After a tour of Zimbabwe which slipped under all but the sharpest radar, Kenya will be keen to make an impression in their four-ODI series against Bangladesh which starts on Friday. It’s a much higher-profile tour, and one against a side on the up as opposed to one struggling to retain international credibility.Kenya did well in Zimbabwe, drawing the five-match series 2-2 after the final game was washed out. Only once, in the fourth match, were they outclassed, while their other defeat was put down to jet lag as they were forced to play their opening match less than a day after arriving and without any chance to practice. Both Roger Harper, their coach, and Steve Tikolo, their captain, said that given the right preparation, they would have easily beaten the Zimbabweans.But Tikolo is realistic about his side’s chances this time round, pointing out that the international exposure for a side kept in the wilderness since the 2003 World Cup is as important as the outcome. He knows plenty about his opponents as well, having played regularly in Bangladesh club cricket for almost a decade.Bangladesh should win this series at a canter, and their performances in the just-finished series at home to Sri Lanka will have further boosted their burgeoning confidence. Their win in the second ODI inspired wild celebrations across the country, and they should dispose of keen but out-of-practice opponents with something to spare. Whatever the ICC rankings might claim, they can now rightly claim to be No. 9 in the world by quite some way, and rather than looking down, they now have West Indies at No. 8 in their sights.Their man of the moment is Mohammad Ashraful, who scored a gorgeous century on the opening day of the Test series against Sri Lanka, and who at the age of 21, is beginning at last to come to terms with the talent that made him, in September 2001, the youngest centurion in Test history, when he cracked 114 on debut against Sri Lanka in Colombo. And Bangladesh’s bowling has a greater cutting edge these days as well, with the tall and aggressive paceman, Shahadat Hossain, coming into his own in their last Test at Bogra, where he took a career-best 5 for 86.

Kenya’s bowling, on the other hand, could be their Achilles Heel. Their seamers lack penetration, although Peter Ongondo and Thomas Odoyo both showed good form in Zimbabwe, but overall they may struggle to contain. And although their out-of-sorts World Cup star, the allrounder Collins Obuya, has been recalled after a spell under the eye of Terry Jenner, reports suggest he is far from ready to resume international cricket. The batting will, as always, lean on Tikolo, but Kennedy Otieno looked in good nick in Zimbabwe.One player worth keeping an eye on is 18-year-old Tanmay Mishra who made his debut on that tour. Although he did not set the world alight, he showed enough glimpses of class to suggest he could well have what it takes to succeed at the highest level.It’s a shame that what could be a winning series for the home side could be played out in front of empty stands. Bangladesh is a cricket-mad country – look no further than the massive attendances during the 2004 Under-19 World Cup – but this series has failed to capture the imagination and ticket sales are sluggish to non existent. That the public have not been tempted is partially due to the perceived weakness of the opponents, partially due to the eyebrow-raising decision to increase prices from those charged for the Sri Lanka matches, but largely because of the glut of international cricket.

Click here for a list of all events awarded by the ICCEngland have been awarded the rights to host the 2019 World Cup as well as the 2009 Twenty20 World Championships. The announcement was made after the ICC board meeting in Dubai this weekend.”The ECB should be very pleased with the outcome of these negotiations,” said Ehsan Mani, the ICC president. “It produced an excellent submission to host both the World Cup and the Twenty20 World Championship and have earned the right to host both events.”A lot of credit must go to David Morgan for the astute manner in which he handled some very complex discussions. England will be a fitting venue for the Twenty20 World Championships at the climax of our centenary year in 2009.”Morgan, the ECB chairman, was clearly delighted: “We entered into this process with the goal of being awarded a Twenty20 event and a World Cup,” he said. “It’s great news for cricket in England and Wales that these two major events have been secured and we have a wonderful opportunity to build our international calendar around these showpiece occasions.”The full support of the ICC board for the staging of these two important events in England is a clear indication of the prominent role that the ECB continues to hold in international cricket.”England hosted the first three World Cups in 1975, 1979 and 1983 (when Wales also hosted games) as well as the 1999 tournament when matches were also played in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

