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The chairman of the England Cricket Board (ECB) Lord MacLaurin will be flying to Colombo before the start of the third Test to hold talks with the chairman of selectors David Graveney, coach Duncan Fletcher and skipper Nasser Hussain. This follows the rather acrimonious series that has been going on in Sri Lanka with both teams indulging in incessant appealing and slamming the umpires after some poor decisions were given. McLaurian said the ICC has already agreed to contract eight professional umpires, which would mean that no home umpire would stand in future Test matches. McLaurian would also be meeting the ICC president Malcolm Gray to see how better the umpires can be trained to operate more professionally.  A complete surrender by India in all aspects of the game put the all-conquering Australians on top in the second Test at Kolkata and all set to score their 17th successive Test win. At close on the second day India was tottering at a 128-8 still needing 117 runs more to avoid the follow on.
The verbal duels continued. This time it was between the Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly and former Australian captain and now commentator and writer Ian Chappell. Chappell who has been of late criticising Ganguly's potentials as a captain and player was given a strong rejoinder by Ganguly in his own column in a newspaper that Chappell should restrict himself to comments about the game as such and not talk about inside information of which he has no first hand knowledge. Ganguly was referring to Chappell's comments that he is too arrogant and does not respect his teammates.
It was left to the old and the new as the run assault at the end of the fourth day's play at Georgetown by Carl Hooper and Ramnaresh Sarwan took the West Indies lead to 258. Hooper and Sarwan share an unbeaten 76 run stand in the first Test match as they were 31 and 71 not out respectively at close of play. All is set for an exciting last day's play and probably an end to West Indies losing streak.
One more player has been added to Pakistan's injury list on their tour of New Zealand. Having lost the one-day series, they went into the first Test losing their top players due to injury. With the youngsters coming true at Auckland the first Test was won (by 299 runs) in a convincing fashion. The latest addition to the injury list is all-rounder and pace bowler Abdur Razzaq, who will fly home following food poisoning and a kidney ailment. It now the turn of 26-year old fast bowler Mohammad Akram, the seventh player to be flown into New Zealand after injures struck the Pakistani team one after the another. New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming slammed the new portable pitch at Auckland, saying it cost them the match. Fleming said as captain of the home side it was difficult to go into a Test match with a pitch that was just nine days old and with no idea how it would play. Contrary to expectations, Fleming had won the toss and opted to bowl which raised many eyebrows. Fleming felt it was not a good idea to experiment with a new pitch for an important Test match. After the crushing defeat in the first Test at Auckland a major reshuffle is on the cards for the New Zealand side. Debutant left-arm pace bowler of the first Test James Franklin, off spinner Paul Wiseman and 12th man Brooke Walker will be replaced by Chris Drum, Grant Bradburn and Jacob Oram. Bradburn (35) is making a comeback having last appeared for New Zealand in 1992 in Sri Lanka. Fast bowler Mohammad Sami like all young fast bowlers in Pakistan attributed his success in the first Test to pace legends Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. The twenty year old who shot out the New Zealand batsmen for just 131 in the second innings at Auckland said he learnt the art of reverse swing from the two fast bowlers. Coming on to bowl towards the 45th over Sami was able to reverse swing the ball much to the alarm of the New Zealand batsmen in much the same way that the former duo did.
Former Pakistani leg-spinner Abdul Qadir has withdrawn from the PCB's three-member bowling committee to study the action of Shoaib Akhtar. Meanwhile, Qadir has also refused to accept an honorary coaching assignment at the Pakistan Cricket Academy. His argument is that if foreigners (with obvious reference to Geoff Boycott) were paid so handsomely, why shouldn't he be also paid, specially after having served the country with distinction. Murray Goodwin, the former Zimbabwe middle-order batsman who left his country to play in Australia has been axed from the Western Australian state team following a complete batting slump. In seven matches for the state side he only managed 145 runs averaging 11.15 with just one score above 50 and 9 scores below 10. He was however persisted with because of his prolific form in the domestic one-day tournament that preceded the Shield matches. Earlier this year he had blasted a record 167 in just 138 runs against New South Wales at Perth, which was the highest ever individual score made in the Australian one-day domestic competition.
AUSTRALIA IN INDIA 2nd Test at Kolkata (2nd day) Australia: 445 (M Slater 42, M Hayden 97, J Langer 58, SR Waugh 110, JN Gillespie 46; Harbhajan Singh 7-123) India: 128-8 (VVS Laxman 26 not out; GD McGrath 3-13)
SOUTH AFRICA IN THE WEST INDIES
ASSAM v KARNATAKA
BARODA v BENGAL
PUNJAB v RAJASTHAN
MAHARASHTRA v RAILWAYS
MADHYA PRADESH V HYDERABAD
TAMIL NADU V DELHI
ORISSA V JAMMU & KASHMIR
Compiled by: Mohandas Menon
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