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Andrew Symonds has been named in Australia’s starting 11 for the third Test beginning at Perth on Thursday. Adam Voges, who was in the original 13-man squad, has been left out and Mitchell Johnson will be 12th man.Symonds, who will play his 11th Test match, has been listed to bat at No.6, with Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke each moving up one spot in the order. Ricky Ponting said there was no reason Symonds could not permanently hold down a place in the team. “I am pretty confident in him actually,” Ponting told . “I have watched him pretty closely over the last few days.”He might have thought his Test career has passed him on, but he is really excited about being back in the team again and right now he feels better about his game than he probably ever has before. We all know what a great talent he is and he hasn’t shown it at Test level yet, hopefully over the next few days we will see some of that.”Ponting said Symonds’ ability to bowl both medium pace and offspin – which he did with success for Queensland in a Pura Cup match at the WACA last month – would be vital. “He was the pick of the bowlers on a wicket that might have been pretty similar,” Ponting said.”It will give Shane [Warne] a chance to have a bit more of a rest, and probably Glenn [McGrath] at different times. We are going to need some guys to bowl a number of overs up into the wind and Symo will probably give us that.”Australia 1 Justin Langer, 2 Matthew Hayden, 3 Ricky Ponting (capt), 4 Michael Hussey, 5 Michael Clarke, 6 Andrew Symonds, 7 Adam Gilchrist (wk), 8 Shane Warne, 9 Brett Lee, 10 Stuart Clark, 11 Glenn McGrath.

Pakistan’s preparations for the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship have been unusually well-planned. A gruelling summer of conditioning camps in three cities as well as a glut of practice Twenty20 matches indicated a seriousness of purpose unseen in other countries. But it all means little until they play their first actual match.”We can prepare strategies, try and find the right balances, work out plans and play any number of practice games,” Geoff Lawson, the Pakistan coach, told Cricinfo just before the team’s departure for Nairobi, where they play a series of warm-up matches against Bangladesh, Uganda and Kenya.”But that can only take you so far,” he said. “Until the first match happens, we won’t really know what to expect. We’ve got an excellent opportunity to play some matches in Kenya now and fine-tune our plans and get our combinations right.”The relative freshness of the format – there have only ever been 16 international matches – means teams start on a more equal footing than they might in a 50-over tournament. Pakistan have only played two internationals (won one, lost one) but were one of the first to organise a domestic Twenty20 tournament – with the fourth edition scheduled for this December – which has proved a wildly successful revenue-earner and has meant their players are familiar and comfortable with the format.”Most of the players in the side have played it and have good experience of it,” Lawson said. “Shoaib [Malik, captain] has an excellent grasp of the tactics in this format. He has been successful at leading domestically as well, so that will play a part.”Fortune, too, will play a role. “We have some explosive players but I think everyone understands that luck will play some part in this game too. Everyone wants to win and to do so, any side will need an element of luck.”It helps also if you have a pace attack “at least the equal of any other side in the world”. Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif and Umar Gul are simultaneously fit and available for the first time since they came together and despite the popular perception that the format is skewed heavily in favour of batsmen, pace, Lawson feels, might make a difference.”See, good cricketers are good cricketers in any format, 20 overs, 50 or a Test. And pace bowlers are good to have in any format. We have three or four very good ones, they are looking healthy and their roles will be crucial in South Africa.”Lawson has been with the side for just over a week, familiarising with the players and overseeing the final training camp in Lahore, but Talat Ali, the manager says the signs are already positive. “He had good interaction with the players, the body language between all of them is very positive,” said Ali. “There is a definite change in the atmosphere and the way the team is and that is a good sign.”Lawson himself has been impressed by the squad’s capacity for hard work. “I’m very happy with their attitude and the way they have responded to the training regime. With David [Dwyer, fitness trainer], we’ve given them some real tough, heavy workouts and full-on sessions. But they want to do it and that is impressive.”There is still considerable work to be done, however, for a side Bob Woolmer initially thought the poorest he had seen in terms of fitness. “We’ve looked at lots of areas in terms of their fitness. They have definitely improved, but they still have a long way to go. But we’re on that slope [of progress], which is good.”How far up that slope Pakistan is, will begin to reveal itself now. They open the four-nation tournament with a match against Uganda on September 1, before taking on Bangladesh the day after. They wrap up preparations by playing the hosts Kenya on September 4, before flying out to Johannesburg for the real deal.

