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Wolves have been linked with a summer move for Paris Saint-Germain striker Mauro Icardi.

What’s the news?

According to a recent report from Corriere dello Sport (via Sport Witness), the Ligue 1 champions have asked Jorge Mendes to see if he can facilitate a move for the striker to Molineux as they look to sign Gianluca Scamacca from Sassuolo.

After scoring 124 goals in 219 appearances for Inter Milan, the Argentine joined PSG on loan in September 2019, before moving on a permanent basis the following summer. In 92 appearances for the French club, the striker has found the net 38 times and delivered 10 assists, once again highlighting the danger he possesses in front of goal.

This is something that the Old Gold were severely lacking in the Premier League last season, with just 38 goals scored throughout the campaign. To further highlight their attacking inefficiency, they ended the season with fewer shot-creating actions (611) than the likes of Watford (624), Brentford (640) and Southampton (732).

With that in mind, it would certainly suggest that some extra firepower is needed in their squad.

Mendes masterclass

Labelled an “animal in the box” by his former Inter boss Stefano Pioli, Icardi has a total of 173 club goals to his name at senior level.

This shows that he certainly has the experience and attacking prowess in him to be a great prospective addition to Bruno Lage’s squad as someone who can routinely find the back of the net.

Having started just 13 games for Mauricio Pochettino’s PSG across all competitions last season, the prospect of potentially playing regular football in the Premier League could be tempting for the striker, especially with his current club apparently looking to move him on.

If Mendes is able to work his magic and secure a deal for the Argentine attacker to join Wolves, this could be a real masterclass from the agent, assuming that the player settles into the Black Country and gets into the rhythm of the Premier League by scoring on a regular basis for Lage’s side.

In other news: Alan Nixon drops big Wolves transfer claim that’ll leave supporters gutted

Bertrand Traore, Douglas Luiz and Morgan Sanson could all leave Aston Villa this summer. 

That’s according to transfer insider Dean Jones, who was writing for GiveMeSport.

The lowdown

Villa paid £17m to sign Traore from Lyon in September 2020 but his future is already in doubt after he made just one start (and eight substitute appearances) in the most recent Premier League campaign.

Sanson is an even more recent acquisition, having joined from Marseille in a £14m deal in January 2021. He also found opportunities hard to come by in 2021/22, with just three starts and seven run-outs from the bench.

Luiz was in the same price bracket – a £15m addition from Manchester City in 2019 – but has played far more often. The Brazilian started 31 of Villa’s 38 top-flight matches, seemingly regarded as a key player by both Dean Smith and Steven Gerrard.

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The latest

Jones addressed Villa’s prospective summer transfer business in a Q&A with GiveMeSport.

He claimed that ‘there has to be doubt’ over whether Traore will be a Villa player next season, adding that Sanson ‘looks sure’ to leave the Midlands outfit just 18 months on from his arrival.

However, perhaps the real surprise for Villa supporters would be the potential exit of Luiz, ‘who seems to be one they could move on’, according to the transfer insider.

The verdict

On the one hand, Villa could make healthy money from offloading these players. Transfermarkt value them at a combined £62.1m, and that could give Gerrard considerably more spending power as he targets a further three singings.

Still, some Villa fans may be sad to see Luiz go. After all, this is a player that Pep Guardiola, the manager of reigning league champions Manchester City, called ‘important’, ‘clever with the ball’ and ‘physically strong’.

Meanwhile, former Villa marksman Gabriel Agbonlahor said in March that the ‘outstanding’ Luiz has looked a ‘transformed’ player.

However, it seems that the recent arrival of Boubacar Kamara from Marseille could spell the end of the Brazilian’s time at Villa, with Gerrard ruthlessly plotting a clearout over the summer.

In other news, Villa are exploring a move for this striker. 

Adam Jones has been left thrilled by some news that he has now heard from Everton.

