S P O R T S

England can level series: Vaughan
London, December 17
Former captain Michael Vaughan said England can recover from their bitter defeat to India and level the series in Mohali.

England team members engaged in a fitness drill at the PCA Stadium in Mohali on Wednesday. Tribune photo: Vicky Gharu

Dravid thinking too much: former players
New Delhi, December 17
Off-colour India batsman Rahul Dravid is perhaps thinking too much about his bad patch and trying hard to come out of it which is making his job more difficult, feel former players.

Spotlight back on Panesar 
London, December 17
An initially amusing but ultimately irritating feature of Monty Panesar's bowling is the frenzied appeal after he beats a batsman and hits him on the pads outside off-stump.

Front-runner for Test slot
Chandigarh, December 17
Though not as sublime as Tendulkar’s 103 n.o. or as brutal as Sehwag’s 83, Yuvraj’s sterling knock (85 n.o.) in the historic Test win against England in Chennai was no less crucial. Of immense value to the team and in a game watched keenly the world over as it was played in the wake of the Mumbai terror strikes that claimed 179 lives, the knock could well turn out to be turning point in his career and help him cement his place in the Test side.

Yuvi will establish himself: Ganguly
New Delhi: Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly today expressed full confidence in Yuvraj Singh, saying he was sure the Punjab batsman would establish himself as one of the top Test cricketers.

Pak tour not on: Ganguly
New Delhi, December 17
Former captain Sourav Ganguly believes Indian cricket team's visit to Pakistan early next year is under serious jeopardy and said the tour might not go ahead after the strained relations between the two countries.

PCA gets security at state’s cost once again
Chandigarh, December 17
It’s loot, which seems to know no bounds. Once again the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) would not be paying a single penny for the elaborate security arrangements it is making for the test match between England and India starting from December 19.

Teams allowed 10 foreign players
New Delhi, December 17
The IPL franchisee meeting on player trading has decided to allow 10 foreign players in each team, though the number of international players in the playing eleven will remain four. And teams will not be allowed temporary replacements from 2009 onwards to cover partial unavailability of a player during the season. The only temporary replacements allowed will be in the situation where a player is completely unavailable for a whole IPL season.

Asif's hearing to be held in London
Karachi, December 17
Disgraced Pakistan pacer Mohammad Asif's request to conduct his drugs inquiry tribunal hearing held at a neutral venue has been accepted by the Indian Premier League (IPL) and it will now be held in London on January 24.

England can level series: Vaughan

London, December 17
Former captain Michael Vaughan said England can recover from their bitter defeat to India and level the series in Mohali.

England were beaten by six wickets in Chennai on Sunday, but Vaughan told 'Telegraph TV' he was proud of his team-mates' performance following the interruption to the tour by the terror attacks in Mumbai.

''It was a great game of cricket. Both teams played to an incredible standard in terms of what they'd gone through in the previous two weeks,'' he said.

''The England team can be very proud of the way they played. For three-and-three-quarter days they dominated the Test and that is something which is very difficult to do in India.''

Vaughan rued the fourth afternoon of the match, when England's run rate slowed, giving India their first respite in the game.

''The defining moment was that middle session (on day four) when we probably let the momentum sway back towards India when we could have nailed home the game.''

Vaughan, taking a sabbatical from the international game, has been in contact with the players during the tour and is confident that morale is good despite the defeat.

''One thing with the England team is we do have a 'bulldog spirit', a fighting spirit. We proved that in this game.'' However, England's most successful Test captain, warned that producing another big effort in Friday's second Test would be no easy task.

''The hard thing is doing it again,'' he said. ''We've just lost a real big game, a game that all the lads would have expected to win on that fourth evening.

''It's going to be a real task of mental strength. The boys are pretty drained and emotionally tired from what they've been through in the last few weeks. But if they win the toss, and bat, and get put runs on the board they can put India under a lot of pressure.'' — UNI 

Dravid thinking too much: former players

New Delhi, December 17
Off-colour India batsman Rahul Dravid is perhaps thinking too much about his bad patch and trying hard to come out of it which is making his job more difficult, feel former players.

Dravid is having a prolonged drought of runs, including scores of 3 and 4 in the two innings of the first Test against England, raising a big question mark about his place in the team.

"Dravid is certainly going through a bad time, which is affecting his confidence as well. But we should not forget that Dravid has led India to win on a number of occasions during his long career," said Kirti Azad, member of the 1983 World Cup winning team.

"I think, he is a quite experienced batsman and would be able to regain his touch very soon," he said when asked about ex-selection panel chief Dilip Vengsarkar's advice that Dravid should take a break to recapture his form.

He also felt that Dravid, who has more than 10,000 runs in Tests and one-day format each, need not ponder about taking rest as keeping himself away from the 22-yards will not help him any way.

