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In a high-scoring semi-final, Islamabad’s 380 for 2 proved just enough for Rawalpindi, beating them by 13 runs to progress to the semi-final of the Regional One-Day Cup.Rawalpindi won the toss and bowled first. They might have been made to regret their decision as Islamabad piled on a mammoth total. Shan Masood and Babar Azam both scored centuries – 182 not out and 136 respectively – in a partnership worth 283 runs. All of Rawlpindi’s bowlers went at over six an over and managed just two wickets in the 50 overs. Masood hit 20 fours and a six in his innings.However, Rawalpindi weren’t demoralised even as the top three fell within the first 15 overs. Just when it seemed Islamabad might canter to a win, Iftikhar Ahmed and Saud Shakeel fought back fiercely, putting on 146 for the fourth wicket. Iftikhar motored along to a century as Shakeel (70) and wicketkeeper Umari Masood (50 not out) gave him able support. However, the target was just a bit too far out of reach, and Islamabad never quite let the game get away from them. In the end, they clinched a 13-run win even as Rawalpindi put on a gallant 367.

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Australia’s eight-wicket victory, with over 17 overs to spare, bore every mark of the intent they spoke about leading into the three-match series against India. Their spinners – Jess Jonassen and Amanda-Jade Welliington – led the charge to pick up seven wickets between them to dismantle India for 200. Debutant Nicola Carey, too, played a part in an economical 10-over spell that cost just 28. Then opener Nicole Bolton made an unbeaten century, her fourth in ODIs, to undo India’s lower-order fightback.Australia’s chase had an air of inevitability about it right from the start. After seeing off a maiden over first up from Shikha Pandey, Bolton leaned into cover drives, rocked back for square cuts, and swept her way to forging three half-century stands. Even as she took a while to assess the Reliance Stadium surface, where pace had been on the wane since the latter half of India’s innings, Bolton kept pinching singles through the seven-two off-side heavy field, while opening partner Alyssa Healy went on a rampage to make a 29-ball 38.In a manner similar to her WBBL blitzkriegs this season, Healy hammered the barrage of short balls from the opening pace duo of Pandey and Pooja Vastrakar, and also took on spinners Deepti Sharma and Rajeshwari Gayakwad. Having hoisted Australia to 60 without loss in nine overs, Healy picked out Veda Krishnamurthy at point to hand Pandey her 50th ODI wicket.By then, Bolton had upped her strike rate and raced to 21 off 26, shaking off the scratchiness that had made her edge the first ball of the sixth over off Deepti marginally past Veda at first slip. Subsequently, she forged a 68-run stand with captain Meg Lanning, who brought up her 3000th ODI run upon her return to the batting crease since losing her offstump to Jhulan Goswami peach from the World Cup semi-final.Lanning’s fluency shone through right from the outset. Bolton, on her part, raced to her fifty off only 57 balls, but three deliveries later, had Lanning respond to her call and come a long way down the pitch only to send her captain back after tapping at a Pandey delivery. With Australia on 128 for 1, Lanning, on 33, met with a direct throw from Veda at cover-point and was caught short of her ground at the non-striker’s end.The dismissal, however, was to barely have a bearing on the outcome of the game. But Bolton enjoyed slices of luck. Reprieved on 65 when Rajeshwar Gayakwad put down a skier off Poonam Yadav at square leg, strung an unbeaten 74-run partnership with Ellyse Perry. In between, she also avoided dragging the legspinner on 72. Perry chipped in with a 26-ball 25, and hit the winning runs – a four of stand-in captain Harmanpreet Kaur – in the 33rd over, soon after Bolton got to her century off 101 balls.As dominant as Australia were with the bat, it was their bowlers that snotted the life out the Indian line-up. Mithali Raj’s unavailability because of fever meant 17-year old Jemimah Rodrigues was handed an ODI debut, which turned out to be forgettable for her. Among the top six, only Punam Rut managed to make some sort of impression to make 37.With the top order failing, the lower order stood up. Bowling allrounder Vastrakar partnered No. 7 wicketkeeper-batsman Sushma Verma to breathe animation into an tail that has time and again failed to wag under pressure. They added 76 for the eighth wicket, with Vastrakar bringing up her maiden half-century off the 55th ball of her innings.Batting only for the third time in international cricket, Vastrakar’s 56-ball 51 featured seven fours and a six that lent credence to her established pinch-hitting prowess in the domestic circuit. Having come in at No. 9, she capitalised on the two reprieves – dropped on 14 by Lanning at mid-off and on 19 by Perry at midwicket – and lofted left-arm spinner Jonassen over the covers, drove Schutt and Perry straight down the track, and launched Gardner for six over the mid-wicket fence with a slog sweep.That India could scramble to 200 after being reduced to 113 for 7 was down to Vastrakar’s freewheeling approach, coupled with Verma’s defiant 71-ball 41, that bettered her international top-score of 33 that came in a similar situation in the World Cup last year, against Pakistan. The pair’s 93-ball stand injected further sloppiness in the Australia fielding unit.Jonassen, who finished with 4 for 30, however, cleaned up the tail, running the last wicket – Poonam Yadav – out after having both Sushma and Vastrakar to hole out – the latter to Haynes as she failed to time an attempted lofted strike straight over the bowler’s head.