The Lowdown: Everton hand contract to Warrington

As confirmed by the Toffees’ official website, under-23s midfielder Lewis Warrington has now signed a new two-year deal which will keep him at the Merseyside club until the end of June 2024.

He spent the second half of this season on loan at Tranmere Rovers, where he scored one goal and supplied two assists in League Two (top-half finish as they narrowly missed out on the play-off spots.

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The Latest: Jones reacts to Warrington contract

Taking to Twitter, Liverpool Echo journalist Jones was left thrilled by the update, claiming that there is a ‘lot of excitement’ over Warrington’s contract at Everton.

Sharing a corresponding article on the news, he tweeted: “Understandably a lot of excitement around Lewis Warrington’s new contract. He’s had a very strong season, both with the U23s and on loan, and certainly given himself a great platform to build.”

The Verdict: One for the future

Warrington is certainly one for the future, and his exposure to men’s football at Tranmere should help him with his eventual transition into the Everton first team when Frank Lampard feels that he is ready.

The 19-year-old has played 51 times at youth level for the Toffees over the last four seasons, scoring five goals and supplying three assists and showing his versatility by adapting to a number of different positions across the pitch (Transfermarkt).

Also, at such a fledgling age, he will surely only get better as he continues his development with the Blues, so it’s little wonder that Jones is so enthused by the confirmation of a new Everton deal for the youngster.

In other news, Everton are now ‘waiting’ to sign this 6 foot 1 colossus

His average of 14.06 is the second-lowest average for a batsman with a Test century

Gaurav Sundararaman01-Dec-2019ESPNcricinfo Ltd 7 – The number of batsmen Test hundreds coming in at No. 8 or below against Australia. The previous instance was in 2017, when Wriddhiman Saha made 117 in Ranchi. 2006 – The last time a Pakistani scored a Test hundred at No. 8. Wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal made 113 against India in Karachi, a Test Pakistan won to take the series 1-0. Yasir is the ninth Pakistani to achieve this feat.ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 – Only one batsman – Jerome Taylor (12.96) has a lower average than Yasir Shah while scoring a Test century. Yasir’s average after the century stands at 14.06. 213 – Runs added by the last four Pakistan batsmen in the first innings in Adelaide. This is the second-highest for Pakistan in Australia. The best was in 2016 when the last four added 230 at the Gabba in Brisbane. 105 – Runs added by Babar Azam and Yasir, the best seventh-wicket stand for Pakistan against Australia. 87 – The ninth-wicket stand for Pakistan, their highest for that wicket in Australia. Overall, it’s the second-highest ninth-wicket stand against Australia. 89.33 – The average seventh-wicket stand for Pakistan in this series. This is the most they’ve averaged for any wicket in this series. Pakistan’s top five wickets average 18.77 runs while the bottom five average 40. 2015 – The last time Australia enforced the enforcingfollow-on in Tests, against West Indies in Hobart. They’ve not chosen to enforce the follow-on on five occasions since. Pakistan were last made to follow-on at Centurion against South Africa in 2013.

The achievements of Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram and AB de Villiers should be celebrated and the form of Faf du Plessis should be questioned but that will come on another day, a less strange day