Four Bangladesh players have been included in the Rest of Asia squad to take on Pakistan in two limited-overs exhibition matches to be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 25 and 26.”Shahriar Nafees, Mohammad Rafique, Aftab Ahmed and Shahadat Hossain will represent Rest of the Asia,” Faruque Ahmed, the Bangladesh chief selector, told .Faruque said that Nafees was included primarily because the organisers requested them to send a specialist opener for the matches. Nafees enjoyed a good series against Australia at home recently, scoring a century in the first Test at Fatullah.The other members of the squad include Anil Kumble, Ajay Jadeja, Gautam Gambhir and VVS Laxman from India, along with Romesh Kaluwitharana and Kumar Dharmasena from Sri Lanka. Sanath Jayasuriya was in the original list, but had to be withdrawn, as he is now with the national team on the tour of England. Jayasuriya recently reversed his decision to retire from Tests.A full-strength Pakistan team will be led by Inzamam-ul-Haq.

The ICC board has surprisingly rejected a recommendation from its own cricket committee to trial a process of allowing players three appeals per innings to the TV umpire if they felt a decision made by an on-field umpire was incorrect during this year’s ICC Champions Trophy.”The reservations expressed by the cricket committee when they recommended the player appeal measure were mirrored to a much greater degree by the ICC board in its rejection of the concept after extensive deliberation,” said ICC president Ehsan Mani. “The board was concerned about the impact of the trial on the Spirit of Cricket and the effect it might have on the integrity of umpiring at all levels.”It was also felt the ICC Champions Trophy was too high profile an event at which to undertake such a trial. As such, further discussions will now take place to see whether the concept can be tested at domestic level.”Duncan Fletcher, England’s coach, had repeatedly spoken in favour of the three-appeal concept. But, for the time being at least, technology will only be used at the discretion of the on-field umpires.Meanwhile, another decision from a week-long series of ICC meetings in London, saw the chief executives’ committee (CEC) also approve a series of recommendations concerning the issue of bad light in international cricket. Research on the subject will be undertaken in Australia, England and Pakistan and pending the completion and review of that research, artificial lights can still be used in Test matches. The CEC also agreed to the increased use of light meters as a guideline for determining whether light is fit or unfit for play.