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Tasmania vaulted to second on the Sheffield Shield table after surviving an extraordinary final-day century from Travis Head to beat South Australia in a nail-biter in Hobart.The Redbacks began the day needing 283 to win with nine wickets in hand. They quickly slumped to 4 for 69 after Andrew Fekete and Sam Rainbird claimed Callum Ferguson, Jake Weatherald and Jake Lehmann in the space of 13 balls.But Head started his assault on the bowling with the aid of Tom Cooper. The pair combined for a 115-run stand to which Cooper only contributed 38. Despite wickets continuing to tumble, Head kept the scoreboard motoring.Joe Mennie (29) and Nick Winter (25) were valuable allies for Head who charged to 145, with 23 fours and a six, and moved South Australia within sight of a famous victory.But with just 19 required, the second new ball did the trick. Rainbird coaxed an outside edge from Head that was easily held at second slip. Winter was bowled by Jackson Bird three overs later to give the Tigers victory. Bird claimed four of the last six wickets.

A rain-hit game in Canterbury between Kent and the visiting Pakistan side meandered to its inevitable conclusion, the sides playing out an uninspiring draw. Pakistan had been shot out for 168 on the opening day, and Kent ended day one at 39 for 1. Following that, no play was possible the following two days of the four-day game, rendering the match as a competitive contest redundant.The early part of day four was unable to have play owing to a wet outfield, leaving the Kent ground staff with the thankless task of drying a pitch that was never going to produce a result. When play finally began, Sean Dickson and Joe Denly, captaining Kent in Sam Billings’ absence, took the opportunity to bat against a quality bowling line-up, seeing off the pace trio of Mohammad Amir, Hasan Ali and Rahat Ali. They combined for a 160-run partnership, and Denly finished unbeaten on 113, hitting 14 fours and three sixes along the way. Dickson was dismissed to legspinner Shadab Khan after reaching 74 and another couple of wickets fell soon, before the sides shook hands after 49 overs of play.Pakistan’s next tour game takes place in Northampton from May 4 to 7, before they take on Ireland in the latter’s first ever Test in Dublin from May 11.

