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The BCCI’s Anti-Corruption Unit had pulled up IPL franchises and players for failing to adhere to protocol during the 2014 tournament, but the board and teams confirmed the ACU was satisfied with the explanations it had received

ESPNcricinfo staff22-May-2015The BCCI’s Anti-Corruption Unit had pulled up various IPL franchises and players for failing to adhere to protocol during the 2014 tournament, but both the board and teams confirmed the ACU was satisfied with the explanations it had received and the inquiries were considered closed.In an email to some officials in the previous BCCI administration, ACU head Ravi Sawani outlined instances where franchises had failed to provide guest lists for private parties and sponsor events in advance, and certain players had allowed visitors into their rooms without informing the on-duty ACU officer, according to a report in the .ESPNcricinfo confirmed the contents of Sawani’s email with BCCI officials.The ACU’s concern that certain players were still not following the code strictly stemmed from the scandal of the 2013 season, when some players and team officials were found to be involved in corrupt activities that brought the game into disrepute.One example Sawani cited, according to the report, was of a private party organised by Kings XI Punjab owner Preity Zinta on a boat on April 30, 2014. In this instance, though only players were invited, there was also a friend of Zinta’s in attendance, whose presence the ACU was unaware of. It is understood the ACU wanted to first establish whether there was a party and whether there was an outsider present.The newspaper also cited similar examples of Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shah Rukh Khan and Delhi Daredevils owners hosting events involving their squads without intimating the ACU. The Daredevils reportedly hosted a party at a five-star hotel in Delhi before IPL 2014 where all the players and support staff mingled with more than 100 outsiders.A BCCI official said franchises have started sending out guest lists for private parties and sponsor events in advance to the ACU, which vets the names and sends an alert in case of any undesirable elements being present.Another instance Sawani cited involved two Chennai Super Kings players allowing friends to stay overnight in their hotel rooms without informing the ACU officer. They breached ACU protocol, which states no individuals, “except blood relations or wife/ partner,” should be entertained by players in their room.Ranjib Biswal, who was the IPL chairman in 2014, said all the necessary actions had been taken by the BCCI. “Our ACU chief Ravi Sawani was constantly in touch with all the franchises,” Biswal told ESPNcricinfo on Friday. “Wherever necessary, he had reprimanded the owners and players concerned”A Kings XI spokesperson confirmed the boat party had taken place, according to the newspaper report, and that “the BCCI was satisfied with the action taken by the franchise.” A Delhi Daredevils spokesperson also said the details of their function were shared with the BCCI-IPL management through various channels.Ever since three Rajasthan Royals players – Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila – and a Chennai Super Kings team official Gurunath Meiyappan were arrested during IPL 2013 for their alleged involvement in corruption, the BCCI has been extra vigilant about keeping the game clean.There is emphasis on educating players during other domestic tournaments as well as IPL, and all franchise squads are accompanied with an integrity officer who keeps a watch on player movements.BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur had said the efforts were paying off. “As far the players being approached is concerned, the BCCI education policy is working very well. If someone is being approached by anyone, he has reported back to the anti-corruption unit,” Thakur said. “I think this is the thing to highlight and admire that the players are reporting back.”

Moeen Ali is on track to return to the England side in time to play the second Test of the series against West Indies in Grenada.

George Dobell02-Apr-2015Moeen Ali is on track to return to the England side in time to play the second Test of the series against West Indies in Grenada.Moeen, who established himself as England’s first choice spinner during the Test series against India last year, was not named in the original squad for the series in the Caribbean after sustaining a side strain during the World Cup defeat to Bangladesh in Sydney.But the England management always hoped that he would be able to join up with the squad if he recovered in time for a series in which spin is anticipated to play a key role. For the first two Tests, in particular, the pitches are expected to be slow and provide more assistance for spinners than seamers.In Moeen’s absence, the England selectors named offspinner James Tredwell, who was unable to maintain a place in the Kent Championship side last season, and the uncapped Yorkshire legspinner, Adil Rashid, as the two specialist slow bowlers in the squad.But now it appears Moeen should be able to return earlier than anticipated after he resumed training with Worcestershire. He has already begun net practise as a batsman and, while he has yet to bowl, intends to play a two-day warm-up match against Northamptonshire at Wantage Road on April 7-8 and play a full part with bat and ball in Worcestershire’s opening Championship game of the season against Yorkshire at New Road from April 12.If he comes through that unscathed, he hopes to fly to the Caribbean in time to be considered for a place in the side for the second Test starting on April 21. The final Test of the series begins in Barbados on May 1.”I’m hoping to play that game against Yorkshire, prove my fitness and fly immediately afterwards,” Moeen told ESPNcricinfo.Moeen was the most economical of England’s regular bowlers in the World Cup and also made the side’s highest score of the tournament, 128 against Scotland.The recovery of Warwickshire’s Chris Woakes is also ahead of schedule following injury in the same World Cup match. Woakes was diagnosed with a stress reaction in the left foot, but could return to the Championship side before the end of the month. He is expected to be available for selection ahead of the series against New Zealand starting at Lord’s on May 21.

