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Adam Shantry, the bowling allrounder who was released by Warwickshire at the end of the season, has signed a two-year contract with Glamorgan.”Adam has had limited opportunities in the past few seasons at first-eleven level,” Matthew Maynard, Glamorgan’s manager told the club’s website, “but from speaking to those who have played with, and against, him, Adam is a bowler with great potential.”His left-arm bowling will add further variety to our seam attack, and I’m delighted that Adam has agreed terms with us for the next couple of years.”It is Shantry’s third club in four years, after making his debut for Northamptonshire in 2003 before joining Warwickshire in 2005. Although his opportunities were limited at Edgbaston, he did impress with 5 for 49 against West Indies A in 2006.

Shane Warne, Hampshire’s captain, made clear his frustration over Kent’s lack of co-operation on the final day of the Championship match at The Rose Bowl.Warne, who is one of the most adventurous county captains, tried to agree a fourth-innings target with Robert Key after rain affected the first two days of the game.”There was a little bit of haggling going on but Keysy didn’t want to know,” said Warne. “We got down to 240 off 65 overs, but they still weren’t interested at all. If I was offered that I’d take it everywhere in the world – no matter what the ground was like – and there was a kiddies’ boundary out there as well.”In the end, Kent were left a far-from-demanding 225 in 48 overs after Warne declared Hampshire’s second innings on 176 for 6. That target was not agreed between the captains. In the end, bad light brought an early end to the match.Warne, however, was clearly irked. “I was disappointed that Kent weren’t really interested in anything – they wanted 60 overs to get 200. I thought we were the only side that really wanted to win the game. Right from ball one I thought they came here with the mentality, their body language and everything, to be very negative about the whole thing. I think they just wanted to come here and basically not lose.”This is not the first time that Warne has been less than impressed with Kent. Last September, he accused David Fulton, Key’s predecessor, of effectively handing Nottinghamshire the Championship title by agreeing to chase 420 at more than six an over. Nottinghamshire won the game, and with it the title, whereas any other result would have set up a decider against Hampshire.

Canada have named a 14-man squad for next week’s Americas Under-19regional tournament. They and Bermuda are expected to battle for theWorld Cup spot at stake.Thirteen of the players, including the captain Abishek Krishnamoorthy,are from Ontario, as is vice-captain Khrishna (Chris) Monohar.Jaskeerat Khalon from Alberta is the other member of the squad.Courtney Gonsalves has been coaching the players, assisted by AbdulMajeed and Pubudu Dassanayake. Most have trained in the GreaterToronto Area over the last two weeks, with Maple Leaf CC providingfacilities.Admission is free for all matches.Squad Abishek Krishnamoorthy (capt), Khrishna (Chris) Monohar,Rustrum Bhatti), Usman Iqbal, Riyazkhan Pathan, Arsalan Qadir, PratikPatel, Asif Manjra, Hasan Raza, Kevin James, Majid Usman, RuvinduGunasekera, Khusal Gangopadhyay (all Ontario) and Jaskeerat Khalon(Alberta)

Although still recovering from his recent heart bypass surgery, Reginald Pearman, the Bermuda president, has expressed his disappointment over his country’s three successive defeats to Kenya in the recent one-dayers.”Well as you can imagine I haven’t been much in touch with what went on in Kenya other than getting the news that we lost all three matches,” he told , “and of course that was news that was rather disappointing.”I feel that what the players have to realise is that they have to work harder to acclimatise themselves as quickly as possible when they go to play in other countries. They have to realise that they are on the big stage now and must be prepared for whatever hurdles are placed in front of them.”

