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The Cobras earned their first victory of the season after defending 163 against the Warriors. The franchise have lost three out of five first-class matches and their first two T20 matches as they continue to battle player concerns over the capability of coach Paul Adams. But Adam could smile for a change after Wayne Parnell, Kieron Pollard and George Linde took the team to victory.Parnell was coming back from a rib injury sustained during South Africa’s ODI series against Australia. He opened the batting with Richard Levi, who departed early, and scored 61 off 51 balls. He lacked support until joined by Pollard, whose 50 off 27 balls earned him the batsman of the match award. The pair scored 78 off 50 balls at a rate of almost 10 an over to ensure the Cobras compiled a competitive total.In reply, the Warriors were in early trouble at 58 for 5. Left-arm spinners Linde and Rory Kleinveldt did the damage but Colin Ackermann resisted. His 60 off 41 balls was one of only four scores in double figures in the innings and the only one of more than 22. The Warriors sit mid-table with one loss and one win so far.David Miller’s career-best T20 score was not enough for the Knights to beat the Titans in a last-ball thriller that was decided by a no-ball. The Titans’ victory keep them at the top of the table, eight points clear of their nearest challenger.At 10 for 2, the Knights ceded the early control as veteran allrounder Albie Morkel struck. Miller and Pite van Biljon shared 91 for the third wicket, with van Biljon only a minor contributor. His 28 off 31 balls offered only companionship for Miller, who stood man alone in building the total. Miller’s century came off 56 balls and his eventual strike rate was a shave under 200. He was particularly harsh on Junior Dala, whose four overs cost 57 runs.The Titans stayed on course in the chase, with all their batsmen chipping in. Heinrich Klaasen’s 50 off 27 balls started them off well before Farhaan Behardien and David Wiese kept them in the hunt.They were dismissed off successive balls – Wiese off the last of the penultimate over and Behardien the first of the final over – to leave the Knights needing five runs off the last five balls. Shadley van Schalkwyk was bowling and he gave away only two runs off the next three balls before a bye was conceded, leaving the Titans with two to get off the final ball. That’s when van Schalkwyk overstepped and the Titans took a single to win the game.

Two days after BCB president Nazmul Hassan said the Test series between Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in January would be shelved to concentrate on limited-overs cricket ahead of the World T20, the BCB’s cricket operations committee has announced it is in discussion with their Zimbabwean counterparts to hold one Test in January apart from three Twenty20s.The cricket operations committee chairman Naimur Rahman said that Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) had proposed the teams play five T20s in Bangladesh after their series against Afghanistan ends on January 10. But Rahman said neglecting Test cricket was rarely beneficial.”Every team is playing Test cricket during this time,” Rahman said. “They will also play in the World T20, so we have to play all the formats. We cannot avoid any of these formats. Test cricket is the real deal. We can improve in other formats if we do well in Tests. But if we just play T20s, we can’t improve properly.”We have always spoken about increasing Tests in the FTP. So there will be a negative effect on us if we don’t play Tests despite the opportunity.”The original schedule for this series featured three Tests, then it was cut to two in September and now there is a possibility of a full, if split series – one Test in Bangladesh, two Tests in Zimbabwe after the World T20. “If we play one Test here, we can play the other two there in July next year, in addition to an ODI series,” Rahman said.Rahman also added the proposed series in January will likely be played in Khulna and Sylhet since most of the other venues in the country will be busy preparing for the Under-19 World Cup that begins on January 27.Naimur also said Bangladesh will not be playing the World T20 warm-up match on March 4 since it clashes with the Asia Cup’s schedule. They will only play the warm-up game on March 6. The operations committee has also called off an initial plan to hold a training camp in Dharamsala in late January because of the different weather conditions compared to the time the World T20 will be played there.

