Several individuals who have been waging a determined battle against the existing USA Cricket Association executive and who have set up a rival board, have been served with legal papers ordering them to cease and desist from their actions.The legal action has been instigated by USACA in New York and is aimed at preventing a number of named individuals – including Bobby Refaie, the suspended secretary of the board – from claiming to represent themselves as being in any way connected to, or representatives of, the USACA.The manouvre was expected, but there are questions as to how this potentially expensive action has been funded. Gladstone Dainty, the USACA president, told Cricinfo last week that no board monies would be used to pay for legal action, but confusingly added that those funds would be spent “to defend the USACA from baseless attacks by the dissidents.””The phrase double speak comes to mind,” said Laks Sampath, a director of the North West region and one of those named in the action. “On one hand Dainty says that no ICC funds or membership dues have been used and in the very same breath adds that the board authorised him to `defend the USACA’. From whom? Its member clubs? The so called majority of the board that authorised this is in itself under dispute so there can be no majority of the board.”Coupled with the USACA’s effective refusal to agree to independent arbitration – it announced that it would only go to arbitration under New York State law – this latest development would seem to only reduce the chances of any settlement between the two factions, a situation acknowled by Malcolm Speed who said that “it now seems likely that this matter will result in litigation or arbitration.”As things stand, the crunch could come when an extraordinary general meeting of the USACA, scheduled for June 4, takes place. The Dainty-led board does not recognise it, although opponents insist that it is legal as the requisite number of members have called for it. Dainty and his supporters have been invited but are not expected to attend.A source close to the anti-Dainty faction said that it is likely that those named in the USACA’s action will contest the case in court.

The management of the South African team in Pakistan has lodged an appeal with the ICC against the two-Test match ban handed down to Andrew Hall following an incident in the second ODI at Lahore a week ago.Hall was found guilty by Clive Lloyd, the ICC match referee, of two breaches of the Code of Conduct. The first was a Level 2 breach for inappropriate and deliberate physical contact, for which he was banned for one ODI (that ban was served today in the final match of the Pakistan series). The second was a Level 3 offence for conduct that brings the game into disrepute, for which he has been banned for two Test matches.In accordance with ICC regulations, a player found guilty of a Level 3 or 4 offence has 24 hours from notification of the sentence to lodge an appeal. The appeal is likely to be heard within the next five days.Hall, South Africa’s captain Graeme Smith and the Pakistan batsman Yousuf Youhana were involved in an on-field altercation during the Pakistan innings in the second ODI at Lahore on Oct 4. The match officials did not report the incident, but Malcolm Speed, the ICC’s chief executive, exercised his right to cite the players and call for video footage of the clash. After the hearing Hall received his double ban, while Smith was suspended for one ODI (like Hall, he missed the decider in Rawalpindi) and fined 50% of his match fee for a Level 2 offence relating to the use of obscene or offensive language, and Youhana was found guilty of a Level 1 offence of bringing the game into disrepute and fined 50% of his match fee.Hall’s appeal will be heard by Sir Oliver Popplewell, a former English high-court judge – and a former president of MCC to boot. Sir Oliver is the England & Wales Cricket Board’s nominated member of the ICC’s Code of Conduct Commission, and has been appointed as the appeals commissioner for Hall’s case by Urvasi Naidoo, the ICC’s legal counsel.