Seeing that the air has been filled recently by the utterances of politicians and lawyers, I thought we should take the process of lies and damn lies a step further today.Statistics don’t ever tell the whole story, yet they can still be quite useful, especially in sporting conversations, even those not fuelled by bets in the nearby rum shop. Probably the most significant statistic for the Trinidad & Tobago sports fan is the number 400, Brian Lara’s world record Test innings score against England two years ago in Antigua.Well, for a nervous few hours on Saturday morning, it seemed that the national hero would be losing the revered status of the scorer of the highest individual innings in Test cricket history for the second time. Mahela Jayawardene, Sri Lankan captain, was getting ever closer to that historic number in Colombo, having already established another world record with a 624-run third-wicket partnership – the highest for any wicket in Test or first-class cricket – with Kumar Sangakkara in the first Test against South Africa.It looked to be only a matter of time before he scaled the summit, but all it takes is one lapse in concentration to bring the dreams of glory to an end, and when Andre Nel bowled Jayawardene for 374, the groans of disappointment throughout Sri Lanka would have been counter-balanced by the relieved exhalations of fans in West Indies.We’ve seen this all before of course in the 12 years since Lara first claimed the record that was held by Sir Garfield Sobers for 36 years. Following that 375 – also against England in Antigua – Sanath Jayasuriya (340), another Sri Lankan, came close against India, while Mark Taylor, the Australian captain then, chose to declare in Pakistan with his personal score on 334, drawing him level with the legendary Sir Donald Bradman for what was then the highest Test innings by an Australian.Matthew Hayden eventually surpassed them, and Lara, in getting to 380 against Zimbabwe in November, 2003. Yet it only served to motivate the Trinidadian to lift his game another notch and, five months later, he ended a run of low scores in a lost series against England with that unbeaten 400, making him the first to reclaim the record.It seems that someone is on the verge of getting the really big one almost every other series these days. In fact, of the 21 scores of 300 or more (we used to be able to just say triple-centuries until Lara’s quadruple) in the 1,810 Tests played to date, eight have been compiled since the left-handed maestro’s first world-beating effort at the ARG. The others who have flirted with the record in that time, apart from those already mentioned, are Inzamam-ul-Haq (329) against New Zealand; Virender Sehwag (309) against Pakistan; and Chris Gayle (317) against South Africa last year.Given the general rarity of such monumental individual scores, it would seem obvious that this has been the most prolific period in that regard in the history of the game. But it isn’t, at least not in terms of frequency on the basis of matches played. Lara’s 375 included, the nine scores of 300 and over have come in a 12-year period during which 551 Test matches have been played, giving an average of a 300-plus score roughly every 61 Tests. You have to go back to the 1930s to find the really prolific period, however, when the first five triple-hundreds in Tests were scored at the rate of one every 15 matches.When Englishman Andrew Sandham, at the age of 39, scored 325 at Sabina Park against the West Indies (amazingly, it was his last Test) in the final match of the 1930 series, it set off a sequence that saw Bradman setting a new standard of 334 just a few months later against England at Headingly; Wally Hammond bettering that with 336 not out for England against New Zealand in Auckland in 1932-33; Bradman getting to 304, again at Leeds, in 1934; and then Len Hutton taking the mark to a new height with 364 for England against Australia at The Oval in 1938.In terms of time, it was a span of more than eight years, yet only 74 Test matches were played in that period when there were just five Test nations. It would be another 20 years before someone got to 300-plus, Sobers turning his maiden Test hundred at the age of 21 into a world record 365 not out against Pakistan in Kingston.Interestingly, given that the period coincided with an era of unprecedented West Indian dominance, there was only one triple-hundred scored in the 25 years between John Edrich’s 310 not out for England against New Zealand in 1965 and Graham Gooch’s 333, also for England, against India at Lord’s in 1990. That was a knock of 302 by Lawrence Rowe against the English in Barbados in 1974.Seeing that none of the great names that graced West Indies batting line-ups for the 20 years after Rowe’s innings managed to get to 300 (Viv Richards was closest with 291 against the English in his phenomenal year of 1976), it merely reinforces the point, as we have seen with our own eyes, that cricket, for all of its focus on individuals, relies on team effort more than virtuoso performances for long-term success.Still, we’re drawn to the big numbers, aren’t we? No wonder there are so many gamblers around.

The major airlines based in the Caribbean have landed a major contract for the 2007 Cricket World Cup (CWC) to be played in the region. The consortium of Caribbean Star, BWIA West Indies Airlines, LIAT and Air Jamaica have been awarded the contract to be the official carrier during the March 5 to April 28 event.Stephen Price, the tournament’s commercial manager, made the announcement late on Wednesday after a series of high-level meetings at the Royal Antigua Hotel. He said, “I can announce that we contracted the Caribbean consortium of airlines to be the official carrier for the teams, VIPs, media, sponsors and officials during the duration of the tournament.”They will provide chartered airlift. It’s a humongous achievement and it shows there is faith in the regional air carriers. It will link all the carriers of the region under one roof. It says a lot too about the steps they are willing to take in terms of ensuring that the transportation for the tournament is successful.”Price was among several executives from the regional and international travel industry who joined officials from the World Cup, customs, immigration, security, land and air traffic management, visitor experience, and logistics in trying to come up with a framework to ease worries over airlift and congestion for the tournament.

