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AB de Villiers fanned the flames of the Stuart Broad ball-tampering controversy at the close of the fourth day’s play at Cape Town, when he accused the England seamer of being “a little bit naughty” for stepping on the ball early in South Africa’s second innings, and suggested that an official complaint ought to have been lodged by the South Africa team management.After raising their “concerns” with the ICC match referee, Roshan Mahanama, South Africa had until the start of play on the fourth day to take their protest to a higher level. When they failed to do so, England believed that the incident had been laid to rest, and having studied the TV evidence for themselves, the ICC followed up with a press release to say the matter was closed.However, de Villiers clearly didn’t want the matter to die away that easily. “I think there should be a formal complaint because the ball did reverse after that,” he said. “There was quite clearly a piece of leather off the ball after he’d [Broad] stepped on the ball and it’s not the first time it happened. It’s a little bit naughty, I wouldn’t say he deserves to be banned but it should be looked at definitely.”De Villiers’ comments suggested there were mixed messages coming out of the South Africa camp, because he implied that the matter had in fact been taken to a higher level already. “I’m not really sure what will happen about the decision-making, official complaints being written and all that. I thought we did,” he said. “Mickey actually told us he sent an email through, but I’m not really aware of that.”De Villiers also claimed that the team had first discussed the issue of England gaining early reverse-swing after the second Test in Durban which South Africa lost by an innings and 98 runs. On the fourth day Broad blew away three middle-order wickets, including de Villiers, in the space of 15 balls.”We spoke about it at Kingsmead because I look after our ball when we bowl and the captain asked why they get the ball to reverse a bit earlier,” he added. “The questions have been asked a few days before this Test and they still got it to reverse a bit quicker. Maybe they just have more skills.”The overall impression was that South Africa were keen to keep the controversy rumbling on without actually backing up their strong words with strong actions. “All I know is that it’s not on to be climbing onto the ball with your spikes,” de Villiers said. “But again it’s not on me to make the decisions. We all like to get the ball to reverse all over the show, as long as you do it in a legal way.”However, de Villiers admitted he hadn’t actually seen any of the on-field incidents as yet. “I can’t say I saw anything. It’s up to the footage on TV and maybe they’ll be something there,” he added. “I just know they’ve been reversing it a few overs earlier than us.”The South Africa team manager, Dr Mohammed Moosajee, confirmed that their original concern was over the state of the ball and as far as the team was concerned the matter was dealt with by the match referee Mahanama.”If you looked at the ball you could clearly see the ball was altered,” Moosajee said. “If that was inadvertently or not we couldn’t tell and we left it to the match referee to decide. The ball showed up with an indentation on it, and there were marks that went across, which is why we asked the match referee to have a look.”They came back to us to say that they’d looked at everything and were quite satisfied that no further action needs to be taken and we accepted that.”Alastair Cook, who is one of three England players with the job of looking after the ball in the field, said that South Africa’s claims had made the team angry, but as far as they were concerned the matter was over.”We were a little bit [angry],” he said. “We’re glad the matter is closed. We’ve done nothing wrong. We know what we’ve been doing is fine. The umpires, match referee and everyone else – with all the TV evidence – have said we’ve done nothing wrong, and we’re totally 100% confident in our camp that that is true. That’s what’s been proved.”He added that it was England’s bowlers who deserved praise for getting the ball to swing early in the conditions and that they had been working on their skills in an effort to become a more consistent threat overseas.”We’ve been trying to find ways of getting the opposition out abroad when the Kookaburra goes flat, and the lads have been very skilled and put in a lot of hard work with Ottis Gibson to become better reverse-swingers of the ball. It’s not just the ball; the bowlers have to take credit. I couldn’t reverse-swing any ball, if I tried.”

