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Sri Lanka fast bowler Lahiru Kumara has been removed from the Sri Lanka Test squad on disciplinary grounds. He has been replaced by Dushmantha Chameeera.Kumara is understood to have broken the team curfew on Sunday evening – two days before the first Test in Galle is set to begin. Sri Lanka’s team management has been especially strict on curfew times and player discipline over the past two months, after two players, Danushka Gunathilaka and Jeffrey Vandersay, were found guilty of serious breaches of discipline during the South Africa and West Indies series respectively.Gunathilaka had failed to return to his room before curfew in the midst of a Test in Colombo. Vandersay, meanwhile, had been out so long after a night out in St Lucia that the team bus to the airport was delayed the following morning.Kumara has generally been Sri Lanka’s second-choice seamer, after Suranga Lakmal, and had stood a chance of playing at least one match in the three-Test series against England. Earlier in the year, Kumar had been especially impressive in the West Indies, where he claimed 17 wickets at an average of 19.88 across the three Tests.Chameera, his replacement, has not played a Test since the end of 2016, partly due to injury. He is something of a like-for-like replacement, in that he is also capable of bowling at over 145kph.

No-one has spent more time batting on the MCG’s hotly-debated pitches this season than Marcus Harris, and he has counselled his team-mates not to judge the surface by the expected preponderance of green grass geared towards ensuring a result after last year’s bore draw during the Ashes series.Harris got the fright of his life when he saw the pitch for the Sheffield Shield match, admitting now that he expected the game between Victoria and New South Wales to be over in “a day and a half”, before proceeding to sculpt a monumental 250 not out that played a major role in vaulting him into the Test team.As a result, Harris is expecting slow scoring but the opportunity for runs to be made by batsmen diligent enough to play within their lanes. “Pre-match when I saw the wicket I was really freaked out and I thought ‘this game’s going to be over in a day and a half and we’ve got blokes trying to vie for Test spots’, so I went into the game with no expectations on myself and the wicket actually played pretty well,” Harris told ESPNcricinfo. “It was relatively slow and stayed together.”I saw this morning the wicket will probably be more similar to the South Australia game, where it had a bit more green grass on it, nipped around a bit but it was one of those wickets where if you play well you can make runs but if you bowl well you can take wickets.”I think it’ll be the same old thing of patience, the MCG is never a really quick scoring ground anyway, so that’ll be the key, just realising things will take a while to evolve. Not sure the wicket will break up too much, but we’ll just have to wait and see. Fortunately we’ve probably got the best bowling attack in the world so that looks after itself a little bit, but I think as batters a patience game will be the key and run rates won’t be as quick as what you’d like, but that’s the way it will be.”Like Harris, the MCG curator Matt Page is a former West Australian transplanted to the other side of the continent, now charged with ensuring the storied stadium has pitches to match its overall reputation. “We want to provide an opportunity for everyone,” Page said. “Whether it’s the spinners, it’s the pace bowlers, or the batters. Providing them opportunities to be able to produce their world-class [skills] throughout a game, whether that’s quickies at the front, batters in the middle, spinners towards the end. It’s producing a pitch that everyone can show what they can do.”I think this one will be very similar to the South Australian game which we were probably happy with the most. We were unlucky not to get a result through rain, but there seemed to be a bit there for everyone; a bit there for the quicks, a couple of guys scored hundreds and the feedback we got from that game was really positive. I know we are still three days out but are looking at a wicket that will be similar to that.”Both the NSW and SA fixtures benefited from plenty of early life, meaning the game could evolve at the requisite pace needed to ensure a result after it dried. Another Shield match, when Victoria hosted Western Australia, was not as lively as attempts to prepare a drier, harder surface resulted in a similar result to the soporific strip on which the Ashes Test was drawn. “We went in to that game and we tried to get a little bit harder and a little bit drier and didn’t get the result we wanted,” Page said. “We learned from that and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”Mitchell Starc, for one, is hopeful of something a little more equitable this time around. With typical bluntness, he assessed last summer’s Test pitch (“shocking”) and the ICC’s average rating for the Perth Stadium flier (“harsh”) that featured some of the characteristics Page is hoping to engender at the MCG over time.”There hasn’t been any discussion in the team but there has been plenty of traction in the public from past players at their disappointment of that rating,” Starc said. “You had a fantastic Test match over five days, a fantastic battle between ball and bat which is what you want. I think that was a bit harsh, I’d say, and the fact it was such an exciting Test match that’s what you want to promote. You want to see wickets like that in the future.”Test cricket isn’t meant to be comfortable, I know it’s a batters’ game, but that’s what makes the game exciting. If you look at the match here last year where the wicket did nothing, it was a pretty boring Test match. If wickets are closer to what we saw in Perth it will create more exiting Test matches and you’ll get more people watching.”It sounds like it will be similar to one of the Shield games few weeks ago so the likelihood is it will do more than last year, which is great because last year was shocking – I didn’t play, fortunately – but the early signs are there could be a bit of grass on it.”