Firdose Moonda in Cape Town25-Mar-2018What a strange day to win a Test match. With all the focus on everything but what was happening on the field. With the headlines hijacked by a confession of an attempt to cheat, albeit a failed one. With the hype for one of the most highly-anticipated contests of the modern era hidden behind layers and layers of hysteria.”It has been bizarre, crazy, ridiculous,” Faf du Plessis said. “We joke about it but it’s literally like a soap opera. There’s something happening every day.”And the somethings have got out of hand. From stairwell altercations to shaming of a player’s wife, this series has been overtaken by the sideshows, to the point where du Plessis has now decided there are “too many things happening away from the game,” and it is taking the shine off on-field performances.Who will remember that Dean Elgar scored a gutsy century to set South Africa up for a fine first-innings score, or that AB de Villiers has made seven scores of 50 or more since his Test comeback three months ago, two of them in this match? Who will remember that South Africa have scored over 300 in three out of four completed innings since being bowled out for 162 in the first innings in Durban? That is a major turnaround in a team’s fortunes but it may be forgotten in the fumes from the fires this series has sparked.The first innings at Kingsmead revealed a South African side that were underprepared and unable to deal with the reverse-swinging ball and Mitchell Starc. If South Africa were secretly wondering if Australia being able to get the ball to tail earlier than usual was a result of some foul play, but were not saying it, they wouldn’t be the only ones asking the question. Whatever the answer, reverse-swing has added a different dimension to a series played in South Africa, which is usually about pace and bounce, and has demanded more than just tough openers from the respective line-ups.It has required patience and discipline in the middle order, something South Africa have got right more than Australia. “The ball has reversed a lot this series. We joked that normally being an opener in South Africa is the toughest time to bat, but at the moment everyone is putting their hands up to open the batting,” du Plessis said. “The toughest time to bat has been 40-80 overs, where you lose a wicket and you come in and the ball is reversing. And it is two very skilful attacks. The bowling attacks are such big exponents of reverse swing, it’s such a big weapon because it’s pace and late swing. Generally, teams have one, maybe two guys, the Australians have three and we have three. As a batter it’s really tough.”And so the achievements of Elgar, Aiden Markram and de Villiers should be celebrated and the form of du Plessis should be questioned but that will come on another day, a less strange day, a day which was not about how long it would be before Australia cracked.”It was about how can we apply more and more pressure on them as a team? Away from the game there was a lot of pressure on them from the stuff that was happening, so it was about making sure the boys were even more motivated to tighten the screw and not give them any breathing space whatsoever,” du Plessis said. “Keep it tight on them so they can feel the pressure and know it isn’t going anywhere. The discussion in this last session was to keep at it and once we get through them, we expected it would happen quickly because there is a serious amount of pressure on them as a team.”What a strange day to be named captain of your side. When you know you are on a hiding to nothing. Tim Paine admitted as much when he was asked how it felt to lead, and he was in an unenvious position. What could he possibly say to rally troops that had been let down by their commander-in-chief? Would he try to say anything at all?For their part, South Africa did not say very much at all in the field. They let the ball do the talking and once, they were spoken to by the umpires, who told them to stop throwing it onto the pitch to scuff it up. They let Morne Morkel do the talking at the end.What a strange day to take your first Test nine-for. On what could be your last day as an international cricketer.Morkel, one of the game’s true gentleman, who has barely uttered a word in anger across his 12-year career, was so modest about his performance, he didn’t even take credit for it. He even stopped to check on Starc when he hit him on the helmet and then removed him two balls later.Morkel should be able to say his final goodbyes at the Wanderers next week but stranger things have happened. He will be the first to admit his place in the XI is still not guaranteed.What a strange kind of insecurity for a man who has 85 Test caps and is one of only five bowlers from his country to have taken 300 Test wickets. But that has been the story of Morkel’s career so on this unusually strange day for cricket, it was fitting that in a series filled with villains, the ultimate gentle giant was its hero.”I’ll remember his last game in Cape Town as one of the sweetest moments,” du Plessis said of Morkel.What a strange day but for South Africa, what a sweet one too.

On a crucial day, Kusal Mendis used his immaculate technique to find success where his team-mates failed, and it gave Sri Lanka some reason to celebrate after a recent bleak period

