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Michael Vaughan has dismissed suggestions Australia have gained a psychological advantage having staved off defeat at Old Trafford. Only a tenth-wicket stand lasting four overs between Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath kept the series at 1-1 at Manchester on Monday.”We’ve been talking about psychological advantages and disadvantages throughout the whole summer,” Vaughan said. “We will arrive at Trent Bridge next week fully focused and hoping to go 2-1 up. What we do know is we can take a lot out of this last game because we dominated four days of Test cricket against the number one team in the world.”However, Shane Warne told the England missed a big chance at Old Trafford and would have been disappointed not to be beat Australia in the final over. “They’ll be thinking, ‘should we have declared earlier?’,” he said. “Ashley Giles won’t be happy with his performance getting 0 for 90-odd on a spinner’s paradise on the last day of a Test to win a game. There’s a few individuals that aren’t performing.”Vaughan said the team had bounced back and shown a lot of character since Lord’s. “It can be hard to produce two performances on the trot of such high-intensity and high-pressure cricket but we have,” he said. “I really do hope the two final games are as good as the last two because the series deserves that.”Since inheriting the Test captaincy from Steve Waugh 18 months ago, Ricky Ponting has not faced anything like the extended challenge of the past fortnight. “There are only two Tests to go so we better start getting things happening pretty quickly,” he said. “I don’t think there will be any personnel changes as far as the batting goes because all the guys are in good form and we have just made errors in judgment at times.”

Steve Tikolo, the Kenyan captain, has said that the loss of Maurice Odumbe was a severe jolt to cricket in the country. He was reacting to the five-year ban imposed on Odumbe by the Kenyan Cricket Association, after he was found guilty of accepting money from bookmakers.Tikolo, who is currently leading the team in a tri-series against India A and Pakistan A, said that the news of Odumbe’s suspension had cast a pall of gloom over the whole team. Reuters quoted him as saying: “The players are down after getting news of the suspension. Odumbe has been an integral part of this team and his absence will affect our performance in the future.”While describing the ban as “unfair”, Tikolo said that he viewed Odumbe as one who had always given his best for his country. “I have known Odumbe for a long time and he always gives 100% in his appearances.”Sharad Ghai, the chairman of the Kenyan Cricket Association, said that there was no immediate plan to call up a replacement for Odumbe in Kenya’s squad for the Champions Trophy. “Odumbe’s lawyer has indicated that he will appeal and we are waiting for the outcome before making any decision regarding his place in the team. We are not in a hurry to replace him.”

In a bid to control costs and streamline its administration, the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCSL) has terminated the services of three international umpires and 36 coaches. Thilanga Sumathipala, who was recently elected president of the board, is clearly in a hurry to professionalise it."We could not go on like this," said Sumathipala to news agency Associated Press. "I can assure you that the BCCSL will not be an inefficient place any more."The three umpires to lose their jobs, Peter Manuel, TH Wijewardena and Gamini Silva, have all officiated in Test matches, and were employed by the BCCSL to help train other umpires. While that assignment is effectively over, they remain eligible to stand as umpires in all forms of cricket. Sumathipala said that following a review, the three might even be re-employed.Sumathipala is also planning a review of the services of the 36 coaches, and a decision on re-employing them will be taken within a month.Sumathipala had defeated Arjuna Ranatunga in last month’s elections by a margin of 121-7. A significant item on his agenda was to bring the BCCSL back to financial health. They lost Rs 288 million (US$3 million) last year, as revenue from ticket sales and merchandising fell short of expectations. He has made an emphatic start towards turning it around.

