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Match facts

Sunday, November 15, 2009
Start time 14.30 (12.30GMT)Plenty to smile about: Eoin Morgan has proved a revelation in England’s limited-overs batting line-up•Getty Images

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A highveld thunderstorm put paid to a potentially gripping finish to the opening Twenty20 but the action before the rain was still thoroughly entertaining in ideal conditions for quick scoring. With Albie Morkel and AB de Villiers in the middle, South Africa would still have fancied their chances of chasing down more than 10-an-over to win, while England’s bowlers were clawing back their figures are severe punishment from Loots Bosman.Not that England were short on boundaries. Eoin Morgan gave another display of his huge talent and Paul Collingwood showed there is plenty of life in the old(ish) dog yet. The tourists’ new-found freedom in limited-overs cricket is certainly the way forward. There will be days when it fails spectacularly, but as they learn how to adapt their aggression to conditions it will serve them well.So South Africa are left needing to win the second Twenty20 to square the series and finish the first phase of this long head-to-head on even terms. They will want to sharpen their bowling skills after they tended to feed Morgan’s leg-side strength, but Centurion should offer more high-scoring conditions. The main concern for England is the number of niggles the players are already picking up with James Anderson and Graeme Swann missing training along with Collingwood.With this being a day-game, it will hopefully mean that the full match is possible before any evening thunderstorms bubble up. However, it’s always worthwhile to keep the D-L sheets to hand.

Form guide

(last five completed matches, most recent first)
South Africa – LLWWW
England – WLWLW

Team news

If South Africa stick to their pre-series talk of giving all the squad a game it means some shuffling of the pack. Heino Kuhn is in line for a debut – Mark Boucher could be rested – while Jacques Kallis will return, although purely as a batsman, and Yusuf Abdulla, the left-arm seamer, is another pace option.South Africa (possible) 1 Graeme Smith (capt), 2 Loots Bosman, 3 Jacques Kallis, 4 JP Duminy, 5 Albie Morkel, 6 Heino Kuhn (wk), 7 Ryan McLaren, 8 Roelof van der Merwe, 9 Johan Botha, 10 Dale Steyn, 11 Yusuf AbdullaEngland are carrying a number of players with minor niggles. Collingwood (back), Anderson (knee) and Swann (side) all missed training as a precaution and face morning fitness tests ahead of the game. With Stuart Broad still recovering from his shoulder injury, Kevin Pietersen not due to return until Tuesday and Andrew Strauss opting out of Twenty20 the squad could be stretched. Adil Rashid and Graham Onions are the two players who didn’t appear in the opening match.England (possible) 1 Joe Denly, 2 Alastair Cook, 3 Jonathan Trott, 4 Paul Collingwood (capt), 5 Eoin Morgan, 6 Matt Prior (wk), 7 Luke Wright, 8 Tim Bresnan, 9 Graeme Swann, 10 Sajid Mahmood, 11 James Anderson

Watch out for

Dale Steyn took a bit of a hammering on Friday, firstly at the hands of Trott, who took him for four consecutive boundaries, then from Morgan’s onslaught. It is still early-season for Steyn, but he doesn’t appear quite on top of his game. However, it would be foolish to read too much into his form so far and it won’t take a lot for him to turn it around. He’ll want to make a mark ahead of the contests to come and his record shows a match-winning performance is not far away.England have found something a little special in Morgan – and he likes facing South Africa. His thrilling effort at the Wanderers followed on from his display at the Champions Trophy, when he helped knock out the hosts. England’s batsmen have been criticised for their lack of sixes, but Morgan is quickly putting that right and one blow in the first match landed comfortably outside the ground.

Stats and trivia

• Joe Denly has been dismissed first ball in both his Twenty20 international innings after being trapped leg before by Charl Langeveldt at the Wanderers to following his golden duck at the hands of Brett Lee at Old Trafford.
• England’s 202 for 6 was their highest Twenty20 total while Morgan’s 85 was also their best individual effort.

Quotes

“It was just that the wicket happened to be good and I didn’t think he bowled particularly well. We don’t target any bowlers at all.”
“From my perspective, it’s a realisation that it is going to be a tough series, it’s going to be good and exciting – England have come here to play.”

