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Fast bowler Zak Chappell will join Derbyshire at the end of the season after the expiry of his contract with Nottinghamshire.Chappell, 25, came through at Leicestershire and was in high demand when he moved to Trent Bridge at the end of 2018. But he only managed 18 appearances for Notts across all three formats in four seasons with the club, twice going out on loan to Gloucestershire.He featured in Nottinghamshire’s Royal London Cup opener on Tuesday and will remain available for selection until the end of the summer.”Zak is an incredibly skilled bowler and a great addition to our attack for all formats,” Derbyshire’s head of cricket, Mickey Arthur, said. “He probably hasn’t played the amount of cricket he’s wanted to in recent years, but he’s kept developing and worked hard on his game, now he has the chance to show what he can do as part of our bowling unit.”Signing Zak is a big move for the club, as it gives us even more competition and quality within our ranks for the 2023 season and beyond.”Chappell claimed his best first-class bowling figures of 6 for 44 with Leicestershire in 2018, but has not played consistently since then. He has taken nine Championship wickets at 37.77 this season, but enjoyed more success in the Blast with 11 wickets and an economy of 7.70.Chappell said: “When I heard of Derbyshire’s interest, I jumped at the chance to come and work with a top-class coaching unit in Mickey Arthur and Ajmal Shahzad.”Last season, I played a good amount across all formats and I feel I’m at a point now where I need to be playing top-level cricket week in, week out and signing for Derbyshire gives me the chance to do that.”Derbyshire have an ambitious project with plenty of quality in the squad. You can see the direction Mickey wants to take the club in and that really attracted me.”Nottinghamshire’s head coach Peter Moores said that injuries and competition for places had limited Chappell’s chances at Trent Bridge.”Our bowling attack has certainly been competitive to break into for this past couple of years and that, combined with picking up some injuries at key times, has limited Zak’s opportunities to play first-team cricket,” Moores said. “He wants to be playing regularly across all formats. Hopefully this move gives him an opportunity to do that, and it keeps him close to his roots in the East Midlands, so we completely understand and respect his decision.”His attitude around the group has been positive throughout his time at Trent Bridge. He trains hard, has gone about his periods of injury rehab professionally and has handled his decision to leave in a respectful and positive way.”There’s lots to play for and plenty we can still achieve during the remainder of the season – and I know Zak will be giving it everything. Once we get to the end of September, it will be a case of thanking him for his efforts and wishing him well for the next part of his career.”

There can be no worse sound for a bowler than the blare of the no-ball klaxon, not least when you are under the pump, defending an under-par total with a set Virat Kohli on strike. For Ben Stokes, it was a brutal moment which summed up a frustrating night.Having foxed him with a slower ball only to find out he had overstepped by a fine margin, Stokes rushed Kohli for pace as he looked to swing him into the leg side, hitting the sort of length that had worked so well for England in the series opener. But the ball flew away off Kohli’s outside edge, travelling 61 metres to clear the fielder on the third-man boundary and fly into the lower tier. Stokes offered a wry smile in response.But an over later, that expression had turned to one of clear frustration. After Ishan Kishan had creamed him over square leg for six off the sixth ball of his first (and only) over – which cost 17 – Stokes had a straightforward chance to dismiss the same batsman at long-on off Adil Rashid. A wicket might have given England half a sniff, but he shelled the catch and the rest of the chase proved to be a cruise.Those ten minutes were the nadir on a night which lent credence to the theory that England are yet to work out how to get the most out of him in this format. Stokes’ overall record in T20Is says more about the infrequency of his appearances as his ability – this was only his 10th appearance since England’s last series in India, in early 2017 – but England will be desperate to get him as much experience in his roles with both bat and ball as possible ahead of the World Cup later this year.In particular, it was intriguing to see him coming in below Eoin Morgan at No. 6, with the two switching roles from the positions they had filled during England’s series in South Africa at the end of 2020. “It was primarily based on trying to get me into the game while the seamers were on and not necessarily the spinners,” Morgan explained. “It didn’t actually work out that well – they continued to bowl spin and one over of seam. My record against seam coming into that stage of the innings is better than against spin, so that was the call that we made.”The result was that Stokes failed to time the ball during his scratchy innings of 24 off 21 balls, which included only a solitary boundary down the ground off Bhuvneshwar Kumar. According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, Stokes was out of control for nine of the 21 balls he faced as he struggled against India’s seamers and their intelligent variations at the death. As a relatively slow starter who usually takes five balls to get set, it may be that Stokes would benefit from coming in ahead of Morgan in the future.Given the weight that England have rightly placed on IPL experience in their T20 strategy over the last five years, it is surprising that they use him in a significantly different role to the one Rajasthan Royals found for him last season, when he was promoted to open and made a success of the job. It seems unlikely that there will be a re-think for either team, which means England will be desperate for Stokes to get as much exposure as they can in the final three games of this series.Related