What was that like? It must have hurt?
We suffered that defeat against Australia in the 1996 World Cup and that still haunts me up to this day. It is about the only regret I had in my career, not having a World Cup medal around my neck – it is the missing link and would have put the icing on the cake for me. The thing that hurt the most was that we had the game won. It was a strange loss by just five runs and there was nothing really we could have done. I still, up to this day, can’t put my hand on what caused the defeat.We were going along at a run a ball and suddenly we panicked and it all fell apart. I knew that if we had taken care of Australia there was no way Sri Lanka could beat us in the final. I was that confident. After the match there was complete silence in the dressing room. Not a man said a word. No one spoke because no one knew what to say. For once in my life I was down and out. You must remember that in that same World Cup we lost to Kenya, so we were bouncing back. I say it to this day that if we had just been able to get those other five runs my cricket life would have been complete.Richie Richardson once told me you never liked cricket. I still can’t believe that’s true.
As a boy, I never liked cricket, and I was definitely not a fan of the game. My favourite sports were basketball and football. Cricket was too long, took up a lot of energy, was never on my list and to be honest I avoided it. Occasionally I would play with the lads in my village, Swetes, but that was just for fun. I played in school and sometimes for my village. But I was a very proud man and anything I did I made sure I did it well and put my all in, so when I had to play cricket, I gave 100 per cent.So how on earth did you get hooked on the game?
I used to play tennis ball cricket on the beach and had fun and frolic with friends. Because of this people told me they believe I could play the proper version of the game. As I said I played at school, because people pushed me to. I was always a tall guy and they felt I could make it. I played in the national league for Swetes at age 21 for the first time, and yes, that’s starting late. But I like to tell people – it was not a late start, I just chose my time correctly. I gave it a big go and it paid off. Many people don’t know it, but I still don’t watch a lot of cricket to this day. I would follow the game and the fortunes of the West Indies and my other favourite teams, but watching cricket is still tough for me. When I retired I said that was it. I decided I would never play another cricket match again.You were lucky to have a great career, how was it at the start?
I tell people my career took off like the Concorde. In 1984 I was playing for Swetes. In 1985 I was playing for Antigua and Barbuda. In 1986 I got picked for the Leeward Islands, alongside Richie, Viv Richards, Keith Arthurton and other great guys. Then by 1988 I was in the West Indies team with great men like Maco (Malcolm Marshall) and Cuddy (Courtney Walsh) and in just those short few years everything just took off. Maco was the top bowler in the world when I came in and he was a world beater. They were some other good guys around and I didn’t want to be the weak link so I had to learn very fast. At first people used to say we’ll see off Maco and Cuddy and then take our runs off that “other guy”, so I was forced to improve quickly. Maco and Walsh were great to me. They offered the world of advice.You certainly learnt very fast. By the 1990 home series you were taking 8 for 45 and sending England packing. How was that?
A: Yeah, that was in Barbados and I really enjoyed it. We were 0-1 down in the series, with a match to go and the England team was holding on for a draw. Jack Russell had stuck in our teeth and it didn’t look like we would ever get him out. Jack could be a very stubborn guy and I had to pull something out of the bag for my side. I managed to get him with one that kept a bit low and that was what the doctor ordered. It was a good performance and I enjoyed it. We went on to win the match and we won the next one in Antigua by an innings and pulled off the series. We just couldn’t let England beat us at home.

