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Chris Adams led from the front with a 49-ball 70 to steer Sussex to a two-wicket win with seven balls in hand over Hampshire at Hove. Michael Lumb (108) and John Crawley (68) got Hampshire off to a flier with a first-wicket stand of 147 and when they were parted Sean Ervine with a 41-ball 56 kept the scoreboard rattling along. Set 261, Sussex wobbled after a good start before Adams and Andy Hodd added 61 for the sixth wicket and even though Adams was caught and bowled by Shaun Udal, Hodd, who helped Sussex bat out a draw yesterday, kept his head to see his side to victory and hand Hampshire their first defeat.Stephen Fleming smashed 90 off 60 balls to lead Nottinghamshire to a resounding win over Northamptonshire at Trent Bridge. Fleming, left out of New Zealand’s Twenty20 squad for the World Championships, hit 12 fours and three sixes as Notts reached their target of 212 with six wickets in hand 62 balls to spare. David Hussey took 3 for 26 for Notts while Chris Rogers and David Sales struck 58 and 52 to take Northants to 211 for 6, a target that proved insufficient after Fleming’s onslaught.Heath Streak claimed four wickets as Warwickshire pulled off a six-run win against Essex at Southend. After the frustration of their Championship draw against Sussex it was a timely result for Warwickshire. Grant Flower’s 49-ball 53 gave Essex a decent chance of claiming the points, but Streak removed him late in the chase. Alex Loudon produced a tight spell of offspin and Lee Daggett grabbed two scalps. After the match was cut to 34 over per side Darren Maddy and Kumar Sangakkara hit 41 apiece then useful innings from Loudon and Tim Ambrose lifted Warwickshire to 188.

An all-round performance from Darren Stevens, who took 3 for 15 and then thumped an unbeaten 85, guided Kent to a three-wicket win over Durham in the table-top clash at Canterbury with seven balls to spare. Michael Di Venuto and Dale Benkenstein looked to be guiding Durham to a formidable score but James Tredwell removed Di Venuto and that triggered a slide in which the seven wickets fell for 58. At 101 for 5 chasing 204, Kent had problems of their own, but Stevens and Geraint Jones put on 60 for the sixth wicket and Stevens kept his head despite Gareth Breese’s late three-wicket haul.The rain already moving into the west of the UK put paid to Glamorgan’s match against Somerset at Colwyn Bay. The umpires called play off two hours before the start with the outfield saturated.

One can quite understand why there is so much fierce competition to administer cricket in Sri Lanka. In the next six months, Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) coffers will be boosted by as much as US $ 9.17 million when they participate in two ICC tournaments.The SLC is set to receive one million dollars as participation allowance (formerly known as guarantee fees) for next month’s Champions Trophy in India. For next year’s World Cup in the Caribbean, they will benefit to the tune of an additional $8.17 million. SLC sources told that 25 percent of this figure will be paid to the cricketers, 25 percent utilised for SLC expenses and the balance used for cricket development.Meanwhile, newly appointed secretary of the SLC interim committee M Mathivanan said that from the 2006-07 domestic season, cricketers of the 14 division one-clubs playing in the Premier League (Segment A) and limited-overs tournaments will receive a 300 percent pay hike.”A player can earn upto between Rs. 127,000 to Rs. 140,000 a season playing in these two competitions,” said Mathivanan. “This is in comparison to the Rs. 40,000-Rs. 50,000 they have been getting in the past. As the clubs have been reduced from 20 to 14 we are able to give this increase. We have done this to ensure that there is more quality and competition in the tournament. We want to make it as professional as possible.”With a personnel of close to 40 cricketers working for him at East West Marketing, Mathivanan revealed that only around 40 percent of the 210 players who are playing in the Premier division are employed. The rest, he said, depended largely on the income they derive from the clubs they represent and the league cricket they play in England. With the SLC having plans to prune down the number of clubs playing in the Premier division further to ten for the 2007-08 season, an increase in payments for the players is on the cards, he added.The groupings for the 2006-07 Premier League season, which commences on November 10, are:Segment A: (Group A): SSC, Ragama CC, Bloomfield, BRC, NCC, Panadura SC, Saracens. (Group B): Chilaw Marians, Colts, CCC, Tamil Union, Moors SC, Badureliya CC, Sebastianites.Segment B: Galle CC, Singha SC, Police SC, Kurunegala YCC, Air Force, Lankan CC, Army SC.The bottom five clubs from Segment A will be demoted to play in Segment B, while the Segment B winner will be promoted to Segment A for the 2007-08 season. The 2006-07 season commences with the Premier one-day limited-overs tournament on November 1. Matches will be played every Wednesday of the week.