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“[His best role] is in the middle order,” Morgan said. “We saw in South Africa how well he played. I don’t think it’s an easy role: I’ve done it my whole career and it treats you like crap the majority of the time. You need guys that really play the situation of the game and aren’t that bothered about taking risks when the team needs it. Ben is a guy that has that attitude and definitely has the skill to do it.”Stokes’ bowling is also a relevant consideration, not least given the balance that he has provided England with since the start of 2020. In that period, he has bowled 18 overs in eight matches, taking seven wickets at an economy rate of 8.72, and while those numbers are hardly eye-catching, they have offered Morgan a crucial sixth option in the middle overs when things have not gone to plan for one of his five main bowlers.With Moeen Ali likely to come into the side in Tuesday’s third T20I – which is due to be played on a red-soil pitch that England are expecting to be conducive to spin – Stokes will again be required to play a supporting role with the ball, and if India bring Axar Patel back into the side as a third spinner, he will be tasked with hitting with the spin to take him and Yuzrendra Chahal down in the middle overs.England see Stokes as an automatic pick in their T20 side, and their problems replacing him in the home series against Pakistan and Australia last summer – when they were unsure whether to bring in an extra batsman or a bowling allrounder in his place – demonstrate why. But with a World Cup looming, lingering doubts remain as to whether he can transform his pedigree in Test and ODI cricket into the shortest format on a more regular basis.

On making peace with his father, the former India fast bowler Yograj Singh, with whom he has had a fraught relationshipI think I actually made peace a couple of days ago when I was talking to my father. So I spoke to him and all the demons inside as a younger kid came out. That conversation happened and he said his side of the story. It was a very peaceful moment for me to have that closure and have that chat with him, because I’ve never had that chat with him in the last 20 years. He’s always been like a dragon to me… I think me and my father both have a very different relationship now. We both have grown up. Well I have grown up, I don’t know about him! All his life he has taken off on me in the media, now it’s my time.But yes, I’ve had closure with him. He never appreciated me playing any other sport. He only appreciated if I played cricket. So I said, “So be it.” And luckily for me, later on in my career I started enjoying it and made something good out of it.I think it was a very beautiful moment talking to my father and talking to my mom about my journey and I was looking for closure.On why he wasn’t able to do as well in Test cricket:Yes, definitely, that will always be a regret. I think I played at a time when it was very difficult to get a spot. Played with [VVS] Laxman, [Sourav] Ganguly who was captain, Sachin [Tendulkar], Rahul [Dravid], Viru [Virender Sehwag] started opening… it was very hard to find space in the middle order. And that time we used to get one or two Test matches [to prove ourselves] compared to guys today who get 10 to 15 Test matches to play all the time.So I never really got that spot. Every time I failed, I would lose my spot because it was just me, or Sourav or Laxman… Over seven years I think I sat out of 40 Test matches. And then when Sourav retired, that one year I was actually playing Test cricket. I finally got my spot, but then I got diagnosed with cancer, so… I don’t know what to say. It’s been unfortunate. If you look at the whole journey it’s been great, but unfortunate not to play… another 40 Test matches would have been awesome.I was batting at No. 6, I averaged about 34-35, which is not great. I would have loved to average 40. But for me, at the end of the day, it’s about winning games, and every time I scored runs I’m sure it helped win the game for India. It’s a regret, definitely, but I’ve given my all.On whether he regrets not scoring 10,000 ODI runs:No… Scoring 8000, 9000, whatever, definitely you can look at the books and say, “Oh he scored 10,000 runs.” But winning the World Cup… I’d rather have winning the World Cup than scoring 10,000 runs. I never thought about 10,000 runs, I always thought about winning the World Cup. 10,000 would be very special, but I think winning the World Cup is far more special.Yuvraj Singh never quite cracked the code of being a successful Test batsman•Getty Images

