England in right shape to shed weight of history

WE come this morning to the pivotal cricket match of the season. If Lord's had twice its present capacity of 28,000, they would still have sold all tickets for the first four days. All but the weather is set fair, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

Mike Atherton, newly awarded the OBE, leads England in a Test for the 42nd time, passing Peter May's great record, and he may be on the point of reaping what would be the most satisfying reward for his fortitude during the largely barren four years since he took over from a defeated Graham Gooch after four of the six Tests of the 1993 series.

England have won only 11 of the 41 games since, but it is the fact that they have won three in succession which accounts now for the mood of national optimism and, more relevant, their own self-belief. Fit, focused and playing as a genuine team, they bowled Australia out for 118 at Edgbaston in conditions suiting swing and seam bowling, then capitalised formidably well with the bat.

Darren Gough, though his figures of six for 169 do not necessarily suggest it, proved finally to be the match-winner and if, as is more likely than not, he bowls as well here, this Test will be won for England too and the Ashes will be on their way home.

The fact that the draw is odds-on favourite is due to the imminence of what one weather forecaster yesterday called the north European monsoon. If it falls less heavily than expected, the conditions should again be to England's advantage, but the arrival of Paul Reiffel to fill the place he should clearly have occupied in the Australian team in the first place, evens the scales somewhat.

Shane Warne, too, now has 20 wickets in his bag on the tour and this is a ground where England have often been embarrassed by leg-spinners, not least by Mushtaq Ahmed last year.

England's defeat of the West Indies here two years ago, inspired by Dominic Cork, laid the Lord's bogey, but a victory over Australia during the next five days would still fly in the face of history. A tired statistic it may be, but true nonetheless, that they have lost to England here only once this century - and that only because it rained overnight and Hedley Verity took his immortal 14 wickets in a day.

How the English cricket enthusiast loves these famous pieces of bowling against Australia: since the war it is Laker, in 1956, and Willis, in 1981, whose individual performances stand out like beacons in a rather bleak sea.

When it comes to matches at Lord's, however, Australians have ample heroes of their own. Laker, for example, may have dominated them throughout 1956 but in the second Test it was Keith Miller, who took 10 wickets for 152. He will be here for the match again, frail of body but unquenchable of spirit, and so will Bill Brown, who made 105 in the 1934 game before Verity prevailed. The scorecard is in the Lord's museum, along with a beautiful exhibition of cricket art, which is the place to go if it rains. England in their present mood should not feel the weight of history. Their job is to maintain the momentum gained in the one-day internationals and marvellously sustained at Edgbaston. Bowling a length in swinging conditions was the key to success there and it surely will be again here on a pitch which has dried out well over the last 48 hours.

Mark Taylor said yesterday that the cloud cover this morning would have to be very heavy if he were not to bat first should he win the toss again, especially as the surface cracks on the pitch suggest help for spin bowlers later in the game.

The probability of cloudy skies, however, makes it likely that Phil Tufnell will again be left out by England. He and Peter Such had very ineffective games here four years ago.

The really attacking option, perhaps, would be to omit Mark Ealham and play Tufnell in his place, but this would leave a long tail after Robert Croft at eight and Ealham, bowling at his best (which he certainly did not in the first Test, despite his burst of wickets at the end), should be capable of prod- ucing the tidy, containing spells which Atherton may well need when the sun comes out and if the pitch is comfortable as it looks.

Relaid with Boughton loam, a soil which tends to promise spinners more than it delivers because the cracks stay firm, it was first used by Middlesex in 1995. Tufnell did take five wickets in the game but as their opponents, Sussex, were at a low ebb at the time and Middlesex had scored 602 for seven declared, the precedent may be apt only to warn the captain winning the toss against putting the opposition in. It was cloudy on the first day of that match, too, and Middlesex made 415 for two by its close.

There were only two doubts about the all-round excellence of England's performance in the first Test. One was Mark Butcher's modest start, the other the lack of a bowler like Angus Fraser to bowl a reliable line and length when conditions eased for batting in Australia's second innings.

Paul Reiffel is essentially a Fraser-style seam bowler, reliable but no great swinger of the ball. Apart from his nine wickets at eight runs in the last week, he may be fortified by the way that Fraser joined the last Ashes series as a replacement and almost bowled England to victory at Sydney.