Andrew Fidel Fernando28-Jul-2016Kusal Mendis’ first run after lunch takes him to 87. It is 13 short of a hundred. It is the number men in the opposition will say is unluckiest for a batsman. But Mendis doesn’t know that. Or at least, he doesn’t play like he does.Soon, he squirts a single to square leg. Soon after, he puts a Josh Hazlewood ball through midwicket with that homespun punch-pull. When he sweeps Nathan Lyon for six in the following over, he has moved clean through the nineties in eight balls. He owns 72% of the team’s runs. He is living out the fantasy of anyone to have held a bat. If at the time Mendis knows that, he doesn’t celebrate like he does.The defence has been immaculate since his amble to the crease. To the spinners, he pushes feet forward, sticks bat close to body, watches and waits. Here is a player who drags his feet at the non-strikers’ end. Who lets his blade trail along the ground when strolling to his partner, mid-pitch. In so much of his demeanour, he is the team’s kid brother – he is the youngest man on the field. But if a ball is to be blocked, Mendis is the Michelin-starred joint just as doors open for dinner service. He is the Special Forces unit, awaiting orders to move in.”He’s one of our guys who really has a technique,” coach Graham Ford had said of him last month. How rare that is in a nation where pure technique is a breakthrough, rather than a birthright. There were at least seven years in international cricket before Kumar Sangakkara worked out a set-up that satisfied him. Aravinda de Silva needed a summer with Kent to unlock his gifts. Yet, seven Tests in, and 21 years old, Mendis sees through the dip and away-spin from Steve O’Keefe in the morning. He milks the turn into his body from Lyon. He pushes away and picks off Hazlewood’s full length. Then in the afternoon, when the ball begins to reverse-swing, the drives come fresh and flowing, like a scent on the breeze. Hazlewood is drilled past his right foot. The straight drive off Mitchell Starc is more delicate, but as delectable – teasing fielders who nearly collide, and give chase all the way in vain.Only in the stroke to get to a hundred, and in one other shot in the day, was there violence. Starc had venom for him all morning, of the verbal variety as much as with ball in hand. But when the bowler went wide, Mendis upper-cut him behind point. Next ball, the overcorrection skidded past fine leg.Late in the day, there is that lofted on-drive flick too – the one that had the crowd sitting up and taking notice on a bleak afternoon in Leeds. Yet it was not Headingley, but Hyderabad that made a man of Mendis. Having led an unsuccessful Under-19 World Cup campaign in 2014, Mendis breezed to 156 in the little-loved Moin-ud-Dowlah three-day tournament last year, then suddenly found himself in the Test XI against West Indies, just one first-class hundred and a fifty to his name.If he has layered improbability upon improbability in producing this innings – defusing the spinners where others have lunged and groped, scoring quickly off the fast men who have had team-mates prodding and jerking, it is because he has stacked improbabilities all his life. The son of a Moratuwa three-wheeler driver, Mendis became Sri Lankan cricket royalty when he was named 2014’s Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year. Two years later, today, he put a three-hour frown on the captain of the world’s top Test team. He threaded balls through the gaps of a five-man leg-side infield. He turned the Test in a new direction, and along the way, the opposition’s mouthy spearhead into a mute.”Angelo told us that they come at you very hard in the first few spells and the main thing is to get them bowling into their third and fourth spells,” Mendis said after play. “So we stuck at the wicket in the best way we could. During the last couple of hours, they came with a plan to have more fielders on the leg side. We also knew that, and played the situation well.”By the time he went to stumps on 169*, the team 196 runs ahead, Sri Lanka fans had begun to hope Mendis is the man they have been waiting for. Following perhaps the bleakest seven months for this team since the turn of the century, there is a reason to fry up the fish cutlets in celebration, to break out the arrack for joy (Mendis brand, why would you even ask?).As composed after the day, as he was against O’Keefe, or Lyon or Starc, Mendis didn’t know he was playing one of Sri Lanka’s great innings. Or at least it didn’t seem like he does.