ScorecardNew Zealand’s Matt Henry was awarded ‘Man of Kent’ status by appreciative home fans after starring with bat and ball during his side’s 58-run Specsavers County Championship win over Sussex in Canterbury.The 26-year-old from Christchurch top-scored with a belligerent 55 in Kent’s second innings and then picked up the ball to claim six for 53 and 10 in the match to help dismiss neighbours Sussex for 211 and clinch a third successive Division Two victory with a day to spare.The Kiwi, who spent much of the winter on the periphery of the Black Caps Test squad, had Phil Salt caught on the drive at mid-off and then went around the wicket to pluck out the off stump of left-hander Luke Wells with a full-length off-cutter – for the 200th first-class dismissal of his career.Stiaan van Zyl mounted a partial recovery before he feathered an Ivan Thomas lifter through to the keeper then Harry Finch steered one from Calum Haggett to second slip.After tea, Luke Wright’s firm drive was caught ankle high in his follow through by Thomas then Henry switched to the Pavilion End to bowl Michael Burgess through the gate as he pushed off the back foot without moving his feet.Despite the absence of Grant Stewart from their attack with a hamstring strain, Kent marched on as Harry Podmore trapped Ollie Robinson leg before, then, just two short of a patient half-century, Ben Brown went in the same manner to Henry’s full-length away swinger.Henry bagged his third five-wicket return in Kent colours by skittling Danny Briggs and polished the game off by uprooting the off stump of Ishant Sharma and move Kent up to second in the table.For good measure. Henry extended his leadership at the top of the national bowling averages after taking his tally to 37 victims in four starts at the miserly average of 9.59 apiece.Earlier, the hosts, resuming on their overnight score of 125 for 4 and with an overall lead of 159, were bailed out of the mire by a counter-attacking 50 from Black Caps strike bowler Henry.The hosts added only eight to their tally when Ishant Sharma struck to remove Zak Crawley, caught at short mid-wicket off a looping bat-pad chance.Seven runs on, Ishant struck again, when Adam Rouse’s full-blooded drive flew toward gulley where Salt flung himself to his right to pull off an athletic, one-handed catch.Matt Henry is having a spectacular season for Kent•Getty Images

Having been dropped off a regulation chance to the keeper two deliveries earlier, Haggett glanced a leg-side delivery from Robinson to Brown, the relieved keeper.Ishant gave way after a five-over spell of two for 15, to be replaced at the Nackington Road End by David Wiese, but Kent took their lead beyond 200 when Henry smashed a brace of boundaries off the South African’s second over.Henry plundered sixes off Wiese and Van Zyl to raise a 50 stand with Podmore on the way to his fourth-first-class career 50, scored off 47 balls and with five fours and three sixes.He and Podmore added 74 in 16.4 overs for the eighth wicket before Henry’s edged a leg-side heave against Robinson to slip. Stewart, batting with a runner, had off stump plucked out by Robinson and last man Thomas suffered a similar fate as Kent finally succumbed for 235 just after the designated 1.10pm lunch interval.Ishant and Robinson claimed four wickets apiece, while Wiese picked up two but Kent had been allowed to wriggle off the hook.

ScorecardGlamorgan were denied their second win of the season by the Derbyshire tailenders at Swansea, where Tony Palladino – who faced 108 balls for his unbeaten 30 – and Duanne Olivier batted out the final 14.3 overs to earn the visitors a draw.When Derbyshire lost their eighth wicket, Glamorgan were favourites to win but, with stubborn resistance and some good fortune, the visitors held out.Glamorgan had resumed at their overnight score of 201 for 3, making rapid progress in the opening session as 107 runs were scored in the first hour at the rate of six runs an over. Kiran Carlson and Usman Khawaja shared a record partnership of 289 for the fourth wicket, the highest for any wicket for Glamorgan against Derbyshire, surpassing the previous record set by Mark Cosgrove and Michael Powell.Khawaja was to the first to reach his century, and he also became the first Glamorgan batsman to score successive hundreds in his fist two games for the club. Carlson reached his landmark shortly afterwards before racing to his next fifty from only 20 deliveries.Both batsmen surrendered their wickets in the quest for quick runs, and after David Lloyd had struck a brisk undefeated 43, Glamorgan declared to leave Derbyshire a target of 325 from a minimum of 63 overs.The visitors were soon in trouble as Harvey Hosein had his middle stump uprooted in Michael Hogan’s first over, then Ben Slater was lbw to Andrew Salter – also in his first over – with Derbyshire struggling at 18 for 2.Much depended on Derbyshire’s best batsmen Wayne Madsen, and he responded with some aggressive shots, notably against Salter, whom he struck for three fours in one over. However, Alex Hughes was the next to go when he edged Hogan, who had changed ends, to second slip.Derbyshire resumed after tea on 77 for 3, with 40 overs remaining, but there then followed a flurry of wickets. Ben Godleman was the first to go when he chipped Prem Sisodiya to midwicket, before the 19-year-old debutant took the vital wicket of Madsen, who was caught at backward point.When Matt Critchley became Hogan’s third victim, Derbyshire had slumped to 93 for 6, but Gary Wilson and Palladino provided stubborn resistance for 15.2 overs. Wilson faced 72 balls before he was lbw to Lukas Carey for 26, a decision he clearly didn’t agree with, as he stalked back to the pavilion.Hamidullah Qadri quickly followed for a pair in the game to give Hogan his fourth wicket – but there was further frustration for Glamorgan as Olivier joined Palladino to defend on a fourth-day pitch that offered little to the bowlers.

