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ScorecardFile photo – Karnataka’s pace quartet picked up seven wickets among them•ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Gautam Gambhir (75) top-scored for Delhi in a disappointing batting effort as they were made to follow on by Karnataka in Hubballi. Delhi, who were bowled out for 301, ended the day on 22 without loss in their second dig when stumps were drawn.Delhi began cautiously and negotiated the first hour without too much trouble, before the middle order collapsed in a heap as they slipped from 136 for 3 to 166 for 6. Manan Sharma and Vaibhav Rawal then put together 93 for the seventh wicket as Delhi briefly looked like avoiding the follow-on. But that wasn’t to be as Abhimanyu Mithun and Shreyas Gopal dismantled the tail quite easily. The pace trip of HS Sharath, Mithun and S Aravind picked up two wickets apiece.
ScorecardNitin Saini’s first century this season kept Haryana afloat, but Rajasthan still had the upper hand going into the final day in Lahli. Haryana, who conceded a 167-run lead, lost the wickets of Saini (146) and Mohit Hooda (56) in the final session to leave themselves a 120 run lead with four wickets standing at stumps.Virender Sehwag, returning after missing the last two matches due to the All Stars T20 in USA, was scalped by Tanveer-Ul-Haq to make it a forgettable outing as he finished with scores of 29 and 8 for the match. When he was dismissed, Haryana were reduced to 110 for 3, needing another 57 to make Rajasthan bat again.Saini then steadied the innings courtesy two important partnerships – 72 with Priyank Tehlan (34) and 88 with Mohit Hooda (56) – to keep Haryana alive, before Pankaj Singh’s double strike halted their progress. The Rajasthan captain first had Tehlan lbw before having Hooda caught by Tanveer in the dying moments of play to break into the lower middle order.
ScorecardAssam were on course for a crucial first-innings lead in Pune after Krishna Das’ four-wicket burst left Maharashtra reeling at 160 for 6 in response to Assam’s 298 that was largely achieved on the back of a mammoth stand between Arun Karthik and Gokul Sharma. Karthik batted for 283 deliveries during his knock of 130, his third ton this season, while Gokul, the captain, made 76 during the course of a 237-run stand for the fourth-wicket.Maharashtra’s openers fell cheaply to Dhiraj Goswami, the pacer, before Krishna Das got into the act. Before long, the hosts were in tatters with the top four back in with hut with just 60 on the board. Rahul Tripathi continued his good form to make a defiant half-century, but little support from the other end meant Maharashtra’s lower order will need to pull off a coup if they are to walk away with three points.

ScorecardMumbai Champs turned in yet another disappointing performance to allow Chennai Superstars to register a facile win at Panchkula in Chandigarh. T Kumaran grabbed a four-wicket haul to restrict Champs to 123, a total that was never going to threaten the Superstars, who romped home by nine wickets with 44 balls to spare.G Vignesh chose the occasion to equal Chris Cairns’ tournament record for the fastest fifty with a 17-ball effort and picked up the Man-of-the-Match award.Kumaran struck in the fifth over to dismiss the opener Saman Jayantha, after which wickets continued to fall at regular intervals. That Dhiraj Jhadav’s 28 was the highest score of the innings reflects the Champs’ woes.The chase was over in a hurry after Vignesh exploded at the start with a 30-ball 61 that featured eight hits to the boundary and three over it. Michael Kasprowicz had a forgettable day, leaking 20 runs in his solitary over. Ian Harvey remained unbeaten on a 30-ball 31, while R Sathish hastened the end with a 17-ball 29.

Batsman Vusi Sibanda and left-arm seamer Brian Vitori return to the Zimbabwe squad for the four T20Is against Bangladesh starting on January 15. Sean Williams, who was ruled out of Zimbabwe’s ongoing Twenty20 series against Afghanistan with a groin injury, is also part of the 16-man side.Tinashe Panyangara and Craig Ervine were notable exceptions, although reports suggested Ervine had caught the flu after scoring 73 in an ODI two weeks ago. Panyangara was picked for the tour of UAE, but has not played a single game so far.Sibanda had been in terrible form over the past two years. His last fifty in international cricket had come in August 2013, and since then he has averaged 16.34 in 24 matches across formats. He has not played for Zimbabwe since July 2015, but his recent domestic record shows clear signs of improvement. This past December, he struck back-to-back fifties in List A cricket and racked up three fifty-plus scores in four innings in first-class cricket including 140 and 90 in the same match.Vitori has spent the same amount of time outside the Zimbabwe team as Sibanda. He comes back as one of four frontline seamers including Neville Madziva, Luke Jongwe and Taurai Muzarabani. Donald Tiripano, who had made his T20I debut a couple of days ago, did not find a place among them. Graeme Cremer will lead the spin attack along with left-armer Tendai Chisoro and Wellington Masakadza.Zimbabwe will fly out to Dhaka on January 11, mere hours after wrapping up their limited-overs series against Afghanistan in the UAE.Zimbabwe squad: Elton Chigumbura, Malcolm Waller, Peter Moor, Sikandar Raza, Graeme Cremer, Hamilton Masakadza, Wellington Masakadza, Richmond Mutumbami, Sean Williams, Chamu Chibhabha, Neville Madziva, Luke Jongwe, Taurai Muzarabani, Tendai Chisoro, Vusi Sibanda, Brian Vitori