Once a five-Test series during the heyday of the Australia-West Indies rivalry, the last two Tests for the Frank Worrell Trophy only lasted six and a half days, further highlighting the growing disparity between cricket’s haves and have nots

Daniel Brettig in Kingston14-Jun-2015Jarring as it was to hear him stumble over his words at the presentation, maybe Brendon Julian was onto something. This did not feel like a contest for the Frank Worrell Trophy, lasting as it did for six and a half days and taking in a pair of fearful hidings dished out by one of cricket’s haves to its most widely mourned have not.Signs of the Caribbean’s retreat from Test cricket were everywhere these past two weeks, from the grand old ground Sabina Park being completely devoid of life a mere two days before the match began, to the stumps for the series not even having a fresh logo. They had been prepared for the preceding series, and instead of being emblazoned with the name Australia, England’s lettering was crossed out with a marker pen.The Australians performed well in conditions unfamiliar to them, but everywhere were taken aback by how utterly alien the experience was when compared to the tightly-wound corporate machines that run cricket matches down under – and will do again when they arrive in England. The series winner’s novelty cheque for the series was US $2000, the kind of figure numerous members of the touring team would no doubt have spent on watches.Of course all these disparities off the field were little more stark than that revealed in the middle, where Australia’s rich supply of cricketing resources utterly overwhelmed a West Indian team that could call on only a quartet of plucky individual performances across the two matches. Devendra Bishoo and Marlon Samuels both contributed in the first Test but were absent from the second, leaving far too much for Jerome Taylor and Jason Holder to do, for all their obvious effort and skill.A look down the Australian series aggregates demonstrates their domination in ways not seen perhaps since the drubbing inflicted upon Pakistan in the UAE as far back as 2002. Not a single Australian full-time bowler claimed their wickets at a rate more expensive than 20 runs apiece. For the Man of the Series Josh Hazlewood (12 wickets at 8.83) and his NSW offsider Mitchell Starc (10 at 16.00) it was tantamount to a turkey shoot. One can only wonder at what a fully-fit Ryan Harris might have achieved against such porous opposition.If the batting statistics make for slightly less lopsided reading, there is still the fact that in Steven Smith and Adam Voges, Australia possessed the only two centurions for the series. Their respective averages of 141.50 and 167.00 were near enough to 100 runs ahead of Holder, the only West Indian to make his runs at better than 50. And while the likes of David Warner, Shane Watson and Michael Clarke could not go beyond starts, none had a shocking series of the kind produced by Darren Bravo. Vaunted beforehand as the man to step up in Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s stead, he was totally outwitted and outfought by Australia’s formidable attack, finishing with 49 runs in four innings.The duel between the captains was telling, too. Clarke is now an old hand at this game, but it was still striking to see his nimble work when lined up against some of the leaden decision-making produced by Denesh Ramdin, who seemed always to find a way to spurn an opportunity. Many bemoaned Kemar Roach’s no-ball allowing Clarke to evade a dismissal early on day one, but under Ramdin the West Indians proceeded to drop their bundles in frustration for the next hour even though the ball continued to swerve. Taylor may never know why he got only six overs that morning, when his figures read 6-6-0-2.Opportunities lost tell a story of fragile confidence, but it is disturbing to think that the West Indies could fall in such a heap only weeks after they had registered a stirring victory over England. That result suggested the new coach Phil Simmons had his team on the right path, though it now looks as though it said more for how much England had allowed themselves to slide despite resources every bit as rich as Australia’s. Certainly Alastair Cook’s men will observe the scorecards from the Caribbean with some trepidation as yet another Ashes series creeps closer.But the underlying truth of this series, both on the field and in the stands, is that the West Indies need all the help they can get if they are to return to a position of competitiveness as a Test match nation. The local caravan has moved on to the Caribbean Premier League, which will be played to packed houses and healthy television audiences over the next month, while the region’s most talented senior players are IPL-tied and deeply cynical about the WICB. Simmons’ efforts to mediate may grow more urgent as a result of this drubbing.All at Cricket Australia are increasingly twitchy about the fact that next summer’s showpiece Boxing Day and New Year’s Test matches are due to be played against the West Indies. It will be a most painful return to the scene of past glories for support staff such as Simmons, Richie Richardson and Curtly Ambrose, and more pointedly an event where history and nostalgia will be expected to draw crowds to grounds and television sets when the cricket itself now looks incapable of doing so.Clarke struck a note of some yearning for earlier days when he was asked about the state of the West Indies team and cricket in the region. “I’ve always loved playing against West Indies. My favourite player is Brian Lara, so I’ve always had a soft spot for the West Indies,” he said of a place where he made his first international tour in 2003. “They’ve certainly got some fight in them, they’ve certainly got talent. I just think they need to be patient. Phil Simmons is a lovely guy and fantastic coach, so I’ve got a lot of confidence West Indies will continue to get better. I’m all for growing the game all around the world, so I hope cricket in any format can continue to improve.”Notably, the next ICC annual conference is due to be held in Barbados later this month. While the BCCI continue to quibble over the money lost when the West Indies squad pulled out of an India tour last year, it is beholden upon all the decision-makers assembling at the home of Sir Frank Worrell himself to work on ways to heal the fractures that have helped West Indies decline to this point. The region’s best players need better incentives to play in the maroon cap, and its islands deserve better administration to regrow and develop future generations.None of those administrators were present in Jamaica, but even from their offices, boardrooms, homes and airport lounges around the world they will be able to see what happened here. The game deserves better than lopsided days like this one, when the Caribbean legacy is mangled more badly even than Worrell’s name had been.