The immediate Test future of Peter Handscomb remains the main selection debate for Australia after they named an unchanged 13-man squad for the final two Tests against India at Melbourne and Sydney.Chris Tremain, who was part of the squad leading into the series, was released before the Perth Test and the selectors have not felt the need to make any changes following Australia’s 146-run victory which levelled the series.Peter Siddle is retained as the back-up pace option to the main three quick men with the big decision heading into Melbourne whether allrounder Mitchell Marsh is recalled in place of the struggling Handscomb who has made 34, 14, 7 and 13 in the series.It is less about the low scores for Handscomb more the manner of dismissals, with his technique being given a working over by India’s quicks as it was by England’s in last year’s Ashes. In the second innings at Perth he was trapped lbw by a full delivery from Ishant Sharma having previously twice edged behind, albeit he fell to a wonderful Virat Kohli catch on the opening day of the second Test.Coach Justin Langer said the challenge for Handscomb was to escape the “noise” which comes with a high-profile Test series but added he had started conversations with him about his method.”There’s areas he can improve and every one of our players can improve,” Langer told . “Aaron Finch, Shaun Marsh, they’re all working so hard on their game. What’s hard is you come into an environment like this and then there’s so much spotlight on your game. So it’s just another distraction for him.”The only thing I’ve spoken to him about so far is I wonder if he’s watching the ball because there’s times where he was playing back to balls he could’ve played forward to, forward to one he could’ve played back to. That’s the toughest thing about Test cricket, concentrating on the next ball, and when there’s all this noise and distraction, that’s the courage and skill of Test cricket.”Looking ahead to the third Test and the consideration of including Marsh as a fifth bowling option, regardless of the form debate around Handscomb, Langer said that the MCG pitch would be the greatest consideration in varying the balance of the team, but he did not have any concerns about the workload of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins.”We’ll look at the wicket, as there’s been a lot of talk about this wicket, there’s been a lot of talk about the MCG wicket after last year. In terms of the quicks, I think they’re all going beautifully at the moment, they’ve bowled a lot of overs but we’ve got a decent rest and all three of those guys super professional so they will be raring to go.”Conditions are going to be different at the MCG than they were here and then in Sydney. We will have to pick what we think is the best combination to win both of those Tests. If it’s this XI then great. But if we have to make some changes I am sure will talk about that at some stage.”Squad Pat Cummins, Aaron Finch, Peter Handscomb, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Tim Paine, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Starc

It didn’t quite reach the epic proportions of Angelo Mathews and Kusal Mendis batting all day in Wellington, and the means adopted were rather different, but Soumya Sarkar and Mahmudullah gave Bangladesh plenty of reason to cheer with their defiance in Hamilton.They couldn’t pull off the miracle of denying New Zealand victory, but they delayed it significantly with a rousing, counterattacking stand of 235 for the fifth wicket. New Zealand eventually wrapped up victory by an innings and 52 runs, but the margin could have been a lot wider; Bangladesh started day four needing 307 runs to make New Zealand bat again, with six wickets in hand.