Karnataka

For Robin Uthappa, this season is probably mightily crucial for him to get back into national reckoning.•ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Karnataka has had an eventful off-season. The potentially trendsetting Karnataka Premier League had a promising debut season, while the state selectors (including former internationals Syed Kirmani and Raghuram Bhat) quit after their integrity was questioned by the state association’s president when they named the squad for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in September (subsequently their resignations were taken back ten days ago) . Further, there is still no clarity over who will be Karnataka’s full-time captain once Rahul Dravid departs for national duty.On the field, the Ranji Trophy title has proved elusive for a full decade after a period of dominance in the late 90s. Last season, the batting was too dependent on Robin Uthappa (Dravid was rarely available) as the other batsmen showed little consistency. It was a similar story in the bowling where veteran left-arm spinner Sunil Joshi, now nearly 40, and fast bowler Vinay Kumar had little support.New coach Sanath Kumar, who takes over from Vijay Bharadwaj, needs to get promising young batsmen – Manish Pandey, KB Pawan, M Gautam and Ryan Ninan (who played for Goa last season) – to raise their game. Fast bowler NC Aiyappa has been axed after a poor season (six matches, ten wickets at 40.40), giving the likes of S Aravind and Abhimanyu Mithun a chance to shine.One of Karnataka’s strengths is that they have a lot of allrounders, adding plenty of depth to the batting. Joshi, C Raghu and Stuart Binny – back after quitting the ICL – are bonafide allrounders while bowlers Vinay and B Akhil have also proved handy with the bat. Another positive is that they have Dravid leading the side for the first two matches, which are against possibly the strongest teams in Karnataka’s group – Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. With their conquerors from the previous season, Saurashtra, and Bengal, who have just made it back to the Super League, also in their pool Karnataka have to be at their best to make it to the quarter-finals.

It was, at best, a satisfactory season for Karnataka. Things seemed to be going well in the quarter-final against Saurashtra when they gained a big first-innings cushion, but they were undone by the old-hand and young-gun combination of Shitanshu Kotak and Cheteshwar Pujara, who orchestrated a tough chase of 325.Before that reverse, though, they were unbeaten. They opened the campaign with a couple of unconvincing draws against Railways and Tamil Nadu, conceding the crucial first-innings lead in both matches. They got back on track with an easy win against lightweights Andhra in Mysore, and a resounding ten-wicket victory against Baroda. The game against Uttar Pradesh was the only time they crossed the 400-mark, but that was not enough to gain first-innings point as the match petered out into a high-scoring draw. A 155-run win against Maharashtra secured a place in the quarter-finals, beyond which they couldn’t progress.

As in the previous season, Uthappa will get plenty of attention as he tries to force his way back into the national reckoning. The spotlight will also be on two other upcoming players who have proved their worth mainly in Twenty20s so far: Pandey and the ICL returnee Binny. A first-class average of 27 with no centuries isn’t a great record, but that hasn’t stopped Pandey from becoming something of a household name after his exploits in the IPL. This season will test whether he can translate his form from slam-bang cricket to the four-day game. As for Binny, he was one of the most impressive Indian cricketers in the ICL, and that has now earned him a contract with the Mumbai Indians. He has done little of note in his 18 first-class matches, though. How he fares over the next few months will determine whether he will be pigeonholed as a Twenty20 specialist or not.

Wriddhiman Saha has impressed both behind and in front of the stumps. So much so that the selectors nearly made him the captain for this season•ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Drama thy name is Bengal. A return to the top flight after one season in the lower division has not been without its share of controversies. The contentious issue of Laxmi Ratan Shukla being retained as captain this season pales in comparison to the difference of opinions between the selectors while choosing the best available talent. After the selection meeting last Tuesday was postponed due to personality clash between the selectors, the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) president Jagmohan Dalmiya held sway at the sitting the following day to bring about a consensus.Little wonder then that the CAB has named a 15-member Bengal squad for just the first game against Maharashtra in Pune. And with every player being handed over a sheet containing contact numbers of their team-mates to improve communication among themselves, the message is loud and clear after their horrendous performance in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.They took a step in the right direction by entering the finals of the Vijay Hazare Trophy earlier this year. Also, the ICL players have returned, there is a new coach in Roger Binny and a new chairman of selectors in Sambaran Banerjee. Will Bengal recapture their lost glory?