Day 1

Wash-out fails to cloud England's optimistic outlook

THE first total abandonment of a day's Test cricket between England and Australia at Lord's for more than 30 years has interrupted the exciting momentum of the season but it will take more than this to dampen the new mood of progress, at least as far as the England Cricket Board is concerned, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

They pressed ahead yesterday with two new appointments and their chairman, Lord MacLaurin, suggested that only 15 per cent of his vision for the future has yet come to pass.

Nonetheless, it is sad when this of all Test matches is ruined by the weather. The arrival of the north European monsoon, although the rain was more persistent than heavy, did more than spoil the day for those who waited in great good humour beneath their umbrellas until the inevitable decision was conveyed to them at 5pm. It was expensive for the authorities and also, in all probability, damaging to England's chances of winning and taking a 2-0 series lead.

The 28,000 ticket holders will get all their money back, at a cost to the ECB of £650,000, which is a setback following the record receipts of £1.6 million from four days' cricket at Edgbaston. The Lord's caterers did good business, of course - one estimate was that 1,800 bottles of champagne were consumed by the 3,100 guests in hospitality boxes alone - but the disappointment for those who had come to watch cricket and to be part of a great occasion is unquantifiable. The last ticket was sold on March 1 and for many Australians, visiting specially for this event, the anticipation had no doubt lasted longer than three months.

This is the first loss of a full day at Lord's since the series against the West Indies in 1991, and although Australia have gone 18 largely rain-free Tests without a single draw it looks as though this game will break the sequence. On the other hand, once the action does start, batting is bound to be tricky. The toss-winning captain will surely field first and expect the ball to swing and seam about.

If the captain in question is Mike Atherton this would be an expression of the bullish mood in the England camp which has spread since Lord MacLaurin and Tim Lamb, the ECB's chief executive, visited Zimbabwe early last January and, at the nadir of the winter tour, effectively vowed, like Monty in the desert: "Thus far and no further".

Press relations were identified as part of the problem and a new media relations officer, Brian Murgatroyd, a cricket enthusiast who has recently worked for Sky Television, has just been appointed. In addition it was announced yesterday that Bob Bennett, chairman of the England committee, would manage the team in the West Indies after Christmas with David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, taking that role for the one-day tournament in Sharjah in December and for a warm-up week for that event in Lahore.

All this will be preceded by a week on Lanzarote which both the England and England A teams will attend, partly to get fit, partly to continue the sort of team-bonding and character-building exercises undertaken by them at a management trainee centre in Oxfordshire in April. This is what MacLaurin was referring to when he said that only 15 per cent of what he called the business plan had yet been completed.

"We still have to prepare the 15 and 17 and 19-year-old players for possible futures as England players with all that entails," he said. "Since Tim and I talked to the players in Harare they have become more comfortable with themselves and more comfortable with us. They know we are 100 per cent behind them. It's about caring and sharing experiences; individual contacts; man-management. It is the players who take all the credit, though. They have responded magnificently. It was the players who broke Aussie hearts at Edgbaston. They bowled like demons and fielded like dervishes."

They all received a bottle of champagne from the board after that match and the chairman wrote to each man to congratulate them for their success in the one-day internationals.

The chairman said it was inevitable England players would in future be contracted by the board and added that even if they had total success against Australia this summer the domestic structure would have to change. By Aug 5 the 'Strategic Plan for Cricket' will have to be published for debate among county and club cricketers. There will be a national cricket centre and, whichever of the various plans for county cricket is proposed, it is certain that those working on the blueprint will strongly recommend a top league in each of the 38 counties, playing two-day matches under Australian grade rules.

Day 2

England face uphill struggle after McGrath learns lesson

THE boot was on the other foot when the second Test started 24 hours late at Lord's yesterday but Australia's rapid incursions into England's first innings were brought to an abrupt end by the return of the rain after 92 minutes of a morning session of biting intensity. The new electronic scoreboard on the half-finished Grandstand beamed out 38 for three for the rest of a grey and bleak afternoon, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

For spectators, the England and Wales Cricket Board, the game of cricket generally and the Australian team in particular the bad weather was rotten luck, but, for the second day running the weather forecasters had left no one in doubt about what was in store.

