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Chris Rogers and Ben Hilfenhaus, two players who could well be part of Australia’s Test team within a year, were rewarded for their outstanding domestic performances at Allan Border Medal night in Melbourne. Rogers was named State Player of the Year and Hilfenhaus, who made his ODI debut last month, was the Bradman Young Cricketer of the Year.Rogers beat his Western Australia team-mate Marcus North for his award, with Victoria’s Brad Hodge completing the batting-heavy top three. Hilfenhaus, with 97 votes, was streets ahead of his nearest competitor, Cullen Bailey, the South Australia legspinner, on 11 votes. Ed Cowan, the New South Wales opener, came in third.Rogers earned his title almost entirely based on Pura Cup performances. After a strong finish to the 2005-06 season, he opened this season with a cracking 279 against Victoria and during the voting period scored 1311 runs at 69.00. His four centuries and six half-centuries were enough to win him the award comfortably – with 48 votes he was 31 clear of North – despite his struggle to convert the same form to the limited-overs game.On top of his domestic form in Australia, Rogers collected an impressive 1352 runs in the 2006 county season for Northamptonshire, including his first-class best of 319. Rogers is likely to vie with Phil Jaques, who was last year’s State Player of the Year, to replace Justin Langer as Australia’s new Test opener. He said with Australia playing no Tests until November, his challenge would be to stay in form until that time. “[A baggy-green is] ten months away at least,” Rogers said. “It’s one of those things where you have to be doing the right things at the right time and hopefully I will be.”

Hilfenhaus’ win completed a stunning emergence on the first-class scene, from bricklayer to international cricketer, having only made his debut for Tasmania last season. He was so quick to make an impact that he was the leading wicket-taker amongst all state players during the voting period, with 75 scalps across both forms of the game. Hilfenhaus, 23, has proven himself to be a leading exponent of genuine swing bowling – often said to be a dying art – and was mentioned by Tim Nielsen, Australia’s incoming coach, as a player who could make a splash in the Australia team in the next couple of years.In a tight finish to the Women’s International Cricketer of the Year count, Lisa Sthalekar, the Australia vice-captain, edged out Karen Rolton, the skipper, by one vote. It was only the second time in six years Rolton has not won the title. Sthalekar starred in the only Test played during the voting period, making 72 and taking 5 for 30 as Australia hammered India by an innings and 4 runs at Adelaide. She also made 241 ODI runs at 34.43 claimed six wickets at 33.00.

Success breeds success in international sport. The England camp is a much more relaxed place now that the team is back to winning ways. The players have their families in tow and have taken over a marina on the northern side of Napier, where the third and final Test gets underway on Saturday. According to Paul Collingwood, the confidence gained from their 126-run victory in Wellington on Monday has reinstalled them as series favourites. “If we put in the performance we can do,” said Collingwood, “we should win.”England’s Wellington win was not without its flaws. Their catching was appalling and the top six batsmen once again made starts without threatening to build a big innings. But, having endured nine barren months since their last Test victory against West Indies in Chester-le-Street, Collingwood was content to be thankful for small mercies. “We still have areas to improve on, but we’d have taken that performance at the start,” he said. “We have a hell of a lot of positives to take into the next game.”It was a massive relief, and great to win,” said Collingwood, who joked that there’d been a few cobwebs gathering on the team’s victory song-sheet. “That’s what we play the game for. We’d gone a long time without a Test win so that starts preying on your mind, but I’m used to that over the years with Durham. It’s just one of those things. You’ve got to be confident in your ability to put in the big performances. You have to back yourself to go out there and do that, and there were some top performances last week.”Most of those performances, however, came at the bottom end of the team sheet. Tim Ambrose’s debut century was the stand-out batting performance, while the three seamers – James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Ryan Sidebottom – all excelled in helpful conditions. Collingwood was the pick of England’s specialist batsmen with a brace of half-centuries, but he knows full well that, on what is expected to be a flat and friendly track, the watching public will be expecting some centuries this week.Collingwood, however, warned that the more an issue was made of England’s lack of hundreds, the harder it would be to end the drought. “You can put too much pressure on yourself,” he explained. “You play your best cricket when you’re relaxed and reacting to the ball, and enjoying yourself with a smile on your face. You play your worst when you think ‘I must do this, I can’t do that.’ That’s when you start doing things wrong. If you say ‘I mustn’t drop short because he’ll smash it,’ that’s what you end up doing. That’s how life works, on a cricket pitch anyway.”Of the top six, only Alastair Cook has managed three figures this winter, and that innings came in a dead rubber at Galle before Christmas. Collingwood himself hasn’t made a Test hundred since June, while Kevin Pietersen – normally so dominant – has gone 10 consecutive innings without so much as a fifty. “We’re just one big ton away from opening the floodgates again,” said Collingwood. “It’s up to one of us to go out there and do that.”Apart from the reintroduction of Andrew Strauss at the expense of Ravi Bopara (and the odd rejig in the batting order), England’s top six has been unchanged since the Headingley Test last May, a situation that contrasts starkly with the treatment meted out to Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard after their failures in the first Test. But Collingwood denied that the players were stuck in the comfort zone.

