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Nasim Ashraf, the PCB chairman, has indicated that one team from Pakistan will be part of the inaugural Champions League, slated to be held later this year. Ashraf’s statement comes less than a week after the official announcement of the Twenty20 tournament, which clearly stated the top two teams from domestic competitions held in Australia, India, England and South Africa would be vying for the US$5 million on offer.”It is not correct that Pakistan is not in the Champions League,” Ashraf told reporters in Karachi. “When the idea of this event was discussed in Mumbai sometime back I was there and the Indian Board, specifically the IPL governing body, invited Pakistan to send one team for the championship.”Senior board officials confirmed to Cricinfo that the PCB had been told they were part of the plans for the first Champions League. When asked whether a Pakistan team had been invited for the event, Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman and commissioner, said, “Nothing has been finalised yet. I can comment on this only after the BCCI meets on June 22 to discuss these issues.”Ashraf is currently in Bangladesh to attend the final of the Kitply Cup between India and Pakistan, and he is expected to take the matter up with BCCI officials.Pakistan, though, haven’t held their domestic Twenty20 competition – the ABN-AMRO Twenty20 – since December 2006, and scheduling problems have resulted in this year’s tournament being postponed to August.Western Australia and Victoria from Australia, Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings from the IPL along with the Dolphins and Titans from the Pro20 in South Africa have already qualified for the Champions League. They will be joined by the two finalists from the English Twenty20 Cup, which concludes on July 26.

Cricket Wellington exceeded their budgetary expectations for the 2001/02 year and achieved a surplus of $59,000 which was $50,000 more than expected, and representative of a $123,000 turnaround.Cricket Wellington (CW) chairman John Hunn said in Wellington’s annual report that revenues from New Zealand Cricket-funded programmes increased by $150,000, indoor training centre revenues increased by $50,000 and Pub Charities revenues increased by $100,000. However, these were offset by a decrease in membership income of $56,000.Hunn said that membership decline was attributable to competition from memberships at the WestpacTrust Stadium and other inroads into revenue generation were coming from other events on the Wellington entertainment market.”We have identified as a short-term priority the need to improve our outcomes in profiling of CW and our main brands, and in communications in general,” he said.In its business development, Hunn said business income had increased by about 25% in each of the last two years and this was despite the lack of continuity in the position of business development manager.”The organisation has embraced the latest data and web technologies and staff are rapidly gaining proficiency at information management via these mediums.”Our academy facilities are building a strong income base and it is planned to reshape the Wellington Cricket Trust to provide another link in our revenue generation chain,” he said.The work of CW’s operations committee had been successful in achieving a number of goals.”Delivery of services to club cricketers has improved markedly in the last 12 months and is subject to continued review and refinement. There appears to be growing levels of satisfaction with progress in this area among our stakeholders,” he said.A significant area of improvement is anticipated in women’s cricket while there was a much closer working relationship with local ground authorities in the region.In coaching and elite player development, Hunn said there had been a drive to increase the base level of elite players and this had resulted in a zonal trial system which concludes with the selection of representative and development squads from Standard Four to Form Three age groups.”This effectively doubles the platform on which our elite programme is built,” he said.”Improved use of technology is allowing tracking of player performances and development. Synergies between our Academy and the High Performance Centre and Otago University Sports Medicine Centre at the Stadium are being explored and utilised.”CW teams are experiencing great success in domestic competition from Under-17 level to first-class and there is a real drive in this area to expand the boundaries of what can be delivered in the Elite Player area.”Coaching systems and structures have been developed from a small informal base with the aim of providing 30 new coaches per year. We are on target to exceed this measure in 2002,” he said.Hunn expressed some frustration in the inability to achieve medium-term financial planning support from NZC.”John Hood in his second report to NZC in December 1998, ‘A Path to Superior Performance Revisited’ highlighted the priority which Associations must give to 3-5 year strategic planning as the basis of their operations.”CW is now strongly committed to this approach as the base for its operational planning but is still pressing for a similar level of commitment from NZC. In last year’s annual report we noted that ‘the Board has sought a review of its funding arrangements with NZC as the present business model forces CW to share in the trading risks of NZC each season to a degree which inhibits sound long-term planning and prudent financial management.'”Regrettably we cannot yet report success in these discussions although we are pleased to report that NZC substantially increased their annual funding to Associations this year.”Recent indications are that NZC is becoming supportive to the concept of a medium-term financial commitment to Associations to provide some in their planning,” he said.Wellington’s chief executive Ervin McSweeney said the year’s performance had been rewarding in many areas.”However, as we look ahead we cannot afford to ‘rest on our laurels'”We may not win major competitions every year but we are determined to set new benchmarks in delivery of cricket services, and to show initiative and leadership in all aspects of the game.”From a financial perspective the next period is going to be very challenging, but we are fortunate to have high quality facilities, an inspirational working environment and hopefully continued support and goodwill from many quarters,” he said.