Anything other than a draw now becomes a remote possibility but it cannot yet be guaranteed, such was the difficulty of batting under heavy clouds with the new ball swinging and zipping about off the seam like a cursor on a state of-the-art computer.

Nasser Hussain and Graham Thorpe were fighting for survival with much skill when the rain came, against Australian fast bowlers who showed that they had rapidly absorbed the lessons of Edgbaston. Glenn McGrath bowled a spell of 10 overs from the Pavilion End which was menacing from first ball to last. He took three wickets and came close to a fourth, but Ian Healy, to his credit, admitted to the umpires that he was uncertain whether he had caught Graham Thorpe cleanly from the first ball he received.

The replays confirmed that he had not and since the umpires, David Shepherd at the bowler's end and Srini Venkataraghavan at square-leg, were in any case in doubt - as Shepherd later confirmed - he lost nothing by his honesty. On the contrary, by rising above the self-interest of the moment he did his own reputation, not hitherto a blameless one, much good.

The all-seeing cameras once suggested that he had stumped Brian Lara unfairly at Sydney and only a few months ago he was suspended in South Africa for losing his temper in public after a dubious decision against him, but he is a cricketer of immense commitment, utterly dedicated to his profession, and it is not easy sometimes for red-headed zealots to rein themselves in.

Yesterday, as slips and gullies debated whether the ball had carried and the umpires met in the middle, he trotted up to the umpires like a schoolboy bravely owning up to the teachers. "I told Shep I was not sure," he said later, and the headmaster led the public applause for a gesture which will in a few seconds have undone much of the damage dealt to the public perception of cricket by displays of excessive aggression and dishonest appealing.

In a nutshell, Healy did the right thing. Unwittingly, he was in harmony with the MCC secretary's public request to the crowd before play started to observe the spirit of the game.

McGrath's three wickets, the reward for high-class bowling in very helpful conditions, proved that he has appreciated the main reason for being outbowled by his England counterparts in the first Test. He pitched the ball up a further foot and immediately had Mark Butcher in desperate trouble. Given the new ball at the Nursery End, Paul Reiffel was no less dangerous, merely less fortunate. The only surprise was that it was not until the seventh over that Butcher succumbed, to an inside edge to short-leg by way of his front pad.

Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart followed in McGrath's next two overs, the captain caught low to the right at first slip before Stewart, like so many before him, misjudged the effect of the slope and lost his off stump as he shouldered arms.

Remarkably enough, David Lloyd, the coach, admitted that after much debate England would have batted in any case because they did not trust the cracked pitch. That would surely have been a mistake in the moist atmosphere, one last made by New Zealand's now fallen captain Lee Germon four months ago at Wellington.

Because only 21 overs were possible, yesterday's ticket-holders will get half their money back, less a 90p handling charge. The paper cost to the ECB so far is £900,000. They are insured, but the damage will come in increased premiums next year.

Day 3

Cautious England hit a low

By Scyld Berry

Australia (131-2) lead England (77) by 54 runs

BEFORE the start of a momentous third day, which England must hope is far from being the shape of this series to come, MCC's secretary Roger Knight called on the crowd to be sporting. The pitch must have overheard. On it England were dismissed for 77 runs, and the rain will have to be torrential if they are not to lose their 1-0 lead over Australia.

There is not only a record low in the weather over Europe but in the bounce at Lord's. The degree of it would be just about acceptable in the fifth-day pitch but not so early in the game as its first 50 overs. This one was dug up in 1993, but whereas a bonne viveuse like Mae West might assert that there is a lot to be said for being relaid, there have been no discernable benefits for England here.

It was England's lowest total at Lord's since 1888, during which interim they have suffered several nadirs at their premier ground. Call it the Tomaszewski Effect, for once again a visitor was inspired at the game's ritual home, as Poland's goalkeeper once was at Wembley.

Glenn McGrath's figures of eight for 38 were not only his finest but also the best of any Australian at Lord's in 31 Tests. He supplied the perfect trajectory, line and length, while the pitch supplied the movement in both the vertical and lateral planes. Not too much either of the latter: sufficient to take the edge rather than to miss the bat.