Shane Watson described his freewheeling hundred against England in Perth as the most fun he had ever had in a Test match

Brydon Coverdale16-Dec-20130:00

#PoliteEnquiries: What is David Saker doing?

Shane Watson will play his 50th Test on Boxing Day but there’s no need to watch old footage or trawl through scorecards to work out what kind of Test cricketer he has been. Just watch his dismissal at the WACA and two minutes either side, for there could be no more accurate microcosm of Watson’s nine years in and out of the Test team. Instinctive at the crease, inward-looking, incredulous at his dismissal, interviewed. The ins and outs of Shane Watson.This time, though, he had a hundred to his name. Yes, the pressure was off. Yes, he had a licence to slog. But having made two tons in his first 83 Test innings, Watson will take whatever hundreds he can. No player has frustrated Australian fans more over the past decade. No player has frustrated Shane Watson more over the past decade. This is a man who knows his potential – and knows he hasn’t realised it.Injuries have played their part – Michael Clarke has managed twice as many Tests as Watson in roughly the same time – but so has performance. Watson is a batsman first and foremost, but has survived averaging mid-30s in Test cricket due to bowling. Now, he is the Test No.3, and he knows that again he has underperformed – in the first two Tests in this series, when the campaign had to be set up, he had limited impact.Here, he had the freedom to attack, and trusted his instincts. He deposited Graeme Swann for four sixes more or less down the ground, and cleared the boundary once off James Anderson too. This was the limited-overs Watson wearing whites. It was, he later said, the most fun he had ever had batting in a Test match. It ended with arguably the most embarrassing dismissal he has ever had in Test cricket.Shane Watson said he had never had more fun batting in a Test match•Getty ImagesWatson tried to attack Tim Bresnan and sent a top edge high, so high that the batsmen could nearly have run two by the time it reached earth. But Watson was so consumed with his own disappointment that he lost all awareness of what was going on around him. Ian Bell, coming in from short cover, muffed the catch, and Watson had barely taken two steps, let alone two runs. His partner George Bailey was through for one already. Bresnan threw down the stumps at the bowler’s end, and Watson was dropped and run out off the same ball.It is not unusual to see Watson strike and forget to take the available single simply because he is disappointed he has not found the boundary. This was a similar scenario, but it cost him his wicket. Embarrassed as he was – he said he didn’t want his baby son Will ever to see the footage of his dismissal – he was in front of Channel Nine’s cameras on the boundary almost immediately after walking off the field, owning up to a schoolboy error.Watson is a rarity among modern cricketers, happy to front the media, and too honest for his own good when he does. His adamance that he wanted to open in the Test side last summer was seen as a white-anting of the incumbent Ed Cowan, but it was just Watson being honest when asked the question. If his batting is blunt, his answers are often blunter.”I haven’t scored as many runs as I would have liked,” Watson said after his 103 in Perth. “I haven’t really capitalised on my really good days. Great players capitalise on their good days and go on and make the most of their starts to go on and get a big score. That’s something I haven’t done in my career.”Watson’s highest Test score, his 176 at The Oval in August, was followed by an admission that it meant little as the series was dead. That was the first Test century an Australian had made at No.3 since 2011. Now Watson has a second. Whether he can remain at No.3 remains to be seen. But whatever the case, Watson knows there is a long, long way to go to fulfil his Test batting potential.