"I don't understand how a cricketer will recover his form by staying away from the game he plays," Azad said when asked about former Test captain and ex-selection panel chief Dilip Vengsarkar's advice that it would be wise to take a break to recapture his form.

However, the Delhi cricketer thinks Dravid himself is the best judge to decide about when he would call it a quit.

"Let him decide when he wants to retire from cricket," Azad said.

Former India wicketkeeper Saba Karim said the experienced cricketer should be given time till India's tour of New Zealand early next year.

"It would be wrong to force Dravid to sit out right now, when the team is really doing well. Before taking any such decision he should given time till the away series against New Zealand," said Saba, who has played 34 ODIs.

"Cricket is a team game where all the eleven members can't perform all the time. He (Dravid) is probably thinking too much about the bad patch he is going through.

"He should enjoy the game fully and everything else will fall in place automatically," Saba insisted. — PTI

Spotlight back on Panesar 

London, December 17
An initially amusing but ultimately irritating feature of Monty Panesar's bowling is the frenzied appeal after he beats a batsman and hits him on the pads outside off-stump.

Because the batsman has attempted to play a shot, he cannot be given out lbw. Yet Panesar will still beg the umpire to give a decision contrary to the laws of the game.

His unquestioned physical gifts and boundless enthusiasm have rightly won him a place as England's premier spinner.

But Panesar's seeming inability to come to terms with the rules of a sport which rewards him with a handsome annual income has raised one question mark about his overall capacity to master orthodox left-arm spin.

Now the spotlight is on Panesar again after his failure to take a wicket in the second innings of this week's first test against India in Chennai where the home side seized a memorable victory on a wearing pitch.

Shane Warne, whose ability to coin a phrase remains undiminished in retirement, said before the match that Panesar had not played 33 Tests. He had, said Warne, played the same Test 33 times.

Former England coach Duncan Fletcher entered the debate today with a similar message.

''Monty has to come to terms with the way a batsman's mind works and second-guess his intentions,''

Fletcher wrote in his regular Guardian newspaper column. ''But he's just sending down the same ball again and again.'' According to the cricinfo website (www.cricinfo.com), Panesar took 65 wickets at 28.40 in his first 17 tests. In his second 17, he has taken 52 at 37.82.

The overall statistics are still impressive in an era of inflated batting and bowling averages. But they do indicate that batsmen are playing Panesar with increasing ease.

In the spinner's defence, he was woefully short of match practice before the Chennai Test and was confronted for much of the second innings by the genius of Sachin Tendulkar.

''People talk about him developing and changing pace and that takes time, we know that with spinners. They have to add things to their game as batters do and all cricketers do to stay ahead of the game,'' coach Peter Moores told reporters.

''He wants to develop his game and he is developing his game and he's at that point in his career where he is learning all the time.

''Once you learn something, you practice it and then you can start to use it in a game. It's not an overnight process.''

It is also true that despite Fletcher's well-documented reservations about Panesar's batting and fielding, he is the most gifted England left-arm spinner since Phil Edmonds and the most successful since Derek Underwood plied his craft in the 1960s and 1970s.

''Possibly because England supporters were yearning for a match-winning spinner and partly because of his idiosyncrasies, Panesar was greeted as the messiah from the start,'' former England captain Mike Atherton wrote in The Times.

''He is no Shane Warne, never has been, never will be. He is, however, a bloody good finger spinner and still the best England have by a distance. One bad game does not change that.'' — Reuters

Front-runner for Test slot
Gopal Sharma
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 17
Though not as sublime as Tendulkar’s 103 n.o. or as brutal as Sehwag’s 83, Yuvraj’s sterling knock (85 n.o.) in the historic Test win against England in Chennai was no less crucial. Of immense value to the team and in a game watched keenly the world over as it was played in the wake of the Mumbai terror strikes that claimed 179 lives, the knock could well turn out to be turning point in his career and help him cement his place in the Test side.

In and out of the team, Yuvraj has come back with a vengeance. Getting a break into the Test squad on the strength of the back-to-back hundreds in the first two one-day matches against the same opponents, Yuvraj overtook the early tentativeness to play an innings that resulted in the fourth highest chase by any team to win a Test.

Yuvraj took some time to settle down. There were occasional lapses in concentration. Like the one when he mis-hit Monty Panesar and the ball landed between the mid-wicket and the long on, prompting Sachin Tendulkar to rush to his younger partner and tell him to stay cool.

With Tendulkar shepherding the innings like a true legend, Yuvraj Singh then played like a seasoned batsman, stringing together with the maestro an unbeaten 163-run stand for the fifth wicket, which finally proved decisive in the outcome of the match.