In light of Saturday's FA Cup final, GOAL pick an African Dream Team to have won football's oldest club competition

GettyBruce Grobbelaar

Africa has not produced many goalkeepers who have had as much success around the world as Grobbelaar.

The Zimbabwe keeper was very successful during his time at Liverpool, and in a career that spanned over 600 games, he won six league titles, three FA Cup winner’s medals and a European Cup.

He will cherish his 1989 FA Cup medal in particular, as a tribute to the 96 Liverpool fans who were killed in the Hillsborough disaster earlier that season. 

AdvertisementGetty ImagesLauren

Lauren was an outstanding defender and a crucial member of Arsenal’s Invincibles team that went the entire 2003/04 season unbeaten.

The Cameroonian was often referred to as the Gunners’ unsung hero during his time at the club, and walked away with a Premier League double, three FA Cup medals, and two Community Shield trophies.

He also enoyed a superb international career with the Indomitable Lions. 

Getty ImagesKolo Toure

Toure was a defensive stalwart in England for more than a decade, winning trophies with Arsenal and Manchester City.

He won the FA Cup three times, two with the Gunners and one at City, and enjoyed great success in North London as a member of the 2004 Invincibles squad. 

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(C)Getty ImagesJoel Matip

The Cameroon centre-back steps into our African Dream XI of African winners after clinching the cup with Liverpool on Saturday.

He was introduced as a substitute during the contest, and helped the Reds keep the European champions at bay before they won it on penalties.

Wrexham star Jacob Mendy shared his delight and declared himself "hungry for more" after making his international debut.

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Mendy makes Gambia debutThanks fans for messages of supportEyes African Cup of Nations spotGetty ImagesWHAT HAPPENED?

The wing-back started for Gambia during their 2-0 defeat to Ivory Coast in World Cup qualifying on Monday. Despite the result, Mendy was delighted with the experience and has now set his sights on winning a spot in The Scorpions squad for the African Cup of Nations in January.

AdvertisementWHAT JACOB MENDY SAID

"Still processing it!" Mendy told Instagram followers. "Just wanted to thank everyone for the support and the messages I’ve received and I’m still receiving. Really appreciate it. Hungry for more"

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Mendy's energy down the left flank was a key feature Wrexham's promotion push at the end of last season and was typified by a crucial goal in the epic April showdown with Notts County. That form earned a first call-up for Gambia's summer internationals and a congratulatory message from co-owner Rob McElhenney. Mendy though, had to wait for the most recent round of internationals to finally make his international bow.

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Getty ImagesWHAT NEXT FOR JACOB MENDY AND GAMBIA?

Mendy will be eagerly waiting to hear if he makes the Gambia squad for the African Cup of Nations which begins in the Ivory Coast on January 13. The Scorpions have been drawn in an intimidating group alongside Senegal, Cameroon and Guinea.

Gremio boss Renato Gaucho admits it “will take a miracle” for his side to prevent Luis Suarez leaving for a reunion with Lionel Messi at Inter Miami.

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Uruguayan striker in Brazil for nowSet to leave at the end of the yearReady to join all-time great in FloridaWHAT HAPPENED?

The veteran Uruguayan striker is in Brazil at present, but has been cleared to see his contract brought to a close at the end of the calendar year. The expectation is that Suarez will pack his bags at that point and head to the United States.

AdvertisementTHE BIGGER PICTURE

Inter Miami have made no secret of their interest in the former Liverpool and Barcelona frontman, with another familiar face set to be slotted into their squad alongside eight-time Ballon d’Or winner Messi – with deals having already been done for Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba.

WHAT THEY SAID

Gaucho sees Suarez heading for MLS, telling reporters after watching the 36-year-old net the only goal of the game for Gremio in their 1-0 win over Bahia: “It will take a miracle [for Suarez to stay]. He already has plans for 2024. He made that clear a few months ago and I’m not expecting a miracle. It’s his decision. I’d like him to stay, but we have to be honest with our fans. If he ends up staying, it’ll be a miracle, and that miracle comes down to him.”

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WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Suarez is expected to agree a deal with Inter Miami ahead of the 2024 MLS season, allowing him to take on another new challenge in a career that has already taken him from Uruguay to Brazil via the Netherlands, England and Spain.