“With the records they have, they’ve proved they can play against different bowlers and in different conditions,” said Collingwood. “We’ve come up against some good bowling, certainly in the India series [in July and August] when they were swinging it both ways, and in Sri Lanka, which is a difficult place to score hundreds. I wouldn’t put it down to desire or concentration or anything like that. We believe we are better players than that.”Owais Shah is England’s reserve batsman in this series, but he was overlooked for Bopara in Sri Lanka, and seems to have slipped further down the pecking order without actually doing anything right or wrong. “Nobody’s position is safe, but that’s always been the case,” said Collingwood. “There’s always going to be people waiting in the wings, and you need to do your job in the England side or your position is in doubt. That’s healthy for the England cricket team. As long as we win Test matches, hopefully we’ll stick together as a batting unit and keep developing in different conditions.”Looking ahead to the Napier Test, Collingwood hinted that England’s approach with the bat would be more purposeful, but stopped short of promising a run-fest. “We’ll score as quickly as we feel we can without taking a risk, that’s generally what we’ve tried to do,” he said. “The first goal is to get 400 on the board to put pressure on the opposition. How quickly we score them goes down to how well they bowl at us. We’re not going to be reckless and go out and say we’ll score at four and a half an over. The pitch dictates that.”I wouldn’t say there’s more pressure than usual,” he said. “It wasn’t going to be a canter coming over here. They bat right down to Nos. 7 and 8 and they’ve got a lot of skill in the bowling, so they are a tough side to beat. We were expected to come over here and steamroller them, but that wasn’t the kind of thoughts in our minds. We knew we’d have to play well and play tough cricket, and we got well beaten in the first game.”

It has emerged that Craig Overton, the Somerset allrounder who was banned for two games at the end of last season after accumulating nine penalty points, allegedly told Sussex’s Ashar Zaidi to “go back to your own f***ing country”.Overton denied the claims – made by umpire Alex Wharf and Zaidi’s team-mate Michael Yardy – but was charged with a Level One offence for “using language that is obscene, offensive or insulting and/or making an obscene gesture” during Somerset’s Championship fixture at Hove in September. He subsequently missed the final game of the season and still has one match left to serve.The decision by the ECB’s Cricket Discipline Commission to pursue the lowest level of offence, reported by the , contrasts with its handling of the case involving Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale in 2014. Gale was given a further two-match ban after using the term “Kolpak” when arguing with Lancashire’s Ashwell Prince; while batting in a Championship match at Old Trafford, Gale told Prince to “f*** off back to your country you Kolpak f***er”.A Level Two charge was initially brought against Gale by the umpires, resulting in a two-match ban, and he was then given a further punishment by the CDC for bringing the game into disrepute. Gale missed the match at Trent Bridge in which Yorkshire clinched the title and was also barred from lifting the trophy.Overton, who was named in the England Performance Programme the same month, escaped a similar fate. He was spoken to at the time by Wharf and the other standing umpire, Ian Gould, along with ECB cricket liaison officer Graham Cowdrey and Somerset’s head coach, Matthew Maynard. Overton subsequently played no further part in the game, with the club saying he had suffered a hand injury.On Thursday evening, Jason Gillespie, Yorkshire’s head coach, indicated the club had questions for the ECB. “There is a strong chance that @YorkshireCCC will be seeking clarification on this,” he wrote on Twitter. Gale, meanwhile, tweeted a link to the Guardian, saying: “Interesting article, take a read…”The ECB has rejected any suggestion of impropriety in the process concerning Overton, stressing that the CDC is “an independent body which operates at arm’s length”.The governing body said in a statement: “Following the incident, the on-field umpires sought advice from the ECB’s Cricket Department who referred the matter directly to the Chairman of the Cricket Discipline Commission, Mr Gerard Elias, QC.”After reviewing the umpires’ report, the Chairman of the CDC gave clear guidance that this should be reported as a Level One offence and no further action should be taken. The automatic penalty for a Level One offence was subsequently applied and this took Craig Overton to nine points, the threshold for an automatic suspension.”The Cricket Discipline Commission is an independent body which operates at arm’s length from ECB. Craig Overton’s selection for the EPP squad would have played no part whatsoever in the CDC’s ruling in this matter.”ECB refutes any suggestion of interference or bias in the proper disciplinary process.”Zaidi, who was born in Pakistan but played for Sussex using a British passport, is understood not to have heard the comment directed towards him. It was included in reports made by Wharf and Yardy, who was standing at the non-striker’s end, afterwards.After submissions were made by all parties, the CDC brought a Level One charge against Overton, which, as his third breach of the season, triggered an automatic ban.According to the ECB’s regulations, a Level Three charge covers “using language or gesture that offends, insults, humiliates, intimidates, threatens, disparages or vilifies another person on the basis of that person’s race, religion or belief, colour, descent, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, gender, sexual orientation or background”.Overton and his twin brother Jamie have been identified as England stars of the future. Both were called up to the ODI squad during the summer and Jamie is currently involved with the Lions’ T20 series with Pakistan A in the UAE.