That Yuvraj is a special talent has never been in doubt. Ever since he announced his arrival in the game against mighty Australia in the 2000-01 Mini World Cup with a blistering 84, Yuvraj has won umpteen ODI games for India.

The centuries at Rajkot and Indore in the first two ODIs against England were more of an expression of his anger and pent up feeling of despair at having remained unable to seal his place in the Test squad even after eight years of international career..

When on song, the Chandigarh batsman is capable of display travelling worth miles to see. His ability to clear the fence at will as exemplified by his 12-ball 50 (fastest in any form of the game) against England when he clobbered fast bowler Stuart Broad for six successive sixes in the T20 World Championship) at Kingsmead in Durban on September 19, 2007 testifies to the exceptional talent he is blessed with. In the semifinals against Australia, he went berserk clobbering 70 runs off 30 balls. This included the longest six he hit off Brett Lee, which went soaring and cleared a whopping 119 meters!

After the momentous win, lavishing praise on Yuvraj, Tendulkar wondered why people questioned the left-hander’s ability as a Test batsman. “These are just loose statements. He is a terrific player and he has got some important runs. He has got three hundreds in Test cricket,” Tendulkar is reported to have said.

Dilip Vengsarkar, former selection committee chairman, felt that Yuvraj was an exceptional talent. Though not as successful in Tests as in ODIs, the recent display augured well for the Indian team.

Bhupinder Singh Sr, former selector, believes that the Chennai knock could well see the emergence of a new Yuvraj. “It was an innings in which Yuvraj showed tremendous maturity. He showed good temperament and ability to adapt to the Test cricket. Henceforth, we could see a Yuvraj, who after having gone through the grind of international cricket for nearly eight years, was ready to serve the team in Tests as well.”

Asked whether he thought that Yuvraj was the front-runner to take the Test slot left vacant by Sourav Ganguly ahead of the competitors like Cheteshwar Pujara or S Badrinath, former India seamer quipped: “Having been tested by the international bowling attacks for nearly eight years and over 200 ODIs and 24 Tests under his belt, Yuvraj is the favourite for the middle order batting slot.”

Pak tour not on: Ganguly

New Delhi, December 17
Former captain Sourav Ganguly believes Indian cricket team's visit to Pakistan early next year is under serious jeopardy and said the tour might not go ahead after the strained relations between the two countries.

''I don't know whether it is right for me to say but I feel the tour is not on. Things are not right now for India to tour Pakistan,'' Ganguly said here today.

Ganguly, who will play his last first class match for Bengal, was practising here at the Karnail Singh Stadium for the Ranji Trophy Plate semi-final match against Goa.

It was under Ganguly's captaincy in 2003-04 when India last toured Pakistan and registered a historic win. He further added that although England showed great spirit to resume its tour of India, the security situation, he said, in the Pakistan might not be the same as here.

''England will not face similar security situation in India as we would face when we go to Pakistan. So it will be really tough for India to tour Pakistan,'' he stated.

India is scheduled to play three Tests, five ODIs and a Twenty20 match during its tour of Pakistan which is due to begin from January 4.

The left-handed batsman, however, lauded India's performance against England in the opening Test at Chennai and said the team has the capability to claim the number one spot in the world cricket.

''I saw the match, they played really well. I don't miss cricket now. We have the capability to be the number 1 team.

''We have defeated South Africa, Australia and England at home. But our real test lies when we go out,'' he pointed. — UNI 

PCA gets security at state’s cost once again
Chitleen K. Sethi
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 17
It’s loot, which seems to know no bounds. Once again the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) would not be paying a single penny for the elaborate security arrangements it is making for the test match between England and India starting from December 19.

While the PCA sells tickets and also earns millions from telecasting rights, the state government does not earn anything from the whole exercise. Not even entertainment tax from the sale of tickets.

To top this, the police of at least three districts is on guard outside the stadium for these matches and despite raising bills and demanding their due the PCA refuses to pay the Punjab police.

For the conduct of IPL matches in Mohali in April-May this year the SAS Nagar police had raised a bill of Rs 1.9 crore but no payment was made. Other than this, another bills worth Rs 1.5 crore raised for other matches are also pending to be paid. For some matches even the bills were not raised.

Compare this with the situation in Kolkata. The Kolkata police charges the Cricket Association of Bengal for every match that is held in the city. “For the IPL, which was a totally commercial venture, we got a very good amount from the organisers,” said GM Chakravorty. Sources add the Kolkata police got at least Rs 80 lakh for the security arrangements it provided for the IPL matches.

When contacted, the DGP Tamil Nadu K.P. Jain also said his police charged for every match. “I am not sure what the amount is but we do get money for providing security for the matches,” he said.