The South African and New Zealand players’ associations have pushed for a separate window for the annual IPL and the Champions League, in such a way that it does not disrupt other international fixtures.”Yes, there is a need for an IPL and Champions League window but then they must not expand outside this window,” Tony Irish, CEO of South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA), told PTI. “International cricket, IPL and Champions League must co-exist and not compete. Players should not be put in a position of having to choose between playing one or the other.”Two editions of the IPL have been completed, but not all international players have been able to participate, owing to their international commitments. The England players in particular have found it hard to take part because the IPL coincides with the start of their county and international home season.Heath Mills, the CEO of the New Zealand Cricket Players’ Association (NZCPA), said players in his country could be tempted into opting for cash-rich Twenty20 leagues if there is a constant clash of schedules.”It is absolutely essential that there are windows created for the IPL and the Champions League,” Mills said. “If they do not create a window for the IPL then I am certain our best players in New Zealand will not sign central contracts in the future so they can choose to play in the IPL ahead of any clash that may occur with the Blackcaps’ schedule.”The ICC said in July that it wasn’t considering the proposal for a permanent window for the IPL. The president David Morgan said that only players in the brink of retirement were likely to opt for such domestic leagues over their international commitments. Shane Warne, who captains the Rajasthan Royals, had earlier called on the ICC to create a window going by his rewarding experience in 2008.

ScorecardEngland Masters were winners of the inaugural Cricket Legends of Barbados International Cup. They comprehensively defeated South Africa Masters by eight wickets with one over to spare to take the Cup and the US$50,000 prize money.Graeme Hick, who was Man of the Series, was at the forefront of the victory with a breathtaking, unbeaten 67. He and acting captain Mark Ramprakash, who chipped in with an attacking 51 not out, put on a wonderful 116 in 14. 2 overs for the third wicket.Ramprakash finished the tournament in grand style, driving through extra cover for a boundary. He hit two fours and one six, while Hick smashed three fours and three sixes.Graham Thorpe made a quick 32 from 19 deliveries with five fours and one six to give the innings the early impetus before he skied a catch to cover.The South Africans were put into bat and made 156 for five. They were reduced to 38 for 3, but Dale Benkenstein (52) and Lance Klusener (43) pulled things around with a stand of 71 in 9.2 overs for the fourth wicket.Benkenstein hit two fours and a pair of sixes, while Klusener lashed two huge sixes in John Emburey’s final over.Pat Symcox (18) and Adrian Kupier (15) and added 33 vital runs for the sixth wicket in 3.1 overs. In the end, another 20 might have made the difference.Fast bowler Devon Malcolm picked up the first three wickets to claim three for 17 from four overs and was named Man of the Match.

England’s captain, Andrew Strauss, believes that Friday’s third ODI at Cape Town could prove to be one of the team’s most instructive of recent times, as they seek to build on the momentum generated by their impressive seven-wicket victory at Centurion last week, and end their frustrating habit of inconsistency.England’s returns in one-day cricket in the past 14 months have fluctuated like the stock market – a 4-0 victory at home to South Africa, a 5-0 defeat away to India, back-to-back series wins against West Indies, and a 6-1 hiding at home to Australia. In the recent Champions Trophy, England continued that trend with impressive wins against Sri Lanka and South Africa, only to collapse to a crushing defeat in the semi-final against Australia.”There is a long-term plan in improving our one-day