Former BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah, a long-time administrator and currently secretary of Saurashtra Cricket Association, has endorsed Shashank Manohar’s “personal” view that the ICC needs to be more democratic. This comes as important support for possible change in the structure of the ICC, especially considering BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur had essentially opposed Manohar’s view.Shah had told ESPNcricinfo in November that it was not fair that everybody earned equal revenue when India contributed a majority of it. “I remember we fought against the infamous veto rights of England and Australia,” he said. “Now it is almost like we have brought back that system, except that we have added ourselves to that list.”Last week, Manohar had said in an interview with the that the revenue-sharing structure the Big Three had imposed needed changing. “I don’t agree with the revenue-sharing formula, because it’s nice to say that India [BCCI] will get 22% of the total revenue of the ICC, but you cannot make the poor poorer and the rich richer, only because you have the clout. The ICC runs cricket throughout the world.”This had brought about an opposing view from Thakur. “The [BCCI] president said this in his personal capacity,” Thakur told . “He made it very clear that it was his personal opinion. The Indian subcontinent contributes close to 70% of the ICC’s revenues. To take 21% of that is not much. That was the position with Australia and England earlier, and no one objected to it then. If this happens to India today, we shouldn’t object to it.”Shah, who will be a voting power if this issue comes up for discussion in the BCCI, believes the board shouldn’t take the view that this becomes right just because somebody else had done it in the past. Shah also compared it with the structure of the BCCI. “In India Tripura and Mumbai have the same voting powers and get the same share of the revenue,” he said and reiterated Manohar’s view that even if India contributes more to the world cricket financially, it needed good competition to do so.Shah said that if the ICC was to be restructured, the matter would be brought up in the BCCI first. Asked if he, as a member of the BCCI, would support such a move, he answered in the affirmative, but said that only a majority view was likely to be considered.

To judge by the way the pundits have been talking, England’s series against New Zealand is already in the bag. The Kiwis, allegedly, are the weakest touring side ever to have touched down in the country, with the ropiest top-order imaginable and a bowling attack that’s hanging by a shoestrong. But they’ve heard it all before, and according to Chris Martin, the man who’ll lead their attack at Lord’s on Thursday, such barbs are only going to spur them on.”Maybe the England team read the papers a bit more,” said Martin. “I know there’s a lot of media hype to bring the English team up, saying that they should really stamp on us and destroy us. It’s probably something they feel if they aren’t doing that, because then that hype gets over-extended and they start to feel the pressure. I suppose you guys are doing us a favour in some ways.”There’s no question that England are confident ahead of the start of their summer campaign. Kevin Pietersen has already started looking forward to resuming hostilities with his former countrymen, South Africa, while the coach, Peter Moores, gave a brusque affirmative when asked if he expected victory in the three-match series. But Martin has seen enough of England over the past four months to know that nothing is set in stone just yet.Four years ago, during Martin’s maiden series in England, the traffic was largely one-way, as England hurtled to a 3-0 whitewash – a performance that set the standard for their Ashes-winning exploits the following summer. But times have changed and Martin believes that the 2008 vintage is some way below that standard just now. “They are just a steady side and on their day they can be a very good side,” he said. “For us, we are in a similar vein. I know over the years New Zealand and England have had some pretty good battles, especially over here, so I’m quite looking forward to it.”As a bowling outfit, we were very poor in 2004,” said Martin, who took six wickets in the first two Tests before pulling a hamstring in his second over at Trent Bridge. “We let ourselves down. There’s normally a bowler who can carry a group like that but I don’t think we had that last time. So hopefully, throughout this series, we all help each other out and get a little bit more of a pack mentality.When New Zealand get it right, they can be an impressive outfit, as they demonstrated at Hamilton in March where they derailed England in the first Test. The next two matches, however, got away from them, and two months on, Martin was still rueing the missed opportunity. “We started with an emotionally charged win, and to let it slip in that second game switched the momentum back to England. We regret the way we bowled to a couple of guys on that first day, [Paul] Collingwood and [Tim] Ambrose. We let them get a bit more confidence.”New Zealand’s own batting could do with a bit more confidence. They’ve lost their leading runscorer of all time, Stephen Fleming, and face making two more changes to the top order after axing the underperforming Matthew Bell and Mathew Sinclair. But in Aaron Redmond, who made an impressive if doughty 146 in the England Lions match, they have identified an opener who could provide them with some much-needed ballast.Redmond’s six-and-a-half hour