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Almost half the scheduled day’s play had elapsed when Trent Boult finally broke the fifth-wicket partnership with the second new ball, Soumya bowled playing across the line, possibly looking for a single to take him to 150. That wicket quickly brought others in its wake, and Boult was soon celebrating a five-for when he had the tailender Abu Jayed bowled playing down the wrong line.But Mahmudullah would not be budged, and was seeing the ball well enough to play some of the most breathtaking shots of his innings: a pair of hooked sixes off Neil Wagner, and a pair of back-foot drives through cover point off Boult. He finally fell in the fourth over after tea, slapping Tim Southee straight to deep point, by which time he had made 146, his highest Test score, and a real statement as Bangladesh’s stand-in captain.Southee would get the last wicket too, the third umpire upholding a caught-behind decision when RTS showed a spike the frame after the ball passed Ebadot Hossain’s outside edge. It was an ironic end to the Test match; Mahmudullah could have been out first ball on day three if the third umpire had overturned an on-field decision of not-out under very similar circumstances.In the end, though, this match will be remembered for the quality batsmanship on display.For the bulk of his innings, Mahmudullah was the less aggressive partner to Soumya in a partnership that galloped along at 4.31 runs per over, fighting fire with fire.Soumya took only 94 balls to reach his hundred – it was the joint-quickest by a Bangladesh batsman, alongside Tamim Iqbal’s effort at Lord’s in 2010 – and the pace of his scoring had everything to do with his clear-headed response to New Zealand’s short-ball tactics. In a first hour full of bouncers Neil Wagner and Boult, both left-armers changing their angle of attack frequently, Soumya kept stepping back and across and kept hooking, ignoring the leg-side boundary riders.He wasn’t always in control – he finished with an overall control percentage of 75, and 67 against Wagner – but he didn’t waver from his plan. Sixty-seven of his 149 runs, as a result, came behind square on the leg side, as did eight of his 21 fours and four of his five sixes.Mahmudullah was a little more selective in his approach, ducking and weaving out of the way of the bouncers or hopping to get on top of the bounce and keep the ball down, and only occasionally rolling his wrists over a pull or hook.By the time New Zealand made their first bowling change of the day, Boult and Wagner had conceded 57 runs off 11 overs. If their bowling was a little one-dimensional, it had quite a lot to do with the pitch, which, like most surfaces in these parts over recent years, has become progressively flatter as the match has gone on.It isn’t a coincidence that the visiting side has been bowled out in less than 100 overs in the first innings of each of five Tests played in New Zealand since the start of 2018, and that they have each time managed to breach the 100-over mark in the second innings.Between the first hour and the taking of the second new ball, Todd Astle’s legspin was a constant from one end, and New Zealand will have been disappointed with his lack of control. There were plenty of loose balls in his 13 overs on day four, which went for 54 runs, as Soumya and Mahmudullah milked him with no trouble.In conditions with almost nothing in them for any style of bowling, New Zealand finally found some respite when the second new ball began swinging straightaway. Having been beaten by both Boult and Southee initially, Soumya was just beginning to come to grips with the swing – he hit Southee for three silky drives to the off-side boundary in the 84th over – when Boult finally sneaked one through him.

