting better. But we are going to give him as long as possible to prove his fitness,” Andrew Strauss told reporters after practice but added Hoggard would have to do more than prove his bowling fitness. “Fielding is important. I don’t think you can go into a game with a guy who is unable to field.”Hoggard has played in 32 consecutive Tests dating back to the 2004 tour of the Caribbean. In that time he has become an indispensable part of the England attack, and recently became the tenth Englishman to pass 200 Test wickets.”We all know Hoggy’s done a very good job for the England team over the last 24 months and, certainly since the Ashes, he’s probably been the pick of our bowlers,” Strauss said. “It’s very important we do get him on the pitch but if he doesn’t make it through it gives an opportunity to someone else.”Hoggard had visited a specialist on Sunday morning when it was decided to employ the same hyperbaric process at a hospital in St John’s Wood that Simon Jones used as he tried to recover from his ankle injury before the final Ashes Test last summer.Earlier in the week David Graveney, England’s chairman of selectors, said. “I think it would be reasonable to see him [Hoggard] bowl in the nets on Wednesday to see what he can do and what he can’t.”England’s spate of injuries has hit the team hard since the end of the Ashes, with Andrew Flintoff, Ashley Giles, Michael Vaughan and James Anderson all out of contention with a variety of ailments. “These things tend to happen in a cluster. It never rains – it pours,” Hoggard told reporters at Canterbury. “When you have one injury you seem to get more, and we are just in a very bad trot of luck.””As soon as I try and move it [right hand] or I hit it, it’s still quite sore, but we’ve still got three or four days,” Hoggard told BBC Sport on Tuesday. “If I can hold a cricket ball, that’s fine, but it’s the catching and the batting that’s going to be the difficult part, so we’ll just have to see how well the stitches have held together.””It’s very frustrating to be fit in every other aspect and just have a couple of scratches on your hand. I’m dying to play on Thursday, so I’ll be doing all I can, but we’ll just have to wait and see how it is.”Though Hoggard remains optimistic of playing at Lord’s, Gloucestershire’s Jon Lewis is on stand-by to step into his role having been named in a 13-man squad.

Mohammad Asif, the Pakistan fast bowler, will rejoin the team in England before the fourth Test at The Oval after passing a fitness test conducted by the Pakistan Cricket Board.The PCB’s director of cricket, Saleem Altaf, told , “He bowled nine to ten overs at full stretch, pain-free and hassle-free.”Asif returned home before the first Test at Lord’s due to an elbow injury, forcing Pakistan to field a depleted pace attack, with the absence of Shoaib Akhtar and Naved-ul-Hasan. Pakistan are yet to bowl England out in the two Tests so far, and in the first day’s play in the third Test at Headingley yesterday, England finished on a healthy 347 for 6. His return should boost Pakistan’s bowling attack tremendously.Asif will have the chance to gain some match practice in a three-day match against West Indies A Shenley starting August 12. Pakistan are trailing England 0-1 in the four-Test series and Asif said that Shoaib’s possible return should propel Pakistan. “I just hope that Shoaib Akhtar is also fit to play at The Oval and, hopefully, we can bring Pakistan back into the series,” Asif said. “I felt comfortable bowling today and the flow was there. I should be able fit to play the final Test.”When asked about the prospect of Shoaib Malik and Naved-ul-Hasan returning for The Oval, Altaf said that they are yet to recover from their respective injuries and the five-match one-day series that follows the Tests would be a more realistic target.

Scorecard

India won the opening match of their tour of England at the County Ground in Derby, with an eight-wicket victory against the hosts in their first ever Twenty20 game. Rumeli Dhar, the Indian allrounder who opened the batting along with Sulakshana Naik, was named Player of the Match for an unbeaten 66 off 69 balls.With six fours in her innings, Dhar made up for Naik’s early fall and pushed the score close to the target with an 86-run partnership with Mithali Raj, the Indian captain.The Indian bowlers were hardly overworked in England’s innings as five English batsmen ran themselves out while adding 45 runs to the total. Jenny Gunn, the middle-order batsman, top scored for the side with 38 and was the last wicket to fall, having taken the total score to 105. Jhulan Goswami bowled well, giving away only three and a half runs an over and taking two wickets for fourteen runs.The two teams are further scheduled to play five one-day internationals and two Tests.

