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David Sales has agreed a two-year contract extension at Northamptonshire which will keep him with the club until 2008 and has also agreed to continue as captain in 2007.Sales, 29, is currently enjoying a benefit year with the county and scored over 1200 runs in the Championship last year as the team missed out on promotion.He said: ‘It’s a great honour to be name captain again with such exciting times ahead. A new head coach in David Capel and David Ripley’s new position as second team coach/academy director will give us the knowledge and support we need along with their back room staff.”I am very much looking forward to the year ahead and expect some big things this year for the club. On my contract extension I am delighted to commit myself to the club for a further two years and hopefully a lot longer in the future’

Scorecard

The Lions stumbled for the second consecutive day in a run-chase of 160-odd as they fell to a 22-run loss against the Kolkata Tigers, thus ending their hopes of qualifying for the semi-finals.The match in Gurgaon was a crunch clash, as both sides needed to win to have any chance of going through. Craig McMillan, the Tigers’ captain, won the toss and his top order cashed in on the decision to bat.The momentum was provided by Subhomoy Das right at the start; he smashed three fours before Andrew Hall had him trapped in front in the first over. Lance Klusener then joined Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, and the duo added 78 in 11.2 overs.Klusener was run out by Dinesh Mongia for 38 from 34 deliveries but Jhunjhunwala stayed till the 20th over before he was dismissed in the same manner. He made 62 off 57 balls as the Tigers puta competitive total of 165 on the board. Hall took 3 for 37 in his four overs, while his new-ball partner Daryl Tuffey was miserly, conceding only 14 in his four overs.Then it was over to the Tigers’ pace attack; wickets fell at regular intervals as the Lions struggled in their hunt of 166. Abu Nechim scalped three as they succumbed to 69 for 6 after 12.1 overs. A 50-run stand between Manish Sharma and Tejinder Pal Singh raised hopes of an unlikely win. Upul Chandana was carted for runs as Tejinder Pal scored 34 off just 16, while Sharma took the same number of deliveries for his 23.Andre Adams removed the duo in the 17th over, and Nantie Hayward and Nechim got rid of the tailenders as the Lions were bundled out for 143. Nechim finished with 4 for 27 off his four overs, while Adams bagged 3 for 22 off his quota. Nechim and Jhunjhunwala shared the Man-of-the-Match award.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsDevendra Bishoo nearly pulled off a stunning heist in the last over•Caribbean Premier League

Trinidad & Tobago Red Steel huffed and puffed and just scraped through to their first win of the season by three wickets in a low-scoring encounter against Guyana Amazon Warriors. Requiring five in the last over, T&T nearly found a way to lose as legspinner Devendra Bishoo picked up his second wicket of the over with the penultimate delivery, but on inspection a no-ball was called by the third umpire because the bowler had overstepped. With one to get and two balls still remaining, Kevon Cooper smashed the free-hit for six to win it for Red Steel.Cameron Delport had got Red Steel off to a brisk start in the chase of 119, making 22 out of a first-wicket stand of 23 with Jacques Kallis. Darren Bravo and Kallis then added 38 in 44 balls, but both got out in quick succession. Again a partnership built, with Dwayne Bravo and Kamran Akmal adding 31, and Red Steel were comfortably placed at the end of 15 overs – needing 20 to win off 30 balls.Kamran played an inspired cameo – 30 off 17 – but was dismissed in the 16th over with Red Steel still requiring 13 for victory with four overs remaining. However, three frugal overs ensued, including a tight 18th over by Bishoo, in which he took one wicket and conceded just one run. Tasked with defending five off the last, Bishoo conceded three singles and took a wicket in his first four balls, and also had Cooper stumped off the fifth. That delivery, however, turned out to be a no-ball, too large an error in a game of small margins.Amazon Warriors had made a poor start to the game after choosing to bat, losing two wickets in the third over. Lendl Simmons and Brad Hodge began rebuilding with a 35-run stand, before Hodge was caught and bowled off Samuel Badree for 19. Sunil Narine came out to bat at No. 5 but couldn’t get going, eventually holing out to long-on for 14. Simmons was bowled just after he reached his half-century as Amazon Warriors slumped to 104 for 7. They were soon bowled out for 118. Dwayne Bravo produced his career-best bowling figures of 4 for 18, while Kallis and Cooper took two wickets each.