Andrew Symonds unleashed his second knockout punch on Western Australia in as many days to ignite Queensland’s cricket season at the Gabba today.After terrorising the Warriors in yesterday’s four-day Pura Cup match, Symonds delivered another blistering attack in the one-day ING Cup match to guide the Bulls to a seven-wicket win.He smashed 91 runs from 57 balls in the Bulls’ total of 3-191 in 29.5 overs, cruising past Western Australia’s disappointing 7-189 from 50 overs.The Bulls had to win the match in 40 overs to secure a bonus point and that was never in doubt once Symonds began his onslaught in the third over, almostovershadowing Jimmy Maher’s excellent 71 not out from 81 balls.After scoring an unbeaten 75 from 43 balls in yesterday’s six-wicket win, Symonds came to the rescue of a Queensland team limping at 2-10, following the loss of Matthew Hayden (zero) and Martin Love (two).He belted two boundaries from his first three balls to continue the trademark sideshow which has earned him a reputation as one of the most exciting players in the country.He finished with 13 fours and two sixes, falling short of his first domestic one-day century when he chipped a catch to third man.Purists might grimace at some of Symonds’ miscued swipes but cricket rarely tosses up pure entertainers in the class of the 26-year-old.”Some days things just click and you hit your first ball in the middle of the bat and your confidence is really good,” Symonds said.”You’re moving your feet well and you’re lining the ball up well.”I’ve trained hard early this season so it’s good to get some runs on the board early.”Symonds’ placement was as impressive as his power, and the Warriors will be happy to leave Brisbane tonight just to see the back of the right-hander.But the Warriors bowlers were left with a tough task after their batsmen failed for the second time in as many days at the Gabba.The Bulls quicks knocked over the Warriors yesterday but the visitors were unhinged by a teenage spinner today who was only called up at the last minute when swing bowler Adam Dale withdrew with a shoulder injury.Nathan Hauritz cashed in with 3-23 from eight overs as the Warriors became bogged down on a surface which has become one of the favourites for Australianone-day batsmen.Test batsman Damien Martyn (82 from 130 balls) did his best but the loss of international teammates Adam Gilchrist (eight), Justin Langer (three) and Simon Katich (10) left the Warriors without enough in the bank.”It was a frustrating, disappointing day and we have to learn from it,” Gilchrist said.”But Queensland’s bowlers did a terrific job in the Pura Cup game and they did it again today. Their spin bowling was excellent and that gave them a good mix-up.”The Bulls were delighted to take full points from their opening match after making a pact to improve on last season’s below-par one-day performance.

Scorecard and ball-by-balls detailsFast bowler Nathan Coulter-Nile and legspinner Cameron Boyce shared five wickets but South Africa A being restricted to 171 was largely a result of their own poor batting. The chase then was rather matter of fact. Australia A won by nine wickets with 19 overs to spare, earning a bonus point to boot.Most of the South Africa A players are coming together after an off-season and they did not look prepared. They had a 10-day camp at home in the hope of getting themselves game-ready and then a few hits in the nets in Chennai. But come game time, the slowness of the pitch provided too many problems.After South Africa A elected to bat, Dean Elgar and his opening partner Reeza Hendricks managed well enough, adding 71 runs. But the other nine could only cobble 77 more and needed a leg up from the 23 extras. There were no fifties and 186 out of the 292 deliveries they faced were dot balls. Only two batsmen managed a strike rate above 60 and they could not last the 50 overs. Not the most ideal audition with the senior team set for a 72-day tour of India in October.Australia A openers Usman Khawaja and Joe Burns, on the other hand, waltzed to their fifties and knocked 142 runs off the target themselves. They stroked 16 boundaries between them.Hardus Viljoen was smeared for a hat-trick of fours in the sixth over as Khawaja put away ordinary deliveries – a wide one driven through extra cover, one on leg stump whipped through midwicket, and a short one crunched through point. Lonwabo Tsotsobe was clattered for successive fours by Khawaja in the next over and in the eighth, bowled by first-change bowler Beuran Hendricks, Burns benefited from easy pickings: two short balls banished to two ends of the ground at point and deep midwicket. The bad balls, they kept on coming. The good times, they kept on going. Representative of that were the seven no-balls South Africa A bowled. Three of the resulting free-hits were smashed to the boundary.In contrast, Australia A bowlers gave nothing away. They had the advantage of playing in these conditions for two unofficial Tests and it showed in how tight a middle and off line Coulter-Nile adopted. His first spell read 5-1-13-0. With the rest of his team-mates keeping that pressure up, he had a more profitable second spell: wicketkeeper Dane Vilas was caught down the leg side. Four balls later Khaya Zondo’s edge was found. South Africa A, caught in a downward spiral, were 142 for 6 in the 39th over.But it was legspinner Boyce, who bowled 10 overs on the trot, and left-arm spinner Ashton Agar who initiated that downward spiral. Agar knew that with the batsmen already struggling to adjust to a slow pitch, his best chance was bowl even slower. Boyce, on the other hand, used the crease well, angling the ball on middle and leg, and created doubts in the batsman’s mind when a few turned sharply while most did nothing. Their 20 overs cost a measly 60 runs and yielded three of the top four wickets.So the story of the match ended up quite simple: In walked a South Africa A batsman, he couldn’t manipulate the field, he got bogged down, played a rash shot and off he went. Then Boyce and Coulter-Nile kept hitting repeat.