It is not entirely a coincidence that McGrath's figures have not been bettered here, not even by Bob Massie in 1972, and only twice before by an Australian bowler. Bowlers of the past have not generally been so tall, and it was the height from which the New South Walian delivered the ball that made the most of this under prepared pitch. Of contemporary bowlers, only Curtly Ambrose could have bowled better, and perhaps only Courtney Walsh, of equal altitude, as well.

If the combination of a tall bowler and inconsistent bounce was similar to that at Port of Spain when England were dismissed for 46, so too was the approach in the face of such formidableness. West Indies captain Richie Richardson's criticism about England's lack of stroke play was again applicable.

In trouble at Edgbaston when the ball had swung, the Australians had hit out and scored 19 fours in the space of 31.5 overs as they were bowled out for 118. In trouble at Lord's when the ball swung on Friday, seamed yesterday and bounced irregularly throughout, England's reaction was defensive: they hit 10 fours in 42.3 overs.

It was indicative that the Australian captain, Mark Taylor, never had to consider a third man: his bowlers did not drop short on this occasion and England did not go for their strokes. Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain played their natural game, but Alec Stewart did not. Mark Butcher at present has not much of the game at all, and the tenor was soon set.

England, in their second innings, will have to be more vigorous, however brilliantly McGrath may bowl. In their first innings they tried to sit on their lead, playing for lunch and rain on Friday, aiming to survive as their priority, but Test cricket does not work that way. Use the initiative, or lose it.

It had been assumed that England's overnight score of 38 for three constituted a poor start, yet soon it was looking relatively good. The cloud was high initially, but descended far enough for 15 minutes to be lost midway through the morning session. For England it made no respite as McGrath and Paul Reiffel were able to go through the session unchanged, and Hussain was out to the first ball after the resumption.

For 73 balls, Hussain batted as well as at Edgbaston, if not more finely. Lighter on his feet than any of his colleagues, as he should be with a ballerina for a sister, he moved into line quicker and played back further, moving his back foot across too far when he was lbw. His innings was beginning to rank in Ashes history with some of those by Hobbs and Hutton on sticky wickets.

Graham Thorpe was out as Butcher had been, edging on to his pad, and John Crawley rather as Atherton had been, to McGrath from the pavilion end. Crawley was actually late into his stroke, whether apprehensive about batting in these conditions or about keeping wicket, as he later had to do owing to spasms in Stewart's back. He outside-edged the ball even though it came into him down the slope.

Starting with Hussain, McGrath took five wickets for 12 runs from 34 balls, a spell worthy of Spofforth or Lillee, but delivered without their ferocious mien and all the more effective for that. When ruffled at Edgbaston McGrath had pitched ever shorter but here he did not allow himself to be. He kept landing the ball not so much in the corridor of uncertainty but of total perturbation.

Darren Gough and Robert Croft had the right idea in attacking, but there is not as much Welsh steel as there used to be and Gough was never in control of his hook. Mark Ealham spooned Reiffel to mid-on. It is rare that Shane Warne spells relief, but he would have now.

Neither Gough nor Devon Malcolm could replicate the trajectory of McGrath, and after 45 minutes lost to rain after lunch, the sun came out for an hour or so. Elliott took a quick single or two, Greg Blewett hit some drives as if the pitch had become a belter. At least England succeeded in luring Taylor into a front-foot off-drive - inside edge catapulted his middle stump out - but when Caddick, bowling into a strong wind, produced a lifter, Butcher was too frozen to back-pedal and Blewett escaped.

In 1995 at Edgbaston England were destroyed by the West Indian fast bowlers yet came back to win the next Test and share the series. They will have to bounce back with similar force at Old Trafford in the Third Test if it is beyond them in their second innings against McGrath here.

Day 4

Grateful Elliott cashes in

THERE may have been a mere 103 completed overs in the second Test so far, but England have only themselves to blame that they face a highly hazardous final day today to save the game and keep their 1-0 lead, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins

Superlative fielding was at the heart of their defeat of Australia at Edgbaston; this time a series of errors ruined their chances of getting the second match back on an even keel and Matthew Elliott rode his luck to make an admirable maiden Test hundred in the gloaming yesterday.

Completed at 6.50 on a dank evening and in gloomy light, his 112 was more than an innings he will never forget. After Glenn McGrath's eight for 38, the second best analysis by any bowler in a Lord's Test, it has given Australia, who lead by 136, every chance of winning today if weather permits.

