JOHANNESBURG – The entire Caribbean must unite if the 2007 cricket World Cup is to be the organisational and financial success it can be, Barbados Cricket Association president Stephen Alleyne has forewarned."We have to make sure that, in our individual territories, we do an excellent job so that the whole World Cup operation is of a consistently high quality," he said, following two weeks in South Africa as a member of a West Indies delegation of 17 observing the running of the current tournament."It’s not going to help if Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, for instance, do an excellent job and Barbados and St Lucia are second rate, because the World Cup is going to be judged on the whole."Alleyne, also a director of the West Indies Cricket Board, said his experience in South Africa reinforced his opinion that the Caribbean could not host the World Cup "without the full partnership of the governments of the region".They would have to be involved in security, institute "ambush marketing" legislation, as the South African government did, and be consulted over the best way to deal with the movement of teams, officials, media and fans between territories."The kind of security requirements of a world championship such as this probably exceed the current capabilities of any of our territories," he said. "The traffic-free and no-fly zones, the bomb sweepers, the personal security officers for every VIP and team, all this will take careful thought and planning with our police and possibly armies."Alleyne admitted he was struck by the "extensiveness and exhaustiveness" of measures to protect the official sponsors against competing products and services at the stadia here."Every electrical appliance in the stadium that was not of the main sponsors had to have its brand name masked out. Spectators were not allowed entrance carrying any soft drink other than one of the sponsor."This was one of the provisions in the contract between the International Cricket Council (ICC) and Global Cricket Corporation that bought the rights to all ICC events up to and including the 2007 World Cup.On logistics, one suggestion was that each individual coming for the World Cup would be served at first point of entry with accreditation that would act as "a sort of temporary passport" to allow a freer flow for the duration of the event. Chartering of aircraft and cruise ships was also a possibility to be discussed."These are the kinds of measures that will be required," Alleyne added.He conceded that outside help would be essential."It will need a significant import of expertise. Rather than us trying to run a World Cup on our own, having never done so before, it makes sense to use some of the techniques and some of the experiences that have been used in previous world [sporting] events."

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Two low scores for Matthew Hayden in the Guyana Test means he has lost the top place in the PwC Test ratings that he has held since October last year.As a result, Michael Vaughan becomes the current top Test batsman in the ratings, the first Englishman to hold this position since Graham Gooch ten years ago.Ricky Ponting, Justin Langer and Jason Gillespie all jumped several places after the Australian victory in Georgetown, while for the West Indies Vasbert Drakes climbed 11 spots to 32nd.When PwC Test and ODI points are added together, Sachin Tendulkar is the top batsman while Glenn McGrath is top bowler.

Yorkshire have confirmed the signing of Yuvraj Singh as their second overseas player for the 2003 county season.The decision was made following injuries to their other overseas player, Australia’s Matthew Elliott, and all-rounder Craig White. White is expected to be out of action for three months after undergoing a rib operation, while Elliott, who is carrying a long-standing knee injury and whose brother-in-law is battling a terminal illnees, is also expected to take a relatively long break.Yuvraj becomes the second Indian after Sachin Tendulkar to play for Yorkshire. He is expected to arrive in Headingley on Thursday and will make his Yorkshire debut in a Sunday League game against Leicestershire on May 18.”Sachin told me that I would enjoy it at Yorkshire and that I should take the opportunity with both hands,” Yuvraj told later.”I think everybody should have the experience of playing county cricket,” he added.Yuvraj has yet to play Test cricket, but he has 73 ODI caps to his name, and was a key component of the Indian team that reached the World Cup final.