Group B

After bowling Assam, who had been 132 for 6 overnight, for 193, Delhi‘s batsmen piled on the runs in Vadodara. Three of their top five made fifties – captain Unmukt Chand scored 55, Nitish Rana was unbeaten on 72 and Rishabh Pant, who played the Under-19 World Cup earlier this year, was not out on 84 off 83 balls. Pant’s innings included seven fours and five sixes.The batsmen’s efforts made the second day’s play near perfect for Delhi. It had begun with Pradeep Sangwan ripping through the tail to finish with 3 for 47 – Assam’s Tarjinder Singh was left stranded with 61 runs to his name – and it ended with Delhi ahead by 48 runs with seven wickets remaining.A maiden first-class century from 19-year old Kaushal Singh helped Jharkhand secure an 83-run lead over Maharashtra in Delhi.Coming in at 108 for 5 in the 35th over, Kaushal batted through to stumps on the second day and helped his team overcome a top-order wobble. And it wasn’t like he was plodding along either. His 121 runs came off only 178 balls, with 15 fours and three sixes and that aggression meant the seventh and eighth-wicket partnerships with Shahbaz Nadeem and captain Varun Aaron contributed upwards of 50 runs each.Maharashtra, despite having only 210 on the board, would have felt hopeful considering Shrikant Mundhe began the day with two wickets in the space of four overs. But they couldn’t finish well.Saurashtra captain Jaydev Shah fell two runs shy of a career-best score as his team racked up a total of 430 against Rajasthan in Vizianagaram.Shah began the day on an unbeaten 120 and was the eighth wicket to fall for 193, an innings that lasted over six hours and included 36 fours. His strike-rate was an impressive 84.64. He added 110 runs with Chirag Jani for the sixth wicket which pushed the score over 300. Marshalled by Shah, the tail made some handy contributions as well to put Saurashtra in a position of strength.Rajasthan bowled them out with just enough time for them to bat again – 1.4 overs – which they got through unscathed.Half-centuries from Faiz Fazal and Ganesh Satish pushed Vidarbha into the lead against Odisha in Visakhapatnam. Fazal made an unbeaten 76. Satish was on 74 when he was caught behind with five overs left for stumps, a minor positive for Odisha, who had begun the day on 134 for 6 only to be bowled out for 150.Vidarbha were dominant from the very first ball they bowled on Friday – it bowled Odisha’s Biplab Samantaray for 53. Srikanth Wagh, who produced the wicket, finished with 3 for 13. Offspinner Akshay Wakhare then cleaned up the tail and finished with 3 for 19.Vidharba’s innings suffered a setback when opener Sanjay Ramaswamy was bowled for 13 by seamer Deepak Behera but Fazal and Satish negated Odisha’s bowling and added 158 for the second wicket. They have a 32-run lead and eight more wickets to work on building it further.

Andrew Strauss, dropped from England’s touring squad to Sri Lanka, has admitted he was shattered when Andrew Flintoff was handed the captaincy ahead of him for the Ashes last year.”Duncan Fletcher [the coach at the time] sat me down and said it was a tough call but that there were good reasons why they chose Fred [Flintoff],” Strauss told the . “Although I was still in the team, it felt like I was dropped. He couldn’t say anything to make it better. I just tried to be as supportive as I could.”However, Strauss didn’t find fault with Flintoff’s behaviour as captain. “He had a lot on his plate,” Strauss said. “With the responsibility of batting and bowling, perhaps the captaincy was too much. I’m not saying he wasn’t equal to the task. No matter who had captained that side – Michael Vaughan, Mike Brearley or anyone – we would not have won the series [Ashes] the way we played. I’m not sure my undefeated run would have carried on for long if I was captain. “Strauss is focused on making a comeback to England whites and is set to play for Northern Districts in New Zealand, though only for the one-day league.”This is the first time I have had a break in a very long time and I have enjoyed spending some time away from the game. But the only way I will get my England place back is to score runs. I have to do everything I can to be in form and in the best frame of mind if England need me. A month with Northern Districts is perfect.”