innings reminded Martin of their former opener, Mark Richardson, who famously made 93 and 101 in the last Lord’s Test in 2004. “Mark would bat for 130 balls and blunt the attack for a while and be out there being a menace,” said Martin. “I think Aaron’s pretty much going down that line as well. He just wants to bat time and stay out there. That helps our middle-order, and the runs we’ve been getting in the warm-up games have been extremely positive.”There is still, however, a question-mark about New Zealand’s attitude to Test cricket. Until the England tour in March, they had played four matches in 15 months, and two of those had come against Bangladesh. Furthermore, five of their key players, including the captain, arrived late for this tour after taking part in the Indian Premier League. Though they were only gone a week, the big bucks that their adventure brought them can only have turned heads in the dressing-room.”It inspires me to get myself over there,” said Martin, who was arguably the highest-profile member of the squad not to have been signed up. “As far as a New Zealand player goes, it’s an important financial incentive to get yourself over to India. For a young guy coming up and playing cricket in New Zealand, it’s a passage you should be following.”The preference and priority for anyone is playing for their country, but it’s a supplement, a superannuation plan,” he said. “If you can get your name up in lights and somebody with a wad of rupees is willing to spend money on you to play cricket, it’s nothing to turn down really.”Such sentiments are hardly encouraging for those who view Test cricket as the ultimate form of the game, but if the promise of a passage to India is sufficient incentive for New Zealand to raise their game, then maybe Martin is right. This series is not one to be written off just yet.

Had Stephen Fleming’s final Test innings been scripted for a film about his life, it would have been deemed too boringly realistic to make the final cut. He entered with the stage set for heroism and sparkled briefly as New Zealand began their long and unlikely trek towards salvation. By tea he had achieved his first aim, the 54 runs required to nudge his career average past 40, but within minutes of the resumption, he was gone – not to a sublime piece of skill from the bowler, Monty Panesar, but to yet another wafty, half-conceived flash outside off stump.That’s been the story of his career for 14 eventful, eye-pleasing, but ultimately under-fulfilling years. “It was short and wide, and I was trying to run it down to point,” said Fleming, as he reflected on the delivery that ended his 189-innings, 111-Test career. “But it was the quicker one, and it seemed to skid through, out of the rough, and hit the bottom edge of the bat. Once again, it wasn’t flamboyant, it was just another mistake that I’d have liked to get away with. But not this time.”And so he trooped off the field, applauded all the way to the boundary’s edge by the England team who had broken off their celebrations to join his ovation. At Michael Vaughan’s instigation, the players had also got together a guard of honour to welcome him to the crease, a tribute that Fleming described as “humbling”, even if – as a fellow tactician – he recognised the underlying ploy in Vaughan’s actions.”I took three or four, maybe half-a-dozen, balls to get into my innings, which was probably very smart from Michael,” said Fleming. “I regard him as a very good captain and a nice guy, and the same goes for the English side, so it was humbling. I tried to think about everything that would go on, but it’s hard to keep a lid on the emotions when you walk through a thing like that.”Ever the professional, Fleming kept his feelings in check for 103 deliveries, right up until the moment a puff of the cheeks and a guilty glance at the umpire betrayed the error that sent him on his way. “I walked off frustrated, which has happened about 50 or 60 times in my career,” he said. “I did have a wry smile at myself, thinking that was a fitting way to go. If I’d scored a hundred it would have been an anomaly. Instead it was another fifty, and there we go.”Fleming’s pregnant wife, Kelly, was among those who stood to applaud him, as Fleming at first appeared lost in his own thoughts, then belatedly lifted his head, removed his helmet and saluted all corners of the ground. “I had a lot of things to cram into 55 metres, and it seemed to happen pretty fast,” he said. “Those first 30 paces, I was just annoyed to be walking off with another start to my name. Then it was about savouring who was here, and what it was about, and enjoying the ovation. It was all just mixed emotions, which is what I’ll have for the next two or three weeks, maybe longer.”Fleming’s international retirement has been a long drawn-out process, which began when he stepped down from one-day cricket in Jamaica last April, following New Zealand’s defeat in the World Cup semi-final. It continued through to Auckland earlier on this tour, when he announced that the current Test series against England would be his last, and finally culminated in today’s anticlimactic departure.It’s a fairly open secret that this is not how he would have envisaged his final days in the game – he had designs on a final tour of England before handing the Test captaincy over to Daniel Vettori, but events overtook him and now, at the age of 35, he’s walking away for good. “The selectors seem to have their ideas of what they want,” he said darkly, when asked who he believed could fill his shoes as a No. 3 batsman. “My ideas are a lot different to the selectors.