The India auditions are done, but Rishabh Pant refuses to go away from the spotlight.He blasted 78 not out off 27 balls, the joint third-fastest IPL half-century, to set the tournament alight for Delhi Capitals.Also crucial for Delhi was Colin Ingram’s 43 that gave the innings momentum in the first place after the top order sputtered. This meant, Shreyas Iyer celebrated an away win at his home ground as Delhi defended their mammoth 213 for 6 in style.Mumbai Indians, meanwhile, haven’t won a season-opening game since 2012. They will now travel to Bengaluru with not just questions to address, but also concerns over Jasprit Bumrah’s shoulder.McClenaghan strikes, Delhi struggle
Delhi might have begun the season thinking ‘there we go again’ when Prithvi Shaw and Iyer were out to Mitchell McClenaghan inside the fourth over. Shikhar Dhawan pottered to 13 off 16 balls in the first six overs. This allowed Rohit Sharma to use up three overs of debutant Rasikh Salam by the seventh over.Although nervous, the 17-year-old from Jammu & Kashmir impressed with his skiddy pace and late away movement. At that stage, after seven overs, Delhi were 49 for 2, with ESPNcricinfo’s Forecaster pegging Delhi’s final total at 144. The innings needed impetus.BCCI

Ingram takes on the Pandyas
A stable base, strong bottom hand and expert picking of lengths makes Ingram lethal. His re-entry into the IPL after eight years immediately injected momentum to the innings. He announced himself off his 13th delivery when he muscled a short Hardik Pandya delivery deep into the first tier on the leg side.In the 11th over, he didn’t spare Krunal Pandya, who repeatedly tried to fire the ball full, trying to angle the ball away from the sweeping arc. Ingram was a step ahead, using the gaps in the off side to drill the ball in the arc between point and long-off. The over went for three fours, which came on the back of Dhawan playing a delicious uppercut off McClenaghan. The wheels were turning. From 70 for 2 in nine, Delhi were now 95 for 2 in 11.Mumbai had no spinner to take the ball away from the left-handers. This forced Rohit to turn to Ben Cutting to cover for Krunal’s quota. But he too was scooped disdainfully. Ingram would make 47 off 32, and his 83-run stand with Dhawan led a superb revival.Pant’s pyrotechnics
Virat Kohli has emphatically stated that the IPL wouldn’t impact World Cup selection, but Pant could give the team management its biggest headache yet. He was held back but it didn’t cost Delhi. He whipped, swept, flicked, pulled and danced his way to sixes, peppering the second tiers of different parts of the ground, although the arc between deep square-leg and long-leg was his favourite.His first five deliveries yielded just one run, but the next 10 brought him 40. He’d hit five fours and three sixes in the interim; like Ingram, Pant too took a liking for Hardik, hitting him for two sixes and a four in the 16th to rev up. The decision to test him with short balls, particularly, fell flat. Short on middle: pulled, short outside off: slapped over long-off. Short further away: fetched and swatted over deep midwicket. This was Pant unleashed. Delhi smashed 99 off the last six overs.Mumbai’s Powerplay failure
Six games in 2017 yielded no wickets for Ishant Sharma. He went unsold subsequently in 2018, and was among the last buys for Delhi in 2019. His first IPL scalp in three years was Rohit, who top-edged a scoop to fine leg in the fourth over. In his next over, Ishant had the dangerous Quinton de Kock holing out at fine leg for a 16-ball 27. In the same over, Suryakumar Yadav was brilliantly run out by Iyer. Mumbai sputtered to 46 for 3 in the first six.Yuvraj sparkles but not enough
Yuvraj Singh walloped Axar Patel’s darts to offset a slow start that had him at 8 off 10 at one stage, struggling particularly against the short ball. But Kieron Pollard and Hardik, who chipped a return catch for a second-ball duck, fell within three balls of each other to put pressure on him. Krunal walked out at No. 7 in the 12th over and eased some of it, despite the asking rate spiraling to 13 an over by then. Delhi briefly lost the plot here, and Krunal made a mockery of their lengths by using his crease to muscle 32 off 15.But when he got out, Mumbai needed 80 off 30. Essentially, Yuvraj or Cutting had to do to Delhi what Andre Russell did to Sunrisers Hyderabad. Yuvraj by then had moved to 47 off 29, and a half-century duly arrived off a thick outside edge, but the game was beyond Mumbai by then, with Delhi closing out the game through Kagiso Rabada and Trent Boult.