Once again, West Indies cricketers have been caught in the middle of a row that is no fault of their own. Such seems to be the case after billionaire Allen Stanford made it known that the US$5 million Stanford 20/20 Super Stars match between West Indies and South Africa, slated for November 10, would be scrapped if the team was weakened by the withdrawal of West Indies players for the simultaneous tour of Pakistan.Why should players have to make the choice between a West Indies cricket tour of Pakistan or playing in the lucrative Stanford 20/20 Super Stars match? Why can’t the players have the best of both worlds? It is unfortunate that a supposedly trivial issue such as the clashing of dates has the potential to create another impasse in our cricket that has indirectly led to the resignation of Clive Lloyd from the Stanford 20/20 board of directors.While debate rages on as to whether the inaugural 20/20 tournament was developmental for West Indies cricket, the financial incentives for our players and the resurgence in spectator appeal was most welcomed. With the Pakistanis not in the most accommodating mood to revisit the itinerary, the players will be caught between playing for pride and peanuts or a heavy one-off pay day.Where does Lloyd, who is a member of the West Indies Cricket Board, now stand in the midst of all this? Lloyd said if any of the players were selected for the West Indies for the tour of Pakistan, they would be replaced in the Super Stars squad.Stanford obviously saw it differently. When you are investing millions of dollars, you want the best and nothing but the best. Now Lloyd has resigned and it will be interesting to see if the other legends follow suit. Lloyd seemed to have been saying that if push came to shove, West Indies cricket should be given priority and no one should question a former Test great having that view. There is a school of argument that Lloyd and others with key roles in West Indies cricket, such as Gordon Greenidge and Andy Roberts, should have distanced themselves from the 20/20 board.On another note, it was a little puzzling that CBC, which so often boasts of being the Caribbean’s best connection, would miss the opportunity to televise the 20/20 final between Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana live after there was so much excitement in the air created by the novelty of the game.

Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, has given Andrew Flintoff instructions on how to deal with Australian crowds during the Ashes. Smith’s team was racially abused by spectators throughout their trip in 2005-06, which contributed to the ICC adopting an anti-racism code.”How England deal with the crowds could be the biggest factor in the Ashes series,” Smith said in . “It will be England’s main challenge – how they handle playing in Australia. The racism stuff was hard for us. Most of us enjoy banter – we had grown up in that environment – but I think the racism and some of the crowd behaviour in Australia was very wrong.”Smith was outspoken throughout the tour, a plan which included saying Shane Warne wanted to be captain, and he advised someone in the England setup to play a similar role in order to take pressure off the junior players. “As a leader in Australia, ‘Fred’ is going to have to carry a lot of heat,” Smith, who struggled with the bat during the trip, said. “England is obviously going to be targeted a lot by the [Australian] media and the public, so how they deal with that is going to be crucial to their success.”They’ve got to look at their team and decide who is going to handle the pressure best and that’s probably the skipper. It will allow the youngsters in the team to get on and play their cricket and not to deal with other issues as much.”

Otago poured on the runs and the misery against a star-studded Canterbury when they declared on 601 on the second day of their State Championship match in Christchurch. Incidentally, it was just one run less than their record score against Canterbury.Greg Todd, in his first match back for Otago after a horrific leg injury he suffered last season, hit a career-best 160. He was well supported by wicketkeeper Gareth Hopkins (38) while bowlers Bradley Scott (52*) and Craig Smith (49) put on 75 for the ninth wicket.In reply, Canterbury limped to stumps at 144 for 4. Brendon McCullum, in the unfamiliar role as an opener, blitzed his way to 67 off just 72 deliveries, but found little support. Peter Fulton (17) and Nathan Astle (6) both fell to McCullum’s brother Nathan. Much of Canterbury’s resistance tomorrow will centre on Craig McMillan and Chris Harris, both at the crease.