England’s injury problems on the Ashes tour of Australia deepened today as their left-arm spinner Ashley Giles was ruled out for up to six weeks with a fractured left wrist.Giles was hit by Durham fast bowler Steve Harmison in the nets at the Adelaide Oval while preparing for the second Test starting on Thursday. He continued with his net but was sent for an X-ray later after complaining of soreness."It was the first ball I faced from Harmy and it struck me at thepoint of the left wrist," said Giles. "At first I thought it was just bruising and kept on batting. But afterwards the pain just got worse and worse. Now I have been told I will be out for anything up to six weeks which is obviously very disappointing."That would mean that he will be unavailable until the fourth Test starting in Melbourne on Boxing Day. It will be a serious blow to the captain, Nasser Hussain, who has always turned to Giles as a means of exerting some control on the opposition batsmen.Giles and Hussain became the targets for much criticism last winter when he employed the negative tactics of bowling from over the wicket into the footmarks outside leg stump in an attempt to keep Sachin Tendulkar quiet. On this tour, however, he had been bowling well and had not been afraid to give the ball more air with a certain amount of success.So far on the tour Giles has taken 17 wickets in all matches at 32.17 each in all matches at under four runs an over. At a time when Australian batsmen in all forms of cricket have been enjoying themselves at the expense of English bowlers, that is a very creditable return. In the first Test in Brisbane he was the most successful of England’s bowlers with six wickets.Giles did not play in the match against Australia A in Hobart, giving a rare outing to off-spinner Richard Dawson who took one for 70 in 16 overs. The Yorkshireman now comes into contention for a place in the Adelaide Test team. Before Hobart, he had bowled only once on tour – in the opening festival match at Lilac Hill – where he failed to take a wicket in his five overs costing 35 runs.Dawson last played in a Test on the tour of India last winter when he made his debut and a favourable impression. It was his temperament as much as his play that marked him out as having a future in Test cricket then, and that will now face a severe examination if he is exposed to the Australian batsmen in Adelaide.

One of Durham’s longest serving players, Jimmy Daley is leaving the Club.Jimmy made his first class debut for Durham as an 18-year-old back in 1992 when the Club joined the first class circuit. Since then Jimmy has played over 90 first class matches, scored over 4,000 runs with a highest score of 159 not out.Club Chairman, Bill Midgley said “Jimmy has been a great servant of the Clubwho has unfortunately suffered his fair share of injuries over the years. We are grateful of the contribution he has made to Durham and wish him well and will follow with interest his future career.”

It was some years ago when April 1st fell on a Saturday. On “Grandstand” – BBC TV’s sports programme – it was decided to mark the occasion by mounting an elaborate hoax featuring cricket. Consequently, I was despatched to the Sussex county ground to film the action that went towards making a programme item that was realistic enough to fool a lot of people.The basis of it was that so many Championship matches finished early, making it difficult for commercial departments to sell the last day to corporate sponsors who could not be sure of having any cricket to put before their clients and guests. To counter this, there was to be a 20-over competition played when the “real” game finished before schedule.The pitch was to be lengthened to 24 yards in order to negate fast bowling, there were runs deducted if a batsman played out a maiden over, two instances of “one hand, one bounce” meant that the batsman was out, and there were only 30 seconds available for the batsman to get to the middle at the fall of a wicket before he could be timed out. There were innovative umpiring signals introduced to cover the new decisions, while the officials had the power to send players to a sin-bin for bad behaviour.We filmed a demonstration match performed (and that is the correct word!) by the Sussex players, and conducted interviews with all and sundry. Paul Parker, the Sussex captain at the time, had to have several goes at his interview because he could not keep a straight face, while coach Norman Gifford and commercial manager Jim Parks gave considered views on the impact of the new competition.To give some scarcely-needed credibility to the whole thing, we conducted an interview with the retiring marketing manager of the then Test and County Cricket Board, Peter Lush, who, unprompted, came out with a marvellous line about this new competition being the way to promote cricket to the American market.As an April Fool, it was a huge success. Viewers wrote in to complain about the further ruination of the game, and several people made a point of conveying their distaste for the idea to me personally. I can clearly remember watching the piece go out and saying to the assembled company in the studio: “I just hope the TCCB weren’t watching or they’ll try to implement it!”The years have rolled by and the TCCB has given way to the England and Wales Cricket Board, whose First-Class Forum have just announced that, as from the 2003 season, there will be – yes, you’ve guessed it – a 20-over-a-side competition in the schedule of matches.The “innovations” that we introduced all those years ago will not be in use. The quite admirable aim of the competition, as described by chief executive Tim Lamb is to introduce “another very positive development for the future of cricket in this country. It’s essential that we reach out and appeal to a new generation of young cricket followers, and this new competition is designed to do exactly that.”All we can hope is that it achieves its aim and brings in that new generation of cricket enthusiasts and they, in turn, grow to like the real thing. Nobody can doubt the sincerity of the intention; we must just hope that it is not the game itself that is being made to wear the hat with the bells.