El James, the former board president, echoed Pearman’s comments while adding that a level of understanding was needed by the public and media.”The local cricket fraternity has to remember that we are going through something we have never experienced before, the players are going to strange countries far from home, leaving their friends, families and loved ones and eating new foods, adjusting to new surroundings and playing on wickets that are different,” James said, responding to comments made last week by Martin Williamson, Cricinfo’s Managing Editor.”It’s a huge adjustment to their whole lives and it takes a while for them to settle down and deal with these changes – so to be honest it’s unfortunate when a harsh judgement is made,” he said. “We actually need to turn our game around, especially when the thinking of some in the world is that we are going in the opposite direction after qualifying for the World Cup.”We need match-winners – look at Kenya’s Steve Tikolo – he was always playing a spear-header’s role and in return who did we have – nobody really.”We lack a match-winner in bowling and batting, nobody is a threat in these respective departments and this is not good. If we had one or two individuals who can come up with a century and a few fifties and a couple of bowlers who can capture several scalps in a game on a consistent basis then we could look forward to a few successful results. But without any semblance of consistency it’s only going to get harder.”Meanwhile the assistant coach, Herbie Bascome, insists the players desperately need to toughen their resolve mentally if they are to find success.”I definitely feel this team has much more to offer than we’re offering now,” he said. “But what’s happened may have a lot to do with coming to Africa, a different environment, a different culture, because we’re getting more experiences than just cricket,” he said. “The cricket is at the highest level but when you come to Africa you’re coming to a place where you’ve always wanted to visit because you’ve read so much about it. You know, maybe the players weren’t in the right frame of mind to play cricket.”Mentally, if we decide we’re going to play this game we have to get tuned in. The most important thing is being able to think your way out of situations. When we realise the importance of the mental part of the game, then we’ll get better.”

Marcus Trescothick’s enforced departure from the Ashes tour of Australia is a bitter-sweet outcome for Paul Collingwood who is expected to play in next week’s Brisbane Test with Alastair Cook likely to be promoted to open the innings with Andrew Strauss, leaving Ian Bell at No.3 and Collingwood at No.5.Cook, Bell and Collingwood arrived in Australia vying for two batting spots, but Trescothick’s health problems have contrived to open the door for Bell and Collingwood.Collingwood said the tourists were devastated for Trescothick, and admitted this was not the way he wanted to book himself a start. But after scoring 732 runs at almost 49 and two centuries this year, Collingwood would consider himself unlucky to have missed out.”It gives you a taste of the challenges, the mental side of the game, everything you do – it’s the biggest challenge in your life,” Collingwood said ahead of Friday’s three-day practice match against South Australia. “That game against Australia last year [at The Oval] with the pressures and the atmosphere, you want to have more, which is why it’s been a big kind of drive to get into this side all year.”Hopefully, I’ve come on as a player since then, playing 12 months of Test cricket and improving, so you’re a bit more confident about your game.”England’s remaining selection dilemma will be deciding between left-arm spinners Ashley Giles and Monty Panesar.

Against a disappointing Western Australian attack, titleholder Queensland has made an excellent opening to the defence of its Pura Cup crown with a fine batting performance on day one of the match between the teams at the WACA ground in Perth. Buoyed by fine innings from Jimmy Maher, Stuart Law and Matthew Hayden, the Bulls have completed the first-class season’s opening day at the imposing scoreline of 2/283.Having shared the last four domestic first-class titles between them, both states entered this season with high hopes of success. But, for much of the day, this was a one-sided contest. The Western Australians encountered problems from early in the piece – fast bowlers Brad Williams and Brendon Julian were late withdrawals due to injury and, in a testament to the sheer quality of the competition, they could not find room in their eleven for returning Zimbabwe Test and One-Day International player Murray Goodwin – and they never recovered.It was Maher (132*) who offered the central contribution to the Warriors’ grisly predicament. The busy left hander was relaxed, authoritative and in command; the end result, perhaps inevitably in such circumstances, was the seventh first-class century of his career. Against some accurate new ball bowling from Jo Angel and Sean Cary, his innings began slowly. He was also a touch fortunate to survive at 39, when a cracking cut stroke was grassed by Justin Langer at gully off Angel’s bowling, and then again at 90, when Simon Katich dropped an incoming throw to the bowler’s end with the scrambling Queenslander still well short of his ground. But the rest of the day offered a showcase to his ability to industriously nudge the ball into gaps on the leg side, to drive with power through the covers, and to play horizontal bat shots with rapidly growing confidence the further that his innings tend to progress.Adopting the no-nonsense strategy of playing straight and resisting the temptation of flinging his bat at the succession of wayward deliveries bowled to him throughout his near-on four hours at the crease, Law (86*) also enjoyed an excellent day. Having come to the crease only twenty minutes after lunch – when the loss of Martin Love (4) to a catch at slip off Angel provided some hope of a Western Australian fightback – his role in the day’s proceedings was crucial. He cajoled and he caressed the ball beautifully through the off side in particular and, in the midst of his unbroken partnership of 189 runs with Maher, looked a completely different batsman from the one who strangely struggled so badly for form through much of the last Australian season.Maher’s opening partner, Matthew Hayden (47), also contributed freely to a first wicket stand of 87 before being trapped lbw by an Angel delivery on the line of leg stump. In fairness, it should be said that all three benefited from the experience of plying their trade on a benign pitch on a warm, sunny day: conditions which made opposition captain Tom Moody’s decision to invite the visitors to bat first all the more surprising.The placid nature of the track and the call at the toss were, though, far from the most significant of Western Australia’s problems. Suspicions about the Warriors’ ability to capture twenty opposition wickets on a consistent basis have been raised more than once in the lead-up to the season and, notwithstanding the gravity of the loss from this attack of players of the quality of Williams and Julian, they did little to dispel those pessimistic assessments today. Gavin Swan (0/38) and Angel (2/57) both acquitted themselves well but received little support. On far too many occasions throughout the day, the ball was pitched on the wrong line and a considerable number of deliveries passed harmlessly wide of the stumps on both sides of the wicket. Other than for four overs of gentle spin from Katich, the attack was purely pace-based and its explicit lack of variation was yet another factor among many which worked in the Queenslanders’ favour.