On Tuesday, England’s most valuable bowler underwent an emergency tutorial behind closed doors at the Adelaide Oval, in a desperate bid to rectify his wonky action. Two days later, Australia’s main man did exactly the same, with one subtle difference. Far from shielding his flaws from public consumption, Shane Warne’s back-to-basics bowling stint took place in the full gaze of several TV crews, eavesdropping reporters and gobsmacked fans.It was typical Warne. No sooner had Duncan Fletcher gone on record to congratulate his batsmen for the positive manner in which they played him at Brisbane, he was back in the nets, working with his personal spin doctor, Terry Jenner, to add some extra bite to his bowling. As a rule, Warne has little time for coaches. He has been famously scathing of Australia’s out-of-the-box thinker, John Buchanan, almost from the moment he took office in 1999. But as with all rules there are exceptions and in Jenner, Warne has a guru he trusts with his livelihood.Warne describes his regular sessions with Jenner as a “grease and an oil change”, but his contemplative demeanour as he listened to the advice and acted accordingly, was proof that, even at the age of 37 and with 689 Test wickets under his belt, he’s never too old to learn new tricks.Today’s lesson was designed to impart an extra rip on the ball, something that – with the exception of one big-turning delivery to Alastair Cook in the second innings – was noticeably lacking in Warne’s Brisbane performance. Jenner had him following through between two white bowling markers, an exercise designed to twist his body into such a position that his arm couldn’t help but impart that extra side spin. To judge by the number of times the off stump was pegged back in the brief session, something was going right.Warne and Jenner’s partnership dates back to 1990, when Shane was a tubby but talented surf-bum and Terry was rebuilding his life after a two-year jail term for embezzlement. He was invited to assess the intake at the newly established Australian Cricket Academy, having been described by Ian Chappell as the best thinking legspinner in the country, and immediately found himself bewitched by the talent he saw before him. “I know his action better than he does,” Jenner told The Daily Telegraph, “and sometimes having watched him on telly I’ll just ring and leave a message like ‘TJ here. Front leg. Bye.'”The fine-tuning has come at an opportune moment for Australia, especially given the doubts surrounding Glenn McGrath’s fitness, but Ricky Ponting scoffed at Fletcher’s claims that England had got the better of Warne in the first Test. “A couple of their guys played Shane okay, but I’m not sure they played him well,” he said, recalling in particular the over-spinning tempter that had Paul Collingwood stumped for 96. “That’s how Warney reads batsmen. That wasn’t an accident, that was classy bowling.”

Wellington v Central Districts Day 3
New Zealand hopeful Michael Mason tore through the Wellington lower order on a rain-shortened day to leave this match delicately poised with a day to play. The third day ended early with rain and bad light but not before Wellington picked up the vital wickets of Jamie How (9) and Mathew Sinclair. Central, chasing 227 for victory, require another 175 runs on a pitch that has proved difficult to score heavily on. Mason, with 4 for 44 from 18.2 overs, was the best of the bowlers but Wellington will be disappointed with their total. All the top-order batsmen bar nightwatchman Jeetan Patel made starts but only Michael Parlane (53) passed 50.Auckland v Otago Day 2
Big scores from Tim McIntosh and Rob Nicol might have lit the fuse, but it was Andre Adams who provided the pyrotechnics on day two of this match at the neutral venue of Lincoln, just outside of Christchurch.Adams, batting at No. 8, hit 10 fours and a staggering eight sixes in his unbeaten 117 off 94 balls to allow Auckland the luxury of declaring with more than 600 runs. Otago will know the feeling well, having declared on 601 for 9 in their opening match against Canterbury last week. Adams’s innings completely overshadowed the meritorious, though sedate by comparison, 160 from Nicol. McIntosh took his overnight 173 to 205 before being dismissed and Reece Young hit 79.In reply Otago were in dire trouble, losing three quick wickets. Adams removed the promising Jordan Sheed for 1 and Aaron Redmond for a duck while Chris Martin removed the in-form Craig Cumming for 7.Cantebury v Norhern Districts Day 2
Shanan Stewart guided Canterbury to first-innings points in this low-scoring match. No Canterbury batsman passed 50 – Craig McMillan top scored with 42 – but Stewart’s 26 not out, batting lower than normal at No. 8, was the difference between the sides. The most notable feature of a dull day, however, was the return of former New Zealand bowler Daryl Tuffey, who impressed with 3 for 61 from 24 overs. Mark Orchard took 4 for 33, also off 24 overs.

Kenya’ preparation for the World Cup have been boosted by the return of 34-year-old Ravi Shah, considered by many to be, along with team-mate Steve Tikolo, among the best batsmen outside Test cricket.The last of Shah’s 44 ODIs was in the 2004 Champions Trophy, more than 28 months ago, since when he has been sidelined by a serious knee injury as well as his increasing business commitments.But he has been playing local cricket this season with reasonable success, and he has joined Kenya’s 30-man training squad ahead of the World Cricket League which starts in Nairobi at the end of January. His return will give much-needed robustness to Kenya’s top order, which has been a source of constant worry to the national selectors.