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

Rahul Dravid’s decision to test out his one-day bowling options was justified as all three fast bowlers got among the wickets. A good day was then capped with half-centuries by both the openers as India eased to a seven-wicket win over Scotland at a sold-out Clydesdale Cricket Ground.Guided by an 82-run partnership between veteran Gavin Hamilton (44) and Neil McCallum (41), Scotland recovered from four early blows to reach 203, but a rain-revised target of 209 proved far too easy for India, who improved their one-day record to 6-1 after that horrible run at the World Cup. This was not one of the more convincing wins of the season for India, but with runs and wickets from their fringe players, such as Gautam Gambhir who made an unbeaten 85, it is a gentle feeler for a year that still holds 20 ODIs.With Paul Hoffmann, in his last game, and John Blain giving no room to free the arms, Robin Uthappa and Gambhir had to rein in their naturally flamboyant ways. Uthappa, who has not played an ODI since the World Cup, was away with a four to fine leg but struggled to work the ball into the gaps despite taking guard over a foot outside his crease. There were more than seven overs between India’s first and second boundaries but Uthappa finally found his footwork, and his confidence showed in bludgeoned drives and one spanking six in an opening stand of 104.An inswinger from Craig Wright beat Uthappa’s defence on 55 and Dinesh Karthik came and went for 14 but Gambhir, whose only opportunities in England have come in the tour games, pressed on. It was not pretty; he felt his way through the early overs before driving his first four through the covers in the tenth. There were repeated wafts outside off stump in between firm drives through midwicket and mid-off as Gambhir did his part to whittle away at the target.His half-century was raised from 76 balls and he continued in the same grafting manner, though there was a pleasing straight six to raise the 50 stand with Yuvraj Singh, who injected some oomph into the chase with a 28-ball 38. Dravid, no stranger to these parts having represented Scotland in the county circuit, drew cheers from the crowd in an unbeaten ten-run knock as India crossed the finish line in the 40th over.

India’s pace bowlers were far from threatening but they did not need to be against a shaky top order. Ajit Agarkar managed gentle swing to get rid of Navdeep Poonia, while RP Singh – who ambled in to bowl but still put in enough in his delivery stride to produce good lift and carry – nipped out Fraser Watts and Majid Haq. Munaf Patel, returning after a back muscle problem sent him home from Bangladesh in May, mixed wides with accurate, lifting deliveries and succeeded in getting the crucial wicket of Ryan Watson, the free-stroking Scotland captain.There were erratic moments, however, as 15 wides in the first 21 overs indicate, and though Munaf might be well enough to return to the line-up, his fielding efforts were by no means adequate. These lapses, and one tough drop by Yuvraj off McCallum after the first rain interval, allowed McCallum and Hamilton to launch a period of Scottish dominance against the spinners.The sweep, mostly to deliveries on and outside off stump, fetched easy singles and doubles and forced the spinners to change their line. Hamilton was confident driving down the ground, while McCallum was at ease working the ball to leg. McCallum celebrated his reprieve by thumping Ramesh Powar out of the ground and later raised the 50 partnership off 74 balls with a streaky four past gully.Piyush Chawla tossed it up and was twice swept to the fine-leg boundary but at 131 for 5, Mahendra Singh Dhoni snapped up a thick under-edge to get rid of a leaden-footed McCallum. Chawla caught Colin Smith shuffling across the stumps (146 for 6) but Hamilton and former captain Wright, with a career-best 38, helped Scotland get close to 200.