On his biggest high and his defining moment on the field:I think the biggest moment in my career would definitely be winning the World Cup in 2011 and being Man of the Series. And we won it in India as well, and after 28 years. There cannot be a bigger high.Defining moment in my career, I think it would be when I batted for the first time in my career and scored 84 against Australia. First game, and you score 84 against the best team in the world… It was quite a dream. Because of that, I came and failed in a lot of games. But because I had started so well I always got an opportunity.On his family’s reactions when he told them:I’d been talking to my wife and mother since two years, that I want to retire and go on with my life. But mentally I was not happy. Because after playing international cricket for so many years, going back and playing domestic cricket was a bit of a struggle.I spoke to my father recently and when I had told him I want to speak to him he was expecting that I would tell him I’m going to retire. He was also saying that, “It’s been enough. Almost 19 years and about 25 years of playing cricket.” I think he was very happy I was retiring, and he hugged me. He was very satisfied with the journey because he lived his dreams through me. He was very happy with my career and told me that when Kapil Dev had lifted the World Cup [in 1983], he had the regret that he wasn’t in that team, but he felt happy when I lifted the World Cup. He was very content with what I had achieved.On whether he would have wanted a farewell match:I didn’t tell anyone in BCCI that I want to play a last match. If I was good enough and had potential, I would have gone to the ground. I don’t like to play cricket in that fashion, that “I want a [farewell] match.” I had been told that if I can’t pass the yo-yo test, I can play a retirement match. I said then that I don’t want a retirement match. If I don’t pass the yo-yo test, I’ll go home quietly.On whether the yo-yo test is needed in a bat-ball game:See, I’m sure in life I will have a lot of time now to discuss these things. I will have a lot to say. I’m not saying it right now because India is playing the World Cup, and I don’t want any controversies around the players. Because I want the players to be in the best phase possible to win the last four. I’m sure my time will come to speak. I don’t want to be in that space where I retired during the World Cup time and whatever… I just retired because I want to move on with my life, and I’m sure my time will come to talk about these things.On which current player reminds him of himself:Not exactly myself, I think he has the potential to be better. Rishabh Pant, he’s already scored two Test hundreds away, in Australia and England. I think that boy has great potential to be a very attacking, match-winning left-hander. I’m looking forward to seeing him in the next few years.On mentorship or coaching in the future:Not now, I’ve just retired! I’ll enjoy myself for a year or two. After that I’ll think about it. Right now I’m going to take some time off. I definitely want to give something back to cricket, and hopefully do some work in the future with the younger generation.Yuvraj Singh gets aerial as he unleashes a throw•AFP

On the captains who had the most impact on him:I think Sourav Ganguly, under whom I started. He supported me a lot. And with MS Dhoni, I’ve won a lot of major championships, so definitely these two captains.Ganguly was very authoritative when it came to fighting for his players. He wanted certain players in the team, like myself, Ashish [Nehra], Bhajju [Harbhajan Singh], Zaheer Khan, [Virender] Sehwag. I think he built us guys together.Dhoni was very composed under pressure. He had a very good mind behind the stumps for how the game was going.On his thoughts before the first time he batted in international cricket:The previous night, Sourav Ganguly told me I have to open. Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie and [Glenn] McGrath were the bowlers. I remember it was a night of a lot of anxiety. But I got up in the morning all ready to open and Sourav said, “No no, I was just joking, playing a prank on you.” I told him that “Hopefully I will be able to repay the prank some day!”I think there’s less pressure when you’re actually going in to bat. There’s more pressure outside, I’ve always felt it. And the moment I was in the zone, it was just like me and the ball.On how he took revenge on Ganguly:Gave it back to Sourav? Nicely, after a couple of years, against Pakistan. Bhajji and me made a false newspaper cutting of him accusing his own players. And Sourav got all red on the field and he said, “I don’t want to captain this team anymore.” And then we said, “April fool, .”On the toughest bowlers he’s faced and his favourite overseas cricketers:You’re asking me this now?! (laughter)I think Muttiah Muralitharan would be the toughest I’ve faced. The other would be Glenn McGrath. The overseas cricketers I admire… Ricky Ponting is someone I really admire as a batsman. AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle… I think these guys were serious powerhouses when I played against them.On playing under pressure:Under the sword, under pressure, I always play my best cricket. I used to enjoy the challenge when we were three or four down. When Kaif and me won that Natwest final, a lot of belief came from that situation, that if I can do this now at such a young age, I can do more in the future.I felt the pressure a lot when I came back after cancer. I was not that fit, I went to France for training. When I came back in the team, Duncan [Fletcher] was the coach. And I felt there was a lot of pressure just to perform at that time. Everything had changed. Because everybody thinks I’ve come back from cancer and I’m not the same player anymore. That added up a lot of pressure on me, but that’s how life is.