A new concept gives Australia a chance to scratch a new guard. Following a winter of serious discontent the team will attempt to dissolve their Ashes memories and start answering some of the pages of questions from a series that highlighted gaping chinks and forced changes. The squad that the World XI will face in the first of three one-day games starting in Melbourne on Wednesday carries players unknown and untried – these are characteristics similar to the Super Series.Australia will test their experiments against a line-up unmatched in its global brilliance, even with the absence of Sachin Tendulkar. Previous Rest of the World outfits were picked during last minutes, but there is no doubting the quality of candidates. Inzamam-ul-Haq has eventually replaced Tendulkar and Shaun Pollock can choose a fast bowling attack for the first game from himself, Shoaib Akhtar, Jacques Kallis and Andrew Flintoff with Muttiah Muralitharan and Daniel Vettori as the slow bowling back-up.The cheerful mode of the visitors will be matched by a nervous yet publicly confident mood from the Australians. As a Cricket Australia outfit ploughs through the England wrongs, Ricky Ponting and his squad talk about “one bad series”. They appear relaxed about an assignment that a year ago appeared to be a formality, but now has quickly marked them as eager underdogs.Over the past month Ponting’s role has been dissected in an almost prime ministerial capacity. Now he can answer his critics collectively on home turf. With a couple of new faces arriving and more wrinkles set to appear, Ponting has the opportunity to develop a squad in his own image rather than hanging on to the dusting relics of Steve Waugh’s rule.Act one begins with three one-day matches on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday before the most compelling game of a concocted series, the six-day Super Test in Sydney starting on October 14. The glare in the undercover and air-conditioned Telsta Dome will be striking, but there is little chance of the roof raising – although Kevin Pietersen will surely try it – during the limited-overs matches that should offer undoubted bouts of brilliance without the lasting reminders of a Test.

Changes in Australian personnel as well as the Ashes loss and the end of local football seasons have slowed ticket sales. A first-up contest of Pollock to Simon Katich holds less appeal than him running in to a clubbing Matthew Hayden. Cameron White, the Victoria legspinner who was called in for the equally anonymous Brad Hogg, and Stuart Clark, a replacement for Shaun Tait, line up in the 14-man squad alongside James Hopes. The three new players who can shop unbothered in their local supermarkets will stare at men reluctant to step away from bodyguards shielding them from masses of admirers. They will not be the only ones in a peaceful state of shock and awe.The World XI, which omitted Makhaya Ntini and Chris Gayle from match one, is a team of such riches – one of Sehwag, Lara, Pietersen, Dravid, Flintoff, Kallis, Sangakkara and Afridi will bat at No. 8 – that it will provide Australia’s generation next with a guide to whether the 2007 World Cup is an event to be watched from the dressing room or the lounge chair.Although Ponting dismissed this series as the official start of the road to the West Indies, it provides Australia with renewed purpose against a wildly impressive unit of united nations, who will be intent on impressing with their vibrant mix of skills and personalities. Individually, the contest will be fascinating, but there is little doubt as to which team has more to play for.For the World XI prize money, prestige and a chance to defeat a giant are the lures. Australia, who sealed their No. 1 status in both forms of the game before the Ashes and held it despite the England slips, begin an era that will be analysed more than any period over the past decade.Shown to be fallible, they are waiting to discover whether the next chapter is one of further mortal stumbles or a swift return to lasting success. The Super Series will help supporters across the globe form judgments, but the performances of Australia will also be critical to a custom-made contest sweating on similar verdicts over novelty, commercial and acceptance values.Teams
World XI
1 Shahid Afridi, 2 Virender Sehwag, 3 Kumar Sangakkara (wk), 4 Rahul Dravid, 5 Jacques Kallis, 6 Brian Lara, 7 Kevin Pietersen, 8 Andrew Flintoff, 9 Shaun Pollock (capt), 10 Daniel Vettori, 11 Muttiah Muralitharan, 12 Shoaib AkhtarAustralia
1 Adam Gilchrist (wk), 2 Simon Katich, 3 Ricky Ponting (capt), 4 Damien Martyn, 5 Michael Hussey, 6 Michael Clarke, 7 Shane Watson, 8 Andrew Symonds, 9 Cameron White, 10 Brett Lee, 11 Glenn McGrath, 12 Nathan Bracken

