England have named an unchanged team for the second Test against Bangladesh, which starts at Chester-le-Street tomorrow (Friday, June 3), following their innings-and-261-run win at Lord’s. After that comfortable victory England will again be expecting a maximum of just over two days’ work in Graham Thorpe’s 100th Test, barring any intervention from the fickle north-eastern weather.All eyes will be on Steve Harmison as he performs in front of his home crowd, and one thing is certain: homesickness will not be a problem for him. Gareth Batty will be hoping for a more active Test than he experienced at Lord’s, where he was not required to bat or bowl. He may get to the crease in this match, but as far as bowling goes, it could be another quiet game for Batty.Jon Lewis again misses out on a Test debut, but England’s pace attack will be targeting an improved performance, now they have some overs under their belts. Michael Vaughan highlighted the first ten overs of the Lord’s Test – when Bangladesh managed to put on 31 for the first wicket, helped by a lot of no-balls – as the one time when they were not at their best.England 1 Marcus Trescothick, 2 Andrew Strauss, 3 Michael Vaughan (capt), 4 Ian Bell, 5 Graham Thorpe, 6 Andrew Flintoff, 7 Geraint Jones (wk), 8 Gareth Batty, 9 Matthew Hoggard, 10 Simon Jones, 11 Stephen Harmison.

The Sri Lankan board have decided to enlist the services of Sandy Gordon, the leading sports psychologist, to assist the players with the mental aspect of the game, according to Tom Moody, the new coach. The appointment of Gordon, a Perth-based South African who has worked with players from Australia and India, is Moody’s first major decision since taking up his position as national coach.Gordon will fly to Colombo this week to conduct one-to-one and group sessions with the players during the first two days of a four-day training camp that will start on Friday. He will then continue in a consultancy capacity, holding quarterly workshops with the players and maintaining contact via e-mail and the telephone. Sri Lanka’s players have not previously been provided proper sports psychology support.”I think this is an area that is required now,” Moody told Cricinfo. “Players are given support in every other area and they should be given support on their mental skills, one of the most important areas. I understand that they have not had a lot of this stuff before and I would like to get Sandy involved quarterly and the players will have access to him on an ongoing basis via phone and email.”Sri Lanka are also set to make changes to the medical back-up team due to concerns over injury problems during the last year. CJ Clarke, the current physiotherapist, will concentrate on physical training and a new physiotherapist, probably with considerable cricket experience, will be hired. Moody hopes a new physiotherapist will be able to start in time for the training camp.Moody is also due to meet with the Sri Lanka board this week to discusscandidates for a full-time assistant coach, another new post that will be filled by a local candidate. Rumesh Ratnayake, the best fast bowling coach in the island, is tipped for the job.

England have named an unchanged squad for the second Test against Australia, starting on Thursday at Edgbaston. Despite their comprehensive 239-run defeat at Lord’s the selectors have resisted the urge to tinker with the 12-man squad, instead sticking with the policy of continuity which has served the team well over the past two years. Chris Tremlett, the Hampshire seamer, retains his place in the squad but is again likely to be the paceman to miss out on the final XI.Despite all the pre-match optimism England were soundly beaten at Lord’s, with only Steve Harmison and Kevin Pietersen performing to their best. There had been speculation that Paul Collingwood, the Durham allrounder, would be drafted into the squad following three consecutive hundreds in county cricket but England will retain the same balance to their team as they had at Lord’s.David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, said: “The selectors met on the Monday after the Lord’s Test and looked at the way we played and identified the obvious plus points including bowling Australia out twice, Harmison’s bowling, and Pietersen’s batting.”Obviously there were areas we needed to improve on in order to win the game, but the conclusion of the selectors was that we wanted to stick with the same squad for the second Ashes Test.”We don’t believe that there’s any need to change the team, clearly we are disappointed that the result of the first Test went against us, but we still have strong belief in the squad that was selected.”England squad Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Strauss, Michael Vaughan (capt), Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff, Geraint Jones (wk), Ashley Giles, Simon Jones, Matthew Hoggard, Steve Harmison, Chris Tremlett.