Southern Electric League Premier Division 3 pacesetters Purbrook and Alton both crashed to their first defeats of the season.Purbrook posted a tidy 226-8 only to be beaten by three-wickets at Bashley (Rydal) II, for whom Neil Sexton and Chris Gates produced key knocks.Alton’s unbeaten record was ended by Flamingo, who drallied from an uncertain 23-4 to reach a rain-cut 140-8 and bowl the Wey Valley club out for 127, with Nick McMurray taking four of the wickets.The upsets strengthened the leadership claims by St Cross Symondians, who crushed Hartley Wintney (209-7) by eight wickets, with Steve Shaw and Ben Adams at the helm.See Saturday’s Pink for a full Premier Division 3 round up.

Rain washed out the third play`s play in the County Championship matchbetween Glamorgan and Kent at St.Helen`s in Swansea.After a morning of mist and persistant drizzle, the early afternoon saw morecontinuous and heavy rain sweep in from Swansea Bay. A lull in mid-afternoonled to umpires Ken Palmer and Jeremy Lloyds calling an early tea, and aninspection at five o`clock. But just as drying-up operations began inearnest out in the middle, the “Mumbles mizzle” returned and the umpiresabandoned play for the day at half-past four.The game therefore enters the final day with Glamorgan still in their firstinnings, 75 runs behind Kent, with two wickets still standing. With thewicket increasingly giving some assistance to the spin bowlers, there could,in theory, be a positive outcome to this match, especially as Glamorgan`sRobert Croft will be eager to get in some match progress before travellingup to Old Trafford to join up with the rest of the England party for theSecond Test at Old Trafford.Today`s washout leaves Glamorgan rueing the elements for the secondsuccessive Championship game, as last week they had all four days of theirmatch against Lancashire at Old Trafford washed out by rain. So far thisseason, the Welsh county have lost over 50 hours of play and today`s totalwashout is the seventh full day that Glamorgan have lost out of a possibletotal of fifteen day`s play.The wet Swansea weather was also a huge disappointment for the St.Helen`sBalconiers, the famous supporters organisation, based at the historic groundin Swansea which over the years has been the scene of many famous days inthe club`s history, including Glamorgan`s victories against the Australiansin 1964 and 1968, as well as Sir Garfield Sobers` six sixes in an over in 1968.During the last four years, the Balconiers have invested £45,000 infirst-class cricket at the Swansea ground, and have been instrumental inorganising this year`s Swansea Festival which continues on Wednesday withGlamorgan`s Championship match against Yorkshire, and ends next Sunday withthe National League game against Sussex.All of Glamorgan`s loyal supporters will be hoping that the weather improvesfor the rest of the week.

West Zone, scoring 496, took a decisive first-innings lead of 204 runs over South Zone in the Duleep Trophy league match at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai on Thursday. Batting for the second time, South Zone were 8 for one at close of play on the third day.Resuming on their overnight score of 181/3, West Zone batsmen Hrishikesh Kanitkar and Kaushik Aphale piled on the runs. The two batsmen added 145 runs for the fourth wicket, but with the scores level on 292, Aphale (76) was bowled by Hemal Watekar. Aphale faced 136 balls and struck nine boundaries in 176 minutes at the crease.Test discard Nayan Mongia started off by cracking a couple of boundaries, but he did not last any longer, caught by MR Shrinivas off the bowling of left-arm spinner Sridharan Sriram for just nine. Kanitkar was then unlucky to miss out on a double hundred, caught by Venkatesh Prasad off the off-spinner Watekar. The former India all-rounder made 192 runs off 295 balls, striking a huge six and 29 fours.Ajit Bhoite (9) too fell to the guiles of Watekar, and West Zone looked like losing the initiative at 366/7. Ramesh Powar and Sairaj Bahutule, however, added 101 runs off 27.4 overs to add to the woes of the home side. Bahutule struck five fours and three sixes to make 68 runs off 107 balls. Powar made 54 off 95 balls, striking nine fours.Another discard Venkatesh Prasad picked up the wickets of Powar and Ajit Agarkar (4) to finish with figures of 25-10-53-3. The young off-spinner Watekar was the most successful bowler, picking five wickets in a marathon spell of 48.3 overs.South Zone had an inauspicious start to their second innings, losing the wicket of skipper MSK Prasad for a duck, cleaned up by Ajit Agarkar. With one full day’s play remaining, West Zone look well on track for an outright victory on Friday.