ESPNcricinfo presents the Plays of the Day from the second T20 between Sri Lanka and Pakistan in Hambantota

Kanishkaa Balachandran in Hambantota03-Jun-2012The intervention
For four balls in the Pakistan innings, Sri Lanka unexpectedly had an additional ‘fielder’ stationed in an undefined position in the outfield. He wasn’t dressed in blue, though. It’s amazing how dogs dodge the tightest of security cordons, in this case the army. After the second ball of the seventh over, a dog gave the sponsors some free mileage by running circles around the signage behind the bowler. Play was held up for a few seconds but the creature failed to get the hint. Isuru Udana walked back to his mark while the dog took position somewhere between long-on and deep midwicket. However, the batsmen didn’t oblige by hitting it in that direction, or else it would have given the umpires an unnecessary headache.The redemption
Sri Lanka didn’t drop many in the first game, but tonight their reflexes weren’t as sharp. In the 19th over, Shahid Afridi failed to control a pull and the ball dipped to deep midwicket where Tillakaratne Dilshan got behind the ball and spilled a straightforward chance. Dilshan didn’t have to wait too long for a second chance. The next ball, Shoaib Malik (the batsmen had crossed) obliged by tonking the ball in the same direction, but Dilshan wasn’t going to fluff it a second time. His reaction, though, was the bigger story. Clearly peeved with himself for the drop, he flung the ball on the turf and didn’t bother to join the celebrations.It brought back memories of the 1985 World Championship of Cricket in Australia where Kris Srikkanth let off Lance Cairns twice before taking the third attempt. On that occasion, Srikkanth took the catch and walked towards his captain like a trembling student approaching the headmaster’s office.The redemption part 2
The bowler who ran in with much verve was Mohammad Sami. He got the batsmen weaving and swishing and missing on many occasions with sheer pace. Not all of it was on target though. With Sri Lanka needing 38 off 21, Sami’s attempted yorker swung its way to fine leg. He kicked the turf after giving away five wides, but he more than made up for that lapse with his following delivery. It landed on target, beat Thisara Perera for pace and shattered the stumps. Two wickets in the over for six runs – not a bad over in the final analysis.The confusion
One of the worst insults to a bowler is being denied a wicket after hitting the stumps. In the final ball of the Pakistan innings, Afridi tried to paddle the ball away down the leg side but missed. It wasn’t called a wide, though, because the ball brushed the leg stump but failed to dislodge the bail. Not surprisingly, there was confusion in the air. Kulasekara was denied a wicket, while Afridi’s career average got a slight boost by virtue of being not out.

Fortunately, Stuart Broad is as grounded as they come. At the age of 23, he’s well aware that his career is still in its infancy, and he’s as well placed as any young player to maintain a cricket-centric focus