The forecast was for a slightly brighter day but for more cloud and perhaps showers. The moist atmosphere will continue to make batting extremely difficult and Australia hold all the aces.

In 17 overs and four balls last night after play had started at 5.40, they added 82 at a run a minute, and in the second of two brief sessions they did so against some rather dumb bowling. They lost five wickets in the process, four of them to Andrew Caddick in a spell of 8.4-2-30-4, but Elliott, given licence to attack, played a succession of thumping drives through extra-cover and many a resounding hook too. He added 11 fours to the nine for which he had battled on Saturday afternoon before he eventually fell to the hook shot he plays with such compulsive relish.

The Australians threw their bats in an effort to build on their overnight lead of 54 with eight first-innings wickets in hand, and this time the catches stuck. But after another shower Caddick and especially Darren Gough, hitherto a nasty proposition, bowled too short to defensive fields and Elliott, with Ian Healy's canny support, cashed in gratefully.

Australia had benefited on Saturday from no fewer than five dropped catches, two off-target throws at the stumps when batsmen were out of their ground and a theoretical missed leg-side stumping. But for the most of yesterday they had to sit on their lead.

A thunderstorm at 10.30 made sure there would be no play before lunch and John Jameson, the former Warwickshire and England batsman and now MCC cricket secretary, was lucky to escape injury when his MCC brolly was struck by lightning. Showers throughout the afternoon only teased a remarkably patient crowd and wearied the hard-working groundstaff.

Mark Taylor may delay his declaration for a while this morning before trying to bowl out England a second time on the relaid pitch. The weather has exaggerated the problems but after the NatWest final last year, when batting on a cloudy day was almost a lottery, Mick Hunt and his team have had another severe trial. There would undoubtedly have been far more runs scored under clear skies and in a dry atmosphere but a cracked pitch after a wet spell is not easy to understand.

McGrath and Paul Reiffel, who bowled almost as well as the hero from the less awkward Nursery End, will be the danger men again today, with Shane Warne available to play further on the batsmen's nerves. McGrath was less unplayable than Ian Botham when he swung the ball both ways at pace to destroy a talented Pakistan team with eight for 34 at the very peak of his bowling graph in 1978, but the probing off-stump line and perfect length of this clean-cut country boy made the most of ideal conditions for a bowler of his type. Lean as a greyhound and shrewd as a politician in his variations of pace, he added five more wickets for 17 in 10.5 overs on Saturday to the three he had picked up in the brief session the previous day.

He keeps it all so simple, running in straight, using his full height in a balanced, rhythmical action, delivering from very close to the stumps and moving away from the danger area after an equally straight follow-through. Truly he is a model bowler and this was a well-earned triumph.

He put his improvement since Edgbaston down to finding his form in the two intervening county matches after a start to the tour dominated by one-day matches. That should be a lesson to those who plan tour itineraries. (The South Africans have asked for only one four-day match between Tests next year). McGrath added that he had returned to his basic checklist, slowing down his run-up and "attacking the crease", in addition, of course, to sticking patiently to an off-stump line.

Whatever the outcome today, it is abundantly clear that the honeymoon period is over for England. If they pull themselves out of their accident-prone mood of Saturday they are still capable of proving themselves to be at least the equals of their opponents but McGrath is now into his stride and that goes for the Australian team as a whole.

Reiffel has made all the difference to the nature of their opening attack. There will be no respite from now onwards; no loose balls from these two; and when Jason Gillespie adds the additional weapon of raw pace, as he probably will from the third Test onwards, there will be more durable bricks for Warne to build upon. When the whole series comes to be reviewed the toss of the coin at both Edgbaston and Lord's may be seen to have been crucial to the issue.

If England had batted first in Birmingham as they had intended, they probably would not have won. Equally, if they had fielded here - although, amazingly, they were contemplating batting - it is hard to believe that they would not rapidly have undermined the Australian batting. The early-season force would still have been with them and the catches would probably have stuck in a way that they did not in the aftermath of their batting collapse.

Day 5

Second Cornhill Test: Atherton leads from the front in rearguard action

CLEARER weather gave Australia six full hours to try to finish off England in the second Test yesterday but it also made batting a much less perilous business, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

A noble opening stand of 162, which held the home fort for the first 56 overs of a day interrupted only by the briefest of showers before tea, made it certain that the game would be saved. For as long as Mike Atherton occupied the middle with cool determination and immaculate technique there was little danger to his team. It was Australia's first drawn match in 19 Tests.