With three wins and two draws, Bengal established their supremacy at the top of Group B in the Plate League. Their biggest triumph was the innings-and-226-run demolition of Services in Kolkata. Ranadeb Bose’s six-wicket haul gave Bengal the first-innings lead against Goa in the Plate League semi-final, which was enough to ensure a Super League quarter-final berth. But Tamil Nadu were always going to be formidable opponents, and despite a first-innings lead courtesy Manoj Tiwary’s century, they lost by eight wickets.

Wriddhiman Saha has made the most of the opportunity with Bengal after Deep Dasgupta’s exodus to the ICL. The journey that began in November 27 is heading in the right direction, even as Dasgupta makes his return following the BCCI’s amnesty offer. Saha was Bengal’s top scorer in the Plate League last year with 428 runs from six matches at 53.50 that included a brilliant 159 against Vidarbha. The performances had even led the selectors to flirt with the possibility of naming him the captain this season. His talent has been endorsed by John Buchanan, Ricky Ponting and the state’s own Sourav Ganguly, who reckons that Saha is the next big thing in Bengal cricket. A successful stint in the IPL with the Kolkata Knight Riders was followed by an India A call-up and the 25-year-old from Shaktigarh, Burdwan is one to watch out for in the future.Behind Saha, with 308 runs at 38.50 in the last year’s campaign, was Tiwary, who is perhaps Bengal’s most consistent batsman in recent years. He was also the fourth-highest run-getter in the Ranji Trophy one-dayers last season, scoring 373 runs at 74.60. Bengal will certainly hope that this season turns out to be like the one he had a couple of years ago, when he averaged over 90.Bose and Ashok Dinda continue to toil hard for Bengal, despite their spat during the Vijay Hazare Trophy, when Dinda was fined Rs 10,000 by the CAB. Bose and Dinda shared 61 wickets to become the third and fourth-highest wicket-takers in the Plate League last season and were the biggest factor in Bengal’s quick return to the top division.

Saurashtra

Shitanshu Kotak and Cheteshwar Pujara will be, yet again, the backbone of Saurashtra’s batting•ESPNcricinfo Ltd

“No one used to bother about Saurashtra in the past,” says Shitanshu Kotak, their most senior player. “Now they sit up and take notice, they think this team can beat us. It feels great.”Saurashtra, one of the unfancied teams in the circuit, surprised many by reaching the semi-finals in the last two years. Their 2007-08 campaign gave them the belief that they no longer need to fear the good teams and the last year’s efforts showed everybody else that Saurashtra are here to stay. They will face a big hurdle this year with the absence of Ravindra Jadeja, away playing for India, as he shone with both bat and ball last season.

Their batsmen, led by Cheteshwar Pujara, came to the party on home grounds in Saurashtra to take them to the knock-out stage. In the quarterfinal against Karnataka, who had Rahul Dravid, they looked down and out after yielding 114-run lead in the first innings. But Sandeep Jobanputra and Ravindra Jadeja, the seam-spin combo, bundled out Karnataka for 208 in the second innings before Pujara (112) and Kotak (87) helped them chased down 325. However, Wasim Jaffer hit a triple century in the semi-final to help take Mumbai the first-innings lead and to end Saurashtra’s campaign.

Pujara and Ravindra Jadeja led with the bat, amassing 906 and 739 runs and were well supported by Kotak and the two openers Chirag Pathak and Bhushan Chauhan. Ravindra Jadeja led their bowling with 42 wickets at 19.92 but he will be missing this season due to India duty. In his absence, Jobanputra and Balkrishna Jadeja will have to share the burden in the bowling department.

Maharashtra

This could be the year of consolidation for this young squad, whose average age is 21 and features only two 25-plus players. Last year Maharashtra appointed a new coach in the Australian Shaun Williams and gave berths to ten uncapped players in the squad. Twelve months on both the coach and team have a better understanding about the goals and challenges ahead and how best to capture them.Willams is unwilling to stick the ‘inexperienced’ tag up his players’ sleeves anymore and instead wants them to step up to the next level. The players seem to have read their coach’s message clearly as they bounced back strongly in the West Zone leg of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in October. Having lost the first game against Gujarat, Maharashtra hit back strongly by beating three formidable opponents – Baroda, Mumbai and Saurashtra – to advance into the knockout round. The challenge now is to come up with strong, solid and consistent performances.Even if their success came in a Twenty20 format it still is an encouraging sign and a pointer to the progress being made. Maharashtra continue to be a developing team whose nucleus remains the quartet of Kedar Jadhav, Amey Shrikhande, Harshad Khadiwale (in the batting department) and Samad Fallah leading the bowling attack. Last year Maharashtra suffered the absence of a quality spinner despite the presence of the Bangladeshi left-armer Enamul Haq jnr, who failed to live up to the expectations. Kiran Adhav, another left-armer, and Ganesh Gaikwad, an offspinner, have done well in the pre-season games and could play a key role considering the fact that four of the six league matches will be held in Pune, the team’s home base.Maharashtra did not have an off season as they played home-and-away encounters against emerging squads in Bangladesh and Australia. Players, having gained vital exposure against quality opposition, would now be looking forward to push Maharashtra to the next level.