ScorecardFifteen minutes after tea on a soon-to-be-fabled evening James Bracey lofted Ollie Robinson to deep square leg where Danny Briggs dived forward to take a fine two-handed catch. Immediately Gloucestershire supporters bowed their heads in disappointment while knots of Sussex followers erupted in glee at a 28-run victory which had appeared a distant prospect in mid-afternoon. Ben Brown, the winning skipper, solemnly shook Bracey’s hand before joining his team-mates in celebrating a win which leaves them 13 points behind second-placed Kent.Bracey stood in the middle of the pitch, lost in his disappointment. He had batted five minutes over four hours and had faced 174 balls for his 87 runs. He is 21 years old and has already made three first-class hundreds. His innings at the College Ground had been good enough to win almost any game but this one. Robinson and Jofra Archer, both of whom had taken four wickets, also congratulated him.Thus a match which some thought might be decided in Sussex’s favour by early afternoon was not ended until the commuters were making their way down Bath Road. The many spectators without a pledged allegiance found it difficult to believe that even this great old festival has seen many better games.Cheltenham, you see, is Cleeve Hill in the morning haze and it is Leckhampton in the evening sunset. But this week it has also been the College Ground’s biggest crowds for a decade and a finish Sussex supporters will remember when autumn’s gales batter the Channel coast.Bracey’s decision to hit out was entirely justified given that Brown had just taken the new ball and David Payne was at the other end. Throughout the day the coaches on the pavilion balcony had applauded his defence and rightly so. Boundaries are easy to appreciate but the shots which earn you the chance to hit fours are quite as valuable. Bracey had arrived at the wicket with Gloucestershire on 36 for 3, still needing 240 to win and facing a four-man pace attack which is as good as most in Division One. And then it had looked as if his beloved Gloucestershire might just manage it. Now this…The early omens had not been good for home supporters and that made the result even more crushing for them. At the beginning of the day Sussex’s bowlers had the immediate prospect of dismissing George Drissell and Matt Taylor, two tailenders whose promotion on Wednesday evening had prompted much head-shaking among the locals. But the morning session was Gloucestershire’s. Although both nightwatchmen, bats, braziers and all, were caught behind by Brown in the first six overs of the day, those wickets were the only ones to fall before lunch.Bracey and his captain, Gareth Roderick, batted with cool self-possession, the latter getting off the mark with a cover-drive off Chris Jordan and celebrating that tiny success with a boundary to the College Lawn two balls later. Bracey, meanwhile, was settling down for a day’s batting. The very sharp half-chance which he offered to Harry Finch at short leg off Briggs’ first ball was an isolated indiscretion. By lunch the fifth-wicket partnership stood at 87 and Gloucestershire needed another 151 runs.And for almost an hour of the afternoon session it seemed Bracey and Roderick might take their side home. Both batsmen reached their fifties with singles off David Wiese and Brown’s options were limited by the otherwise admirable Robinson twice being warned for running down the pitch. When drinks were taken Gloucestershire needed exactly a hundred and there were 22 overs until the new ball. Locals who had taken their seats when the morning’s play began could not be shifted lest the game’s gods looked unkindly on such restlessness.Immediately after drinks Roderick swept at Danny Briggs and lost his leg stump. There was silence among the coaches on the balcony. The next hour saw three batsmen made modest contributions to the cause but none looked as solid as the skipper had been. Brown changed his bowlers with an eye to the new ball after tea but kept his concentration sufficiently to take leg-side catches off Ryan Higgins and Kieran Noema-Barnett, the latter off the last ball before tea. The Sussex captain came in having taken six catches, thus equalling the record for a Sussex keeper in an innings. He neither knew nor cared. Gloucestershire needed 34 runs; Sussex wanted two wickets.Immediately after tea David Miles was leg before to Robinson, although the ball looked a trifle high. Bracey and Payne scrambled three singles; the fielders were distant or close as the situation required. Then Bracey seized what seemed to him a moment and hoisted five and three-quarter ounces of cork and polished red leather towards a distant boundary.