When Atherton was out in a manner almost as unusual as the poignant run-out which deprived him of a deserved hundred against Australia at Lord's four years ago, other wickets soon fell, but Mark Butcher battled for 4.5 hours for an innings of 87 which well and truly launched his Test career and in the belated evening sunshine John Crawley also took the chance, following his remarkably able performance as Alec Stewart's stand-in behind the stumps on Saturday, to score his first significant runs of the series.

He and Graham Thorpe, who finished the match on an equally positive note, are placed at five and six largely to try to counter Shane Warne, against whom they are reckoned to be England's most effective players. That Warne caught and bowled Nasser Hussain from a leg-break and then deprived Butcher of the looming possibility of a century with a ball that spun sharply past a drive and through the gate, may be of significance for the remainder of the series.

Whether he bowled over or round the wicket, however, Crawley and Thorpe played Warne confidently. They dealt equally capably with the final thrusts from the man of the match, Glenn McGrath, before Atherton declared with a lead of 130 and England's honour, if not their supremacy, restored.

By the time that he was out five overs after tea, Butcher had made certain of a third Test cap at Old Trafford and ensured that Australia will still be one behind when the third of the six matches begins on Thursday week. He was as timorous as a bather hovering beside a cold sea in the first hour of the morning, but that was not surprising. Three short innings and a handful of missed chances close to the wicket during his first two Test matches had played on his nerves and at first yesterday the new ball darted about and bounced unevenly after Mark Taylor's overnight declaration.

Dark clouds still hovered and dark possibilities, too, of another England collapse, but Atherton showed early that he would not simply concentrate on defence when he cover-drove McGrath handsomely for four. It was a bold stroke, because the ball was wide, and not a true half-volley but it was symbolic, too. Soon after, Australia missed their only chance of the morning when Butcher, then only two, was missed by Taylor low to his left at first slip off Michael Kasprowicz. Eight overs later, the 14th, Butcher looked perilously close to leg before, again to Kasprowicz, the ball this time swinging the other way and into his pads.

He survived to make 24 of England's 70 before lunch, increasingly secure and through the afternoon he began to unveil the cover and straight drives which have made his reputation. Atherton, meanwhile, was in his element, with a whole day to bat and a match to be saved for England. He is playing with his left shoulder sideways-on to the bowler for much longer than he was last year and he was seldom in trouble on a pitch playing much more comfortably than might have been expected. It is one of the truisms of cricket, especially in England, that batting is easier when the sun shines.

The occasional ball kept low and a good many more hit the splice when one of the three fast bowlers dug it in, but virtually the only anxious moment for Atherton came when the total was 80 and his own score 41. McGrath, during a major effort after lunch from the Pavilion End, thought that he had brushed a glove with a lifter but in fact it had only touched the captain's shirt as he pulled his arms inside the line.

Atherton's elusive Lord's century was looking increasingly likely when Kasprowicz, during a typically wholehearted spell, forced him back with a ball lifting to his ribs and his back foot disturbed the base of the leg-stump as he glanced.

Warne's wickets followed a briefly imposing innings by Stewart after tea which ended when he top-edged a hook at McGrath and was caught at long-leg. It is the second time in four innings that he has fallen to the hook and, like Matthew Elliott, he can expect many more invitations.

The final session, indeed, was all about point-scoring for the rest of the series. England remain one up, perhaps having got their one bad match out of their system. To say that Australia would probably have won had there been no interruptions after the rained-off first day might be right in one sense because any side out for 77 in 42 overs is likely to lose; on the other hand it was the damp air and fresh pitch which enabled Glenn McGrath to produce his famous bowling figures.

It was excellent bowling in very helpful conditions, rather than bad batting, which gave Australia the whip hand but what followed in the field was less easy to explain. Dropping five catches and missing two run-outs was a negation of all that they had done right in the field at Edgbaston.

The best of sides have bad days. They also recover from them, and this is what England achieved here, albeit in a game which most of the team will quickly be happy to forget.

Contributed by The Management (help@cricinfo.com)