Abdur Razzak has climbed to a new height among Bangladeshi cricketers by becoming the first bowler to reach 600 first-class wickets. Razzak, the veteran left-arm spinner, completed the milestone during Khulna Division’s NCL match at the Shere Bangla National Stadium.Razzak began the match on 594 wickets, and swept past the milestone while bagging figures of 7 for 69 in Rangpur’s first innings. Six of Razzak’s wickets came in an unbroken spell of 18.1 overs, during the course of which Rangpur collapsed from 139 for 3 to 224 all out. The 600th wicket was that of Robiul Haque, the No. 9 batsman out bowled.Razzak, who had reached the landmark of 500 first-class wickets in January 2018, said the new milestone delighted him, and reckoned it would take a while before another Bangladeshi bowler reaches it.”I am happy with my achievement,” Razzak said. “Six hundred wickets is not a matter of joke. It is a big number in our context. There have been bigger milestones reached in other countries but nobody has done it here, and [the next bowler] will probably take time to reach this number.”I have never imagined reaching this stage of 500 or 600 wickets. It is a big thing in a Bangladeshi context. We don’t have a lot of people with 200 or 300 wickets. I am sure someone will go past me but I am glad that I am the first one.”Abdur Razzak has become the first Bangladeshi bowler to pick up 600 first-class wickets•Saif Hasnat

The milestone is also a tribute to Razzak’s fitness, particularly after the BCB called for higher fitness levels shortly before the 2019-20 season began in October. It had put the spotlight on Razzak and other senior players, but he managed to pull through.The seven-wicket haul has put Razzak on top of the NCL’s wicket charts for the season.”I am fortunate these records are coming from me,” Razzak said. “Someone would have achieved them. You need skills to reach this level and I don’t know if I am that skillful. I try hard. I think not giving up is my skill. I am still passionate about playing when I am out in the middle. I can’t think of anything else.”Razzak’s first-class performances over the previous five years earned him a Test recall last year, after four years out of the side, but despite his performance against Sri Lanka in Dhaka – he took five wickets, including a first-innings four-for – he wasn’t retained in the side for their next series. Still, he says, the fire continues to burn within.”I can’t really say where I see myself, or where I can reach,” Razzak said. “I also don’t know when I will finish. As long as my fitness and desire is there, I will keep playing.”

Like many things in life, your perspective on Dawid Malan’s recall to the England side probably depends on whether you are a glass half-full or a glass half-empty person.The glass half-full type will look at Malan’s first-class batting average for the season – an impressive 199.00 – and conclude he is in fine fettle. The half-empty type will note that average was achieved in just one innings, against a Sussex side which finished bottom of Group Three in the County Championship, and represents Malan’s only first-class outing in the last 12 months.The seasoned England supporter, meanwhile, will eye the glass nervously in the expectation it will explode at any moment and blind all around it. Experience has taught them to be a cautious bunch.Either way, Malan returns to England’s Test side for the first time in three years having enjoyed less than perfect preparation. Quite apart from only having had one red-ball innings this year, he has played just four first-class games since September 2019. And while his record in those is encouraging – he’s scored 418 in his two most recent first-class innings – he is the first to admit that big scores against Sussex and Derbyshire do not necessarily prepare for life against arguably the best seam attack India have ever produced.Related