Former West Indies batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan will mentor the West Indies side ahead of their next month’s tri-nation ODI series against Bangladesh and hosts Ireland, and the World Cup following it.Sarwan, who retired in 2016 after a 13-year long international career, has already joined the ongoing week-long training camp in Barbados ahead of next month’s trip to Ireland.Incidentally, Sarwan was not part of the support staff announced by Cricket West Indies (CWI) on Monday for the Ireland tour and the World Cup. However, Sarwan has been roped in specifically to work with the batsmen. It is not yet clear whether he will travel to the UK for the World Cup.Sarwan said the offer had come from former West Indies wicketkeeper Jimmy Adams, who is CWI’s director of cricket. Although it’s a short stint, Sarwan said he was “overwhelmed” by the assignment.”I am very excited to be here,” Sarwan said. “When I received the call from Jimmy, I was very overwhelmed at being asked to assist West Indies cricket again.”I have come here to act as kind of a mentor to the players and try my best to assist them in any technical ways and with any shortcomings where I think they can improve, and to offer as much help to the head coach, Floyd Reifer, and his coaching staff.”Following retirement, Sarwan has been residing in Florida. In an interview with ESPNcricinfo in 2016, Sarwan said the biggest thing in West Indies cricket was the absence of a good cricketing structure that would help the young talent grow.Now, Sarwan has been given the opportunity to do exactly that and he has already identified areas where he can contribute. He spent time with batsmen Darren Bravo and Shai Hope in the nets on the second day of the team’s training camp, currently underway at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies, on Tuesday.ALSO READ: Gabriel, Carter, Dowrich picked for ODI tri-series in IrelandSarwan pointed out that one of the key areas he wanted the batsmen to focus on was strike rotation and stated that it would take them time to improve it.”I know our batsmen have struggled in the past with rotating the strike, so I am trying to see how best we can get them to improve in this area,” he said. “It’s not an overnight fix, but it’s important to share ideas with them, so that they have something to build on.”Reifer, who was recently appointed as the interim coach following a review of West Indies’ coaching and selection policies led by newly-elected president Ricky Skerritt, outlined the importance of having someone like Sarwan around the team ahead of the big tournament.”It was very important to have him here,” Reifer said. “Sarwan was a player that was outstanding for West Indies. A very good batsman. A very good ‘finisher’ in limited-overs matches. We thought that a guy like Sarwan, coming into the camp with us whilst planning for the World Cup, would bring a wealth of knowledge.”We are hoping he can help the batsmen get a better understanding of how to finish games, the mindset, how to approach batting first, how to approach batting last, so we thought that kind of knowledge was very important to share. He fitted in very well. He did a lot of talking and a lot of work with the batsmen.”

“If I had to single out one player that can make more impact, that would be Marcus Stoinis,” Virat Kohli had said before the start of Australia’s limited-overs tour of India earlier this year.Kohli’s assessment was based on the allrounder’s performance in the Big Bash League in Australia. Playing for Melbourne Stars, Stoinis was the third-highest run-scorer in the tournament with 533 runs at an average of 53.30 and a strike rate of 130.63. With the ball, only Dwayne Bravo (15) had more wickets for Stars than Stoinis’ 14.Against India, Stoinis scored only eight runs in two T20Is, and didn’t get a chance to bowl. In the ODI series, he redeemed himself somewhat with 140 runs at an average of 46.66 and a strike rate of 81.87. In the last ODI in Delhi, he took two wickets, including that of Kohli.Stoinis may not have proven to be the he was billed to be, but that didn’t stop his team-mates from nicknaming him “BT”. Also, the ODI series against India was the one that put Australia’s World Cup campaign back on track. After losing the first two games, they bounced back to win the next three and clinch the five-match series 3-2. They then went on to whitewash Pakistan 5-0 in the UAE.Stoinis is once again in India, this time playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2019, under Kohli’s captaincy. Talking about Australia’s chances at the World Cup, Stoinis said those eight successive wins away from home have given the side the confidence it needed.”I think everyone is really confident [going into the World Cup],” Stoinis said on the eve of Royal Challengers’ home game against Kings XI Punjab. “Eight wins, to have them all away from home, I think is very important for us. We needed it as well. We lost a lot of games over the last year or so. It’s good timing and I think everyone started to really believe in each other and we started playing really well as a team. It’s exciting times.”But what turned it around for Australia after they had won just four out of their last 28 games? According to Stoinis, the little things made the big difference.”From the outside, it might look like it’s all of a sudden, a big shift, but I think it also shows the game of cricket is only about small minor details, small minor