Stuart MacGill, the Australian legspinner, has urged the national selectors to persist with him in a bid to prolong Shane Warne’s career. He also admitted that the realisation that his days as an Australia cricketer were numbered had added a sense of urgency to his performance in the first Test against Bangladesh last week.”I think that if you ever — and there’s not many of them — pick up little troughs and plateaus in Shane’s career they’re predominantly based around workload … They’re all following hard seasons or are either immediately before or after operations,” MacGill told . “And in all of those situations there would have been definitely plenty of scope to play a second wrist spinner and I think that you can maybe avoid those situations completely if you do share the pain a bit. It’d work out great for me because I’d play more and probably will stretch Shane’s career a little bit, too. I don’t necessarily see there being a huge difference between the end of Shane’s career and the end of my career.”MacGill gave the example of the Dhaka Test, when Warne was forced to leave the field on the first day with a shoulder strain. “In the Ashes everybody was looking at Shane’s 40 wickets, which is an amazing achievement but if you look further than that maybe the last week was a physical manifestation of that workload,” he said. “(It was) the end of a very, very long season and maybe if I had played a couple of more times in between it would have been avoided.Despite an impressive 191 wickets at 27.35 from 39 Tests, MacGill has found it hard to cement a place in the side. With Warne coming back extremely well since his one-year ban – he picked up a record 96 wickets in 2005 – the 35-year old New South Wales bowler has found himself spending entire series on the bench or carrying drinks. “It’s not as if you’re going to be saving me up for later,” he said. “We’re similar ages and we’ve both got other things to do, so it would be great to be used at the moment.”MacGill also admitted that he knew this tour of Bangladesh could be his last. “I certainly can’t see another Australian tour for me, unless I miraculously hit one-day cricket,” he said.”The next scheduled tour is Zimbabwe in the middle of next year, which I won’t be part of (because of a political boycott). From there, there is a Pakistan tour the year after, so this would be my last Australian tour, I would say. The Ashes summer is there but I don’t know when I am going to be used, so you don’t know what’s going to happen. I have got to make sure I cash in in these games because I might not get another Test.”The second Test against Bangladesh starts at Chittagong today.

Dav Whatmore has expressed surprise and disappointment at reports that Arjuna Ranatunga, the former Sri Lanka captain, has advised the PCB against hiring him as their next coach.According to , Ranatunga had a chance encounter with Talat Ali, the Pakistan manager, in Scotland recently. When asked for his thoughts on Whatmore as an option, given that the two had worked together extensively and led Sri Lanka to their 1996 World Cup triumph, Ranatunga reportedly offered the advice that Whatmore should be avoided.”I don’t know what his motivations were but he is entitled to his own personal views and I have no desire to get dragged into a public argument with him,” Whatmore told Cricinfo.Whatmore was one of three Australians shortlisted by the Pakistan board for the coaching position, lying vacant since the death of Bob Woolmer in March. Geoff Lawson, the former Test fast bowler, and Richard Done, the ICC’s High performance manager, are the others.”The facts are that I have indicated my desire to coach Pakistan and, if appointed, I am confident of being able to do an extremely good job with a very talented group of players,” Whatmore said.Kumar Sangakkara, who made his debut while Whatmore was in charge, endorsed his credentials to be the Pakistan coach. “I have absolutely no doubt that Dav is exactly the kind of coach Pakistan needs right now,” Sangakkara told Cricinfo.”He has the expertise and the experience, including a World Cup win, the pinnacle of coaching success. I count myself as very fortunate to have broken into the national side with him as coach. It helped me to hone the right attitude towards hard work and getting out of my comfort zone that has stood me in good stead ever since,” he said.Ranatunga’s advice comes on the back of increasing chatter within Pakistan that Whatmore may not be the favourite he once was for the position. Some of the players, especially senior ones, are said to be more keen on Geoff Lawson, wary of Whatmore’s reputation as a no-nonsense taskmaster. According to the report, Talat Ali has also given Lawson his backing.The board, however, is refusing to say anything other than each candidate was impressive and that a final decision will be taken soon. Though Nasim Ashraf, the board chairman, has repeatedly said a decision would be made by July 1, it looks likely that one will be taken at the next meeting of the board’s ad-hoc committee, in the middle of the month.

Graeme Smith’s right ankle showed no signs of discomfort during his innings of 73 in a warm-up match against a local team in New Delhi ahead of the Champions Trophy.This was Smith’s first match since he recovered from an ankle injury that sidelined him for two months, forcing him to miss the tour of Sri Lanka in August and the one-day series against Zimbabwe that followed.”He [Smith] was comfortable on Sunday and active in the nets on Monday,” said Gordon Templeton, South Africa’s media manager. “All the players proved their fitness and now the preparation for the tournament can start in earnest. It was a good trial run on a typical subcontinent pitch.”AB de Villiers contributed 55 and Shaun Pollock scored an unbeaten 53 as the South Africans piled up 307 for 9 against the local side. The completed a clinical performance by dismissing their opponents for 198.South Africa have a couple of warm-up games before they kick off their Champions Trophy campaign against New Zealand in Mumbai on October 16.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball

Andrew Strauss filled his boots against the Bangladesh attack for the third time in the NatWest Series as England comfortably sealed their place in the final with a five-wicket win at Headingley. Strauss was out with just one run needed, for 98, following Andrew Flintoff’s 4 for 29 which restricted Bangladesh after they made a promising start.Strauss attempted to finish the match in the grand manner, by reaching his century, but was bowled by Manjural Islam, the ball after hitting a six to get within two runs of his milestone (208 for 5). It was another impressive innings from Strauss and it is important that he now starts to take this form into the remaining matches against Australia – starting at Edgbaston on Tuesday.A target of 209 was never going to be enough to trouble England, especially when Strauss and Marcus Trescothick continued to gorge themselves on the Bangladesh bowling. Trescothick was in great touch again and it was a surprise when he got a feathered edge against Manjural for 43 – a relative failure against after his previous scores of 100* and 85 against Bangladesh in the tournament.Habibul Bashar was forced to turn to his spinners – Manjural and Mohammad Rafique – within the 15 overs and Trescothick took advantage and slog-swept into the Western Terrace (or Stand as it now prefers to be known). However, Manjural got his revenge when Trescothick tried another dab to third-man and got the thinnest of edges to Khaled Mashud (99 for 1).Flintoff was promoted to No. 3 but he again failed to make the most of his opportunity when he fell lbw sweeping at Rafique (134 for 2). Kevin Pietersen gave the Headingley crowd a brief glimpse of his power, clearing the midwicket boundary once during his 23, before finding long-on as he attempted to win the match quickly (182 for 4).

Bangladesh stuttered to 208 for 7 as England’s bowling improved after a poor start with Flintoff leading the resurgence with another menacing spell. Javed Omar provided the backbone to the innings with 81 from 150 balls and Mashud brought some much needed late acceleration with 42 off 43.Omar’s innings was a model of concentration and he largely managed to eradicated the cross-batted shots that have been is downfall in this series. But at times it was questionable whether he was doing more harm than good to the innings. However, after their rapid collapse against Australia yesterday they can be forgiven for ensuring they batted out their 50 overs.Simon Jones gained a useful workout. He grabbed the first wicket to fall, when Shahriar Nafees edged a expansive cut to first slip, where Trescothick took a well-judged low catch (22 for 1).But Flintoff was easily the pick of England’s seam attack after they generally wasted the new ball in a lazy display of bowling and fielding. As Tushar Imran attempted to increase the scoring rate he chopped into his stumps after comfortably scoring at a run-a-ball (92 for 2). It was typical of so many Bangladesh dismissals on this tour, with a batsman doing all the hardwork then losing concentration at the vital time.Mohammad Ashraful had a perfect base to continue his scintillating form, but picked out Trescothick at midwicket from his first ball (92 for 3). Flintoff was then within a whisker of a hat-trick – although not as close as Tremlett last week – when Habibul Bashar just managed to get his pad outside off stump.But Bashar did not last much longer and became another victim of Paul Collingwood’s sharp fielding in the covers. Omar dropped the ball and set off for a single but Bashar’s dive was not quite enough to get him home as Collingwood’s underarm flick just clipped the stumps (112 for 4). When Aftab Ahmed was bowled by Ashley Giles, Bangladesh had lost all their momentum (138 for 5) but Mashud used his experience to ensure they at least passed 200 and gave England a decent chase.Although not the most convincing of England’s performances against Bangladesh, they still got the job done with plenty of time to spare. Now the attention turns firmly to Australia for the rest of the summer. Although Tuesday’s game has no bearing on the final, some important psychological points can be scored ahead of the Lord’s showdown.

Lalit Modi, the vice president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India,has strongly denied reports that his house and offices were raided by theincome tax department.Modi told Cricinfo that income tax officials had carried out a routinesurvey at the office of Rajasthan Cricket Association, of which Modi is thepresident, to seek “routine information about tax deducted at source (TDS)on certain payments made by the association last year”.”Contrary to what many media organisations have reported, neither my house,nor my offices were raided,” Modi said, “in fact, no-one in Mumbai was awareof the raids.”Modi said he was initiating suitable legal action against the organisationswhich had tried to spread misinformation about him.

Graeme Smith, the South African captain, has said that his team is ready to take on a resurgent India in the five-match one-day series beginning in Hyderabad on November 16.”We have come here on a good run and see this tour as a massive opportunity,” Smith told AFP after arriving in Mumbai. “India are a strong side with a bunch of young guys who are doing well. Sachin Tendulkar is also back in their side but I hope we continue to win.” South Africa have had an awesome run of form, blanking New Zealand 4-0 in the recent one-day series and winning 16 of their last 18 games with two matches washed out. India, too, have thrashed Sri Lanka 6-1 in the just completed one-day series.Mickey Arthur, the South Africa coach, said that they weren’t too worried about countering Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the Indian wicketkeeper who was named Man of the Series for his 346 runs in seven matches against Sri Lanka. “We have studied his technique well and have some plans for him. We only have to wait and see how well we are able to execute them,” said Arthur. “The key to India’s fortune is the return to form of Sachin Tendulkar as he can really lift the team. Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell are doing a good job and we respect the Indian batting line-up in home conditions but we also back ourselves to win in India.”South Africa’s tour begins with a warm-up game on November 14 at Hyderabad followed by the first ODI on November 16. The remaining four matches are all day-night fixtures at Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai on November 19, 22, 25 and 28.

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.

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.