The England & Wales Cricket Board is trying to persuade Australia to play three ODIs in England next summer as it attempts to recoup the financial losses stemming from the decision to boycott Zimbabwe during the World Cup.The ECB is facing a shortfall of around £2.5million as a result of the stay-away, and three matches against the Aussies could generate up to £1million. The aim would be to play them ahead of the ICC Champions’ Trophy, which is being held in England in September 2004, and the hope is that Australia will see them as a good way of warming up for that tournament, which will involve all the Test-playing nations.While the accountants will be delighted with the plan, England’s cricketers might be less enthusiastic. They are already due to play seven Tests and a ten-match triangular series against New Zealand and West Indies, as well as the ICC Champions’ Trophy. Another three games crammed in to the schedule will place further strain on them at a time when the burdens of nonstop cricket are a major concern among players.The other question is whether the public will continue to flock to matches, or whether the sheer quantity of games will lead to a decline in interest. The appetite for cricket isn’t infinite, and the ECB has a delicate balancing act to perform.

Wisden Asia Cricket, Batting for the Empire by Mario Rodrigues systematically demolishes the once-held notion that the celebrated cricketer Ranji was the finest ambassador India ever sent to England. With its striking cover photograph of Ranji at the batting crease, the book is sure to attract even the casual cricket lover, but it is meant really for an altogether more cerebral readership. It is a painstaking attempt to de-mythify Ranji the man, and a near-scholarly work.Hardcore cricket followers and cricketers with an interest in the history of the game, if such a breed still exists, are rarely swayed by the larger-than-life personae the media creates around cricketers. To them the appeal of Ranji would be based on his feats on the field – that he played for England, scored a hundred on Test debut and captured the imagination of critics and fans alike with unequalled artistry at a time when his countrymen were a subject race and treated as such. Their respect for Ranji the player may not need the buttress of admiration for Ranji the prince, but even they will find disillusionment in the image of their hero – as despot, buffoon, schemer, spendthrift, unreliable borrower, and despicable toady of the British empire – that emerges from Rodrigues’s hard-hitting biography.Another category of readers likely to find the book illuminating is followers of recent Indian history, especially scholars with a deep interest in the affairs of the princely states, in particular the politics of the western Indian region of Kathiawar.It is the sophisticated reader of recent vintage, owing much of his appreciation of cricket and cricketers to an increasing body of work by experts in fields other than cricket, who may actually read it from cover to cover, for readable the book surely is. This elite readership, familiar with the writings on Ranji of such reputed authors as Simon Wilde, Mihir Bose, Ashis Nandy and Ramachandra Guha, already knows that the ‘Black Prince’ was one of the greatest players the game has known but not quite the white knight that his hagiographers, English and Indian, make him out to be. Rodrigues’s work offers them a wealth of information that will strengthen such an impression.Rodrigues has succeeded in revealing Ranji in his true colours in his role of Jamsaheb of Nawanagar. It is obvious his research has been extensive, ranging from purely propagandist literature – both for and against – including the vernacular press and official mouthpieces of the state, to the more objective writings of cricket writers and historians. While we can hardly fault the systematic way he has gone about his job, we do get the impression sometimes that he takes a spade to a soufflé, piling on the evidence long after the jury have decided to return a verdict of guilty. And, while his acceptance of adverse criticism of the Jamsaheb by his detractors is generally unquestioning, he displays a constant streak of skepticism towards any praise of him or statements made by Ranji himself that show him in a good light.Ranji’s unswerving loyalty to the Empire, his total faith in hereditary rule and suspicion of democracy, his opposition to the freedom movement led by fellow Kathiawari MK Gandhi, his desperate attempts to perpetuate the Indian princely order, his claim that he and his nephew Duleepsinhji were “English cricketers”, his refusal to play an active role in Indian cricket – all these and worse are pitilessly exposed in the book.The last chapter includes this defence by Mihir Bose: “So if Ranji did not do much for Indian cricket it is because he did not think of India as a cricketing nation. He did not think of India as a cricketing nation because he could not conceive of India as a political nation. India as a political nation was born fourteen years after Ranji died and, had he lived, as his successors’ actions show, he would have undoubtedly opposed it … Had Nawanagar managed to get together a Test team then, I am sure, Ranji would have advised Duleep to play for Nawanagar. For inasmuch as a king is ever a nationalist, Ranji was a Nawanagar nationalist. He was, perhaps, a Rajput nationalist, if that term can have any meaning …”Rodrigues does not endorse this view. He refuses to give Ranji the benefit of doubt. His biography is an indictment that allows for few grey areas or bright spots, while painting a vivid picture of a dark prince.