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Oh, and he’s being asked to bat at No. 3 which, in his words, “is not something I’ve actually done a lot in my career in red-ball cricket”.It doesn’t sound ideal, does it? But beyond those concerns, Malan is a perfectly pragmatic choice. He has made a Test century against an outstanding Australia attack – albeit in Perth, where conditions could scarcely be more different to Leeds – and has shown an increasingly tight technique over recent seasons. Since the start of 2019, he averages 56.78 in first-class cricket with six centuries and four half-centuries from 29 innings.His success in white-ball cricket is not irrelevant, either. While the white ball tends to provide very little lateral movement for bowlers compared to the red, Malan’s rise to No. 1 in the ICC’s T20I batting rankings demonstrates an ability to deal with the pressure of the international environment which bodes well for him. Where once he seemed to allow failures to eat away at him, he now appears relatively sanguine about the inevitable stumbles he will encounter. He seems a calmer, wiser man who is better equipped for the mental challenges he is about to face.”Is my lack of red-ball cricket a concern? Yes, it is,” Malan admitted on Tuesday. “I think we all know how tough English conditions can be at times. Not playing a lot of red-ball cricket probably doesn’t help with the rhythms and the flows of Test cricket, but that’s the challenge that we as players have.”A good 30 or 60 is not good enough, really. You want to score those big hundreds and to do that you have to bat for a day or a day-and-a-half. That’s where the challenge comes when you don’t play a lot of red-ball cricket.”I’d say from a mental point of view it [playing limited-overs internationals] helps slightly to be used to the pressure that comes with it [Test cricket].”You can play all the domestic cricket you want, but it’s such a totally different game. There’s totally different intensity, totally different scrutiny and totally different bowling, whether in white or red-ball cricket. Playing white-ball cricket at that level, under that pressure and scrutiny – I think that does help you to stay in and around the mix.”I definitely think I’ll cope better with the demands of Test cricket this time. I remember going to New Zealand [at the start of 2018] and having a bad first Test, and then in the second Test getting nought. And it sort of led on from there.”I wanted it so badly and I tried so hard that even in the lead-ups to Tests, I was burning myself out from a mental point of view trying so hard at training and batting for four hours endlessly doing things to try to get better. Hopefully I’ve learned from that and I’m beginning to accept that I will fail in cricket. I’ll probably fail a hell of a lot more than I’ll succeed. Even the greats have failed more often that they’ve succeeded.”Cricket is not an easy game. I just accept that and when I get another opportunity make sure what’s happened is in the past and play the way I play. If it’s good enough it’s good enough and if it isn’t it just wasn’t meant to be.”Dawid Malan pulls during net practice•Getty Images

Ed Smith, the national selector at the time, made a memorable observation when Malan was dropped in 2018, saying “…it may be that his game is better suited to overseas conditions.” To be fair to Smith, the statistics suggest he might have a point – Malan averages 20.23 in eight home Tests and 35.46 in seven Tests away – and we ask our selectors to justify their opinions: his candour was welcome at the time.He might reflect, however, that such candour can also alienate players. He made similarly critical comments about Moeen Ali and James Vince at times when they were not selected, too.Players tend to remember such things and Malan certainly does. And while he accepted he hadn’t scored enough runs in the Tests running up to his dropping – he had reached 30 only once in 10 innings averaging 15.70 in the process – he said Smith’s comments served only to “derail” his career for a while.”I think at the time when you get dropped you’re very emotional,” Malan said. “But once the dust settled you look back and go ‘you know what, I didn’t score enough runs there, especially in those last four or five Tests’.”But the comments didn’t help. You work your absolute socks off in your career to earn the right to play for England and you get that call. To then have comments that derail you slightly as a player and get pigeon-holed into things.”It’s amazing how it leads to every single Tom, Dick and Harry having an opinion on you. Whether that’s on social media or what have you, I wouldn’t say I was abused by that stuff but every time you nick off it comes back to bite you.”It probably did affect me for the next four, five or six months, especially when I went away and played some tournaments and I just couldn’t get in the right head space after all of that.”But then having a bit of a break and gathering my thoughts after all of those comments I found a new lease of life and realised what I’d done wrong the first time. Luckily enough I was still in and around the white-ball teams to put some of that into practice. So hopefully this time around the stuff I’ve learned puts me in good stead.”It sounds as if Malan is well prepared mentally for his second chance in Test cricket, but whether that can make up for the lack of red-ball cricket remains to be seen. Going up against this attack on a sluggish-looking surface which is likely to provide assistance to seam bowlers could ask plenty of him technically and temperamentally.