Australia captain Pat Cummins has conceded he is unlikely to feature in the Boxing Day Test and may not play again in the series after his team was able to secure a “pretty amazing” Ashes victory in Adelaide to retain the urn in just 11 days of playing time.For Cummins, who claimed six wickets in the match, it was his first game for five-and-a-half months as he recovered from a back injury and while he said he came through the game well back-to-back Tests was always unlikely for him.”I’m feeling really good, [but] as for the rest of the series we’ll wait and see,” he said. “We had a pretty aggressive build-up knowing that it’s the Ashes there to be won and we thought that was worth it. Now that the series has been won, there might be a sense of job’s done and let’s reassess the risk.Related

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“We’ll work it out over the next couple of days, I doubt I’ll be playing Melbourne, and then we’ll have a chat about Sydney. But certainly before the series it was, while the series was live, let’s take on the risk and have a crack at it, now it’s done, I think we’ll need to have a chat about it.”Jamie Smith and Will Jacks raised the slim prospect of a remarkable England chase on the final day in Adelaide but Australia always had runs in the bank, although had to contend with the loss of Nathan Lyon to what looked like a series-ending hamstring injury.However, Mitchell Starc claimed three wickets on the final day – the vital one of Jacks courtesy of a spectacular catch at first slip by Marnus Labuschagne – and Scott Boland closed out the match.”It feels pretty awesome. Yeah, amazing,” Cummins said at the presentation. “It’s a series we’ve been thinking about for a long time. It wasn’t easy today, but we got it done. It’s a pretty excited changing room in there.”The relentlessness of Australia’s attack stood out throughout the game, while the fielding was superb and Alex Carey produced another masterclass behind the stumps.”I think that’s when we’re at our best, this cricket team,” Cummins said about maintaining the pressure on England. “You can’t really rush things here in Australia. I think you kind of will it to happen, but it doesn’t really work that way. It’s good old-fashioned grind a lot of the time. I loved the toil from all the guys today. It got a little bit closer than I would have liked, but I’m pretty happy.”He also praised the way his team responded to various challenges that came their way, including the loss of Lyon. “I think that’s one of the things I’m most proud about in this group,” he said. “Nothing ever really happens perfectly, there’s always something that gets thrown up.”Over the last few years, this groups have shown [it can] just crack on. Even I missed the first couple of games, Steve stepped right in and it was smooth and seamless. There’s always things that crop up; Nathan Lyon doing his hammy with a couple of hours left today.”The boys just go, okay, that’s happened. Let’s crack on. What’s next? I think that’s one of the big reasons why we’ve had our success over the last couple of years.”On his own comeback, he added: “The last two months have been a bit of a grind. [I gave] myself every chance, but it’s all worth it when you get days like this, packed crowd and retaining the Ashes.”

Ashley Giles, Warwickshire’s director of cricket, has expressed interest in signing Shaun Pollock, the South Africa allrounder who retired from international cricket on Friday.”We were a bit surprised at the timing of Shaun’s announcement,” Giles said, “but, of course, we would be interested in signing Shaun. I would hope that he would give us the first bite of the cherry. He has played for Warwickshire before and knows the club well.”He’s a world-class cricketer and would bring experience to our side. As a player, he is the complete package.”Warwickshire are close to signing Monde Zondeki, another South African fast bowler, and Giles admitted they would consider employing Pollock – who first played for Warwickshire in 1996 – as a Kolpak player.”We are quite a long way down the road with Monde, and it’s still possible he might play for us during the first half of the season and then be involved in South Africa’s tour of England,” Giles said. “If that was the case, we might consider signing Shaun as a Kolpak player but then not sign an overseas replacement.”Pollock left the Test arena with 421 victims, and bowed out on his home ground in Durban after South Africa’s 2-1 series win over West Indies. The forthcoming one-day series will be his last appearance for South Africa.