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In the same week that Don Bradman’s baggy green cap, as worn during the 1946-47 Ashes series, was sold for £35,250 (US$58,500), the cap of his rival, Douglas Jardine, has fetched £9,600 (US$16,000) at an auction in Melbourne. Ironically, Jardine’s cap was sold in a county where he attracted so much animosity as a result of Bodyline, while Bradman’s went under the hammer in London.Jardine’s cap ended up in Australia when its owner emigrated from Lancashire over 30 years ago. It was obtained when the owner’s father, a butcher, was given the cap and two bats by Surrey cricketers in return for meat which was, at the time, rationed.”Our expectation was £6,000 to £10,000 so we were very, very pleased,” a spokeswoman for the auctioneers said. “It [Jardine’s cap] would never have been expected to achieve that sort of Bradman figure.”

There’s a guy works down the betting shop swears he’s Hansie. Well, not yet there isn’t, but one might well turn up if the Cronje cult gathers much more momentum. The increasingly sorry saga of Wessel Johannes Cronje took one of its more bizarre twists on Sunday with the publication in Britain of suspicions that his death, in a plane crash last June, was no accident. According to The Observer‘s monthly sports magazine Cronje, the corrupt former South African captain, may have been silenced.Dark forces that stood to lose too much should Cronje ever come entirely clean on his involvement in and knowledge of match-fixing would be the most obvious suspects in this crime, if that’s what it was. The Observer didn’t lay it on quite that thick – it didn’t have to.Accordingly, for a few hours in South Africa today Cronje again ruled the media roost. "Was Hansie murdered?" asked the lead headline on a newspaper held aloft by a vendor in mid-morning traffic. "Who cares?" the nation replied as it drove by.By lunchtime Cronje was once more a memory, and the cricket news concerned itself with more lively matters. "We’ll bring you updates from the Lord’s Test," announced someone brightly on the radio. "Oh, no we won’t, because we stuffed them yesterday!"The simple, wonderful truth is that Graeme Smith, a man whose passion is incandescent, not hidden in some offshore bank vault, has proved to all cricket-minded South Africans that there is life after Cronje. Smith has taken on the job of restoring South African cricket to the status it enjoyed before the triple disaster of Cronje, the thrashing by Australia in 2001-02 and the 2003 World Cup, with irresistible enthusiasm and confidence.Shaun Pollock, who manfully stepped into the breach created by the first of those calamities, couldn’t avoid the last two, both of which were haunted by Cronje’s ghost. Smith has no connection, cricketing or otherwise, with Cronje. He was never part of the group that were somehow all smeared by their former captain’s greedy folly, and who reacted to that slight by embalming his memory to the extent of stencilling his initials onto the collars of their playing shirts.Those players could well find themselves among the sad souls to whom the embellished legacy of a dead Cronje means more than a captain, a team and a nation that has moved on to better things. Better? Yes, Smith is already a better player than Cronje ever was, and while he is a novice Test captain there can be few better foundations on which to build a career in leadership than insatiable hunger. A hunger for runs, records and success, that is – not for brown paper bags stuffed with illicit cash.For most South Africans the legend of Hansie Cronje is recent history. For an unfortunate few it is right up there with those of Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe and JFK. Perfect material, in fact, for a dodgy country song.Telford Vice is a cricket writer with MWP Sport in South Africa.