cricket – and these sorts of games are the ones that can really take us forward,” Strauss told reporters at Newlands on the eve of the match. “We’ve said in the past we’ve always responded well to defeat, but we have not been quite so great on building on a good performance. We’re going to try to put ourselves under a bit of pressure this game to make sure we build on that.”England have never yet managed more than a single victory in any one of their three previous one-day tours of South Africa – and they were routed 4-1 on their last visit in 2004-05 – but victory at Newlands on Friday would ensure at least a share of the spoils this time around. Strauss, however, is not banking on South Africa making life easy for them – especially at a venue where they have won 24 of their 27 contests since 1992.”We’ve got ourselves in a nice position to really turn the screw in this one-day series, so now is not the time to let up,” said Strauss. “They are going to come back hard at us, there’s no doubt about that – they’re always competitive anyway but they wouldn’t have enjoyed losing that first game. We’re expecting them to come here all guns blazing.”England’s bid for victory will be aided by the expected return of Stuart Broad, who has recovered from a shoulder injury and is likely to come into the side in place of Sajid Mahmood. South Africa have been quick to focus on Broad’s perceived lack of match fitness, having not played since the opening game of the tour, but Strauss was sure he would rise above such mindgames.”I suppose it’s a little bit of a test of his character,” said Strauss. “Those sorts of comments have a good way of focusing your mind and motivating you – and he certainly looked in fine fettle yesterday when we had a middle practice. He’s confident and he’s been bowling pretty well for a long period of time.”Graeme Swann is another player who could feature on Friday, if England feel that his side strain has healed sufficiently, while Kevin Pietersen – who recently returned to action after recuperating from Achilles surgery in July – will be keen to improve on his current tour tally of 37 runs in three innings.”He’s been out for a while, so it’s always going to take a couple of games for him to be at 100%,” said Strauss. “But I never have any real worries about KP, a big score is always just around the corner. He’s fresh, motivated and really wants to contribute to the England side – and coming back to South Africa is another place he really wants to do well.”

ScorecardA six-wicket haul by Dwayne Bravo, followed by captain Daren Ganga’s calm half-century, led Trinidad and Tobago to a two-wicket victory against Barbados in the semi-final of the WICB President’s Cup in Providence.Barbados had made a sound start to the day-night fixture, with their openers Martin Nurse and Kirk Edwards adding 85 for the first wicket. Dwayne Bravo gave T&T their first breakthrough in the 21st over, dismissing Nurse lbw for 46. Dwayne Bravo and Ravi Rampaul, who went on to take 3 for 50, cut through the Barbados top order, reducing them to 184 for 4 before the middle and lower order imploded and were dismissed for 229. Dwayne Bravo was the star, picking up career-best List A figures of 6 for 46.T&T’s openers, Adrian Barath and Lendl Simmons, added 42 before the innings wobbled. They lost Barath and Darren Bravo for the addition of one run in the space of an over and, from 43 for 2, they steadily lost wickets at regular intervals. Wickets weren’t falling at both ends, though, for Daren Ganga was playing a patient innings.He struck only three fours and consumed 105 deliveries for his 79 but it was what the T&T chase required. When his younger brother, Sherwin Ganga, was dismissed, T&T needed 28 from 36 balls. The game was balanced with nine required off the last two overs but Dave Mohammed eased the tension by hitting Sulieman Benn over long onfor six off the last ball of the 49th over.T&T will now play the winner of Tuesday’s second semi-final between Guyanaand Combined Campuses and Colleges in the final on November 5.