Jammu & Kashmir stormed into the knockout phase of the Ranji Trophywith a four wicket triumph over Himachal Pradesh in their final NorthZone league tie at the Maulana Azad Stadium in Jammu. J&K finishedthird in the zonal standings with 24 points from their five games,behind Punjab (40) and Delhi (29).The win was enabled by a sporting declaration from Himachal skipperAnurag Thakur who set the hosts a fourth innings target of 251 in 77overs. An invaluable 138 from opener Ranjit Bali helped J&K across thefinishing line with more than 13 overs to spare. It was a spectacularrecovery by J&K who trailed by 140 in the first innings, narrowlyavoiding the follow-on.Resuming at 55/4, Himachal declared just over ten overs into themorning. In that period they exactly doubled their score, losing twowickets in the process. The closure was applied at the fall of onedrop Rahul Panta for a run-a-ball 66 (4 fours, 2 sixes).A 131 run third wicket stand between Bali and Ashwini Gupta (43) putJ&K firmly on the road to victory. After the latter’s departure at193, Bali carried on unperturbed until he was bowled by Nischal Gaurjust sixteen runs short of victory. His 138 arrived from 180 balls andfeatured 14 fours and 4 sixes. J&K lost two more wickets before thewinning runs came in the 64th over.

The ICC-appointed team from the Africa Cricket Association is due to arrive in Nairobi on Friday to begin their investigations into the crisis which threatens the future of the game in Kenya. The four-man delegation is led by Peter Chingoka, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union and president of the ACA, and will be assisted by Percy Sonn, the ICC’s vice-president.”We have been told that we will meet the delegation twice on Saturday,” Sharad Ghai, the beleaguered chairman of the Kenyan Cricket Association told reporters. “We are ready to meet them and put our point across. We don’t have many things to discuss with them.”While Cricket Kenya, the body formed by the government to replace the KCA which has the backing of players, clubs and supporters, has not formally reacted to the ICC’s appointment of the ACA team, it is not thought to welcome the intervention.One local administrator explained that the ICC had been kept closely informed of the situation, and was aware of the long-standing problems concerning the KCA. He added that there was nothing else for the ACA to uncover and the whole exercise had the feel of the ICC wanting to be seen to do something rather than actually taking more decisive action.It is common knowledge that Jimmy Rayani, a former KCA chairman, has been trying to broker a deal which would enable some of the existing KCA officials to remain in office. But there is deep opposition within the cricketing community to a group that is seen as being responsible for the current parlous state of the game inside the country being allowed to retain any control. The feeling is that all the old guard needs to removed, and some senior officials within the ICC are known to share that view.The ICC’s decision to release US$54,000 to the KCA to enable it to meet its liabilities was also greeted with incredulity and anger. The KCA has no staff, no coaches and no players, and locals are bemused why the ICC decided to make the payment in the knowledge that it was unlikely to be used to promote the game but rather used to clear outstanding debts.

On the back of their match-winning performances with the ball, Dale Steyn and Brett Lee have broken into the top ten in the ICC player rankings for Test bowlers.Lee and Steyn jump into joint eighth position after their performances against Sri Lanka and New Zealand in the first of the coinciding two-Test contests being held in Australia and South Africa.Lee finished with figures of 8 for 112 at the Gabba, while Steyn bagged his first ten-wicket haul at The Wanderers as both their teams registered convincing victories. This is the first time the two bowlers have been placed in the top ten and they could move up further during the Tests beginning later this week in Hobart and Centurion.The other change in the top ten for Test bowlers is the advance of Stuart Clark to third place at the expense of Shane Bond, who dropped to fourth. Bond has been ruled out for at least four to six weeks after suffering an abdominal tear.Jacques Kallis’s continued run of prolific scores has seen him displace Mohammad Yousuf from the second position in the rankings for Test batsmen, one place behind Ricky Ponting. Kallis also extended his lead in the rankings for Test allrounders, where he is in first place ahead of Andrew Flintoff.