The England batsman Vikram Solanki will captain Worcestershire in 2005 as the club attempt to bounce back immediately into the top flight of the County Championship, following their relegation this year. Solanki, 28, has played for more than a decade for the first team at New Road, and he will have Gareth Batty as his vice captain.Worcestershire had been searching to replace Ben Smith in the captaincy role following the retirmement of Steve Rhodes, who stood in as captain at the end of the 2004 season.”I am honoured and delighted to accept the invitation,” said Solanki, “and look forward to working with everybody at the club over the next few years.”We have a very strong squad of players and I look forward to working with them and Tom Moody in our hunt for titles.”Moody, the director of cricket at New Road, believes Solanki’s appointment is an important step forward: “Vikram is a Worcestershire player through and through and we are confident he has the right qualities to lead us forward at this stage of our development,” he said. “The experience he has recently gained in the successful England set-up can only help us at county level and I look forward to working with him in the future.”And how Worcestershire will need all of Solanki’s experience, following their disappointing first-class showing this year. A key factor in their relegation was the failure of the attacking allrounders Andrew Hall and Andy Bichel. Hall took 29 wickets at 36 apiece, whereas Bichel’s 33 victims cost 46 runs each. Worcestershire have already confirmed that Bichel will definitely not return to New Road next year, while Hall’s future with the club is still in the balance.

New Zealand’s victorious tour of Bangladesh ended on a slightly sour note as both Craig McMillan and Scott Styris were brought to book by Alan Hurst, the ICC match referee, after the third and final one-day international in Dhaka.McMillan was fined 25% of his match fee after a show of dissent and swearing at the umpire on being given out leg before, while Styris – who was Man of the Series – was given a severe reprimand for giving Mohammad Ashraful a tasteless send-off after dismissing him.Interestingly, New Zealand were the recipients of the Spirit of Cricket award at a ceremony organised by the ICC just two months ago.

The Greater London Authority has offered the ECB use of Trafalgar Square for a victory parade, in the event of England winning The Ashes at The Oval next week.England, who lead the series 2-1, need to win or draw the final Test against Australia to reclaim the Ashes, which they haven’t held for 18 years. The ECB has provisionally booked Trafalgar Square for next Tuesday, the most obvious venue for parading the winning team.London’s famous square has hosted open-top bus tours and parades for other victorious sporting teams in recent years. In 2003, the England Rugby team returned back from Australia with the World Cup and received a tumultuous welcome from home fans: over 750,000 people turned up to see their heroes, before which several thousand crammed into Heathrow airport to cheer their arrival.And in 2004, the square was the venue for the victorious British Olympic and Paralympic teams of the games in Athens. Indeed, the announcement in July that London was to host the 2012 Olympics saw the square packed with yet more cheering supporters.But at least one England player wasn’t overcome with joy at the news. “I’m not interested,” said Steve Harmison. “As long as we win the Ashes, I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the celebrations afterwards. But I’m not bothered about the celebrations. I will be happier going home to Ashington than riding on an open-topped bus. That’s not really my scene.”And Marcus Trescothick, speaking to BBC Sport, urged fans to be cautious: “Great things lie ahead if we win but we don’t want to get drawn into it because we’ll lose our focus.” With today’s news that Simon Jones, England’s trump-card in this series, has failed a fitness test, England still have five days of intense cricket ahead of them, in what is the team’s biggest Test match in a decade.