Sam Northeast will make Nottinghamshire his third county of the summer after signing a short-term deal to play for them in the divisional rounds of the County Championship.Northeast started the season with scores of 63 and 118 in Hampshire’s second match against Middlesex but his form tailed off and he was dropped from their T20 Blast side after making 6 off 12 balls against Kent in their opening game.He was left out of matchday squads over the next few weeks before the county put out a short statement confirming he had been released from the last 18 months of his contract by mutual consent.Related

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He briefly joined Yorkshire in July after their squad was decimated by England call-ups, making 3 and 1 in the Championship fixture against Northamptonshire and not facing a ball between the Blast fixture at Trent Bridge and the abandoned four-day game at Headingley.He has not played in the last six weeks during the Hundred and will play for Notts’ seconds against Derbyshire this week to prepare for the final stages of the Championship season.Notts were looking for a top-order batter after Haseeb Hameed’s Test recall, and Mick Newell, their director of cricket described him as “a proven run-scorer” who “will bolster our chances in red-ball cricket during the coming weeks.”Northeast, 31, is expected to attract a number of counties this winter despite his lean season. He was widely regarded as England’s best uncapped batter for several years towards the end of his Kent career and while his T20 returns have dried up, he is an excellent 50-over player.

Hampshire stormed into the quarter-finals of the Vitality Blast after a final round day of drama saw the two-time champions progress. The Hawks, who sat bottom of the South Group only a month ago, found their form at the right time, reeling off five successive wins and then saw results work in their favour on Sunday night following their thumping six-wicket win over Glamorgan at the Ageas Bowl.Hampshire started the day sitting in sixth spot in the South Group, needing to beat Glamorgan whilst bettering Surrey’s run rate then hope Gloucestershire and Sussex lost to Somerset and Kent respectively to have any hope of qualifying for the top-four.James Vince’s side held up their side of the bargain by blasting their way to a challenging 185-run target inside the 14.1 overs needed to usurp Surrey’s run rate. Although Sussex brushed aside a Kent side, who had already qualified, but had been depleted due to Covid-19, Somerset ensured James Vince’s side remain in with a chance to win a third Blast title with a 23-run victory over Gloucestershire.

Vitality Blast quarter-finals

• Yorkshire vs Sussex (Aug 24)

• Nottinghamshire vs Hampshire (Aug 25)

• Somerset vs Lancashire (Aug 26)

• Kent vs Birmingham (Aug 27)

It capped off a superb week for Hampshire, who on Wednesday booked their spot in Division One of the County Championships by beating Gloucestershire before coming from nowhere to reach the last-eight of the Blast.yD’Arcy Short’s blazing 69 off 30 balls and a magnificent 43 off 13 from Joe Weatherley got the Hawks home in a match that yielded 24 sixes from both sides and included a fine knock of 78 from Glamorgan’s Australian Test batsman Marnus Labuschagne.Weatherley said belief was the key to the victory and credited the recent arrival of New Zealand allrounder Colin de Grandhomme as the catalyst to a change in mentality after the team’s T20 season looked dead and buried after a demoralising defeat to Surrey four weeks ago. de Grandhomme scored just 5 against Glamorgan and was overshadowed by Short’s brilliant knock, but Weatherley said his arrival has been a huge boost to the squad.”Colin has come in and showed us how to play and given us that confidence in the middle to go for it from ball one,” Weatherley said. “For me, one of the younger guys, I am just feeding off that and it makes things a lot easier.”It’s funny, when you are swimming against the tide it feels the hardest thing to win games and vice versa when you are going well. Of course we were going to do that today – it is that inner-confidence that at the start of the competition felt a million miles away. To have put ourselves in this position at this stage of the season is unbelievable.”We have put so much in over the last five matches and we have found a formula that works. It’s a real team effort, lots of guys have put their hands up, everyone is working hard for each other.”