Why the Punjab government does not insist on its police being paid and continues to virtually subsidise the organising of matches is any one’s guess. Senior IAS and IPS officers of the state are embedded in the management of the PCA and are known to misuse their official staff and vehicles for the “efficient” organising of the matches.

Sources alleged that political leaders are included in the various organising committees for the “desired effect.” “I am the chairperson of the organising committee but am only the ceremonial head. I have just attended one of their meetings and have no idea why the PCA does not pay our police if other cricket associations are paying the local police,” said SAD president Sukhbir Badal.

In the post 26/11 scenario, the Punjab police has made unprecedented arrangements to ensure the safety of the PCA stadium at Mohali and all this would be done at the state’s cost. The whole exercise is likely to cost the state government lakhs of rupees. But not even a bill has been raised to charge the association this time.

“We do not have any order from the top regarding this,” said the SSP SAS Nagar Jatinder Singh Aulakh. “The government is seized of the matter and we would be taking a decision regarding this,” said DGP N.P.S. Aulakh.

And this is what the PCA has to say: “Why should the PCA pay for the security? It is the job of the police to provide security. It has already been decided at the level of the Chief Minister,” said G.S. Walia, an office bearer of the PCA. “We do pay for the food arrangement of the policemen on duty. We are a non-profit earning organisation and whatever is earned in the match is ploughed back into the association to promote cricket in the state,” he added. “We have not come across any demand from the police,” added D.P. Reddy, another office bearer of the association.

Teams allowed 10 foreign players
M.S.Unnikrishnan
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 17
The IPL franchisee meeting on player trading has decided to allow 10 foreign players in each team, though the number of international players in the playing eleven will remain four. And teams will not be allowed temporary replacements from 2009 onwards to cover partial unavailability of a player during the season. The only temporary replacements allowed will be in the situation where a player is completely unavailable for a whole IPL season.

Chairman and commissioner of the IPL Lalit Modi said, “This meeting on the player trading regulations is an important step in helping franchisees redress the integral balance of their playing squads to make them more competitive”.

Modi said the 2008 salary cap will cease to have effect and no unsued amount of the 2008 purse can be used in 2009. He said there will be no cap on player fees payable to players acquired by the franchisees during the trading window. “The trading window is only for players who were part of the IPL in 2008”, Modi added.

The trading window will open on December 22 at 12 noon (IST) and remain open till 5 p.m January 22, 2009. During this 32-day period, franchisees would have the opportunities to trade players - either by offering to sell a player via trade or expressing an interest to acquire a player - but prior to any trading discussions, the player’s consent must be obtained. “Negotiations between the two franchisees should be only with regard to the player fee payable”, Modi clarified.

“The other terms of the player contract (for example the period of the contract) may not be varied”, he added. But in the case of more than one franchise interested in buying the player, the “selling” franchise will have the right to negotiate with all interested franchisees.

The selling franchise will have the discretion as to which offer to accept, while each franchise will be restricted to purchasing a maximum aggregate of a total of four overseas and Team India players during the Trading Window - subject to the IPL squad composition rules. But there is no limit on the number of players that a franchise can sell.

Modi said a player auction will be held for new players who did not feature in the IPL 2008 season on February 6, 2009. All oversees players will require an NOC to play in the IPL. Outside the auction process but subject to the squad composition rules with respect to overseas players, each franchise will have the option to purchase any number of uncapped new players, but through a direct agreement.

The “uncapped overseas player” has been described as one “who, at the date the player contract is signed, neither had ever played senior international cricket (Test, ODI, international T20) nor had a central contract with his national association”. Each franchise will have $2 million to spend on 2009 player fees for players who are acquired either in the auction or through signing uncapped new players.

Asif's hearing to be held in London

Karachi, December 17
Disgraced Pakistan pacer Mohammad Asif's request to conduct his drugs inquiry tribunal hearing held at a neutral venue has been accepted by the Indian Premier League (IPL) and it will now be held in London on January 24.

The pacer confirmed today that he had been informed about the new date of the hearing by the IPL authorities.

The IPL has formed a three-member drugs inquiry tribunal to hear his case after Asif tested positive during the inaugural Twenty20 event semi-finals and later his "B" sample test also came positive in Geneva in August.

The tribunal that includes former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar has already held a hearing and was scheduled to meet on November 29 in Mumbai but the hearing was postponed due to the terror attacks in Mumbai.

"Because of the sad incident in Mumbai we felt it would be best to have the hearing at a neutral venue and we had requested the IPL to consider a neutral venue. I am thankful they have accepted my request," Asif said.

"I am really frustrated at being unable to play any cricket until the tribunal gives a clear decision on my case which is why I am keen to have this thing over with as soon as possible," he added. — PTI