changes,” he said. “I think even over the time we were losing, we learnt a lot, we starting getting closer in a lot of games. There were a lot of close game we were losing and then on the flip side when we started winning in India, a lot of them were close games as well. Just that we were on the other side.”Even the first two we lost [to India], we had a good chance to win them. It just shows how strong the competition of cricket is all over the world, any team can win on any day. But also the belief we have in each other, it’s going a long way to help us.”Australia’s World Cup squad has also been bolstered by the return of David Warner and Steven Smith. Warner is currently the leading run-scorer in this IPL season. Smith too, after a lukewarm start, has shown signs of form with scores of 59 not out and 50 in the last two games.”It’s a massive boost,” Stoinis said of the duo’s return to the national side. “Also the fact that people stepped up in the last three-four months and we started winning games consistently. It all adds to the mix and hopefully, it adds to a World Cup-winning combination.”While talking about the switch from the 20-over format to ODIs, Stoinis felt the IPL was ideal preparation because he would be batting in the middle order at the World Cup as well.”I think it’s okay for me [switching] from T20 to one-day cricket, especially with the role I would probably be playing in the middle order,” he said. “And I don’t think there is any better preparation than playing the IPL, in front of these crowds, with all the pressure and all the external factors that go on, I think IPL makes it one of the strongest competition in the world.”I don’t think it [my role] will change too much. I am assuming I will be batting in the middle order, whether that’s 5 or 6, I am not sure. And then with the ball, doing my stuff with the ball. We are very fortunate to have Glenn Maxwell bowling pretty well at the moment as well. I see probably myself and him sharing the overs as a fifth bowling option.”But what about sharing the dressing room with the man who had labelled him the biggest threat two months ago? “I have known Virat for a while,” Stoinis said. “It’s probably much better playing with him than against him. Yeah, I have learnt quite a bit from him as well. His passion definitely rubs off on everyone in the change room. He is very clear, very determined, he knows what he wants to do. So it’s good to watch one of the best in the world, or one of the best of all time nearly, to go about his stuff.”

Sri Lanka fans, look away now. What’s that? You already were, even after the rousing dogfight of a win over Afghanistan… Okay, well, these are tough times, so that’s understandable. But up next is an opponent that Sri Lanka have never beaten in World Cup competition. Yes, that’s right. Against Pakistan on the biggest one-day stage, your team’s record reads: played seven, lost seven.It is not much better in Champions Trophy encounters either (one win in four). Only a couple of years ago, just a few miles along the M4 in Cardiff, Sri Lanka were sucker-punched by Sarfaraz Ahmed’s team in a match that was effectively a quarter-final. Pakistan went on to win the tournament; Sri Lanka started handing around the captaincy like a prize at a raffle.Dimuth Karunaratne is the sixth different man to lead the team in ODIs since Angelo Mathews in that tournament. But while he might be on what is politely known as a hiding to nothing over the next few weeks, there are tentative signs that Sri Lanka have more competitive spirit than was generally ascribed to them after a supine 10-wicket thrashing at the hands of New Zealand in their opening game. Lasith Malinga kicked some teacups around before the Afghanistan match and Sri Lanka’s bowlers got stuck in amid the damp conditions in Cardiff.The British weather has often been cause for a little shiver (or an extended one, accompanied by a call for another layer) among touring Sri Lanka teams. The hands are cold, the senses dulled. When Kumar Sangakkara decided to warm up – figuratively speaking – for Sri Lanka’s 2014 tour, he chose to go to Durham, the country’s most northerly outpost, for a spell in county cricket. Suitably braced, he got himself straight on the honours board at Lord’s.Durham’s head coach during Sangakkara’s spell there, Jon Lewis, is now the man in charge of Sri Lanka’s batting. Lewis has been in the job for just six months and in that time has worked with more than a dozen top-order batsmen, which is hardly ideal preparation for a World Cup campaign. After putting up scores of 136 and 201 in the tournament so far, there is clearly room for improvement but Lewis is phlegmatic about what can be done at this stage.”I’ve seen a lot of cricketers in six months, which has been good in some respects, because it has been nice to see some young – and some senior – Sri Lankan cricketers,” he told ESPNcricinfo. “That’s given me a really good feel for the country and the players they have. Maybe a little bit more continuity, seeing the same people for a bit longer, we’d have maybe had more of a chance to make some progress. But we are happy with the players we’ve got and we’ve got to try and do our best to get a little bit more out of this batting group.”Of immediate concern is the form of Mathews, former leader and the likeliest batting champion in this Sri Lanka side. Having been dropped in circumstances both unceremonious and acrimonious late last year, his return has so far