Inzamam-ul-Haq, the former Pakistan captain, struck out at the findings of an official board report that found him to be a “dictator” and blamed him almost entirely for the World Cup debacle.Responding to claims in a PCB committee report that his attitude was “haughty and that of a dictator,” Inzamam responded by arguing that this was the way of Pakistan cricket. Speaking to the Urdu daily , Inzamam said, “I was blamed for being very lenient during my whole captaincy career and now I am turned into a dictator. That could only be accepted if players had complained that I acted like one.”This is nothing new in Pakistan cricket. When the team loses, all the blame is put on others, and I was ready for that because it happened in the past,” he said, referring to Pakistan’s equally dismal 2003 World Cup.”Inzamam defended himself from charges that he took all selection matters into his own hands, marginalising on-tour selectors and calling up his own preferred players without consultation. “If I had power as captain it was simply because I was a successful captain and whenever I wanted certain player I convinced selectors to get that player and not through dictatorship.”The committee included two paid employees of the board, Salahuddin Ahmed, chief selector and Salim Altaf, director special projects, leading Inzamam to question the neutrality of their findings.”I know it will sound bitter to them but the presence of two paid members in the probe committee raises doubts over the impartiality of the report,” Inzamam told the BBC’s Urdu service.”How can a member, who was the director of operations, say this now and didn’t realise it before the World Cup?” asked Inzamam of Altaf.Inzamam, who resigned as captain and retired from ODIs after the tournament, maintained the report would have no bearing on his future. “It will be up to the selectors to select me. I will feature in domestic cricket and have been training to play Tests. This committee cannot decide my future,” he said. Given that the current chief selector was party to the committee’s findings, it seems improbable that Inzamam will be selected again for Pakistan.

Several of Stuart MacGill’s team-mates have backed him to keep his Test spot – provided he is fit and wants to play – for the Boxing Day match against India. MacGill is trying to get his ailing body in shape after a persistent knee problem and numbness in his hand affected his output in the second Test against Sri Lanka in Hobart.Michael Clarke believes that if MacGill works hard on his fitness in the lead-up he should remain Australia’s first-choice spinner. “If he can come through and say, ‘I’m ready to go boys’, I’m backing him all the way,” Clarke told the .”He was a bit stiff and sore in the second dig the other day but we had a four-day game and then two Tests back-to-back and that’s a lot of cricket. Now he has time to take a bit of a rest.”Hopefully that will set him up to get whatever he needs right and to make sure he’s ready to go for the Boxing Day Test. If his mind is right and he feels ready to go, then no doubt he will be an unbelievable bowler as he has been in the Test matches he’s played for Australia and the games he’s played for New South Wales over a long time.”MacGill faces a race against time to prepare his body for the India series and has hinted at possible retirement if he determines that his injuries cannot be adequately treated. He is seeking the advice of John Orchard, a rugby league doctor, as he spends the next few weeks working on his fitness.Brett Lee said MacGill should remain at the head of Australia’s slow-bowling list even after his Hobart struggles. “The bloke’s a class act and still has so much to offer Australian cricket,” Lee told the . “I’m very, very confident he has what it takes to lead our attack after Christmas. Nothing against the other spinners in Australia, but going on his record Stuey is still the best.”If Australia decided not to choose MacGill, Hogg would almost certainly be next in line. MacGill said in the it had been awkward for Hogg to be chosen in the 13-man squad for the first Test in Brisbane as the pair was subjected to “a dead-set bowl-off”. “If I don’t play in Melbourne Hoggy will do a great job,” MacGill said. “He’s been the best bowler in the Australian one-day team for two years.”However, Andrew Symonds said MacGill deserved to keep his place after he fought through his knee and hand problems in Hobart. “The easy way out would have been to say to Ricky Ponting, ‘Mate, I can’t bowl’,” Symonds wrote in his column in newspapers. “The fact he was willing to have a go and help knock over the Sri Lankans is testament to the character and spirit we want in the side.”