Nothing spectacular. In fact, they were only in the news when the Tamil Nadu opening pair of Abhinav Mukund and M Vijay fell short of breaking the Ranji Trophy record for the opening partnership against them. Their 462 was two runs short of Ravi Sehgal and Raman Lamba’s 464 which came in the clash between Delhi and Himachal Pradesh in 1994-95.

Jadhav, Shrikhande, Khadiwale and Fallah remain the catalysts. Jadhav is the pivot in the middle order and was the ninth highest run-getter in the Super League (651 runs in 6 matches) and Shrikhande was No. 13 (571 runs in 6 matches). Fallah, a left-arm swing bowler, is of average build, not particularly tall but his strength lies in his ability to move the ball in the air. Last season he was the highest wicket-taker in West Zone at the end of the league phase with four five-fors the highest number by any bowler till Dhawal Kulkarni equalled his mark in the final. In the final count Fallah stood No. 8 on the wickets’ list with 33 victims. Khadiwale, 20, is a hard-hitting opening batsman and got a half-century in the Challenger Trophy for Indian Red.

Former Zimbabwe captain Alistair Campbell expects Zimbabwe to return to the Test fold in two to three years with the resolution of some issues that had hampered its cricket. The country lost several leading players in an exodus following Heath Streak’s removal from the captaincy in 2004 and the situation became worse in 2006 when the Zimbabwe board suspended the weakened national team from Tests.”Bygones need to be bygones,” Campbell told BBC World Service Sport. “I think we’ll be good enough in two or three years to get back and compete. Selection is now on merit and that’s a huge step in the right direction.”ZC makes no apology for the fact that there was a policy of affirmative action before. There are 13 million black people in Zimbabwe and you’re not going to will that away – they had to become more integrated.”Campbell, who played 60 Tests and 188 one-day internationals, is now the chairman of selectors. He said that the mess in Zimbabwe cricket since 2004, when 15-odd white players lost their contracts, could have been handled a lot better.”I don’t think it was thought out. When you get cricketing decisions made by non-cricketers, that is what happens,” he said. “There were a lot of people who muddied the waters as well and I think it just became an exercise that had the right intentions but just got out of control.”Only a few players from the exodus, including Steak and left-arm spinner Ray Price, made comebacks. The country continues to play ODIs and Twenty20s but languishes at the bottom of the world rankings.Ozias Bvute, managing director of Zimbabwe Cricket, defended his board’s policies as it gave plenty of opportunities to several black players.”To allow cricket to grow, we had to ensure that everybody was represented and that we picked our team from the entire population, rather than just a facet of it,” Bvute said.”At one stage we were able to raise a team from only 200 to 300 individuals. That situation has changed now.”Ultimately, you can’t take away the fact that there are over half a million youngsters who now play cricket in Zimbabwe, that there are over 200 professional cricketers in Zimbabwe, that wherever you go in and around Zimbabwe, people now know about cricket.”