“I loved the captaincy and everything that went along with it,” he said. “The pressure, the emotions, the ability to control a game and a group of men. That’s something I do miss and have missed, so if the opportunity with other sides, I’ll look forward to it.” His next stop is the Indian Premier League, while Nottinghamshire and Wellington also beckon. His tactical nous, not his runs, are what he will be remembered for, and in that regard, he might not be quite finished yet.Regardless of the unspoken grievances, Fleming was asked if he would leave the game satisfied with his contribution. “Only just,” was his disarmingly honest answer. “I am satisfied with 40 on the chest. It sets you apart, in terms of New Zealand batters anyway, but as a batsman I’ll always feel I underachieved because I couldn’t convert my starts, and I’ll never know why. Sometimes I was the master of my own failings, other times it just wasn’t meant to be.”Even if I’d converted a quarter or a half [of my fifties] I’m up into the 20-25 centuries category which, as we know, is pretty good going,” he said. “I’ll always rue that fact and wonder why, but I guess there are bigger things out there so it won’t last too long. When I take time to reflect, I’ll be satisfied to have 4 in front of my average, but it would have been nice to chalk up ten hundreds, and have a crack at saving this game.”At 222 for 5 overnight, New Zealand are not completely beaten yet, but Fleming’s role in the match is finished, and he’s seen too much in his 14-year career to start believing in miracles at this late stage. “We’ve got some batting to come but we’ve got our backs against the wall,” he said. “But that’s the way it goes. In the first innings we were going pretty comfortably … and look at my career, things go comfortably until the mistake, and then we’re in trouble.”Unfortunately four wickets in a session is trouble,” he said. “If we’d lost one or two, we’d be going into a tight final day, but as it is, it’s going to take some pretty strong resistance in the morning, and then we’ll see how we go in the afternoon. The belief would be stronger if we hadn’t lost those wickets but unfortunately the tendency of this side is to lose five or six wickets, not one or two. We’ll make England work damn hard, but we only did that in patches today.” The same, to his eternal chagrin, will also be said of his batsmanship.