50 overs India 260 for 6 (Dravid 104, Ganguly 55) beat United Arab Emirates 144 (Tauqir 55, Tendulkar 3-21, Pathan 3-28) by 116 runs
Scorecard

This was supposed to be a gentle initiation into the new season for the Indians, where Virender Sehwag would be gunning for the first double-century in one-day international history, Sachin Tendulkar for his 38th ODI hundred, and India for a total way in excess of 350. None of that happened, but while UAE stayed in the game till the halfway stage, allowing India to score just 260, their incompetence with the bat meant that India were still able to canter to a comfortable 116-run win and take home the bonus point as well in their Asia Cup campaign opener at Dambulla.The Indians hadn’t played international cricket for three months, and it showed. Many of the batsmen struggled for timing and form – with Sourav Ganguly being especially woeful through the first half of his innings. However, Rahul Dravid showed the way – yet again – with a classy 104 off just 93 balls, while the trio of Indian seamers had just too much firepower for a batting line-up which was woefully out of their depth.However, till Dravid stamped his authority on the game, the Indians were in serious danger of being embarrassed by a spirited UAE side which bowled with plenty of discipline and control, and showed lots of spirit in the field. They had last played a one-day international more than eight years ago, but if today’s performance is any indicator, that period has been well spent.The script went wrong for the Indians at the very start – Sehwag flicked the third ball to leg, started off for a single, then saw Tendulkar stop after initially committing to the run. Sehwag out for 0, 200 short of his projected score; India 0 for 1. Tendulkar himself left soon after, inside edging a flick to short midwicket for 18 (30 for 2). Fahad Usman pocketed the catch, and Asim Saeed won himself the small matter of US$1000, which was on offer for the wicket. India could have been in even greater strife if UAE had pouched a couple of catches from Ganguly when the batsman was on 0 and 3.Struggling for form and fluency, Ganguly repeatedly groped for the ball early on, and the ball repeatedly sneaked past outside edge and inside edge, or rapped him on the pads. Ali Asad, the right-arm seamer, was the pick of the bowlers, consistently getting the ball to swing away from the right-handers. Better support from the fielders – both of Ganguly’s missed chances came off his bowling – would have given him far better figures than the none for 38 he ended up with.India managed just 58 in the first 15 overs, and then lost another wicket soon after when VVS Laxman chipped back a return catch to Mohammad Tauqir, the offspinner, ending an innings which promised much – his effortless pulled six off the front foot to bring up the Indian 50 was among the shots of the match – but delivered only 14 runs (65 for 3).Then came the revival, with Dravid at the forefront. The slow pitch had bothered most of the others, but not Dravid, who simply rocked back, waited, and repeatedly guided the ball in the arc between backward point and extra cover. There was little risk in the approach, yet the runs flowed effortlessly. Equally importantly, he injected some much-needed urgency into the running between the wickets, an aspect of India’s game which had been awfully shoddy early on.

At the other end, Ganguly’s monumental struggle ended for a laboured 55, when he holed to long-on (153 for 4). Yuvraj played a short cameo, and Dravid continued to show splendid one-day nous. With the overs running out, he shifted gears effortlessly, defeating the cordon of off-side fielders and the huge, slow outfield to find the boundaries. His century came with one such clean strike, a magnificent cover-drive off Rizwan Latif. He finally fell in the last over of the innings, bowled going for a cross-batted swipe off Latif, but by then he done enough to ensure that India had a reasonable score to defend.As it turned out, 260 was more than sufficient. Not for the first time a minnow side showed far more skill with the ball than the bat. Repeatedly shuffling across the stumps, their batsmen were sitting ducks for Irfan Pathan and Lakshmipathy Balaji, who kept swinging the ball into the batsmen and trapping them in front. They shared the first five wickets, before Zaheer Khan, returning after a long injury layoff, celebrated with a wicket off his first over, forcing Syed Maqsood to edge to Laxman at slip.UAE had slipped to 45 for 6, and an extremely early finish seemed likely, before the lower order decided to play spoilsports. Tauqir braved a barrage of short deliveries from Zaheer, taking plenty of blows on the body and helmet, in scoring a half-century on debut, before Tendulkar winkled out the tail in a trice.S Rajesh is assistant editor of Wisden Cricinfo.