It cannot be an easy time to be a West Indies cricketer of any kind. Thoseon strike are not doing what they are meant to be doing. Those in SouthAfrica are not being credited for doing what they are doing.Floyd Reifer’s men came into the tournament having been beaten byBangladesh. Their presence here was said by many to devalue the tournamentitself. And when their batting collapsed today, you could sense peoplewere waiting to pounce.It’s a funny charge that, devaluation, given that of the many things theChampions Trophy has been accused of in the past, adding value to crickethas rarely been one of them. Minnows have played before and been greatlyembarrassed too. And it’s hardly as if the West Indians not of Reifer havegallivanted around the globe over the last many years adding value to thegame.It is too harsh, too righteous, too ignorant of a devilishly entangledissue and too disrespectful of those who are here. They are plainly a weakside and are likely to be beaten in all three games. But they did notdevalue their match against Pakistan. They almost made something of it,added whatever value can be added to a match in which a target of 134 hasbeen set. Their top order was poor, but it’s not as if Pakistan’s battedlike kings. And if the pitch remains the same then other sides will alsostruggle with the grass.They flashed and dashed around the field later with particular vim andgusto, a world away from the lethargy that so often engulfs Chris Gayle’ssides. There were errors for sure, but the effort could not be questioned.Tino Best hared in wanting to break something, Darren Sammy and DavidBernard didn’t disgrace themselves and Gavin Tonge actually surpassedhimself.So fluid and rhythmic was Tonge that you believed him when he said aftertaking a career-best 4 for 25 that he could’ve bowled 20 overs straight. “Iwas feeling good today, good to bowl 20 overs straight because it was mytype of pitch and I was feeling it good,” Tonge said. “Coming in the rhythmwas perfect.”They were the first four ODI wickets of his career and it felt as if hedid his spell a little disservice by talking of the pitch as if it were alove he had spent his entire life chasing after. “That was a very goodtrack for fast bowling and cricket in general,” he said. “Having seen thePakistan bowlers earlier in the day there was a little bit of nip in itand a fair bit of carry, but it was a very, very good pitch for fastbowling.”Bowlers are rarely so glowing about the merits of a pitch, especiallyafter they have done so well on it. The natural urge is to play up yourown skills and play down the surface’s assistance. Not so Tonge. “We’regoing to be playing on the same pitch again,” he said, in anticipation ofa second date. “Hopefully it will be behaving the same, so I will put theball on the spot and let the pitch do the same. Hopefully I’ll be doingthe same thing again.”Sure there was movement, but he did all that smart bowlers do on suchsurfaces, hitting the right areas and all that. The ball moved about,Pakistan’s batsmen froze as they often do on such pitches and chasing suchtotals and it was all quite competitive. A slightly bigger target, aMohammad Yousuf chance held onto early and who knows; Tonge didn’t thinkthe Yousuf drop made much of a difference in any case.Inevitably, the issue of devaluation was skirted around. Questions wereasked about second strings and future selections when and if the otherscome back, a little unfair on a man who has just recorded a career-bestagainst serious opposition in a serious tournament, quite likely thebiggest match of his career. “I definitely think so [forced a few peopleto take us seriously]. I wouldn’t say it is a second string team becauseeach guy has performed to be here and we are here to compete.” The future,he said reasonably, would be left to the selectors.Other teams and batsmen in the group may well be more ruthless with them,however, so the issue is unlikely to go away. Not that Tonge seemedworried, even expressing disappointment at not being able to bowl toYuvraj Singh. “I was looking forward to playing against him, reallylooking forward to it.”

Lancashire are confident of securing one of the Pakistan-Australia Test matches next year, but their ultimate aim is to bring Ashes cricket back to a redeveloped Old Trafford. The club has submitted its bid to the ECB for one of the neutral games in 2010 and has felt bullish about its chances since the series was announced with the strong Asian links in the area an advantage.However, while hosting the Test next summer would be a significant boost the absence of an Ashes match this season is still hurting. When Lancashire learnt they wouldn’t host Australia over five days it made them realise how seriously the venue needed redeveloping.”Since Old Trafford first hosted international cricket we have only missed out on three Ashes Tests and one of them was 2009,” said Jim Cumbes, the Lancashire chief executive. “There are no guarantees, the ECB can’t give any but they have been very supportive. When the work is finished this will be a wonderful stadium. The bidding process for the Ashes in 2013 is probably 12 months away and when it comes around we feel we will be a strong position.”Building work is well underway in the first stage of an ambitious project to revive the ground that has fallen into disrepair in recent years. By 2012 they aim to have built new stands, a new joint media centre and players’ pavilion and renovated the current pavilion. The permanent capacity will be 15,000, but temporary seating will bring it to 25,000. At the end of the 2010 season the square will also be turned to face north-south, which will avoid problems with the setting sun and provide an increased number of pitches.Nothing, though, is certain. The bidding process has, according to Cumbes, “put many chairman’s and chief executive’s noses out of joint” but he believes the ECB’s position on it is softening a little since Cardiff offered huge sums for their Ashes match. “I think they are realising that geography is also important”, he said.The biggest stumbling block, however, could still be planning permission. The crux of the massive redevelopment is based on a partnership with Tesco, who will build a superstore a short distance from the ground and help finance the whole project which is expected to cost around £70million.The next stage of the project is due to go before the planning committee in September and while the club is publicly confident it will pass, the plan could still be ‘called in’ by the government which would cause a severe delay and threaten the entire project. “That would be tough,” admitted Michael Cairns, the Lancashire chairman. “Something would happen but not to this scale. It doesn’t bear thinking about if there was an extensive delay on this process.”They have won one of the packages recently announced by the ECB and have Test matches against India in 2014 and Pakistan in 2015. Still, they are subject to the ground plans going ahead so a huge amount rests on the next month for the future of Old Trafford.It has taken a long time for the club to even get to this stage and Cumbes revealed there had even been consideration of a drastic move. “We did seriously look at whether to become a county ground, but with the size of the North West you just can’t do that,” he said. “You’d be letting people down. It is unthinkable not to have Test cricket in this region which is why we want to bring it back to Old Trafford.”