Test match batting preparation aplenty was on offer for England in perfect batting conditions against Canterbury in Christchurch today but, Michael Vaughan, Nasser Hussain and to a lesser extent Craig White excepted, England failed to make the most of their chances.Cricket in Christchurch played in the idyllic weather and surroundings of today is cricket as it should be played and the dreams of the city’s planners of the mid-19th Century were realised at the mid-city complex of Hagley Oval.Yet even the almost English setting, a goal of those town planners, was not sufficient to prevent England also suffering problems.The middle-order batting collapse, the curse of recent England performances, reared its head again in benign conditions before White led a recovery which saw England with a 188-run lead by stumps.Vaughan, despite his lack of appearances on New Zealand soil, is shaping as the most serious contender for batsman of the tour, and that is based on an obvious delight, even in only two appearances so far, in scoring runs and spending time in the middle. This is a player most countries would nurture and encourage.”I couldn’t have asked for a better day. We had the best of the conditions and I needed a score,” he said in reflecting on his masterful 156, scored off 198 balls and including 23 fours.It is amazing to believe that a batsman of such quality has to stand in a queue for a Test match place when he has looked the player most likely to succeed. His attitude of putting the pressure back on the selectors to pick him was confirmed afterwards.”All I concentrated on was putting pressure on by scoring a big hundred.”The make-up of the team is not down to me, I just hope that when the team is named on Wednesday I am in there,” he said.Vaughan, who shared a 207-run stand with Hussain, felt no ill effects of the shoulder dislocation that forced him to leave the field during the fourth One-Day International in Auckland.”My shoulder is fine when I’m batting and is getting better by the day.”I was always going to be playing in this game after having had treatment on the shoulder in Queenstown.”I had no reaction from it when I was batting and I felt free to play any shot. I felt in good touch. We cashed in on some balls that were there to be hit and that is the secret of batting,” he said.Hussain batted like a player still trying to get the one-day series out of his system, which he was after being excused from the first three-day game against Otago earlier in the week. He was much more controlled than Vaughan who was very much the senior partner of their stand.His innings of 69 took 121 balls and ended when he attempted a sharp single, of his own calling, but he didn’t allow for Canterbury square leg fieldsman Gary Stead fielding the ball cleanly and breaking the stumps at the bowler’s end with his throw.The run out came one run after Vaughan’s dismissal and was followed soon after by Mark Ramprakash who was caught by short leg fieldsman Robbie Frew as he attempted to turn a ball from off-spinner Paul Wiseman.Then Andrew Flintoff suffered the mortification of continuing the tumble when hitting a full toss straight back to bowler Chris Harris to be out for one.Four wickets had fallen for eight runs.Usman Afzaal was joined by White and they added 43 runs before Afzaal became the first victim of the new ball, being caught from Warren Wisneski’s bowling for 19 from 56 balls. James Foster was bowled by Wisneski four runs later to leave England 333/7.The chance for Canterbury to wrap up the innings was lost when Ashley Giles was dropped by point fieldsman Shanan Stewart when on nine. He had the ball in his hands but in rolling over he lost the ball.Hitting out in celebration, Giles helped White add 50 for the eighth wicket before he cut at a ball from Wisneski which lobbed to Harris at gully.White brought up his 50 off 114 balls, having his seven fours. By stumps soon after he was 53 not out and Andy Caddick was four not out.Wisneski had problems with his rhythm during the morning but when he returned with the second new ball he proved a much more difficult customer for the batsmen and he ended the day with three for 88.Young tyro Wade Cornelius came in for some stick and had one wicket, Mark Butcher, at a cost of 85 runs. Wiseman had two for 70 from 17 overs.The real pressure goes on the England attack tomorrow. To knock over Canterbury which hasn’t been one of the harder assignments for side’s in recent domestic history, more bowlers than Caddick have to fire.