Tom Maynard, the Surrey and England Lions batsman, whose death shocked the cricketing world on Monday, was electrocuted before he was hit by a train on London underground accotrding to

ESPNcricinfo staff22-Jun-2012Tom Maynard, the Surrey and England Lions batsman, whose death shocked the cricketing world on Monday, was electrocuted before he was hit by a train on London underground, British Transport Police have confirmed.An inquest was formally opened and adjourned at Westminster Coroner’s Court on Friday morning. The circumstances of Maynard’s death will be established later this year.British Transport Police have appealed for information from residents in Wimbledon Park and confirmed that Maynard, 23, had been electrocuted by the live rail on the District Line before he was struck by a train shortly after 5am.The initial results of a forensic post mortem, conducted by a Home Office pathologist have indicated that Maynard suffered burns as a result of coming into contact with the live rail as well as suffering multiple injuries from being hit by the train.Police stopped Maynard in Ryford Road, next to Wimbledon mosque, after reporting that he was driving “erratically”. Maynard then fled from the scene, leaving police and BTP officials anxious to discover information about a period of roughly 45 minutes between his escape and the report of the collision from the tube driver.The funeral will be held on Wednesday, July 4 at Llandaff Cathedral at 12 noon with a service at Thornhill Crematorium at 1.15pm. This will be followed by a gathering at Pentyrch Rugby Club where friends are encouraged by the Maynard family to bring personal photos of Tom to compile a montage. All three events are open to the public.Surrey will play their first match since Maynard’s death on Friday night against Essex at Chelmsford. The county postponed the Twenty20 game against Hampshire that was scheduled for The Oval on Wednesday.Rory Hamilton-Brown, Surrey’s captain, who shared a house with Maynard, has been left out of the squad on compassionate grounds, leaving Gareth Batty to lead the team.Chris Adams, the Surrey director of cricket, said: “It has obviously been an incredibly difficult few days for the club and the players but this game against the Essex Eagles is a step back into some sort of routine. Playing cricket is what we do and tonight will give the players a sense of normality in such a tragic situation.”

Cricket Australia believes its rotation policy will strengthen the side by giving greater opportunities to young players

ESPNcricinfo staff09-Jan-2012Cricket Australia believes its rotation policy will strengthen the side by giving greater opportunities to young players. Pat Howard, CA’s general manager of high performance, has outlined a plan to ensure the best players are available for major series, although he said it was important not to enter any series with a sub-standard side for the sake of resting players.”We do look at different series differently and obviously we took the Indian series very much about trying to drive performance, so if a player was touch and go, we’d probably push him for this series knowing that if we had to rest him for part of the ODI series so be it,” Howard told the Age. “For New Zealand we took more of a conservative approach, took the chance to get people right.”There are risks associated with that and we have to keep that balance. Without question we want to win every series and we’re never going to go in with a B-team against anybody, that’s for sure. But we will take the opportunity to introduce players and with the downside of losing Hobart the upside is that we got to see David Warner at his best. At times we will take educated risks during a series to maintain overall opportunity to introduce players.”Warner, Mitchell Starc and James Pattinson all made their Test debuts during the recent series against New Zealand, with Pattinson and Warner both making strong contributions. However, Howard said had Australia not been willing to try the new men during the two-Test series, Pattinson might still be on the fringe.”James Pattinson is a well-regarded player now but going into that series he wouldn’t have been considered top of the tree,” Howard said. “You’ve got to take the chance to introduce these players and find out. Some people say, ‘is this the best player’? Well the selectors believe they have the potential to be, and in James Pattinson’s case that has proven very right.”For India, it was very much about trying to get the best players on the field. We knew Ryan Harris would be injected at some stage during the [India] series so we kept him and Mitchell Starc very close to the team, knowing the likelihood we would lose a player or two during the series.”Australia will be without Pattinson in the third Test against India in Perth due to his foot injury, but it has emerged that he was likely to be rested anyway, following his heavy workload over the past four Tests. Howard said there had even been consideration of resting Pattinson for the Sydney Test.”We’d monitored his workload and knew that the time was coming for James and it was either going be the second or third Test that was going to be a pretty novel time for his workload,” Howard said. “He’s 21 years of age and we’ve got about three years of data on him, and we knew that would be around about the time.”It was a really touch-and-go decision for Perth but even for Sydney. He was obviously in very good form and we thought we’d go ahead and give him the best chance. We’d been planning for James to miss that and coincide with Ryan’s availability as well.”