Kumar Sangakkara, the former Sri Lanka captain, has been announced as the first non-British President of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), and will take up his one-year post on October 1, 2019.Sangakkara’s nomination was announced by the current President, Anthony Wreford, at the MCC Annual General Meeting at Lord’s on Wednesday.”It is a huge honour to be named the next President of MCC and it is a role that I am thoroughly looking forward to,” Sangakkara said. “For me, MCC is the greatest cricket club in the world, with its global reach and continued progress for cricket on and off the pitch. The year 2020 is going to be yet another significant one in cricket, especially at Lord’s, and I am thrilled that I am going to be able to play a part in supporting its future as President of MCC.”Sangakkara is already heavily involved with the club, having delivered a powerful and memorable MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture in 2011, in which he touched on the power and importance of cricket in healing the wounds of civil war in his native Sri Lanka, and recounted his experience of the Lahore terror attack in 2009.In 2012, he was awarded Honorary Life Membership of the club, and, in the same year, he joined MCC’s World Cricket committee and remains an active member.His connections with MCC go back a long way: he played against the Club in 2002, opening the batting for the touring Sri Lankans in a first-class match at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield. He also played for MCC against an International XI at Lord’s in the 2005 Tsunami Relief Match. Proceeds from that match were used by the Foundation of Goodness to set up the MCC Centre of Excellence at Seenigama in Sri Lanka.Sangakkara appears twice on the Honours Boards at Lord’s, having scored 147 in the drawn Test against England in 2014, and 112 in their ODI victory on the same tour, an achievement that earned him one of the inaugural placings on the new limited-overs boards that was unveiled earlier this year.Sangakkara’s year of office will begin on October 1, 2019 and will conclude on September 30, 2020. His tenure will encompass two England Tests against West Indies and Pakistan, and the launch of The Hundred competition.Wreford said: “As MCC looks to broaden both our horizons and international reputation, I’m delighted that Kumar has accepted the invitation, which he did in January this year, to be the next President of MCC. He is an outstanding individual both on and off the field and will make a huge contribution to the Club. In a World Cup and Ashes year he will also have a significant role to play as President Designate.”

A number of overseas players are expected to withdraw from the inaugural season of the Hundred due to clashes in the international calendar and complications regarding international travel caused by Covid restrictions.West Indies, Pakistan and Australia players with contracts to appear in the men’s competition will have their availability limited if they are involved in the two T20I series due to take place in the Caribbean in July and August, while two Australia players – Rachael Haynes and Jess Jonassen – have already withdrawn from the women’s tournament due to quarantine requirements.Cricket West Indies announced its men’s fixtures for the 2021 home season last week, with the end of the T20I series against Australia overlapping with the start of the Hundred. Seven of the nine Australians contracted to play in the men’s competition were named in an enlarged 23-man squad on Monday – Chris Lynn and Nathan Coulter-Nile were the exceptions.Those seven include marquee names in Aaron Finch, Glenn Maxwell and David Warner, and while it is possible that they could still play the majority of the eight-game group stage subject to quarantine periods, Cricket Australia remain in talks with the Bangladesh Cricket Board regarding a possible tour which would present a further clash.Related

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Four West Indians are also under contract: Nicholas Pooran and Kieron Pollard are both key parts of the T20I set-up, while Andre Russell and Sunil Narine are likely to come back into the picture ahead of this year’s T20 World Cup. Their series against Pakistan starts on July 27, three days after the Australia T20Is finish, with the fifth and final match scheduled for August 3 in Guyana – which is on the UK’s travel red list, adding to the complications – though it is understood they remain keen to be a part of the tournament if possible.Pakistan stay in the Caribbean for two Tests on August 12 and August 20, which will effectively rule Shaheen Shah Afridi out of his deal with Birmingham Phoenix. Shadab Khan, the other Pakistan player involved, may be available for the second half of the tournament with Manchester Originals if he is overlooked for the Test squad again.The ECB remain confident that the Hundred will feature some of the best overseas players in the world but are realistic about the fact that some players will withdraw in the coming weeks and months. The new 100-ball tournament’s inaugural season was postponed last year due to operational challenges, and is now due to start on July 21. “The realities of Covid mean there remain practicalities that are difficult for some overseas players to overcome,” a spokesperson said.Jonassen was replaced by compatriot Georgia Wareham in the Welsh Fire squad last month, while Haynes’ withdrawal from her Oval Invincibles contract was revealed by London’s last week. They are the only two confirmed withdrawals as yet, but the fact that salaries are significantly lower in the women’s competition (£3,600-£15,000) than in the men’s (£24,000-£100,000) reduces the incentives for players to travel to the UK specifically for the tournament. As such, it is possible that further Indian players will sign deals and stay on following the conclusion of their tour to England on July 15 – six days before the start of the Hundred.Jess Jonassen and Rachael Haynes have both pulled out of the Hundred•CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images