Blaming the mediocre standard of batsmen in school cricket today partly to the preparation of substandard pitches, Aravinda de Silva, the former Sri Lanka batsman, is of the opinion that playing school matches on matting surfaces than on turf pitches would improve the quality of batting significantly.Being appointed consultant coach to the Sri Lanka under-19 World Cup team enabled de Silva, who retired from international cricket five years ago, to make a close study of the declining standards of school cricket in Sri Lanka and this is what he observed.”As I see it, playing on matting wickets will create much better players because that extra bounce will encourage batsmen to play shots square of the wicket and produce more gutsy players,” de Silva said. “One thing we should look at is that some of the fast bowlers of today can’t get the ball to rise waist high.””We played most of our cricket at school on matting wickets. It is easier to switch over from matting to turf. There are two sides to playing on matting. On turf you get use to playing on different sort of surfaces. But at a younger age I don’t think that is necessary. You must allow them to go and play their normal cricket, to play with aggression. The advantages are greater to develop batsmen than bowlers on matting.”Throughout his illustrious career he remained the most feared batsman in the middle-order, capable of single-handedly changing the course of a match. He was renowned for being a fearless hooker and cutter of the ball even against the fastest of bowlers in the world. He had the freedom and confidence to play shots all around the wicket because of the quality of cricket he played at DS Senanayake MV where his natural talents were allowed to flow.”Playing tough competitive cricket on good wickets is what our youngsters lack. They lack a lot of confidence because of poor wickets. Arjuna [Ranatunga] made a triple hundred at the age of under 15 and players used to get double hundreds regularly during our time. Today as a team schools are averaging totals of 190-200 except for some schools that play on good wickets.””That is perhaps mainly because the batsmen lack in confidence to play their shots. The only way to give them the confidence is to prepare good batting surfaces. But most schools cannot afford to maintain turf wickets and therefore play on substandard surfaces.”Even for the bowlers why we don’t develop good spinners is because the wickets are all crumbling. Also there is no competition to create situations because they play safe games. Some of the coaches go round setting fields and not allowing the players to think on their own. More than winning competitions coaches must get players to think and make decisions on their own. This would allow the boys to study the game from a young age.”De Silva’s remedy to overcome this shortcoming is to field a schools team in the inter-provincial tournament. “They will gain a lot of experience from the exposure that will be given to them. Playing with guys like Mahela [Jayawardene] and Kumar [Sangakkara] will give them competitive cricket and a chance to learn the game.”Having watched how the under-19 World Cup teams of Pakistan and England played in the recently concluded tri-series in Colombo, De Silva said: “The Pakistan and England sides are very much matured. They have more thinking cricketers than our guys. The Pakistan bowling attack is a lot better that Sri Lanka and England because most of the bowlers have got exposure at first-class level. Every bowler was able to move the ball, which is a very good sign at that age. Our batsmen found it difficult to face up to the Pakistani bowlers when the ball started to move around because they play on flat and slow wickets at school.”Sri Lanka lost all three fixtures (including the final) to Pakistan in the tri-nation series. de Silva suggested that as the Junior World Cup is played every two years, Sri Lanka should pick a pool one year ahead from the under 17 squad and prepare for the event.

Scorecard1:11

Mumbai, Saurashtra dominate Day 1

A five-wicket haul from Jaydev Unadkat gave Saurashtra the early impetus in their quarter-final in Vizianagaram, as they bowled Vidarbha out for 151. Saurashtra made a strong start to their reply as well, ending the day 70 for 1 with Cheteshwar Pujara batting on 45 off 71 balls (9×4) and sharing an unbroken 60-run stand with Sagar Jogiyani after the early loss of Avi Barot to Umesh Yadav.Saurashtra sent Vidarbha in after winning the toss and Unadkat, the left-arm seamer, made an almost instantaneous impact, dismissing Jitesh Sharma with the second ball of the match. Hardik Rathod picked up the next two wickets as Vidarbha slumped to 30 for 3, and there was little respite thereafter, with a 33-run fourth-wicket stand between S Badrinath and Wasim Jaffer finishing as the highest of the innings. Jaffer top-scored with 41, facing 86 balls and hitting seven fours. The seamers picked up all ten Vidarbha wickets, with Rathod and Chirag Jani bagging two each and Unadkat finishing with figures of 5 for 70.
ScorecardPacers Siddarth Kaul and Barinder Sran cut through Assam’s batting line-up, but Syed Mohammad unbeaten 50 pushed his side past 200 in the second quarter-final in Valsad.Coming in at No.7, Syed Mohammad rallied with the lower order, bringing up his second fifty of the season. It had come after forties from opener Pallav Kumar Das and No.4 Amit Verma, but the rest of the middle order did not have answers to Kaul and Sran who had combined figures of 47-8-148-6.Dhiraj Goswami was dismissed just before stumps, as Assam made slow progress to 223. Captain Harbhajan Singh managed only one wicket, but gave away only 11 runs in as many overs. Left-arm pacer Deepak Bansal, playing his third first-class match, took the other wicket to fall.
ScorecardAkhil Herwadkar’s century and Suryakumar Yadav’s half-century led Mumbai to 303 for 6 at stumps on the first day of their quarter-final clash against Jharkhand in Mysore.Having opted to bat, Mumbai lost opener Jay Bista early, but Herwadkar, joined by Shreyas Iyer, who scored a brisk 45, put on a 70-run partnership to lift Mumbai. Iyer fell with the score at 91, but Herwadkar found good company from Suryakumar as Mumbai pushed past 200. Suryakumar struck nine fours and two sixes during his 70-ball 75. Herwadkar’s effort, on the other hand, was built on patience. He took 217 balls for his 107, during which he hit 12 fours.Jharkhand made late incisions, reducing Mumbai from 227 for 2 to 303 for 6. Pacer Jaskaran Singh and left-arm spinner Shahbaz Nadeem picked up two wickets each for Jharkhand.