Tatenda Taibu, the former Zimbabwe captain who walked away from the international game after he and his family were threatened by people with links to Zimbabwe cricket, has said that he will try to qualify for South Africa.Taibu had played in Bangladesh and England since he quit last November, and, as reported by Cricinfo last week, he is now heading to South Africa where he is expected to sign for the Cape Cobras or the Warriors.”I will never return to the Zimbabwe side and I want to play Test cricket. South Africa is the best option,” he told The Times. It would take Taibu four years to qualify, but he is only 23 and so time is on his side, and when he walked away from Zimbabwe he was considered to be their one international-standard player.

England 256 for 9 dec and 112 (Arafat 5-31) beat PCB Patron’s XI 211 and 105 (Plunkett 4-16, Giles 4-38) by 52 runs
Scorecard

Ashley Giles and Liam Plunkett dug England out of a great big hole on the final day at Rawalpindi, grabbing four wickets apiece to seal a nervy 52-run victory. Having eased to 50 for 0 in pursuit of 158, the PCB Patron’s XI lost all ten wickets for 55 in the space of 23 overs. It was left to Shaun Udal to complete the formalities after tea, wrapping up the last two wickets to complete a satisfactory bowling workout ahead of the second warm-up match, which begins at Lahore later this week.If the bowlers could be happy with their efforts, however, the same could not be said of the batsmen. Had it not been for the efforts of Marcus Trescothick, who took his match tally to 162 not out with an unbeaten 38 in the second innings, England would have been unable to set the Patron’s XI even the smallest of targets. They had been braced for an embarrassment after resuming on 39 for 6 this morning, but an important eighth-wicket partnership of 56 between Trescothick and Paul Collingwood enabled England to muster a defendable total, and in the event it proved to be more than enough.Thanks to Duncan Fletcher’s pre-match arrangement that all 14 squad members could be used, England’s batting line-up extended way beyond the normal limits. Collingwood and Ian Bell were the overnight incumbents, and both were seeking a big innings to push their claims for a place in the first Test at Multan. Bell, however, cut a sorry figure as Yasir Arafat pinned him on the crease for 1. It was his second failure of the match and, allied to the pair he recorded at The Oval against Australia, it seems increasingly likely to condemn him to the also-rans for this series.The real revelation in this match, however, was Arafat, who completed the impressive match figures of 9 for 76. He hardly needed the assistance of his fielders in producing a performance that recalled the feats of the great Waqar Younis. Seven of his nine victims were bowled, one (Bell) was lbw, and only England’s No. 11, Matthew Hoggard, fell to a catch, at third slip, as he skewed an attempted drive. His two seasons with Scotland have reaped an unremarkable 37 wickets at 29.10, but two days against England could yet have propelled him into the eyes of the Pakistani selectors.