Then there was another great showing. A spell of seven for one at the WACA against Australia?
It’s not often that you get such good figures. To be honest, it came out of the blue. I didn’t bowl very well before lunch. Both wickets that fell went to Ian Bishop. I didn’t have a particularly good spell and I wanted to come back out and get back in there. Then suddenly everything just fell into place. I sent down some top deliveries, which even surprised myself and there were some brilliant catching in the slips. Everyone was delighted and suddenly Australia were all out for 120-odd.It was another moment in my career, which I was extremely proud of. WACA was a good ground for me and the pitch reminded me of those back in the Caribbean – bounce and pace – and every fast bowler loves that. Was it one of my favourite grounds? I never had a favourite ground so to speak. I was a professional and whatever pitch I encountered I knew I had to put in that big effort.There was that incident when Dean Jones asked you to take off your wristband in a one-day international during the 1993 World Series Final. Did that tick you off?
To this day I found it strange that he asked me to take off my wristband. I was using wristbands all through my career and out of nowhere he asked the umpires to ask me to take it off. I think he said something about the white wristband and the white ball which was disrupting. It didn’t make sense and I was reluctant to take it off, but Richie told me to just get in with the game and avoid the distractions. I was mad, really mad. But as I told them you should never wake a sleeping lion. It was just a one-off situation, but it was a warning to batsmen all over the world. What Dean Jones did was a bad mistake, which backfired. I blew them away.Then there was the incident with Steve Waugh in the Caribbean, during a Test in Trinidad, went you two went face to face. What happened there?
That was a one-off situation and there was no love lost between Steve and myself. We still have mutual respect for each other and it did not go beyond that day. On that day, he said something that I didn’t like and I felt I had to respond. I felt I deserved more respect than that and I had to give him a piece of my mind as well. It was nothing racial, just a spur of the moment something. Each man said his piece and the game went on. Today, we have the greatest respect for each other.Waugh rated you as the supreme fast bowling machine, and better than Marshall. That’s a huge compliment.
Thanks Steve (laughs). As I said there was great respect from Steve towards me and from myself towards him. He was a great batsman and very tough to get rid of. I had to have a big bag of tricks to outfox and outwit Steve Waugh – a giant of a man.And finally, what keeps Curtly Ambrose going nowadays? What’s life like?
Music has always been my passion. I am involved in the band Big Bad Dread and the Baldhead, where I play guitar and Richie plays bass. It’s sort of a roadshow, and everyone – fans and the members of the band – has been loving it. Enjoying is not the word. I’m absolutely loving the music business. Music has always been one of my passions and I see myself as a musician. I was a fast bowler, I’m now a musician (laugh). We will be in England for a number of performances and we are also working on a CD to be released in the upcoming weeks.

England’s chances of retaining the Ashes later this year depend largely on the performance of their strike bowler Steve Harmison, feels Ian Chappell, the former Australian captain, now a leading television commentator. England defend the Ashes they won at home last year against Australia in the first of five Tests in Brisbane, starting on November 23.”So much depends on how Steve Harmison bowls. It may be a reason why they gave Andrew Flintoff the captaincy – apparently he’s very matey with Harmison,” Chappell told . “Some of the stuff I saw from him against Pakistan (in the recent Test series) was absolute crap. But if he bowls as well as he can, England will be right in it.”Chappell said England’s decision to opt for Flintoff as captain over Andrew Strauss has reflected a change in attitude with England, Australia’s traditional rivals.”They could have gone the safe route and made Strauss captain. But they won the Ashes by taking the aggressive route and picking someone like Kevin Pietersen. Logic says that to retain the Ashes, they’ve got to keep taking risks and they’ve done that by making Flintoff captain.”Chappell felt it also makes sense that Flintoff was preferred as captain as he understands the tactical side of bowling better than opening batsman Strauss.”What does a captain do with batting? He basically just picks the order. The important side is out on the field. Who better to understand bowling than a bowler? There haven’t been many bowling captains and that’s probably been a mistake. There’s no reason why Flintoff can’t do it. The danger is that he’s coming back from a serious injury and needs to find his form as a bowler. He might overbowl himself in a bid to lift the team.”They’ll miss Michael Vaughan’s captaincy but Flintoff is a bit of a Shane Warne: he loves competing. When the heat’s on, Flintoff will want to bowl, but he can’t do it all the time. That’s when Strauss will have to know when to step in and say, ‘Not now, save it for later’. If everything goes right for England, it will be very competitive. But it could easily turn bad for them.”