Sri Lanka batsman Danushka Gunathilaka has been suspended from all forms of international cricket by SLC for breaching the ‘Player Code of Conduct’, pending inquiry. The board will also withhold Gunathilaka’s match fee for the ongoing Test against South Africa, in addition to the suspension that will come into effect immediately after the match at SSC.Without divulging more details, an SLC release said, “the decision to suspend the player was taken following an initial inquiry conducted by Sri Lanka Cricket, after the team management reported that the player have violated the ”Code of Conduct’.” The offence, for now, is understood to be a breach of curfew during the ongoing Test against South Africa. There is a possibility that a further, more serious offence will come to light as well, which is what has prompted the strong action from SLC.Gunathilaka has had a sequence of disciplinary issues in the recent past. In January this year, he had been officially reprimanded for breaching Level 1 of the ICC Code of Conduct during the final of the T20 tri-series against Bangladesh. He had been reprimanded for giving Tamim Iqbal a send-off when the batsman was on his way to the dressing room. As a result, one demerit point had been added to his disciplinary records.Last year, Gunathilaka had been suspended for six white-ball matches for misconduct, and was hence omitted from the ODI squad for the series against Pakistan in the UAE. ESPNcricinfo had reported that Gunathilaka missed a training session, turned up for a match without his gear, and was generally found to have had an indifferent attitude towards training – all during Sri Lanka’s home series against India. The suspension was later revised to three matches, the remaining three matches being part of a suspended sentence over a one-year period, which could come into force in the event of any further disciplinary breaches. He had also been fined 20% of his annual contract fee.

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On an opening day of the Australian domestic season so early it could only have been played in far north Queensland, its new possibilities were exemplified by the displays of Glenn Maxwell and Nic Maddinson as the bulwarks of a Victorian innings that proved just stout enough to see off Queensland in seam and swing-friendly conditions.For Maxwell, it wasn’t quite the hundred that he has been told he must make in far more frequent fashion to make it into Justin Langer’s preferred Australian teams, but plenty noted it was almost worth three of the 30-plus scores that have apparently become a key metric in determining a batsman’s ability to avert collapses.That is exactly what Maxwell and Maddinson, in his first game for Victoria after becoming unwanted by New South Wales, were confronted with at 4 for 66, and their stand of 121 was critical to lifting the state to an ultimately sufficient 240 in Townsville. While Mark Steketee pouched four wickets for Queensland, the Australia paceman Billy Stanlake was expensive, and was also fortunate when Cameron White was able to get a glove to an accidental beamer that may otherwise have caused grievous injury.At the end of a week in which he was discarded from the Test squad, Maxwell spoke happily of making runs, bailing out his team and ultimately winning – a sensation he noted had been somewhat missing from his experience of 2018 so far. He also contended that if he is to return to international cricket in the longer formats, he would first have to let go of his earlier visions of a key role in the UAE against Pakistan in the absences of the banned Steven Smith and David Warner.”I’m not thinking about that right now, that’s gone at the moment and no point dwelling on it and talking about it, my job right now is to make runs and play well for Victoria,” Maxwell said. “If I can contribute to wins like today, have some success and sing the song together, they’re special moments. I feel like I haven’t won a lot of games this year. In Delhi we had a pretty average tournament, with the English one dayers we got pumped and lost the tri-series final [in Zimbabwe] as well. Hasn’t been much success, I think we lost three of our four practice games as well. So nice to win a game and start the tournament off well.”From the position the game was in I think coming out at three-for in the Powerplay and the ball was nipping around, doing all sorts out there, it was nice to get through that, put on a partnership with Maddo and give us something to bowl at. I think you’re always wary of when it seams in the morning that it’s going to flatten out in the arvo. Luckily enough it still seamed about for them [batting] and we were able to get enough wickets to really drive the game. So it was nice to get some runs and start the tournament off well.”You don’t need extra determination playing for your state and with your mates that’s for sure, it was good fun to get out there and I’ve got a lot of really good mates out here so it’s fun to be up in Townsville.”Getty Images