West Indies aim to negate Australia’s intimidating legspin threats before launching a fierce bowling assault on their rivals in the three-Test series starting in Brisbane on November 3. The fast men are not as furious as their predecessors of the past 30 years, but the coach Bennett King is confident they will exploit the bouncy pitches even if they aren’t as tall as the men who knocked over Australia during the Ashes.”We have a very different set of bowlers to England, given they are all around 6ft4in [193cm] and our blokes are all around 5ft9in [175cm],” King said in . “But we have three or four blokes who bowl around that 90-95mph [145-155kph] mark and hopefully even quicker, so we have a bit of firepower there which can hopefully unsettle the Aussies.”Back home they are forced to bowl to their knees on really flat tracks which are batsmen and even spin-friendly.” The squad arrived in Brisbane on Thursday and Corey Collymore is expected to lead the attack with back-up from Tino Best, Jermaine Lawson and Fidel Edwards.While the bowling appears settled, the batsmen’s weaknesses to legspin will mean a host of local slow men will be called to assist their preparation for a potential confrontation with Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill. The pair performed well in tandem during the Super Test and will be considered for Brisbane even though the surface usually suits the fast bowlers.”With what happened in the recent Test match you’d have to expect that [both Warne and MacGill playing] could happen again,” Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the captain, told the paper. “We know it will be tough but that is what makes you a Test cricketer. You have to deal with whatever may be in front of you.” West Indies play Queensland in a four-day match starting on Thursday.

Scorecard

New South Wales took complete command of their Pura Cup match against Tasmania at Sydney. After piling up a mammoth 9 for 522 in their first innings, they reduced Tasmania to 6 for 189. Despite Sean Clingeleffer’s valiant unbeaten 83, Tasmania were in danger of being forced to follow on.Matthew Nicholson struck the early blows, dismissing the openers Michael Di Venuto, caught at gully for a duck in the first over, and Jamie Cox, edging to slips. Nathan Bracken, the left-arm swing bowler who was left out of the Test side, then got into the act trapping David Dawson for 9 and having George Bailey caught at short leg for a duck. Four for 23 soon turned 5 for 37 when Shannon Tubb edged behind off Stuart Clark for 8.At this point it seemed Tasmania would fold without a fight but Travis Birt and Clingeleffer put up a defiant act. The duo stitched together a fighting 126-run partnership in 116 minutes from 179 balls to take the score to 163 before Birt fell to Steve O’Keefe. He had faced 112 balls and hit four sixes and four fours in his 62.Earlier Brad Haddin, the NSW wicketkeeper, hit a breezy 65 off 77 balls, while Nicholson and Clark added a quick 32 off 5.3 overs for the last wicket to take them to 522, allowing Simon Katich, the captain, to declare soon after lunch. Adam Griffith removed the centurion Dominic Thornely (123) to finish with the figures of 4 for 124.