Australia’s captain Ricky Ponting is open to the idea of handing deputy Michael Clarke the leadership responsibilities for the Twenty20 and one-day teams, and preserving himself for Test cricket.Clarke, 28, has already captained Australia in 11 limited-overs and two Twenty20 internationals while Ponting has been rested or injured. He was installed as Test vice-captain after the retirement of Adam Gilchrist, and led all Australian batsmen with 448 runs at 64.00 during the 2009 Ashes series.Ponting assumed the one-day leadership in 2002 while Steve Waugh was still at the helm of the Test side. The pair shared the captaincy until Waugh’s retirement from Test cricket in 2004. Ponting has been the first-choice captain of Australia’s Test, ODI and Twenty20 sides ever since.”If that’s the way that I or others outside of what I’m thinking decide (is) the right way to go, there’s absolutely no reason why that couldn’t happen,” Ponting said of splitting the captaincy with Clarke. “It has happened in the past with Australian teams. It is happening with other teams around the world right at the moment.”Paul Collingwood is captain of the England Twenty20 team and Andrew Strauss is captain of the one-day and Test cricket teams. Those things are things that need to be thought long and hard about, but if it means that I’m going to be better off for Test matches and bigger series when they come around.”Ponting returned to Sydney on Wednesday after becoming the first Australian captain since Billy Murdoch to twice surrender the Ashes in England. The defeat at Lord’s ensured Australia the added ignominy of slipping to fourth place on the ICC Test rankings, having lost three of their past five series.Australia’s transitional issues have led to calls from certain sections of the local media for Ponting’s axing as captain, however he has reaffirmed his desire to play on until the 2013 Ashes series.”Having a pretty bitter and sour taste in my mouth at the end of that Test match, I’d love to be able to go back and give it one more crack,” he said. “I’ve got to worry about the next 12 or 18 months and see if all that hunger or commitment is still there. It’s probably higher right now than ever before. Who knows, 2013 might be something achievable.”I still think I’ve got a lot to offer the team, as a batsman and as a captain and as a leader. If it ends up getting to the point where I’m not the captain, my hunger and determination to keep playing this game are as good as ever.”If that’s with a ‘c’ next to my name, all well and good. If it’s not, I still think I have a lot to offer, particularly a lot of younger guys who are around our set-up at the moment.”Australia’s returning cricketers have expressed their ongoing support for Ponting, with Stuart Clark describing calls for his sacking as “ludicrous”. “He’s the best man to captain,” Clark said after arriving at Sydney airport. “I think it’s ludicrous that anyone would say any other [person should captain Australia]. That’s the way it is.”Simon Katich was similarly defensive of Ponting. “There were eleven of us out there that had the opportunity to win the Ashes and you can’t just blame it on one person,” Katich said. “We had our chances through the whole five Tests.”