Kevin Pietersen has admitted his recovery from Achilles surgery is proving a slow process but is still targeting a return to action in South Africa this winter.Pietersen has been sidelined since the end of the second Ashes Test after an operation on the Achilles problem that had troubled him since the tour of West Indies earlier this year and steadily got worse during the home season. He has already suffered one setback when he needed to be admitted to hospital with an infection which set the recovery back and he is still some way off returning.”I saw a couple of surgeons during the week but it’s slow at the moment. I’ve got an open wound in my leg,” Pietersen told BBC Sport while at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. “But I’m really hoping to be back for the South Africa tour at the moment, that’s my target now.”Pietersen needed injections to get through the two Ashes Tests he played, but by the end of Lord’s he could barely walk. When Pietersen originally underwent the surgery the hope was that he may recover in time for the Champions Trophy, which begins in South Africa on September 22, but now a more realistic comeback is probably the Test series in his homeland which begins in December.Pietersen has yet to play Test cricket in South Africa, but when he was part of the one-day series in 2004-05 he struck three centuries and overcame a hostile welcome from the crowds.Before the Tests, England play two Twenty20 internationals and a five-match one-day series against South Africa during November, but they might come too soon for Pietersen even though the England management will be desperate to have him back. While the team coped without him for the final three Tests against Australia to regain the Ashes he has left a huge void in the one-day side which is now 4-0 down after Saturday’s seven-wicket defeat at Lord’s. They are also without the injured Andrew Flintoff, who is deciding whether to accept the increment contract offer that was made this week.”It is always hard to be without your two best players but that’s the reality we are in,” Andrew Strauss said. “It is not going to be changing for a while so other people have to stand up. Hopefully when they do we have got more potential match-winners.”

A new match-fixing controversy has surfaced with the release of an audio tape that purports to be of two Pakistan Cricket Board officials discussing the ICL.The tape, the audio of which is not very clear, allegedly has a member of the national selection committee, Mohammad Ilyas, telling PCB chief operating officer Saleem Altaf how matches were fixed in the ICL. Ilyas is apparently referring to the first edition of the ICL, in which his son-in-law Imran Farhat was a participant.The voice allegedly that of Ilyas, a former Test player, speaks about how several Pakistani players fixed matches and also how a discarded Test batsman used to go out to bat drunk in the unauthorised league.The audio tape has nothing much coming from Altaf who is heard saying mostly “yes, yes, okay, okay”.Ilyas has denied that his is one of the voices on tape – the conversation is in Punjabi – while Altaf said he had not heard the tape. “The voice has been doctored. Someone is trying to damage Pakistan cricket and why would I say something to jeopardise the career of my son-in-law,” Ilyas said.But a former official of the Pakistan Cricket Board, who was in a key position during the tenure of former PCB chief Nasim Ashraf, admitted that the tape was from a collection of recordings made off Altaf’s telephone line on Ashraf’s instructions.”The telephone conversations of Altaf were being taped secretly and he didn’t know about it. But it is wrong if someone has released publicly what is a private and confidential tape,” the official said.Ashraf had sacked Altaf from his position as COO in July, 2008 on the basis of his taped conversations in which Altaf was accused of leaking out confidential information of the board. Altaf took the PCB to court and was re-appointed after Ijaz Butt took over as board president.Speaking about the tape, Altaf said: “Ilyas has this habit of even talking on [the basis of] hearsay. Everyone knows that. But if anything it must have been a general conversation, nothing more.”An ICL spokesperson said there was no truth in these allegations. “The ICL has operated as a private league, but we followed stringent norms in monitoring the matches using the anti-corruption model that is being used by the ICC,” he said. “We did not come across any instance of match-fixing.”The audio tape was sent to media representatives from an unknown e-mail address and was also uploaded, with English subtitles, on Youtube.

Bhupinder Singh, the former Indian cricketer and national selector, has been appointed by the Punjab Cricket Association as coach for the 2009-10 season. The 44-year-old, who represented North Zone on the selection panel, will take over from Arun Sharma. Bhupinder represented India in two ODIs in 1994 and was Punjab captain from 1989-1991.Bhupinder, who will be supervising the preparatory stage of the state probables camp starting from middle of next month, listed his priorities and said he wanted his team to make an “impact” in the near future. Punjab last won the Ranji Trophy in 1992-93.”After many Punjab players left earlier to join the ICL, it did have a temporary affect,” Bhupinder told PTI. “But now, we again want to build a strong side and eventually win the national championship. We will work hard to improve in all departments and hopefully make our presence felt.”Punjab had a disappointing season last time, finishing fifth among the eight teams in Group A of the Super League, and Bhupinder said it would be tough to get the team to start winning matches again. “Every season brings new hopes,” he said. “We are looking at making an impact in the domestic championship.”