The former Australian opening batsman, John Dyson, has been confirmed as Sri Lanka’s new coach. He replaces his fellow countryman, Dav Whatmore, who has now taken charge of Bangladesh, and has agreed a contract which will run until 2005.”I am very excited to be coach of the Sri Lankan team, which has great potential,” said Dyson, who will take over in September. He has not previously coached at international level, but the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lankan (BCCSL) is confident of his abilities.Dyson has big plans for Sri Lanka, believing that they had the “depth and skill” to “knock the Australians off their perch” as the top-ranked Test side.Dyson reached a “memorandum of understanding” with Sri Lanka while the team was in the Caribbean recently. He had been approached about the role when Whatmore was relieved of his position after the World Cup. Bob Woolmer, Graham Ford, John Bracewell and Steve Rixon were in the frame but turned the job down, so Duleep Mendis was put in charge on a temporary basis.Dyson played 30 Tests for Australia between 1977 and 1984, scoring 1359 runs at 26.64, including two centuries. The first, at Headingley in 1981, had set Australia on their way to a crushing victory until Ian Botham and Bob Willis famously turned the tables. The second, at Sydney in January 1982, lasted for more than six hours and saved Australia from defeat against West Indies.

Mangala Samaraweera has been appointed as the new Minister of Sports in theProbationary Government, which the People’s Alliance and Janatha VimukthiPeramuna (JVP) have formed.President Chandrika Kumaratunga announced the shortened 20 ministers of thecabinet in a ceremony held this morning at the Temple Trees.Samaraweera, a leading minister of the ruling Peoples Alliance governmentheld the post of Urban Development, construction and Public Utilitiespreviously.He replaces Lakshman Kiriella who was instrumental in forming the presentInterim Committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka.

The IPL governing council has finalised two options to decide on the future of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals – either invite bids for the two teams for two years or float fresh tenders for them for ten years and start preparing for a ten-team IPL from 2018. The two options are set to be presented to the BCCI working committee in Kolkata on Friday.The options were finalised on Thursday evening after the governing council dissected findings of the five-member working group appointed in the aftermath of the Lodha Committee suspending the owners of the two franchises for two years.With no new investor likely to invest in a brand like IPL for a term as short as two years, the working committee is likely to initiate the process of inducting two new teams on a long-term basis. However, with Super Kings’ plea against two-year suspension to be heard in the Madras High Court on September 23, it is unlikely that the tender documents will be floated before the next month’s BCCI annual general meeting.ESPNcricinfo understands the hour-long governing council meeting dissected various options presented by the working group. One of the options was of involving multi-national corporates to independently run the two teams for two years. But the IPL governing council, according to a member, found it “impractical, financially as well as legally.”After seeking legal advice, the meeting concluded that inviting fresh bids was the best possible option considering the peculiar state IPL finds itself in following the two-year suspension handed to the owners of the two teams.If the working committee decides on floating a 10-year tender, the governing council members were confident that there would be enough time to decide on their base price and the available cities that can be bid for as the additional franchises. Besides, with all stakeholders knowing about the expected expansion two years in advance, there would be enough time to plan for a ten-team IPL from 2018.The five-member working group was formed on July 20. It includes IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla, BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur, BCCI treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry, former India captain and Cricket Association of Bengal joint secretary Sourav Ganguly and BCCI’s legal advisor Ushanath Banerjee.

Victoria 322 (Handscomb 98, Stoinis 75, Finch 68, Paris 4-68) v Western Australia
ScorecardPeter Handscomb struck 98 off 158 balls, with 17 fours•Cricket Australia/Getty Images

Peter Handscomb missed out on a second century in four innings, but his 98 off 158 balls was vital to Victoria coming away rather well despite a wobble at the top and a mini-collapse in the middle. Western Australia’s left-arm paceman Joel Paris took 4 for 68, on Sheffield Shield debut, to limit the visitors to 322 at the WACA.Victoria were put in and they found things difficult immediately. Openers Rob Quiney (5) and Travis Dean (6) fell by the 13th over with the score on 36. That brought Marcus Stoinis and Handscomb together for a 78-run stand. When Michael Hogan broke through and Stoinis was sent back for 75, out walked the Victoria captain Aaron Finch at No. 5 and made a stroke-filled 68 with 10 fours. He was no competition for Handscomb though, who struck 17 fours in his innings at a strike rate of 62.02. That ended up being part of the problem though as five of the eleven players bagged single-figures.Finch was knocked over by David Moody, and in the same over Glenn Maxwell fell for a duck. Victoria went from 3 for 249 to 7 for 274 and thereafter 322 all out, at a run-rate of 3.89.Western Australia had 10 overs to survive and they did with Cameron Bancroft unbeaten on11 for 42 and Will Bosisto on 4 off 18