Andrew Miller25-Aug-2009Stuart Broad woke up on the morning after England’s Ashes victory with the broadest grin of his life – which is just as well really, because overnight, his life had changed beyond recognition. The Man of the Match in the decisive Test of the series, Broad’s career has just achieved vertical take-off. All manner of accolades await him as a result, and according to some estimates, he is tipped to earn £2 million in commercial deals alone. He’s going to need shoulders as broad as that grin if he’s to carry those heightened expectations.Fortunately Broad is as grounded as they come. At the age of 23, he’s well aware that his career is still in its infancy, and as his struggles to make headway in the first three Tests demonstrated, there are sure to be more days in the coming months when his learning will have to be done on the hoof. Nevertheless, with a pedigree upbringing through his father Chris, whose three centuries in Australia made him the star of the 1986-87 Ashes, he’s as well placed as any young player to maintain a cricket-centric focus.”I don’t think winning the Ashes has really sunk in yet,” he said, less than 24 hours after the victory had been sewn up. “When I went downstairs there were photographers outside the front, snapping away. I was thinking to myself ‘why are they doing that?’ Then I remembered, ‘Ah yes, the Ashes.'”He’s going to have to get used to those snappers. Just as 2005 transformed Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen into household names and public property, so 2009 is sure to have a similar effect on arguably England’s most marketable cricketer for a generation. His looks, his youth and his undeniable talent have already conferred him the status of cricket’s David Beckham – and his current deal with a protein-drinks manufacturer, which has led to his picture appearing on several platforms on the London Underground, is unlikely to be his last.”Maximuscle … ironic, isn’t it?” he joked, referring to his relative lack of physical bulk, although seeing as he has already posed naked (with a cricket bat for modesty) in a women’s magazine, he’s not got too many issues on that front. As for the rest of those trappings of fame, he’s equally relaxed. “You don’t get paparazzi in Nottingham,” he added. “But that isn’t something that fazes me. It is an exciting time, but there are good people around me. My mum is clued up and my dad thinks he is. My life won’t change. My profile may have been raised, but that won’t get me runs or wickets.”Broad is an astute young man who’s already reaping the rewards of one of the cannier decisions of the cricketing year. By opting not to put himself forward for this year’s IPL, he spared himself the limelight until such time as he was ready, and spared his body the rigours of another three weeks on the road. As the injured pair of Flintoff and Pietersen might privately attest after their ill-fated stints in South Africa, the break proved to be utterly beneficial in the long run.”The reason I didn’t go was to focus on the Ashes and that really worked out for me,” said Broad. “I managed to play in all five Tests and make useful contributions to us winning, so that decision was certainly worthwhile. The IPL will, sometime in my career, help me develop as a Twenty20 cricketer, because it’s a great competition and a great spectacle. But it all depends on how I and my body are feeling, and if anyone wants me.” On that final point, it won’t be a case of who, but how many.Nobody in the England camp doubts that he’s got what it takes to go all the way to the top. Andy Flower, the coach, spoke of Broad’s streetwise attitude and his competitive instincts, never better exemplified than when he went eyeball-to-eyeball with Mitchell Johnson at Edgbaston, while Flintoff is confident that his allrounder mantle has been passed into safe hands, and that his performances will only improve with age.”He is very different,” said Flintoff. “You forget how young he is – the music he puts on shows it sometimes in the dressing room – however, he is only 22 or 23. He is playing the most intense cricket against the best team in the world at the highest level. Compare him to a doctor or a surgeon, these people wait until they are 40 or 50 to be the best in their field. For a young kid to come along at that age and be the best – so far he is living up to it.”For the next ten years we are going to see the best of Stuart Broad,” said Flintoff. “It is unfair to compare him to myself or [Ian] Botham. Let’s just let him progress and if you do that he will have a very exciting and great career ahead of him.”Broad, for the moment, is not getting ahead of himself. “It is a bit surreal being mentioned in the same sentence,” he said of the Botham and Flintoff comparisons. “I am certainly not an allrounder like those two. I would love to score big hundreds and am willing to put in the hard yards to do that, but at the moment when I get to 30 or so I start thinking about all the shots I can play. A proper batsman, at that point, would knuckle down. I would love a move up the order, but probably not yet.”One step at a time is all that Broad intends to take, starting with a step onto the plane to Belfast for Thursday’s one-day international against Ireland. Now there’s a trip designed to nip the mounting hype in the bud.