Gauteng will meet Northerns in the final of the SAA Provincial One-Day Challenge after they defeated South Western Districts and Eastern Province in the semi-finals held on March 8.Gauteng thrashed South Western Districts by 209 runs while Northerns prevailed over Eastern Province by 15 runs.Gauteng’s massive win in Johannesburg was set up by opener Dane Vilas, who smashed an unbeaten 119 from 115 balls, including ten fours and two sixes, as he steered his team to a commanding 297 for 5. Warren Swan chipped in with 57 while wicketkeeper Matthew Harris (25 off 13) and Dumisa Makalima (47 off 22) provided the flourish at the end. The only bowler to end with respectable figures was Rudy Hillerman, who took 2 for 49 in eight overs.Pursuing a stiff 298, South Western Districts struggled as left-arm spinner Jean Symes along with fast bowlers Yunus Keiller and Brian Mathebula shackled the visitors and bowled them out for 88 runs in 21 overs. Symes finished with 4 for 8 off 3.5 overs, while Keiller had 3 for 23 off his seven. Nigel Brouwers hit three sixes but fell for 26 as his side crashed to a 209-run lossIn the other semi-final in Port Elizabeth, Northerns scraped home in a low-scoring encounter. A tight bowling performance saw the Northerns, who chose to bat, restricted to 172 for 9. Shaun Liebisch scored almost a run-a-ball 60, but the rest of the batsmen were unable to find any run-scoring rhythm. Two run-outs in the 30th over didn’t help the cause of the Northerns either.Liebisch, though, sparked off his team-mates with the ball; he provided two vital breakthroughs when the Eastern Province top order were threatening to take the game away via building partnerships. Left-arm spinner Aaron Phangiso removed Nos 6-8 to finish with 3 for 31; wicketkeeper-batsman Sean Adair fought for 69 off 100, but was one of two scalps for medium-pacer Tumi Masekela.Eastern Province were dismissed for 157 off 42.5 overs, 16 short of their target. Northerns will face Gauteng in the final on Wednesday.

The MCC has submitted a planning application to Westminster City Council for six floodlights at Lord’s to be installed at the start of each season from 2009 for five years.Having floodlights is one of the provisions for hosting ICC World Twenty20 matches next year and could also be used for one-day internationals and county matches. If the plan is approved there will be six light pylons, the tallest standing at just under 48 metres behind the Warner, Compton, Edrich, and Tavern Stands. They will remain in place throughout the season and removed each winter.The application follows an in-depth study by the MCC which looked at the growing demand for day/night games The MCC realises that Lord’s needs floodlights to remain an attractive venue for day/night matches. Lord’s is one of three grounds that will host the World Twenty20, conditional on the provision of floodlights that meet ECB standards and the requirements of broadcasters.The MCC has already experimented with temporary mobile floodlighting for a day/night match in 2007 but found that they failed to meet ECB standards and there were problems with light spill and glare. A further day/night trial with temporary mobile floodlights is scheduled for August 2008 to address some of these issues.The temporary floodlights now proposed for 2009 are specifically designed for Lord’s and will implement higher quality and more accurate lighting to minimise light spill for local residents and eliminate glare for players, umpires, broadcasters and spectators. It will also enable the MCC to continue to monitor the impact of floodlighting on both the game and across the wider neighbourhood over a longer period of time.”Floodlights are now a key component for staging one day and Twenty20 matches,” said Keith Bradshaw, the MCC secretary and chief executive. “This application provides a solution to floodlighting for the ICC World Twenty20 tournament in 2009, a major international sporting event, as well as matches over the next five years. As the home of cricket globally, it is crucial that Lord’s continues to host these games.””The temporary option has been developed following a thorough analysis of floodlighting solutions. It’s important that we take into account the effect on the local area as well as how it fits in with the Lord’s masterplan, which will see significant and long-term improvements at Lord’s.”