seen him record one run and face 21 balls across three ODI innings – but faith in his enduring qualities remains, amid talk in the camp that he could move up to No. 4 against Pakistan.ALSO READ: Malinga grabs the limelight, but Pradeep turns the game“Angie’s probably our most experienced player, and so far we’ve got very little out of Angie and Angie knows that,” Lewis said. “It’s fine, but it would be unrealistic to think we’re going to have a really strong World Cup and Angie was not going to feature too much. He’s going to have to give us a couple of strong performances. I’ve no doubt he’s got them in him and he’s working very hard to make sure they come out at the right time, and hopefully it’s going to be here at Bristol.”A collapse of dizzying proportions against Afghanistan, from 144 for 1 to 159 for 6, undermined Sri Lanka’s hopes of posting a daunting total, with Kusal Mendis and Mathews among those foxed by Mohammad Nabi’s non-turning offbreaks. Lewis suggested that the team had mentally switched off after a good start, while Karunaratne, who has attempted to set the tone with a couple of nuggety innings at the top of the order, was confident both players would come good.”Our middle order comprises players who have experienced this type of situation before,” Karunaratne said. “Kusal Mendis scored well in the practice games and also in the South Africa series and failing in two matches I don’t think it has anything to do with his talent, he only needs a start to get going. Mathews is a player with a lot of experience and this sort of thing happens to players, however good you are. But with their experience, once they get going, you cannot stop them from scoring runs. I have plenty of faith in them and I think they will perform well against Pakistan.”Sri Lanka may not arrive “ship shape and Bristol fashion”, as they used to say of the trading vessels that regularly departed from this port city, but neither have they been holed below the waterline. There was laughter and pats on the back at training on Thursday, while the team also sat in a huddle on the boundary’s edge afterwards, listening intently to the coach and captain even as the rain began to fall.The British weather might end up doing them a favour on this occasion, too. If beating a Pakistan side buoyed by victory over England is beyond them, Sri Lanka could yet avoid adding to that aforementioned record of World Cup defeats thanks to the dodgiest of weather forecasts. Whatever the case, there is at least hope for better performances to come.”Nobody feels too bad after a win,” Lewis said. “We know we could have played better [against Afghanistan], and in a way there’s a comfort in knowing we haven’t played our best cricket. We’ve had four innings in this tournament in two games and we’ve probably got one of them right. With that in mind, we’ve got a win from those sorts of performances, and if we start to put two innings in a single game together there’s no reason we can’t win a few more.”

BCB director Khaled Mahmud is “close” to becoming Bangladesh’s temporary head coach for the upcoming three ODIs against hosts Sri Lanka, according to his colleague Akram Khan, the chairman of the cricket operations committee.Mahmud will replace Steve Rhodes who was removed from the head coach’s position last week through “mutual consent” after the BCB reviewed his performance following their World Cup campaign.”Khaled Mahmud is close to becoming the senior team’s temporary coach. The board will confirm the decision in a couple of days,” Akram said but didn’t comment on whether Mahmud continues to be a board director at the same time.This is the second time Mahmud will become a director-coach after he took over in a temporary role (called the team’s technical director) following Chandika Hathurusingha’s resignation in October 2017. Mahmud has several roles in the BCB and within Bangladesh cricket, including that of the senior team’s manager and selector, vice-chairman of the cricket operations committee, chairman of the game development committee and vice-chairman of the high performance committeeMahmud is also the coach of Dhaka Premier League side Abahani Limited and the BPL’s Dhaka Dynamites franchise, as well as head coach of Bangla Trac Cricket Academy. He recently said that he wouldn’t mind leaving the BCB directorship if given a long-term coaching role with the Bangladesh team.Meanwhile, Wasim Jaffer and Champaka Ramanayake, currently working as the BCB’s high performance batting and bowling coach respectively, will be the senior team’s batting and bowling consultants for the Sri Lanka tour. Both places in the team’s coaching staff became vacant after the board didn’t renew Courtney Walsh’s contract after the World Cup while Neil McKenzie, the team’s white-ball batting coach, is currently on leave.”We have given charge to Wasim Jaffer and Champaka Ramanayake in these two roles. Since the series was arranged much later, McKenzie had already asked for a leave during the same time,” Akram said.Ramanayake had rejoined the BCB two years ago as a bowling coach, while Jaffer joined in May after he had impressed his Abahani coach Mahmud with his batting performance as well as the time he spent with the other batsmen in the nets.The Bangladesh team is leaving for Sri Lanka on July 20, but with BCB chief Nazmul Hassan unlikely to return until the day before, the decision to appoint Mahmud and the rest of the temporary staff is looking like a last-minute call.