With their leader restored at the head of the pack, Australia’s pacemen have stared down a pitch promising sore backs and nothing more. While the game’s frontline spinners twirled potential records in their minds, Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz did well not to baulk at the damage the deck would do to theirs.Instead McGrath, used in five neat five-over spells, led Australia to a228-run lead on the first innings and reaffirmed his status at the top of the bowling heap. Until he ran through India’s high-quality batting line-up with 4 for 55 there were concerns that, at 34 and stepping back tentatively from ankle surgery, this could be the tour he ended on the scrap heap.McGrath helped Australia roll over the Indian top order, but they were forced to toil through the lower half, and he added only one wicket to his three on the second day. Forcing Harbhajan Singh to bunt a slow offcutter to Darren Lehmann at cover was nothing to compare with the two daggers he slipped through Aakash Chopra and Rahul Dravid on Thursday, but the method showed another old trick. The rest of the bowlers chipped in with wickets as well, but it was the olden-day work of McGrath, confident and assertive once more, that was the most impressive. He could even start sledging again soon.Throughout his career McGrath’s delivery, actions and haircut had stayed much the same. Like the heavy bowling boots he recently discarded, they were unfashionable but worked. Very well. For this Test, his 98th, he has tried lighter, hi-tech shoes and updated his mop to a style worn last summer by many of his team-mates. In everything but bowling the gangly McGrath has generally been a bit off the pace. In his defence, he missed last season’s catwalk.For almost a year the oohs and aahs came from ankle operations and recovery delays instead of Bay 13 and Yabba’s Hill. Missing both home series against Zimbabwe and India, he bowled for New South Wales late in the season like a county trundler. Doubters said he was too old to make it again. For a short time McGrath agreed.Before returning in Darwin against Sri Lanka he considered quitting, then delayed mortality in his comeback innings with five wickets. Still he was – insultingly, for he has more wickets than any Australian fast bowler – considered only a match-by-match proposition. On arriving in India he was nominated for the tour game and the whispers continued. Was it a bowl-off with Brett Lee? Or an opportunity to lube his joints? Whatever the reason, his head was down while the feet of Gillespie and Kasprowicz were up. The new ball stayed in his hand. Body willing, he will hold it until Nagpur, when he will become Australia’s first fast bowler to reach 100 Tests.By then he might also have created another milestone. If McGrath remains scoreless (as he did in the first innings here) until he strikes off another six victims, he will have 450 wickets – equal to his haul of Test runs. As a hard-practising batsman it would be one record he chooses to ignore.

Tamil Nadu, who emerged as leader with 29 points of the South Zoneleague in the Cooch Behar tournament, lifted the Ghulam Ahmed Trophy,qualifying – along with Andhra – for the knock-out stage from theSouth Zone.The tie between the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka under-19 teams was the mosteagerly awaited of all the matches in the league, so it must have been ablow for the spectators when the third day was washed out due to rain.Karnataka, winning the toss, opted to bat, but they could only manage223 at the Guru Nanak ground in Chennai. Opener G Nidhuvan made 62,while Stuart Binny top-scored at number four with 72 off 113 balls,striking seven fours and three sixes in the process.With T Kumaran taking four wickets, Tamil Nadu had made a good startwith the ball. Their essay with the bat too was striking, with skipperAditya Srikkanth making 100 off 190 balls at the top of the order. Hewas supported well by K Vasudevadas’ 97, and Tamil Nadu reached 332 fornine by the end of the second day. But incessant rain and wet conditionson the final day made play impossible, drawing the match.Goa draws with KeralaThe other tie, between Goa and Kerala being played at the CPT-IP groundin Chennai, was also drawn, with hardly an innings and a half beingcompleted inside the three days. Kerala, batting first, were bowled outfor 276, with skipper MM Nathani leading the scoring with 108 off 200.But the opposing captain hogged the limelight himself. S Asnodkar at thetop of the order put on 191 for the first wicket, out of which ASKolambkar made only 52. Asnodkar went on to make 205 off 365 balls,falling only as the fourth wicket with the score on 338. By that time,little possibility of a result remained, and the game meandered untilGoa reached 356 for five at stumps on the third day.