By tea, the Patron’s XI openers, Asher Zaidi and Yasir Hameed, had knocked off 13 of the 158 runs they needed for victory, and when Kevin Pietersen dropped a regulation clip to square-leg when Hameed was on 24, it seemed England would struggle to save face. The pair brought up their fifty partnership in the 14th over, but no sooner had they done so than Giles struck to change the course of the innings.Giles had missed the second day of the match with a stomach upset and had earlier recorded a second-ball duck as England subsided to the wiles of Arafat, but by grabbing two wickets in two balls he turned the Patron’s XI innings on its head. First Hameed clipped a firm chance to a juggling Andrew Strauss at midwicket, and then Giles came round the wicket to trap Bazid Khan first-ball with a quicker delivery (50 for 2).Plunkett entered the attack and sprayed a series of rapid deliveries on both sides of the wicket. But he got it right before the over was out, as Asher chipped a leading edge to James Anderson at mid-on. Three balls later, Asim Kamal flashed hard and was caught by Trescothick at second slip for a duck, and at 65 for 4, the innings was in freefall.Faisal Iqbal didn’t hang around, swishing a rising catch to wicketkeeper Matt Prior, before Giles persuaded Shahzad Malik to chop onto his stumps for 3. Khaled Latif then hoisted a mighty slog straight into the hands of Strauss in the covers, and when the becalmed Misbah-ul-Haq edged Plunkett to Trescothick in the slips for 14, their last recognised batsman had fallen. Plunkett reached tea with the impressive figures of 4 for 13 for five overs, and at 88 for 8, England were just about out of jail.Udal, who had not featured in the first two sessions, then appeared after tea to push his Test claims, and he used his opportunity well, ending the resistance long before the last two wickets could cause England any alarms. It was a mixed performance in a mishmash of a game, and England now travel to Lahore to team up with their two missing talismans, Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison. Perhaps their arrival, and a proper first-class match at Bagh-e-Jinnah, can concentrate a few minds in the England camp.

Bob Woolmer, Pakistan’s coach, believes that Shabbir Ahmed’s suspect bowling action has improved sufficiently since he was reported to the International Cricket Council (ICC) during Pakistan’s tour of West Indies in May. Woolmer has been working with Shabbir over the last two weeks after the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) decided to seek assistance at home rather than abroad to rectify his action.According to the Karachi-based daily, , Woolmer told Saleem Altaf, the PCB Director, that he was now satisfied that the bowler’s action was within ICC regulations. But the PCB will wait before sending videos of his remodeled action to the ICC Bowling Review Group for final clearance.Board officials are eager for his action to be checked one last time by Dr Paul Hurrion, the ICC-appointed bio-mechanics expert, before they send the videos to the ICC. This is due to new ICC regulations introduced in March this year, which state that a bowler who is reported twice within two years will face a one-year suspension from all forms of cricket.Understandably, the PCB are keen to avoid such a scenario and are prepared to wait until they are certain his action is rectified before they go to the ICC. A final decision on when to send him to Dr Hurrion will be taken by the ad-hoc committee which meets on September 12.Shabbir was reported for the third time in his career during the Barbados test against the West Indies in May this year. The two previous occasions were after his first ODI in 1999 and on the tour to New Zealand in January 2004.

Cricket Kenya’s plans to of take over the running of Kenyan cricket could have to wait more than a year – at least, in the eyes of the ICC.A letter from Malcolm Speed, the ICC’s chief executive, to Ochilo Ayacko, the minister of sport who is behind the establishment of Cricket Kenya, warned that ICC procedures mean that no switch of recognition could happen before the full board meeting in June 2006. Under ICC rules, any body requiring recognition would need to submit its application by the January before the meeting. That means that CK cannot make the deadline to be considered at this June’s meeting.That letter, leaked to the Nation newspaper, gave a boost to the beleaguered KCA. Only if the KCA ceased to exist or its executive accepted the seemingly inevitable and stepped down en masse, would the ICC have to recognise CK immediately. But if the KCA refuses go quietly, then the ICC’s rules state that it should be given 12 months to get its house in order.The letter was welcomed by Sharad Ghai, the KCA’s besieged chairman, who said: “If they [CK] get the go-ahead in June, they will have to apply for membership before December 31 and wait for application to be considered during the next annual conference next year, then wait for another year for membership to be approved.”