Quinton de Kock will captain South Africa’s T20 side during their upcoming trip to India. There are also three newcomers in the squad for the three-match T20 International series, with Temba Bavuma and Anrich Nortje included and Lions allrounder Bjorn Fortuin in line for an international debut.Faf du Plessis was not included in South Africa’s T20 squad, but will captain South Africa in the three-Test series that follows the T20s, with Bavuma named as his vice-captain. Cricket South Africa’s acting Director of Cricket Corrie van Zyl stressed that du Plessis “remains an important part of our plans for white-ball cricket” despite his absence from the T20 squad.Nortje was one of three new caps in South Africa’s Test squad, along with wicketkeeper Rudi Second and spin-bowling allrounder Senuran Muthusamy.Offspinner Dane Piedt returns to the Test squad on the back of very impressive performances in domestic four-day cricket, having topped last season’s bowling tables with 54 dismissals. Also included is Zubayr Hamza, who was one of only two batsmen to make double hundreds in the franchise four-day competition last season, and made his Test debut against Pakistan in January.”All three newcomers to the Test side have more than earned their spurs through impressive performances in last season’s Four-Day Franchise competition,” said van Zyl.”We feel we have covered all the options for the conditions we are likely to encounter on the sub-continent with Muthusamy and Dane Piedt, who was far and away the leading wicket-taker in our Four-Day competition, providing the back-up to Keshav Maharaj.”Zubayr Hamza made an impressive start to his Test career against Pakistan last season when Faf du Plessis was ruled out and the retirement of Hashim Amla creates a further opportunity for him.”Aiden Markram, Theunis de Bruyn and Lungi Ngidi were not considered for T20 selection as all three are part of the South Africa A squad that will be playing four-day cricket in September. Allrounder Chris Morris, who has been playing for Hampshire in the Vitality Blast, didnot make himself available for selection. Dale Steyn, who recently retired from Test cricket, did make himself available for T20 selection, but was not picked.”As far as the T20 squad is concerned, Temba Bavuma and Bjorn Fortuin were two of the standout players in the CSA T20 Challenge last season while Nortje was outstanding in the Mzansi Super League until ruled out by injury,” van Zyl said. “This is very much a form squadwith players being rewarded for their consistent performances at franchise level. This applies equally to Junior Dala and Jon-Jon Smuts.”The T20 series gives us the last chance to have a look at our leadership and batting options as the next edition of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup is now little more than a year away which is why we have gone with an inexperienced leadership group,” explained van Zyl. “This is our last chance to do this before we settle on an established squad.”Test match squad: Faf du Plessis (capt), Temba Bavuma (vice-capt), Theunis de Bruyn, Quinton de Kock, Dean Elgar, Zubayr Hamza, Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, Senuran Muthusamy, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortje, Vernon Philander, Dane Piedt, Kagiso Rabada, Rudi Second.T20I squad: Quinton de Kock (capt), Rassie van der Dussen (vice-capt), Temba Bavuma, Junior Dala, Bjorn Fortuin, Beuran Hendricks, Reeza Hendricks, David Miller, Anrich Nortje, Andile Phehlukwayo, Dwaine Pretorius, Kagiso Rabada, Tabraiz Shamsi, Jon-Jon Smuts.