The Championship match between Glamorgan and Gloucestershire at the Nevil Road ground in Bristol endedin a draw, as Gloucestershire, needing 360 to win on the final day, ended on 280/7. Jonty Rhodesand Tim Hancock each made half centuries in a third wicket stand of 125 and for a while in mid-afternoon,a Gloucestershire victory could not be ruled out. But Glamorgan then claimed fourwickets in twelve overs either side of tea, before a defiant 50 in two hours from Alex Gidman saw thehome county to the safety of a draw. However, Glamorgan will not be too despondent at this outcome, as theten points they picked up allows them to consolidate on their position in the promotionrace into Division One.Glamorgan had earlier batted on for a couple of overs in the morning before being dismissedfor 291 to leave Gloucestershire their victory target of 360 in a minimum of 92 overs.A slash to the third man boundary off Jon Lewis by David Harrison had broughtup the 50 partnership for the last wicket with Michael Kasprowicz. The Australianalso clipped Lewis for two legside boundaries, before he was caught at mid-wicketby Tim Hancock off Martyn Ball for 25. David Harrison was undefeated on 39 withthe merry 10th wicket stand being worth an invaluable 62 runs.Had luck been going their way, Glamorgan might have taken four wickets in the first twenty fiveovers before lunch, and both of Gloucestershire`s openers might have gone in the first fiveovers. Firstly, Craig Spearman survived a difficult chance in the slips in Alex Wharf`s second over,before Phil Weston gave a sharp chance to first slip in Kasprowicz`s third over. But afterHarrison had replaced Wharf at the Ashley Down End, he made the breakthrough as Weston edgedto wicket-keeper Mark Wallace.Craig Spearman continued to live dangerously, twice playing the ball in the air close to a fielder, buttwo overs after Weston had departed, Harrison dismissed Spearman as he slashed a ball straight into the handsof Dean Cosker who was fielding at point as a substitute for Matthew Maynard who had a bruised finger.Harrison might have dismissed Jonty Rhodes first ball, as the South African nearly chopped a ball ontohis stumps. Then two overs later the Springbok edged an outswinger from Harrison just wide of a divingJimmy Maher at second slip, before surviving another loud appeal for a catch as the umpiresruling in the batsmans favour.Rhodes and Hancock brought up the 100 after lunch and despite both batsmen playing and missing several times, neithergave any further chances, and a pull for six by Rhodes off Harrison not only brought up the century partnershipbut also saw the South African to his fifty from 90 balls. Hancock, who had been content to play second fiddle,duly reached his fifty – his second half century of the game – from 124 balls with 7 fours.The game changed complexion in twelve overs either side of tea, as 4 wickets fell for the addition of just 41 runsThe 3rd wicket stand between Hancock and Rhodes had added 125 runs in 39 overs when Wharf returned at the PavilionEnd and had Rhodes leg before playing across the line. In the next over Hancock was caught at short-leg by Ian Thomasoff Robert Croft. The same combination accounted for Matt Windows in the first over after the interval. Ian Harvey thencame in and made his intentions clear by immediately going onto the attack, hitting two consecutive fours off Wharf.But on 16 he was superbly caught and bowled by Croft attempting another firm drive as Gloucestershire slippedfrom 180-2 to 221-6.Jack Russell and Alex Gidman then mounted a stubborn rearguard action, with Russell in his usual dogged fashionfending off the seam of Kasprowicz and the clever spin of Croft, whilst Gidman offered stout support at the other end.After seventy minutes of defiance, Russell was trapped leg before by Croft, but Gidman remained resolute throughthe final eight overs and with Martyn Ball, he saw his side to safety.

Sri Lanka A have taken an unassailable 3-0 lead in their five-match series against Kenya. Nuwan Zoysa claimed 4 for 15 as Sri Lanka A beat Kenya by seven wickets at Simba Union grounds on Wednesday. The Kenyans were no match for a strong Sri Lanka A team and only Steve Tikolo (71) could make any impact.After they won the toss, Kenya batted first and began well, reaching 119 for 1. Kennedy Obuya’s contribution of 40 at the top of the order ensured that the Sri Lanka A bowlers were kept at bay. When Obuya was dismissed, lbw to Rangana Herath (119 for 2), the wheels came off.Kenya lost wickets in rapid succession, with Tikolo waging a lone battle. Wickets fell at regular intervals and no one else made more than 13 as Kenya were bowled out for 179 in 45.3 overs.The total did not trouble Sri Lanka A, who reached the target in just 36 overs. Zoysa, no doubt buoyed by his four-wicket haul, was sent out to open the innings and topscored with 48. He was named the Man of the Match.