West Indies board officials will meet with officials from the West Indies Cricket Umpires Association (WICUA) president today in an effort to settle the issues that led to the WICUA’s boycott of Carib Beer Cup matches last month.”We’ve sought this meeting for some time but had to put it off once at our request,” Hartley Reid, the WICUA president said. “It’s a welcome opportunity to have this specific matter resolved and to discuss the general relationship between the WICB and the WICUA”. Reid will meet Donald Peters, the WICB chief executive, and Tony Howard, its chief cricket operations officer.The WICB was caught in the middle of a stand-off triggered by differences between two umpiring bodies in Trinidad and Tobago, only one of which is recognised by the Trinidad and Tobago board.WICUA decided on the boycott when two of its members, Hayden Bruce and Kaso Dowlath, were replaced after being originally assigned matches during the regional season by the WICB. Bruce and Dowlath belong to the Association of Cricket Umpires of Trinidad and Tobago (ACUTT). But the T&T board recognises the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Umpires and Scorers Council (TTCUSC) which did not put forward Bruce and Dowlath on its recommended list. “This was noticed by the T&T board, which informed the WICB, pointing out the perceived error, and the WICB then removed those two names,” Lalman Kowlessar, a T&T board executive said. Umpires from the TTCUSC filled in for those who adhered to the WICUA call and the matches all went ahead.Kowlessar described the boycott as a “total failure” but WICUA secretary Vivian Johnson of Jamaica pointed out that it was not a situation that could be allowed to continue “in perpetuity”. In a television interview in Guyana last week, Peters said he hoped “to come to some amicable agreement” at today’s meeting.”The larger issue is all these factions in the umpires’ fraternity,” he said. “What I would like to see is one group and the WICB would contract an elite panel and three levels of umpires. That’s the way I’d like to go.”We’re not involved in the struggle but we have a responsibility to ensure that umpires work closely together so that, in the final analysis, we can get the best umpires to stand in our matches,” he added.The impasse led to an e-mailed threat from WICB corporate secretary Tony Deyal to WICUA area vice-president Billy Doctrove, one of two West Indians on the ICC Elite Panel of umpires, informing him that if he did not umpire the match between the Leeward Islands and Guyana as directed that the WICB would “refer the matter to the ICC”.Deyal warned that it would point out that “your actions have sought to bring the WICB and the game of cricket in the Caribbean into disrepute and that you, and any other persons from the region who have behaved in a similar fashion, should not be considered for further employment by the ICC now or at any future time”.ICC Communications Officer James Fitzgerald said that although the ICC was aware of the issue “it is really a domestic matter and so we have no direct part to play.”However, if there is a way that we can assist all sides coming to a satisfactory agreement on this, then we will be happy to help,” he added.The ICC has subsequently assigned Doctrove to the last two Tests of the current series between India and South Africa in India.

Scorecard

Twenty-two runs was the margin of defeat for the Kolkata Tigers; 22 was also the runs conceded by Tigers medium-pacer Abu Nechim in one over.The Badshahs had been unconquered in five matches so far in the tournament. The Tigers seemed to have them on the mat, but they ended up being tamed. The Badshahs, without captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, were put in to bat by the Tigers and a tight performance from the bowlers left them at only 53 for 2 at the half-way stage.Taufeeq Umar held together the innings with a 35-ball 41, and his dismissal paved the way for Hasan Raza and Naved Latif to take charge. They didn’t disappoint, as 64 runs were scored off the final five overs.Latif got the momentum going with a six off Upul Chandana in the 16th, before both he and Raza belted a four and a six in the next from Nechim, which went for 22. The same Nechim had been the star for the Tigers on Wednesday, wrecking the Chandigarh Lions’ semi-final hopes with his 4 for 27.Further punishment was inflicted in the 20th over bowled by Nantie Hayward, with Azhar Mahmood – facing his first ball – hitting a six off the final delivery. Raza was run out for 48, while Latif was unbeaten on 30 from 17.Mahmood struck soon after as the Tigers began their hunt, and when his new-ball partner Mohammad Sami scalped the dangerous Lance Klusener, which was soon followed by Deep Dasgupta’s run-out, the Tigers were tottering at 12 for 4.Despite a run-a-ball 46 from Rohan Gavaskar, and captain Craig McMillan’s 30, the Tigers couldn’t upstage the Badshahs. They finished at 131 for 7. For the Badshahs, it was an impressive collective bowling effort; of the five bowlers used, offspinner Arshad Khan, playing his first match of the tournament, was the most expensive with 26 coming off his four.The Badshahs next take on the bottom-placed Ahmedabad Rockets in their final encounter on Sunday, while the Kolkata Tigers take on the Delhi Giants in an important clash to determine a semi-final spot.

The Super League stage of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy ended on Tuesday – the same day as the IPL 2026 auction – with Jharkhand and Haryana booking their final berths for a title clash on December 18 in Pune. Here’s how the day unfolded.