England supporters will be able to follow the five-match series in Zimbabwe after Sony TV announced that they have bought the rights to show the games.It had been thought that BSkyB’s lack of interest in buying the rights would mean that for the first time since 1989 nobody would be showing an England overseas tour. But Sony TV, who are a major player in Asia, paid around £300,000 to broadcast the matches.<!–Interestingly, the Sony commentary team includes Nasser Hussain, who has been vocal in his opinion that England should not be making the trip. Less than a fortnight ago he wrote: "If something happens, Michael [Vaughan], and you lead a side out there and someone gets killed, it will tarnish English cricket and your name for a long while." It remains to be seen whether Hussain's hitherto firm stance will prevent him from going.Rajan Singh, Sony Entertainment Television's executive vice-president, told the Daily Telegraph: “This is a wonderful opportunity for us … we see this as a chance to widen the reach of our channel. Our subscribers are mainly from the Indian subcontinent but while they like Indian and Pakistani cricket they like all cricket, cricket for them is a religion and increasingly British Asians are keen to support the England team wherever they play.”With Asian cricketers playing for England,” Singh added, “Nasser was an Asian icon as is Vikram Solanki. We see our broadcasts as reaching out to them as also to the mainstream white community.”–>The Sony TV channel is not available to terrestrial viewers but can be found on the Sky platform.

ScorecardSurrey took firm control of the first day of their match against Bangladesh A at The Oval, racking up 336 for 5 before declaring. Bangladesh A made 45 without loss by the close on a decent wicket, but the day belonged to the home side. James Benning made 124 before being run out, and there were half-centuries for Richard Clinton, Andrew Hodd and Ian Salisbury. Hodd and Salisbury shared an unbeaten stand of 105 before Mark Butcher called time on the innings.Surrey took the opportunity to blood their 17-year-old batsman Rory Hamilton, but he made just 5 before being bowled by Enamul Haque Jnr, the second of his two wickets. There were failures, too, for Scott Newman, who made 8, and Butcher, who reached 5 on his return.Other young players were included in the home side’s team for experience, with 19-year-old Jade Dernbach opening the bowling; he had six overs for 32, and Hodd, the wicketkeeper/batsman striking an unbeaten fifty. Shahriar Nafees and Mehrab Hossain Jnr had started to build the visitors’ reply and they will look to cement a solid partnership when play gets underway again on Thursday.

Stephen Fleming, the New Zealand captain, has termed the victory in the final of the Videocon Cup as “a perfect script” and hailed his team’s “tenacity” to claw back from a dangerous position. Understandably, his Indian countrpart, Sourav Ganguly, spoke about the “heartbreaking” nature of the defeat and was concerned about India repeatedly going down in crucial games.”I was always a little concerned about how things went in the first half-hour to on hour,” said Fleming after a memorable six-wicket victory at Harare, thanks largely to a fantastic century from Nathan Astle. “Things just didn’t go our way, we could have had a couple of wickets in that period. When it’s their day, they are very hard to stop, but we pulled them back through tenacity. It was a tenacious performance in the last half, and this side is experienced enough to know that if you hang in there long enough, you can turn things around.”Ganguly, though, could only rue India’s inability to seize the advantage. “We must be lacking something to lose finals even when seemingly in a good position,” he said. “We had a good start but probably fell 20 runs short. It is heartbreaking. We have been in such situations in the past but haven’t been able to finish it off. Once again we didn’t look good enough to win the finals. Everytime we lose a final, it will become more and more difficult for us to come good in another finals.”Ganguly pinpointed India’s middle-order stutter, when they slid from a formidable position at the halfway stage to 276, as one of the main reasons for defeat. “After being 150 for 1, we could add only 120 odd from the final 25 overs. And when we bowled, they were 90 for no loss in the first 10 overs. That’s where we lost the game. Kaif batted very well but he didn’t get support from the other end. If somebody had stayed with him at the other end, we would have been 300-plus.”But his main concern was the erratic nature of the Indian bowling attack, one that appeared toothless when Astle and Fleming were in a pillaging mood. “Just as we have to learn how to bat on seaming wickets, we also have to learn how to bowl on wickets which are flat,” he said. “Since our medium-pace bowlers don’t have the pace of a Shane Bond, Shoaib Akhtar or Brett Lee, they depend on little assistance from conditions to do well. Our bowlers didn’t bowl good line and length and generally bowled both side of the wicket.”Fleming admitted that it was a planned assault, when he and Astle plundered 81 runs in the first nine overs, and was pleased that Astle could bat right through the innings. “It felt good at the start,” he said, “we wanted to put pressure on their bowlers at the top of the innings. Of course, we had a guy who could bat through the innings, and Nathan’s 15th one-day hundred won the game for us. We wanted to be aggressive at the start and get away, what with the pitch being such a good one. We wanted to set the tone and take the pressure off chasing a big score, it was a very important start.”It has been a tough tour for a number of reasons, and it feels good to finish well. It’s good to take a trophy back home because there aren’t too many in our cabinet.”