The ICC’s Winter Training Camp (WTC) has been about more than simply improving players from the six Associate countries to have qualified for the 2007 World Cup.The concept, driven by Richard Done, the ICC’s high-performance manager, and Scotland and WTC head coach Andy Moles, has also been about coaching in every sense of the word. The 11-week camp at the University of Pretoria’s High Performance Centre has educated Associate coaches, given current senior players a chance to advance their coaching skills and offered all 23 players attending an opportunity to obtain coaching qualifications.After all, the ICC’s Development Program, in place since 1997, is about more than simply improving the on-field performances of those countries below Full Member status. “The future continued development of Associate and Affiliate countries depends not just on the improvement of playing standards but also on the continued improvement of all parts of the cricket support network,” said Done. “Coaching is a key element of this process.”That wholistic approach was behind getting two current players, Bermuda captain Clay Smith and John Davison of Canada, involved in the coaching process in South Africa. Smith was unable to stay for the whole duration of the WTC but Davison has remained and benefited from the experience.”Both John and Clay have expressed a desire to stay involved with the game through coaching after they finish playing and the chance to work with experienced coaches like Andy Moles and [bowling coach] Bob Cottam has been ideal for them,” said Done. “John, in particular, has had an invaluable opportunity to work side by side with high quality and experienced coaches for the full 11 weeks and it will stand him in good stead for his coaching future.”Ahead of the WTC Davison had been studying for his Level 3 coaching award in Australia and he added: “The WTC has really helped me in my coaching outlook. It has been a big help to see the coaches here, how they work with players in a group and one-to-one and how they structure sessions. I am looking to get some coaching experience at club level so my time spent here should help when it comes to working with players when I get back to Sydney. My plan is to play until the World Cup in 2007 but the experience I have gained here means that I am also in a position to give something back to Canadian cricket, something I am very keen to do.”The original plan at the start of the WTC was for the coach of each Associate represented – Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, the Netherlands and Scotland – to attend for two weeks. The idea was that they could see the technical, physical, tactical, mental and personal work put in by the players in Pretoria and take that as a benchmark for their future work.Scotland’s coach Moles has helped run the course but the plan was diluted by Kenya and Canada’s current lack of a coach while Gus Logie, the coach of Bermuda, and Peter Cantrell, his equivalent in the Netherlands, have been unable to attend.However Adrian Birrell, Ireland’s coach, was able to spend two weeks at the WTC towards the start of the program and commented: “I was hugely impressed by what I saw. What I did see was the way the players and coaches covered all bases from the physical to the technical and even the psychological aspects of the game. On that basis it has now been a case of me going back to Ireland and spreading the news about the way things are being done by our three players at the camp and how they will definitely be better players when they get home because of it.”All the players attending the camp have studied for a Level 2 coaching award and Done said that, too, was a crucial aspect of the work done at the WTC. “Understanding your own game is a vital part of any cricketer’s development and completing a coaching course is one way to help gain that knowledge,” he said. “The course will provide players with a much better grasp of their own strengths and weaknesses and it means they should be better able to evaluate the advice they are bound to get during their careers.”On top of that there is the added bonus that each of the WTC players will now be in a position to return home and put something back into developing other players and that drip-down effect is a long-term key to developing talent in Associate countries.”The players completed the written part of their Level 2 course on Monday and they will get the chance to put their newly-acquired skills into action almost immediately as they will head to Soweto to coach some local children later this week.Tom de Grooth, the Netherlands batsman at the WTC, endorsed the coaching program when he said: “It has definitely helped my game. It means I am able to understand what I am doing and the mistakes I have made a lot better and also know how to put those mistakes right. That also means that when I see others making those mistakes I will also know how to help correct them too.”Done concluded: “The most positive aspect of our emphasis on coaching is that it has helped encourage an environment of excellence. There is little doubt the players have run with that and enjoyed it.”Players attending the WTCBermuda – Jekon Edness, Jim West, Stephen Outerbridge & Azeem PitcherCanada Qaiser Ali, Umar Bhatti, Kenneth Carto & Henry Osinde (plus John Davison, who is filling a coaching role)Ireland Trevor Britton, Kenneth Carroll & Eoin MorganKenya Nehemiah Ngoche, Alfred Luseno & Kalpesh PatelNetherlands Tom de GroothScotland Richard Berrington, Kasim Farid, Gordon Goudie, Ross Lyons, Dewald Nel, Qasim Sheikh, Fraser Watts & Sean Weeraratna

The ongoing crisis blighting Zimbabwe Cricket has produced another casualty with the news that Matabeleland Cricket Association chairman Ahmet Esat has stepped down from his post and ceased to be a ZC board member.Former Matabeleland medium pace bowler Ethan Dube, who is also on the national and provincial selection panel, has replaced Esat. Dube was unanimously elected by the clubs at a delegates meeting held at Queens Sports Club last Wednesday and also replaces Esat on the ZC board.In his letter of resignation to both ZC chairman Peter Chingoka and the Matabeleland board dated 2 December 2005, Esat made it clear that he did not want to be associated with the controversy bedeviling cricket in Zimbabwe. He said, however, that the main reason for relinquishing his post was because he is undertaking an international pharmaceuticalexamination in the United States which will see him move there for the next six months and he said it was unfair for the game if he was to cling onto his post.Esat became MCA chairman in 2002 when the then incumbent Rob Whiley stepped down, and was formally elected to the post in 2003 and then re-elected last year on a revised two-year term ending in July 2006.Dube is no pushover and is one of the many people advocating the removal of Chingoka and Ozias Bvute from office and that is certainly not good news for pair.In normal circumstances, Stanley Staddon, the MCA vice-chairman who also seats on the ZC board and who is a close ally of Chingoka and Bvute, should have taken control until next year’s AGM but it is understood that he declined to take up the post.