In the men’s competition, there is a broad pool of nearly 250 overseas players registered as replacements. Several of them, including Dan Christian, Glenn Phillips, Lockie Ferguson and Carlos Brathwaite, will already be in the UK to play in the T20 Blast for their respective counties, and as such may be attractive options, either to fill in for a handful of games or to play the full season in the event of withdrawals.Meanwhile, Manchester Originals can begin to negotiate with county cricketers who were not signed in February’s re-draft following Harry Gurney’s retirement. Gurney was an £80,000 signing in the draft and his withdrawal from the competition means that there is a free slot up for grabs at that price bracket for any domestic player without a contract.The ECB are hopeful that England’s centrally contracted red-ball players will be available for up to three group-stage games at the start of the tournament before the start of the men’s Test series against India, and potentially the eliminator and the final. Ashley Giles, the managing director of England men’s cricket, said last week: “We’ve got a lot of cricket coming up so it’s a difficult juggling act but I know the players are also looking forward to that tournament and would love to be involved at some stage if they can.”England men’s players on all-format central contracts will earn £40,000 for their involvement in up to three matches, and those on red-ball deals will earn £28,000. All centrally-contracted players will then earn £4,608 per match for any additional fixtures. Players with white-ball contracts are due to be available throughout the Hundred, and are paid directly through the draft mechanism.

An unbeaten 177 from Ben Duckett and five wickets for Luke Fletcher at last gave spectators something to cheer on day three of Nottinghamshire’s weather-hit LV= Insurance County Championship match against Worcestershire.Duckett, who earned four Test caps in 2016, shared partnerships of 205 with allrounder Lyndon James, who made 78, and 142 with skipper Steven Mullaney, who smashed four sixes in a 73-ball 88 as Nottinghamshire racked up maximum batting bonus points.They then added two bowling points, reducing their opponents to 46 for 6 in a frenzied 85 minutes before the close, Fletcher taking 5 for 20 including three in the same over.Duckett’s hundred was his fifth for Nottinghamshire, his first of the season and his biggest for the county in the Championship, an innings that mixed some impressive conventional strokeplay from the punchy left-hander with some characteristic improvisation.Nottinghamshire declared on 400 for 5, after which Worcestershire lost former Notts opener Jake Libby to a brilliant one-handed catch by Ben Slater at short square leg off Fletcher, Tom Fell gloved one off Stuart Broad and Fletcher, bowling full and straight, dismissed Daryl Mitchell, Brett D’Oliveira and Riki Wessels in the space of five balls, all leg before, Mitchell offering no stroke.Related

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He completed his third five-wicket haul in consecutive matches when Jack Haynes went the same way.Only 95 balls could be bowled in the opening two days, and showers cost another 16 overs on Saturday, yet a positive result remains possible, if unlikely.It was hard to recall that Worcestershire, still without a Group One win, had reduced their opponents to 51 for 3 by taking three wickets in 28 balls in tricky conditions on a fragmented first day. By contrast, after Friday’s complete washout, Nottinghamshire enjoyed chanceless progress through the first two sessions, adding 99 before lunch and 105 in the afternoon, with Worcestershire’s bowlers unable to create meaningful pressure.James and Duckett overtook the 157 set by James Taylor and Riki Wessels at New Road in 2015 as the highest fourth-wicket stand for Nottinghamshire against Worcestershire but the 21-year-old, whose 10 boundaries brought him the third half-century of his fledgling career, fell soon after tea when he miscued a pull off Mitchell’s medium pace and was caught at extra cover.Duckett, whose first fifty came at a run a ball, posted his 19th career hundred off 126 balls as he swept D’Oliveira’s legspin for his 11th four, celebrating with two more boundaries in the over from reverse sweeps. He reached 150 off 175 balls, the innings containing 19 fours all told.