West Indies captain Darren Sammy has said that his side’s inability to capitalise on the “key moments” led to their seven-wicket loss to Pakistan in the second ODI in St Lucia

ESPNcricinfo staff26-Apr-2011West Indies captain Darren Sammy has said that his side’s inability to capitalise on the key moments led to their seven-wicket loss against Pakistan in the second ODI in St Lucia.”We could have tried to squeeze their batsmen more and when we batted we got a good start, but did not capitalise on it,” Sammy said. “We weren’t rolled over today. We kept ourselves in the match right to the finish. There were moments when things could have gone either way, but we didn’t make it happen.”We have to find a way to win those tight situations. We have to win in Barbados to stay alive in the series, so we have to grab our chances.”Lendl Simmons was the only West Indies batsmen to score over 30, or manage a strike-rate in excess of 80. As a result, West Indies finished with a below-par score of 220 that was easily chased down. Even in the first ODI, West Indies’ made just 221, where only Darren Bravo who got past 30.Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi praised the “discipline” shown by his side and said Pakistan were reaping the benefits of sticking to the gameplan. “We made a plan at our team meeting and our guys stuck to it and that was good,” Afridi said.”I think our bowlers are doing a great job, and the fielding has improved because it is a very important area for us. Our batting has shown responsibility and we hope to maintain this discipline right throughout the series.”Pakistan opener Ahmed Shehzad, who was named the Man of the Match, anchored Pakistan’s chase with his second ODI century. “Shehzad is a very talented guy,” Afridi said, “and he showed that he is capable of performing. He took his time, but chasing a small total, he could afford to do that and we won the game.””We tried to keep wickets in hand,” Shehzad said, of the way he paced his innings. “It was not a huge total so I knew that I had to control my strokeplay and not get carried away.”The third ODI will be played on Thursday in Barbados. Pakistan lead the five-match series 2-0.

West Ham manager David Moyes was encouraged by Kalvin Phillips' performance despite the midfielder's red card against Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

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Phillips sent off in Forest defeatMoyes pleased with performanceTold England man to 'keep going'GettyWHAT HAPPENED?

The Hammers crashed to a 2-0 defeat with their Manchester City loanee sent off after picking up two bookings in quick succession with his team trailing by a goal. Pundits and fans were quick to direct their ire at Phillips, who has endured a difficult start to his spell at West Ham, committing costly errors in his first two appearances then featuring in the second half of last weekend's thrashing by Arsenal. Despite the latest setback, Moyes saw some positives from Phillips on the 70 minutes before his dismissal.

Advertisement(C)Getty ImagesWHAT DAVID MOYES SAID ABOUT KALVIN PHILLIPS

"I thought for long periods he played well today," Moyes told after the game. "I though Kalvin played well. It looks like he's had a bad start and that adds to it a little bit but overall his performance today was good with just a couple of small incidents.

"I've watched him gain 50 or 60 caps for England, play incredibly well for Leeds United and get a huge transfer to Manchester City. So he's not a bad player, he probably just needs to get back on it and keep going and today he played well."

GettyTHE BIGGER PICTURE

Moyes made the point that Phillips' second yellow card was harsh and it's hard to not feel a shred of sympathy for the player who played a key role in Marcelo Bielsa's thrilling Leeds revival before being picked up by City with a view to becoming an established part of Pep Guardiola's midfield.

Phillips spoke earlier this week about his sadness at being frozen out at the Etihad and it seems his lacking of playing time is now being punished ruthlessly before he can shake any of that rust off.

West Ham's alarming dip in form has seen them go eight games without a win. And the Hammers fans' frustrations with Moyes has not provided the calmest of environments for Phillips to play his way back into form.

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WHAT NEXT FOR DAVID MOYES AND WEST HAM?

The suspended Phillips will have to sit on the sidelines once again when West Ham seek their first win of 2024 against Brentford at the London Stadium on February 26.

New Zealand Under-19 pulled off a close last-ball, one-wicket win, their first of the series, against Australia Under-19 in the third Youth ODI between the two teams

ESPNcricinfo staff08-Apr-2013
ScorecardNew Zealand pulled off a close last-ball, one-wicket win, their first of the series, against Australia in the third Youth ODI between the two teams. The third ODI was a dead rubber as Australia had already taken a winning lead of 2-0 in the three-match series.Batting first, Australia began well as the openers put on 71 runs. Kelvin Smith scored his second half-century of the tour, hitting 52 off 76 balls. However, offspinner Dane Watson effected a breakthrough to dismiss Jaron Morgan for 36. Sean Willis and Jake Doran fell in quick succession to leave Australia at 126 for 4. The rest of the batsmen struggled to put together partnerships and it took a brisk knock of 39 from Cameron Valente to push their score to 220 for 8. Watson finished with figures of 4 for 31, while Kyle Jamieson and Arana Noema-Barnett took two wickets apiece.In reply, New Zealand were shaky at 19 for 2 before a 90-run partnership between opener Rakitha Weerasundara and Ken McClure revived the chase. Weerasundara then added 71 runs with Leo Carter to take New Zealand to 180 for 3 in the 41st over. Australia clawed back into the match as Ben Ashkenazi dismissed Weerasundara and Valente, then got wickets off two successive deliveries. Valente took another two wickets in his next over as New Zealand stumbled to 8 for 198. A run-out in the last over almost gave Australia a 3-0 scoreline, but Noema-Barnett hung on to ensure New Zealand scampered home off the final ball.