The West Indies Players Association (WIPA) has issued a release stating that it is greatly concerned about recent decisions taken with regard to Dwayne Bravo and Brian Lara.Recently, the WICB announced that retainer contracts were being given to seven players including Lara, but not Bravo. The board had excluded Bravo because of a contract he recently signed with TSTT, a competitor with the board’s sponsors Digicel. The WICB took a decision to ignore Lara’s personal contact with Cable & Wireless because it was signed prior to the WICB’s contract with Digicel.WIPA is contending that the recent ruling by the ICC allows Bravo and other players to pursue their personal sponsorship deals, regardless of who sponsors the WICB.”We say this against the background of a FICA/ICC ruling on the issues pertaining to the respective commercial and promotional rights and obligations of players, the WICB and its major sponsors, a ruling the WIPA and the WICB agreed would be binding on both parties,” WIPA’s release said.

Michael Barton, who captained Surrey shortly after the Second World War and went on to be their president, has died at the age of 91.Barton’s career can be divided into distinct halves, bisected neatly by the war. Between 1935 and 1937 he appeared 28 times for Oxford University, winning Blues in 1936 and 1937. When he left university his first-class career appeared over – he joined Dunlop and played his cricket for Norfolk.But in the post-war years Surrey were struggling for a captain and Errol Holmes, who led them in 1947, approached Barton and asked him to share the role with him. “It was extraordinary really,” Barton reflected. “I was only playing occasional club cricket and I’d never captained a side in my life.”A skeptical dressing room was won over by his quiet charm and three hundreds in his first four matches, and Surrey ended one victory short of winning the title. Barton took over in sole charge in 1949, and in 1950 they won their first Championship since 1914. Stuart Surridge took over the captaincy in 1952 as Surrey began their extraordinary run of titles while Barton slipped quietly back into the shadows. He played one final time for Surrey, against his old university in 1954, scoring an unbeaten 58 from No. 9.Of his captaincy Wisden wrote: “Barton had considerable batting ability but was a dreamy captain. He was as unobstrusive as Gower. He fielded in the slips, and the picture lingers of him meandering down the pitch after each over and of his rule of thumb bowling changes. Starting in the field at 11.30 he used to take off his No. 2 opening bowler, usually Parker or Surridge, at 11.55 and his No. 1, Alec Bedser, at 12.15.”Barton was made Surrey president in 1983 and remained a loyal supporter of the club up until his death.

The fourth Test between England and Pakistan has been forfeited in favour of England, after an extraordinary day of rumour, speculation, and high farce that brought the game to the brink of one of the biggest crisis in recent memory. The decision was finally made at 10pm London time, in a makeshift press conference hall in the bowels of the Oval pavilion. It was the first such forfeiture in 129 years of Test cricket.Four long hours after play was called off for the day, and after protracted negotiations between the ICC, the ECB and the PCB, it was left to David Collier, the ECB’s chief executive, to read out a statement that will doubtless raise more questions than answers. Though both teams and their boards were keen for the match to continue, it was the umpires, Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove, who were not willing to budge from their original decision.”It was concluded with regret that there will be no play on the fifth day,” read the statement. “The fourth npower Test match between England and Pakistan has therefore been forfeited with the match being awarded to England. In accordance with the laws of cricket it was noted that the umpires had correctly deemed that Pakistan had forfeited the match and awarded the Test to England.”It may have been the correct application of the letter of the law, but the decision made a mockery of a match in which Pakistan had made all the running from the very first morning, and had been bubbling towards a thrilling conclusion on the final morning, as England looked set to put at least a token target on the board.According to Surrey officials, 12,000 tickets had been sold in advance – all of which will now have to be refunded, along with 40% of today’s takings – a combined loss of about £400,000. And Pakistan will certainly not be content to return home with a 3-0 defeat to their name, not to mention the further implications of the forfeiture. As Bob Woolmer announced at the close of play: “The team is upset by the inference they have been accused of tampering with the ball and therefore cheating.” The ICC, in a separate statement, confirmed that Pakistan has been charged under Level two of the Code of Conduct, 2.10, which relates to changing the condition of the match ball.The initial incident took place in the 56th over, when umpires Hair and Doctrove deemed that the quarter seam on the ball had been raised and would therefore have to be changed. But the situation only really kicked off after tea, as the Pakistanis remained in their dressing-room in protest at the decision.After waiting in the middle of the pitch for twenty minutes, the umpires went to the Pakistan dressing-room to ask whether or not Inzamam-ul-Haq would lead out his team or not before they went out, took the bails off and left, thus awarding the Test to England.Bob Woolmer told Cricinfo that after Pakistan refused to come out after the tea break, both umpires, after waiting on the field, went to the Pakistan dressing room to ask whether or not they would continue to play. Inzamam countered by asking the umpires why they had changed the ball, which led to the Pakistan team protesting.”We are not here to answer that question,” Hair was reported to have said, and when Inzamam didn’t provide any reply to their initial query, they walked back out again. By the time Pakistan were eventually led out onto the field by Inzamam, the umpires had already walked on, knocked the bails off and gone back inside, refusing to come out again.The decision was made according to Law 21, regarding the result of a match, which states, “A match shall be lost by a side which in the opinion of the umpires refuses to play.” A further subsection adds, “If an umpire considers that an action by any player or players might constitute a refusal by either side to play then the umpires together shall ascertain the cause of the action. If they then decide together that this action does constitute a refusal to play by one side, they shall so inform the captain of that side. If the captain persists in the action the umpires shall award the match in accordance with above.”

Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, has said Pakistan could face further charges after yesterday’s events at The Oval. The whole team has been cited for the condition of the ball and the ICC are awaiting the umpires’ reports.”The umpires are meeting this morning to consider whether there should be any further charges in relation to the refusal by Pakistan to take the field that resulted in the forfeit of the match,” Speed told BBC Radio. “It may be that there is more than one charge.”Having failed to appear for the session after tea, Pakistan again remained in the changing room when the umpires went out a second time 15 minutes later. They then took the field but by then the umpires ruled that the match had been forfeited and, after several hours of deliberation, the game was awarded the game to England, whose victory meant they took the four-match series 3-0.”The next step that will be taken will be that there will be a [ICC] disciplinary hearing to deal with the ball handling issues,” Speed said. “I’m not sure whether that will take place today [Monday] or whether it will be later in the week.”There are other provisions under the code of conduct that would enable a charge to be laid for bringing the game into disrepute and that is being considered this morning. It would be directed at the captain [Inzamam-ul-Haq].”The captain is responsible for the actions of the team, that’s very clearly laid out in the laws of the game and it’s one of the things that we try very hard to uphold. The ball tampering charge, that will be dealt with, and there is power there for the match referee to fine or ban the player there.”Similarly, if other charges are laid, the player could face fines or if he is found guilty, he could face a fine or a ban.”

The Pakistan Cricket Board has, as expected, rejected a claim for compensation totaling around £800,000 lodged by the ECB in relation to the abandonment of the Oval Test in August.The ECB was looking to recoup losses it incurred resulting from Pakistan’s forfeiture of the match. It had to reimburse people who had bought tickets for the final day, and it also handed a 40% refund to ticket holders who attended the curtailed fourth day.The ECB declined to comment on the grounds that its correspondence with the PCB was confidential. However, a spokesman for the PCB told The Times: “We have decided to contest the claim legally as the Pakistan board was not responsible for the Test not being completed.”The PCB has maintained ever since Inzamam-ul-Haq was cleared of ball-tampering that the blame for the early end to the Test lay with the umpires, especially Darrell Hair, as it was their decision which set in motion a chain of events that led to the forfeiture. As a consequence, the PCB argues that, as Hair’s employers, the ICC is ultimately responsible.The ECB’s position is that whatever the rights and wrongs of the original action, Inzamam was to blame for Pakistan refusing to take the field – an offence he was punished for following the hearing – and that makes the PCB liable to make good losses.The matter is now likely to be raised when the ICC executive board meets in Mumbai early next month. It an agreement cannot be reached then, the likely next step is arbitration, months of deliberation and quite possibly more legal bills.