Greg Chappell and Rahul Dravid have stressed that the Indian team should look at the forthcoming tour of South Africa as an opportunity to play good cricket and produce results, rather than worry about the recent losses or be overly concerned at the kind of conditions they will face on the tour.”I think most teams find it difficult when they go on to different surfaces,” said Chappell. “It will be a challenge for us, we have given it quite a bit of consideration. It’s an opportune time to have a challenge such as this given the development of the players. If we play as good as we can, we’ll make a very good series of it. Having said that, most of the senior guys know the conditions particularly well and had good success during the World Cup in 2003.””Adjusting to bounce is going to be critical,” said Dravid, who had personal success in South Africa. “As a batsman you’ve got to show patience, show a bit of courage. One’s character is going to be tested on the tour. It is a great opportunity to learn about yourself and your game.” Dravid added that it was sometimes better to be batting on pitcheswith bounce than on the slow, low wickets that you encounter in the subcontinent. “Rather than worry about seam or bounce I’d like to look at it this way. There are good wickets in South Africa. The pitches give you a chance to play your shots, the sort of shots you can’t play on low and slow wickets. You can trust the bounce. On slow, low tracks your back-foot game is completely ruled out. Here you have more scoring options.”Chappell also did not agree that India’s bad record in bilateral series in South Africa would have an impact on the team’s performance. “History is going to make no difference on this tour,” he said. “We hadn’t won a Test series in West Indies in 35 yearsand recently we went there and won a Test series. How you play on the tour is important. It’ll have nothing to do with what’s happened in the past.”Dravid and Chappell were both happy that Anil Kumble and Zaheer Khan, two experienced campaigners, had returned to the squad. “Anil brings a lot of experience and his obvious skill as a cricketer,” said Dravid. “But he also brings his personality to the mix and that’s important to us as a team. We’ve always had Anil at the back of our minds. It was only a question of bringing him back at the right time and in the lead-up to the World Cup. I think this is the right time.””I am impressed with what Zaheer has done,” said Chappell. “He has worked on his fitness and form and made his way back into the team. We have the variety in the bowling that we need to give us a chance to win in all conditions.”Dravid also said that he expected the spinners to play a role even in conditions that may not be ideally suited to them. “From experience I know that we’re not going to get square turners in South Africa. Having said that there’s always a bit of bounce in the wickets and this helps both Kumble and Harbhajan, given the kind of bowlers they are. They’re both quality spinners and can play a role on any kind of wickets.”Chappell and Dravid both said that the players had been given strict training routines to follow in the time since India were knocked out of the Champions Trophy after failing to reach the semifinals. The individuals also had a chance to go back to their homes and train with their domestic teams in the interim.

The weather, which ruined the opening one-day match of the series onNovember 19, is threatening to derail India’s first-ever Pro20 game onFriday evening. Late on Thursday evening, there was a heavy thunderstorm,and though it didn’t rain on Friday morning, the skies above wereominously grey.Some would have said that they reflected the mood in the India camp afterthree heavy defeats that saw South Africa wrap up the one-day series witha game to play. With Rahul Dravid out until the first Test, and MunafPatel struggling with an ankle injury, the Pro20 represents the bestchance for India to salvage some pride before packing away the bluepajamas and bringing out the whites.Apart from Dravid in the Cape Town game where he broke his finger, SachinTendulkar in Durban, and Irfan Pathan in the last game at Port Elizabeth,no batsman has shown signs of having come to grips with the conditions.And though South Africa are resting several keep players for the Pro20game, the replacements are no slouches. The team practised on Fridaymorning – India were pencilled in for an afternoon session – and GraemeSmith was determined to ensure that India didn’t go into the Test serieswith any shred of confidence.The format probably suits the likes of Virender Sehwag and Mahendra SinghDhoni, and with so much attention having been focussed on the selection ofthe Test side over the past few days, India will probably be glad of thisgame, with all the attendant Bollywood trappings that the organisers havepromised. But with the thunder rolling in, and the skies getting everdarker, another disappointing washout was the most likely outcome.