The Highveld Strikers ended the limited-overs portion of their season of discontent with another defeat, their seventh in 10 Standard Bank Cup outings, although they mounted a courageous attempt to reach a target that rain had seen revised to 220 off just 31 overs.In the end, they needed three off the last ball and number 11 David Terbrugge was unable to beat the field, hitting it back to the bowler, Garth Roe, on the bounce, to leave the Strikers on 217 for nine, three short of their victory target.The match was a meaningless one, with both sides long out of the semi-final frame, but turned out to be a thriller, with rain adding to the frenzied nature of the encounter. First it reduced the match to 41 overs a side before it had even started and then it shaved a further 10 overs off thevisitor’s innings by returning during the supper break, after the home side themselves had gone at more than six an over in setting a challenging 249 for nine.Gary Outram, with an unbeaten 46 off just 32 balls, gave North West a flying finish after contributions down the order, including a swashbuckling 41 from Mark Lavine, whose West Indian counterpart, Ottis Gibson, was flayed for 67 off just seven overs.Clive Eksteen, the only Strikers bowler to get a full nine overs, was all that stood between North West and an even higher score as he took three for 24.It was a similar situation in the Strikers’ knock, with occasional offspinner Craig Light, the one man to bowl seven overs, taking one for 24. The visitors’ run-chase pivoted around one man, their find of the season, Marthinus Otto, who belted 70 off just 59 balls before perishing in thefinal run-in.Eksteen could manage just six off 11 balls at a time when eight an over were needed, but Nicholas Mataboge, with 10 off six, and Sonnyboy Letshele, who finished unbeaten on 26 off 27 balls in only his second innings at this level, almost got the visitors home before the former was run out. But it was always going to be asking too much of Terbrugge to come in and hit a boundary off his only delivery.

Pakistan’s three day match at Derby ended in a drawbut not before Yousuf Youhana suffered anotherfailure.Youhana, who scored two centuries against England inthe winter, made only four after Dominic Cork declaredto set the tourists an improbable victory target of152 in 20 overs.The right-hander, who is regarded as one of the topbatsmen in the world, was lbw when he aimed to playTrevor Smith to leg.Youhana has now scored nine runs in three inningsfollowing his first ball duck against the BritishUniversities at Trent Bridge and five on the secondday at Derby.Pakistan’s other top batsman Inzamam-ul-Haq played nopart on the final day after slipping in the showeralthough they are confident he will be fit for nextThursday’s Test at Lord’s.Shoaib Akhtar is unlikely to play against Englandafter he failed to take a wicket in Derbyshire’ssecond innings which was dominated by Mathew Dowmanwho made his highest score for the county.His 145 not out came off 203 balls and included twosixes and 20 fours and won him the Man of the Matchaward.Dowman profited from some undemanding bowling aftertea but the majority of his runs were made againstPakistan’s frontline attack when Derbyshire couldstill have lost the match.Overnight thunderstorms delayed the start until 12.20but Pakistan had a chance of forcing victory if theycaptured quick wickets.Dowman and Luke Sutton denied them and although Suttonand Chris Bassano fell after lunch, Derbyshire were 75runs on at tea with six wickets in hand.Dowman dipped his bread at the start of the finalsession and Cork’s decision to declare gave Pakistansome batting practice and at the close, they had made63-1 although skipper Waqar Younis admitted hisplayers needed more match practice.”We more or less got what we wanted out of this gamebut we still have a lot to do before we get toLord’s,” he said.”We didn’t get enough batting; we need more time outin the middle for players like Yousuf and Inzamam.”Waqar also admitted that Shoaib was running out of timeto stake a claim for the First Test.”He needs more time to get his rhythm but it’s veryhard to say if he’s got enough time to do that beforethe Test.”