Scorecard

Bermuda’s women carved an unwanted niche in the international record books with one of the most abject performances in the game’s history. In their opening match of the World Cup Qualifiers at Stellenbosch University, they were bowled out for 13 and then South Africa took only four balls to sweep to a ten-wicket win.Bermuda’s men haven’t made much of a positive impact in the game either – eleven months ago, they conceded 413 for 5 against India in the World Cup and lost by 257 runs, the biggest margin in one-day history. But their women have just lowered the bar by several notches.They crawled to 7 for 2 after ten overs, but that represented the high-water mark. By the time drinks were taken after 15.5 overs they were 13 for 7 and had lost their 42-year-old captain, Linda Mienzer, for a determined 1 off 48 deliveries. Such was the confusion that when play resumed the batsmen returned to the wrong ends.The last three wickets failed to add to the score as Sunette Loubser finished with 6 for 3, including 5 for 1 in 12 balls.Terry-Lynn Paynter opened Bermuda’s attack but struggled to find the cut strip, conceding nine wides and a no-ball. Olivia Anderson did manage to reach one, which she dispatched for four.The statistics of the match are mindboggling. Eight Bermudans failed to get off the mark, and the three that did only managed a single each. Ten of the runs that helped make up their meagre score were extras – 71%. South Africa’s score of 15 for 0 was also made up of ten extras – nine wides and a no-ball. Anderson scored 50% of the runs scored off the bat in the match, and 80% of her side’s runs.Unfortunately for South Africa, but mercifully for the record-books, Bermuda’s debacle does not count towards the official statistics because they are ranked outside the world’s top ten countries. “I am disappointed that today’s stats don’t count for nothing,” said Loubser, “but I would say it was a team effort to win the opening match of the tournament.Bermuda’s captain, Mienzer, tried desperately to put a positive gloss on the performance. “I am extremely proud and our team is very proud to be here,” she said. “Just a year and a half ago there was no women’s programme so we went to Canada and qualified to come here which is an achievement in itself. In terms of women’s cricket in Bermuda, it has come a long way but we still have a long way to go.”South Africa’s next match is against equally unheralded opponents, Papua New Guinea, on Tuesday. “We are taking one match at a time and we are happy that we are off to a good start,” said Loubser. “It should augur well for the whole tournament. We don’t know anything about our next opponents, but that doesn’t mean we should rest on our laurels. We should be ready for anything.”

Jhye Richardson is in the frame to be included in Australia’s squad for the Boxing Day Test following a successful recovery from shoulder surgery.Pat Cummins is expected to sit out Melbourne, and potentially the rest of the series, with the Ashes secured after victory in Adelaide, meaning there is a vacancy in the pace attack. Brendan Doggett and Michael Neser, who took a five-wicket haul in Brisbane, played earlier in the series and would also be in contention to return to the XI but ESPNcricinfo understands Richardson is very close to being in consideration.Richardson trained with the Test group ahead of Adelaide but was not officially part of the squad.Related

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Australia also need to replace Nathan Lyon who is out of the series with a hamstring injury. Todd Murphy is likely the frontrunner, although Western Australia’s Corey Rocchiccioli could earn a first call-up, while left-arm spinner Matt Kuhnemann had a successful tour of Sri Lanka earlier this year and toured the West Indies.Should Richardson’s official return to a Test squad be locked in, it would come exactly a year since he was last included, against India for the Boxing Day Test. Shortly after that, he opted to undergo shoulder surgery to fix long-standing issues and was ruled out of action for nearly 12 months. The selectors had long held hope that he would be in contention for the latter stages of the Ashes.He has made a gradual return to action in recent months, starting in grade cricket before playing for a Cricket Australia XI against England Lions. He then featured for Australia A against the Lions where he increased his workload, claiming five wickets across 26 overs.