Ricky Ponting has blamed “fundamental skill errors” for Australia’s second Test defeat but remains convinced his side can be patched up in time to hit back at Edgbaston next week. While Mitchell Johnson’s bowling was the biggest concern of the 115-run loss, there are also serious worries over the opener Phillip Hughes and the decisions of the batsmen.Australia were behind from the opening session, which began with Johnson spraying the ball, and were out of the match when they fell for 215 in their first innings amid a flurry of cross-batted dismissals. Michael Clarke improved their position in the second bat with 136 after the side dropped to 128 for 5 in their impossible victory pursuit of 522.”There are fundamental skill errors that we have made in this game,” Ponting said. “I’m not just talking about the bowling. We didn’t bat very well either in our first innings. Two hundred-odd on that wicket was a long way short of what we needed to get.”The first two days was where the game was decided. I was pretty happy with the way we stuck at things for the remainder of the game. It’s just little skill errors that have cost us big time.” Australia play a three-day match against Northamptonshire on Friday before the third Test in Birmingham starts on July 30.Despite being 1-0 down after two fixtures, Ponting is certain his men can re-group and believes both teams are evenly matched. Australia dominated much of the opening game in Cardiff, which now feels as far away as 2005, but England quickly built on their thrilling draw to take a strong advantage.”It’s grabbing the momentum when you can and running with it for as long as you can that’s going to decide this series,” Ponting said. “If you look at this game, they grabbed the momentum on day one, ran with it, and we found it hard to wrest it back.”A lot of Test matches are won with what happens in the first hour’s play. We were a fair bit off at the start of this game and we have to make sure we’re a whole lot better when we start the third one.”Ponting spoke calmly after the match and managed to laugh at his treatment from the usually polite Lord’s crowd. They jeered him throughout the contest, starting with his dispute of an incorrect caught-behind dismissal on the second day and continuing when he missed a run-out of Kevin Pietersen and a catch off Ravi Bopara in England’s second innings.”They seemed to take great pleasure in me dropping that,” Ponting said. He counted 15 big-screen replays of the drop in two overs.”I got my first clap as I got off the stage from my post-game interview on the ground,” he said. “It took me cracking a joke to get a laugh out of them. I’m not sure what all the animosity was there.” He promised not to lose any sleep over the response, which comes from his spirit of the game pronouncements, treatment of umpires and gritty on-field behaviour. He is also Australia’s most talented and recognisable player.Clarke sat next to his captain and said his century became “irrelevant” with the defeat. He wished the performance had come in the first innings instead, when he flicked James Anderson to midwicket on 1.”Our goal is to win the game,” Clarke said. “I thought we played pretty well last night but it’s irrelevant now because we didn’t get the result we were after. We knew we had a big job to do today, especially in the first session, but unfortunately we didn’t get the result. I think we can still take some confidence out of the way we performed with the bat in the second innings.”

ScorecardEngland Under-19 routed Bangladesh Under-19 by ten wickets to secure victory inside three days at Scarborough. They asked Bangladesh to follow on after gaining a 232-run lead in the first innings, bowled them out once again, and knocked off the target of 45 at rapid pace.Bangladesh began the third day on 265 with only a wicket in hand. They managed only five more before legspinner Scott Borthwick had Shabbir Rahman caught to complete his five-wicket haul, finishing with 5 for 70, to give England a massive lead.Bangladesh were made to follow on and the visitors improved marginally on their first-innings performance. Saikat Ali scored 58 and Mominul Haque scored his second half-century of the match but again missed out on a hundred. He was dismissed for 80 and the rest of the lower-order batsmen did not make large enough contributions to rescue Bangladesh. They managed to avoid an innings defeat but their lead was minuscule. Offspinner Azeem Rafiq was England’s best bowler in the second innings, ripping through the Bangladesh middle-order with 6 for 90.England were left needing only 45 runs which their openers, James Vince and Joshua Cobb, knocked off in only 6.2 overs.