Queensland’s innings mirrored Victoria’s in its struggles against the new and moving ball, particularly in the hands of the young allrounder Will Sutherland, who Maxwell likened to the similarly rangy John Hastings in his height, bounce, late movement and accuracy. Also of interest was the flighted leg spin of Tom O’Connell, who returned a very creditable 2 for 42 on his state debut, including the key wicket of another Test team discard Joe Burns just as he and Mitchell Swepson threatened a rearguard.”Will Sutherland was outstanding, Tom O’Connell a very confident young legspinner and handy with the bat as well,” Maxwell said. “We’ve got some really good young guys … it’s going to be a collective effort from our squad to try and win this tournament, we’re going to need everyone to stand up at some stage and it was great for the guys to stand up, a couple of guys on debut, Maddo played really well today, so to have guys stand up in the first game has been really good.”[Sutherland] is a star, a very good young player. Very similar in the John Hastings mould, big tall guy, moves the ball around, hits a great length and hits the seam. Makes it difficult for batters if you’re getting that movement off the wicket and pressuring their defence all the time, which is ideal. He’s just got a really level head about him so hopefully if he doesn’t run himself out we’ll see him with the bat as well he’s got some really good skills there.”The Bulls captain Chris Lynn, playing his first domestic limited-overs match in five years, was caught at cover by Maxwell for a duck when he tried to power Sutherland through the off side as Queensland wickets fell in a new-ball clump. Chris Tremain, another man who could consider himself unfortunate to be missing out on the Pakistan series, maintained his habit of regular wickets. He claimed three, including the final two Queenslanders, just as they appeared capable of salvaging victory.

BCCI secretary Amitabh Chaudhary is expected to represent the board at the ICC’s chief executives’ meeting to be held in Singapore this week, a task that would normally have fallen to its CEO Rahul Johri. The decision follows #MeToo allegations, made public on Friday, around Johri’s conduct with a fellow professional in his previous job.The BCCI’s first response to the anonymous allegations of Johri’s alleged conduct against a woman ex-colleague in the television industry, before he joined the BCCI, had been to seek an “explanation” from Johri within a week. There was no word on whether the allegations would affect Johri’s daily operations inside the BCCI or indeed his presence as the Indian board’s representative at the Singapore meeting on October 17 and 18. It is believed that protests from within the board, the two-member Committee of Administrators (CoA), as well as reservations expressed at the highest level of the ICC went ahead to ensure that Johri would not be be a part of the CEOs meeting in Singapore. The possibility of Johri turning up at the meeting in Singapore had made the situation “very uncomfortable”, according to a cricket official.The allegations against Johri, made anonymously through Twitter, are part of a vitally transformed global environment around issues of sexual harassment, abuse and crimes against women. The BCCI’s own internal complaints committee against workplace harassment has only been in place since April 2018. The committee is headed by BCCI lawyer Karina Kripalani, GM Operations Saba Karim, Rupawati Rao, who works in BCCI accounts, and external member Mumbai-based women’s rights lawyer Veena Gowda.This is the third time within 18 months that the BCCI, and through them the CoA, have been faced with complaints, accusations and allegations of sexual harassment around its senior executives. Johri’s name has featured in them, but it is not yet certain if two complaints were indeed the same one, only with more details. Given the nature of the allegations against the CEO of the most high-profile and richest sporting body in India and the richest board in world cricket, the complaints committee could be dealing with their biggest and most scrutinised case yet.