The bouncer that didn’t bounce
There was concern before the start of the match that this track, given the cracks, might just turn out to be dangerous to the physical well-being of the batsmen. Any such fears were dispelled when Ishant Sharma, bowling between 135-140ks, could get most of his deliveries to end up ankle high for Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who had come up a bit for him. Nothing summed the low bounce better than the attempted bouncer by Ishant in the fourth over. Dug in his own half, the ball came up till Neil McKenzie’s waist, who accepted the unwrapped gift from outside the off stump, and hit it past mid-on.How early is too early?
Given that Sreesanth and Ishant were spraying the new ball around in the first three or four overs, not utilising the low bounce, it was surprising that Dhoni took 47 minutes and eight overs before falling upon Harbhajan Singh. Perhaps he wanted the pacers to stay on until they created enough rough. But once Harbhajan came, he stayed. He bowled 15 overs without break, from No. 8 to 36, and came back on in the 50th. In all, the medium-pacers bowled 15 overs out of the first 50.The blow
Hashim Amla is usually a delicate batsman who doesn’t really rely on power for his runs. But the one shot he got down to give an almighty swing to, had lethal results. When he swept Harbjajan, the ball was headed only one way and that was smack into Sourav Ganguly at forward short leg. He showed superb reflexes to turn around, and that must have saved him as the ball struck him flush on the helmet. Ganguly went off for about a session, came back, and took a swirling skier at midwicket.Bailed out
Harbhajan, Jacques Kallis, and the bails seem to have started an interesting three-way relationship, which sometimes leaves Harbhajan frustrated and sometimes Kallis. After Harbhajan suffered from the bails that wouldn’t budge in Ahmedabad, Kallis suffered the agony this time. Moving back and across to a big off-break, Kallis would have thought he had done well to cover it, but the ball hit his thigh, then the back of his gloves, and then gently, cruelly on to the stumps. The bail fell this time.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
How they were out

Football’s truism – money alone can’t buy you a winning team – found its echo in cricket as the Mumbai Indians, the IPL’s most expensive franchise, lost their third consecutive game in a row to find themselves one place above the bottom of the table. They were outplayed by Kings XI Punjab, who secured their first win of the tournament with a fine team performance studded by some moments of individual brilliance.For all of that, this match had lots for the purist too, as it showed Test skills can be used to great effect in cricket’s newest format. Kumar Sangakkara used classical shots in his innings, while Piyush Chawla bowled attacking legspin to rattle the Mumbai batsmen and concede just 16 runs off four overs.At the toss, Harbhajan Singh explained the decision to field first by saying his side preferred chasing. But their pursuit of a competitive, though not impossible, target was crippled by wickets falling at regular intervals – six of them between the ninth and fifteenth overs – as the line-up, once again lacking Sachin Tendulkar, came up against some inspired Punjab bowling.Leading the line was Brett Lee, who conceded nine runs off his four overs as he mixed scorching pace with athleticism and exuberance to dismiss the Mumbai openers. After going past the 150kph-mark in his first over, he took a brilliant return catch in the next to remove Sanath Jayasuriya before running out Luke Ronchi off the following ball with a fluid diving throw even as the batsman chased after him a yard behind.More athleticism was on display as Yuvraj Singh plucked out a blinding one-handed catch by stretching to left at covers to dismiss Shaun Pollock.At the other end of the spectrum was the teenager Chawla, all twirls and swirls as he bowled Dwayne Bravo and Saurabh Tiwary with deliveries that stayed straight. His figures at the end read two for 16 runs off four, incredible for a spinner in Twenty20.The most consistent display of class and grace came earlier in the day, from Sangakkara. Though he missed getting a hundred, Sangakkara managed to overtake Brendon McCullum as the tournament’s leading run-scorer – and he did it in style.For his first scoring shot, a drive through extra-cover for four, he transferred his weight perfectly from back to front foot and then arrested his follow-through halfway through the shot. Out of place in such a setting, perhaps, but no one was complaining.He used his wrists to great effect; to reach his fifty – off 23 balls – with a cut-glide to point and to flick to fine leg. And the purists would have been delighted when he was joined by Mahela Jayawardene, who thrilled with an equally wrist-driven flick for six to fine leg. Jayawardene, though, didn’t stay for long, and was caught for 12 trying to sweep fine. Yuvraj matched them in grace with a six driven over long-on. The biggest six of the innings, though, was hit by Lee – he lifted a fuller delivery off Dhawal Kulkarni in the final over high in the sky over long-off.But barring Sangakkara, no other Punjab batsman built an innings of consequence – the next highest score was 18. Yet, if you look at their shots, Punjab’s batsmen look like they can entertain and deliver on a good day. Mumbai, on the other hand, will be desperately hoping Sachin Tendulkar is fit for their next match against Deccan Chargers on Sunday.