Andrew Flintoff has said that the heavy 166-run loss in Friday’s opening Ashes tour match did not suddenly turn England into a bad side. Flintoff, who scored only a single as his team was drubbed by the Prime Minister’s XI in a one-day game in Canberra, said England were far from despondent and would learn from their first experience of Australian conditions.Flintoff put on a brave face with less than a fortnight to the opening Ashes Test at Brisbane. “We were outplayed by the Prime Minister’s XI; they played some good cricket,” Flintoff said. “On previous tours we have started slow and we’ve been beaten in warm-up games and we’ve bounced back quick.”Flintoff, like England have been doing recently, didn’t read too much into the one-day game. “Today was a one-day game and we’re not going to get too despondent about it. Next week we have the (three-day) New South Wales game, a longer form, and then we have the South Australia game so we’re not despondent about it. We know we have to improve and we’ll do that next week before the first Test in Brisbane.”We had a defeat today. It doesn’t turn us into a bad side. We’ve still got talented players and we’re going to express ourselves in the weeks to come.”Three of England’s top batsmen – Andrew Strauss (67), Alastair Cook (4) and Kevin Pietersen (7) – were all victims of short-pitched balls, with Shaun Tait in dynamic form to push his Test claims.”The lads are aware of what happened today,” Flintoff said. “Sometimes in one-day cricket you are looking to score runs and you are looking to take the ball on a little bit more and sometimes you play shots you probably wouldn’t necessarily do in the longer form of the game. I’m sure the lads would have learned from today. In the dressing room the confidence is fine, the lads are still upbeat and we just have to work hard.”On a personal front, Flintoff was delighted to have bowled out his 10 overs to fully test his fitness from mid-year ankle surgery. “I was pleased. I got 10 overs under my belt, I started well in three spells, came back strong and the body felt good and my ankle pulled up nicely. So from my personal point I was pleased with my 10 overs,” he said.Cameron White, PM’s XI captain, was satisfied with a job well done to help uncover some weaknesses in the England side for the Australian Test team to exploit. “I’m not sure how the defeat will affect them, but I think it might put them under a bit more pressure to perform in their tour games coming up,” White said. “We talked about trying to put them on the back foot, so if that helped the Australian team out some way, we would have done our stuff.”Tait, who played down talk of his Test chances, said that based on the evidence of this game Australia had some cause for optimism about the upcoming Ashes series. “There are some (English) guys who don’t really play the short ball that well and they are prepared to have a go at it, so we exploited that today and we got three wickets off short balls,” Tait said. “The Australian team could look at that and maybe exploit that as well.”

Nasim Ashraf, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), has reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to a zero-tolerance policy on doping in the wake of criticism from Percy Sonn, the ICC president, over the board’s handling of the doping cases of Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif.The bowlers were initially handed bans by a committee set up to investigate their cases, only for the judgment and punishments to be totally overturned by a subsequent appeals committee. The findings of the appellate committee raised questions about the PCB’s anti-doping regulations and it prompted Sonn to remark, in an official statement, that “the judgment highlights inconsistencies in the PCB’s anti-doping processes and regulations.”But Ashraf, speaking to Cricinfo, defended the role of the PCB in the matter. “We remain totally committed to a zero-tolerance policy on doping. I cannot stress that enough. But the verdict of both commissions also has to be honoured and respected. The board has nothing to do with the commissions. They were completely independent; they proceeded and arrived at their conclusions in an open and transparent manner.”What appears to be a particular concern is the seemingly wide divergence between the PCB’s anti-doping regulations and those of the ICC and WADA (World anti-doping agency). As a result of the disparity, the original committee found both players guilty and punished them based on ICC and WADA regulations but the appellate committee exonerated them of all charges under PCB regulations, further arguing that the first committee was wrong to have referred to an international code in the first place.Ashraf explained that the discrepancy existed because the PCB had framed their policy in 2002, much before the ICC adopted the WADA code. And in response to Sonn’s call for member countries to align their regulations with those of the ICC and WADA, Ashraf said the process had already begun in Pakistan.”We have already started aligning our policy to the WADA code and we will make sure that this process happens as quickly as possible now. Our policy should be as close to possible as their’s. Pakistan is one of only four members that has an active anti-doping policy at the moment and ours was framed back in 2002.”Though drugs have crept into cricket through a number of incidents in recent years – international players have been fined for smoking marijuana and first-class cricketers banned for more serious abuse – Shoaib and Asif are the only players to test positive for a banned anabolic steroid. Shane Warne tested positive for a diuretic which is used to mask the presence of steroids and was banned for a year.And Ashraf reasoned that from this incident, there was an opportunity for cricket to learn as well. “This unfortunate incident has created mass awareness of doping issues in cricket. That is something we can all, as a sport, now learn from and try and prevent such cases from occurring again. This is a good lesson for all players because the responsibility ultimately is theirs for what goes into their body.”We will also take greater pains to ensure that all players are properly educated about doping matters and fully understand the issues at stake. And we will do this while being completely committed to zero tolerance on doping. That is something the board, and I personally, will not compromise on. I believe in zero tolerance and I will implement this belief.”