Australia’s selectors will rely on medical advice before deciding whether the opening batsman Justin Langer will play with a fractured rib in Thursday’s first Test against West Indies. Langer was adamant that he would play in the first of three matches against the tourists at the Gabba despite breaking a rib while playing for Western Australia in an ING Cup match on Saturday.But John Buchanan, the coach, said that the decision would be taken out of the strong-willed hands of Langer on Monday. “He’s a very tough little nut,” Buchanan said on Sunday. “He’s a vital member of our side. For him personally and for us as a team, we want to make sure we make the right decision. It’s like everybody else understands, that if he was unfit, he wouldn’t be playing. I know that he desperately wants to play and we desperately want him to play.”Mike Hussey, Langer’s Western Australian team-mate and the one-day international batsman, is the likely stand-by player. But Langer was in no mood to give someone else a crack at his hard-earned opening spot. “I’ve never had a broken rib before,” he said. “I am certainly feeling it at the moment but I’m sure by Thursday it will be okay.”Asked how confident he was of playing he said: “No doubt, 100%. I’ll probably be a bit sore for a while. I’m not trying to be a hero but it’s only pain, mate.”Buchanan said: “It’s going to be pretty important that we try to settle the side as quickly as we can. The selectors are discussing it. There isn’t an official stand-by player because we still don’t fully understand the extent of the injury, apart from the fact that we know it’s a broken rib and he’s pretty bloody sore. The selectors will take that all into account and have a decision [Monday].”Langer was one of the few batting successes in the failed Ashes campaign against England last month, topping Australia’s averages with 394 runs. With 22 centuries and 7,023 runs in 94 Tests at an average of 45.90, he is Australia’s eighth-highest scorer.

Scorecard
Clinton Heron and Shaun Marsh put on a stand of 145 for the fourth wicket to help Western Australia into a strong position on the first day of their Pura Cup match against Tasmania at Perth. Ryan Campbell was unbeaten on 76 by the close as the home side ended on 5 for 305.Heron built a steady platform with Chris Rogers, but Rogers’ dismissal to Scott Kremerskothen on 16 prompted two more quick strikes. From 0 for 42 and cruising, Western Australia were wobbling on 3 for 48, but Heron and Marsh rescued them – and more.By the time their partnership came to a close, when Heron became the second of Adam Griffith’s victims on 84, Western Australia were in the much healthier position of 4 for 193. They lost just one more wicket before the end of play, Marsh’s valiant knock ending just shy of his third hundred when he sent a catch off Shannon Tubb to Michael Di Venuto.

Victoria have been bolstered by the return of Cameron White and Mick Lewis from Australian one-day duty for Sunday’s ING Cup match against Tasmania at Launceston. White will be back as captain and he said a win was crucial at the half-way mark of the competition.”Getting the points in Launceston will have us sitting in second position on the table and with plenty of momentum going in to the second half of the season,” he said. Tim Welsford was cut from the squad that comfortably beat Queensland last weekend.Victoria squad Jon Moss, Michael Klinger, Lloyd Mash, David Hussey, Liam Buchanan, Graeme Rummans, Grant Lindsay, Cameron White (capt), Adam Crosthwaite (wk), Shane Harwood, Peter Siddle, Gerard Denton, Mick Lewis.Tasmania Michael Di Venuto (capt), Tim Paine, Travis Birt, George Bailey, Michael Dighton, Adam Polkinghorne, Dane Anderson, Adam Griffith, Xavier Doherty, Shannon Tubb, Ben Hilfenhaus, Darren McNees.