Australia have not tasted success in a Twenty20 fixture for four months so any victory, even in a practice match against Bangladesh, will not be sneezed at. But as encouraging as the batting segment of their 38-run win at Trent Bridge was, by far the more important development for Australia was the performance of Shane Watson and Brett Lee; a duo whose recovery from injury could go far to determining the tourists’ fortunes in World Twenty20 and Ashes campaigns this summer.Watson was again withheld from bowling duties, but remains hopeful of fulfilling his all-round ambitions in the World Twenty20 proper. His batting, however, was from the very top shelf and provided further evidence that, after several unconvincing auditions, Australia have found the limited-overs opener they have sought since the retirements of Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist.Watson continued his sparkling touch from the recent series against Pakistan, hitting firmly through the line en route to a brisk 52 off 23 deliveries. His 100-run opening stand with Brad Haddin provided Australia with the platform from which to post an intimidating 219 for 6 in what was comfortably their best Twenty20 performance of the year. With the back and groin injuries that have blighted his 2009 campaign seemingly behind him, Watson is hopeful of reaching full fitness in the next fortnight.”That’s the plan,” Watson said, when asked whether he would be available to bowl in Australia’s World Twenty20 opener against West Indies. “It’s just building up over this week to be right to go for the first game. It was great to be able to get out and have a run around today and continue that confidence building.”I’ve been very excited to be able to get back over here and be a part of the Twenty20 and the Ashes squad as well. It’s a really exciting time for myself and I’m really enjoying my time over here. To get a few runs in the first game is a nice little confidence booster.”Lee might not have possessed the clinical execution of Watson, but the veteran paceman will nonetheless be satisfied to have completed another incident-free outing. Foot and ankle surgeries in January have restricted Lee to just a handful of 20-over matches this year, and for a bowler who relies heavily on rhythm, each match represents another step in his quest to reclaim his mantle as Australia’s spearhead in all three forms.”Brett seems to me like he’s gradually starting to find his feet,” said Watson, who knows a thing or two about comebacks. “From my experience, it does take a little while for me getting back to full pace. It can take a month or so to gradually get your body used to doing what you want to do with it. Brett’s in that phase at the moment. He looks really strong and he’s hitting the crease really hard. His best is just around the corner.”It’s definitely coming along, there’s no doubt about that. I know from experience it’s difficult and it takes a bit of time. You feel like you’re pulling down extremely hard on the crease but it’s just not coming out as fast as you want. But in time, over a couple of weeks, everything feels like it’s in alignment and you’re ready to go. I’m sure that’s exactly where Brett is at the moment.”

Ravi Bopara is determined to cement his place as England’s long-term option at No.3 by proving his worth against West Indies in the first Test at Lord’s on Wednesday.Bopara was preferred to Ian Bell, Owais Shah and Michael Vaughan for England’s squad this week as Andy Flower unveiled a string of bold and decisive squads -the first to have his fingerprints as England coach. Bopara, who cracked a sublime maiden ton against West Indies in the winter, is doggedly determined to make sure the No.3 spot is his for some time to come.”It is nice to know my opportunity is here again. I took my opportunity in the West Indies and if I get runs at No3 there is a chance for me to bat at No3 in the Ashes as well, which is a great opportunity,” Bopara said. “That is what I have dreamed about since I was a young boy.”It was a bit of a surprise to hear that Ian Bell, Owais Shah and Michael Vaughan weren’t in the squad. I thought with Fred [Flintoff] being injured one of them might have got a call-up, but I am happy. The guys have backed me and said ‘You are the man to do it’ and I want to prove them right.”I did understand being dropped in the West Indies. I knew one of the batters would be left out because we needed to win the Test and had to play an extra bowler. I had a feeling it would be me. Even coming off the back of a hundred I realised Owais deserved a run in the side. It was disappointing, but also understandable.”Shah was preferred in West Indies but couldn’t capitalise on the opportunity afforded to him, running himself out twice while visibly suffering from tension and cramp. Geoff Miller, the national selector, also wrote off Ian Bell’s chances of featuring this early in the summer, in spite of scoring runs for Warwickshire, when he said “we need to get him even more passionate about playing…so he doesn’t lose his place again”. Clearly, this is Bopara’s opportunity for the taking, and he enhanced his credentials further by out-batting Kevin Pietersen, among others, in the Indian Premier League.”The learning experience is amazing,” he said. “I spoke a lot to Kumar Sangakkara and Yuvraj Singh. The Sri Lankans never panic and Yuvraj spoke to me a lot about ‘death-hitting’. Hopefully I can put that into practice. I know we are preparing for a Test match but I will still be practising my one-day stuff because cricket is all about scoring runs, no matter how you score them.”I know England’s No3, 4 and 5 will only have played Twenty20 cricket but that doesn’t matter. It is about scoring runs – not how but how many.”