ScorecardAvesh Khan dismissed four of Bangladesh’s top five batsmen•PTI

Medium-pacer Avesh Khan’s figures of 6-3-4-4 helped India Under-19s defend their small score of 158, by bowling out Bangladesh Under-19s for 76 to seal an 82-run win in the opening match of the Tri-Nation Tournament, in Kolkata. After India were restricted by Bangladesh’s spinners, the visitors lost half their side in under eight overs and never recovered from there.Opting to bat, India lost four of their top five batsmen to single-digit scores as only Washington Sundar resisted with 34 off 61 before he was trapped lbw by offspinner Mehedi Hasan, leaving the score on 62 for 5. Five overs later, India were reeling at 76 for 7 before Anmolpreet Singh (28) took them past 100 and Zeeshan Ansari (34) and Avesh (25*) chipped in with useful scores to lead them past 150. India were bowled out in 45.3 overs and Mehedi finished with 3 for 21, and Abdul Halim and Saleh Ahmed Shawon took two each.Bangladesh never got going in the chase. Avesh struck on the first ball of the innings and in each of his first four overs, leaving Bangladesh’s score on 23 for 4. His opening partner Kanishk Seth, a left-arm pacer, also picked up wickets in consecutive overs later on as Bangladesh’s top five batsmen registered scores of 0, 1, 7, 9 and 0. Only No. 6 Shafiul Hayet and No. 8 Saeed Sarkar scored in double-digits but they were soon bowled out in 22 overs. Seth and Ansari picked up two wickets apiece.Nine of the 11 players from India made their debuts, apart from captain Ricky Bhui and Sarfaraz Khan.

It was a struggle to get out of St. Johns Wood station this morning, with a frenetic scramble for tickets clogging Wellington Road. Spectators were willing to pay ten times the actual amount and Lord’s was the place to be in London.All the excitement culminated in the most anti-climactic end to a competitive series. The one-sided contest seemed even more flat after the humdinger at The Oval. The freedom and expression that the teams displayed on Wednesday was rarely seen; instead there was attrition, a feature typical of when too much is at stake. Suddenly the teams appeared to have woken up to how big the prize was.Before we get into the nitty-gritty of this forgettable decider, let’s get the big picture out of the way. England were the better side through the series and deserved winners. They were more consistent with the bat, aggressive with the ball, and far more athletic on the field. India played an important part in converting a long series into a cracking one but their weaknesses – especially in the field – were bound to be exploited over seven matches.Now to two issues that were the talking points of the match. Today’s was the sort of toss that’s supposed to be a “good one to lose”. Rahul Dravid won it and batted but soon found out that bowling might have been a better option. In similar conditions at Southampton and Edgbaston he’d chosen to bowl but realised that batting might have been better. The problem may lie with his tendency to win tosses but with seven batsmen you’d expect to counter conditions and put up a decent score.India’s problem might have arisen from a need to change their mindset – and the eventual failure to do so. They needed to switch from the throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-everything approach that was on display at The Oval to a knuckle-down-and-get-a-competitive-score here. Instead Sourav Ganguly, in the most torturous innings all summer, flayed as if in blindfolds and the rest attempted too much too early. A more grafted approach could have got them to 240, a total which could have proved tricky later in the day.The second point of contention needs to be taken more seriously. Sachin Tendulkar, for the third time on this tour, was at the receiving end of a contentious decision. Actually it was quite a howler. It happened at Bristol, when he was sawn off on 99, and it happened here, at a critical juncture of a vital match. He’d just backed away and walloped Andrew Flintoff over cover, not once but twice, and promised more. He’d got his eye in and gauged the pitch. And then Aleem Dar, probably going on sound rather than sight, gave him caught behind when the bat had merely clipped the pad. Of course Dar is human, like the rest of us, but was this the time to reiterate that truism?It was a point from which India never recovered. England gathered momentum and didn’t look back. Chasing 187 was going to be tricky at the most and when Kevin Pietersen, for the first time all series, started reading Piyush Chawla’s legbreaks it was time to draw the curtains. India’s fielding inadequacies came to the fore and their part-timers weren’t effective. If this was the one match you watched in the series, you’d have wondered how India had managed to win three games before today. Credit to India for overcoming their weaknesses to setup a classic finish but the weaknesses were so evident that they ultimately caught up.