Ashwell Prince will replace Boeta Dippenaar for the remaining two ODIs against India. The change was announced today by Haroon Lorgat, convenor of selectors. “We have brought Ashwell Prince back to give us experienced options should we wish to change our top order batting,” Lorgat said.Lorgat also announced that six senior players would be rested for the Twenty20 match to be played against India at Wanderers on Friday night. “The players to be rested are Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis, Andrew Hall, Andre Nel, Makhaya Ntini and Shaun Pollock,” Lorgat said.”We are fortunate to have talented players in reserve which allows us to rest some of our senior players. “These include the likes of AB de Villiers as a wicket-keeper, and allrounders such as Tyron Henderson, Albie Morkel, Roger Telemachus, Robin Peterson and Johan van der Wath.”Lorgat also confirmed that he had replaced Andre Nel with Andrew Hall for the third ODI. “Andre Nel had sustained an injury to his right index finger and I made the call to the replace him with Andrew Hall before the start of play”

Ozias Bvute, Zimbabwe Cricket’s managing director, has tried to cool temperatures after Zimbabwe’s humiliation in Bangladesh, saying the board will take its time to act on the series whitewash.The series whitewash has sparked widespread condemnation back home, and stirred up debate on the future of the team’s management staff and under-performing players. But Bvute told Zimbabwe’s Standard newspaper that the board would not be making any rush decisions with regards to the team’s future.”Obviously we are disappointed by the team’s overall performance. The players have not been able to acclimatise and again, there was always apprehension before the tour started that Zimbabwe would struggle against their spinners. But there will be a post-mortem when the team returns, where the technical committee will be meeting with the coaches to make a review of the tour and decide on the way forward.”Whatever comes out of that meeting would then be tabled before the ZC board in early January. If there are going to be any changes, that would have to be decided by the board, after full consultation with the technical committee.”Bvute added that no dates had been set for either of the two meeting or for the ZC board elections, which were postponed last month, following a directive from the Sports and Recreation Commission. But he added that ZC has set December 29 as the interim date for the board elections which are expected to grant Peter Chingoka yet another term, despite his having been in charge at a time the game inside Zimbabwe has sunk to new lows both domestically and internationally.

Ross Taylor and James Franklin have been cleared to play in New Zealand’s second match of the CB Series against England at Hobart tomorrow after recovering from their respective ailments. Taylor suffered from cramps during his innings of 84 against Australia, requiring a runner midway through his innings, while Franklin bowled four overs before leaving the field due to migraine.Stephen Fleming, the New Zealand captain, had earlier expressed concern over the Taylor’s health, given that Taylor had a similar experience after scoring his maiden ODI hundred against Sri Lanka at Napier last month. He had to be taken to hospital, where he was put on an intravenous drip. Fleming said something needed to be done to prevent the problem from recurring and Taylor accordingly took blood tests.After the 105-run loss to Australia, Fleming said his team had to sort out their batting woes quickly. Taylor and Peter Fulton made a push for the target of 291 with a fourth-wicket stand of 81, but New Zealand lost their last seven wickets for 23.”There is some residue from that Sri Lankan series, there’s got to be because we batted poorly,” Fleming told NZPA. “At least we got a base there where we could have pushed on but it wasn’t to be. We’ll get into this tournament in the sense that the wickets are better, the conditions are more batter-friendly, and work our way in.”Both New Zealand and England go into Tuesday’s game searching for their first win, and Fleming said they could expect some tough competition from England. England were whitewashed 5-0 in the Ashes and are still seeking their first win on a tour that started in November.”I’m sure England will be looking forward to our match very positively just to see some new faces and put things into play that they haven’t been able to do against Australia,” Fleming said. “They’ll want to prove to everyone else that they’ve been up against a good side, so if they can beat us it’ll go some way to easing a bit of the pain.”