Liam Plunkett has been ruled out of the second and third Tests against Pakistan after picking up a side strain bowling for Durham against West Indies A last week. There is also a doubt as to whether he will be available for the final Test, at The Oval, but England are hopeful he will be fit for the five-match one-day series.He was selected in the 14-man squad for the second Test at Old Trafford, which starts on Thursday, but after consultations with the England physio Kirk Russell early on Tuesday his injury was found to be serious enough to him to miss at least two weeks of action.Sajid Mahmood, the Lancashire fast bowler, could now be recalled at his home ground while Gloucestershire seamer Jon Lewis is also in contention.Plunkett played in the match against West Indies A mainly to work on his batting, which Duncan Fletcher hopes will develop into No. 8 standard, but he also opened the bowling before breaking down in his seventh over.Matthew Hoggard, the only England bowler not to have missed a match through injury in the past year, told BBC Radio Five Live: “It’s disappointing news about Liam. He is obviously a talented cricketer and he has shown us what he can do, and unfortunately he is another one that has succumbed to injury.”

Scorecard
Tasmania survived a late onslaught from the tailender Shane Harwood to remain unbeaten in the ING Cup with a 43-run victory over Victoria at Bellerive Oval today. Harwood, batting at No. 10, hit an unbeaten 50 off 31 balls, and put on 75 for the ninth wicket with Andrew McDonald.Sent into bat, the Tasmania openers Michael DiVenuto, who was Man of the Match, and Michael Dighton put on 160 off 152 balls while the push towards 300 was continued by Michael Bevan. Xavier Doherty, the left-arm orthodox spinner, then inflicted the damage for Tasmania in collecting 4 for 41, including the important wicket of Cameron White for 31. Brad Hodge, who returned from the India tour with White to play in the match, managed 51 off 56 balls before being caught by George Bailey off Brett Geeves.White, the Victoria captain, wrote off the result as “a bad day”. “Hopefully it’s just a one-off thing and we’ll be right,” he said.

Ehsaan Mani has taken exception to Mohammad Azharuddin’s presence in Sri Lanka as a commentator. Azharuddin has been employed as a cricket expert by Aaj Tak, an Indian news channel, even though he was banned for life by the Indian cricket board. Mani wondered why, even then, Azharuddin was involved with the game.”I am extremely disappointed to see Mohammed Azharuddin doing commentary in the ongoing Asia Cup in Sri Lanka,” said Mani, according to Press Trust of India. “There is zero-tolerance for corruption in cricket and there should be no position in the game for a player who has been banned by his own cricket board. If he is deemed guilty and we have the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s word that he has been banned for life, he should not be involved in the game in any way,” Mani said, also admitting that the ICC had no say in the approval of commentators. “High profile cricketers are role models and there are better role models.”The television channel that employed Azhar has been supportive of him. Earlier, G Krishnan, the executive director of the TV Today network, confirmed that Azharuddin was doing work for Aaj Tak, and said, “His involvement in match-fixing is alleged. What has the fact that someone is alleged to have done something got to do with his commenting on a cricket match? He is not playing. Just being accused of something does not mean much. People are ministers in this country while they are accused of greater crimes. The point is they are not convicted. You have to be reasonable to everybody. Till you find someone guilty he is innocent.”