Fri, May 17, '02
Another 'sumfapitch' in the making? That's the question hovering
around the grassy Sabina Park wicket being prepared for the
decisive fifth Test between West Indies and India, beginning on
Saturday.
According to reports from Jamaica, the wicket, which shot to infamy
when deep cracks in the surface force the abandonment of a Test
match against England in 1998, resembles an English 'green-top'
track, leading to speculation the home side retain for fast bowlers
in the final eleven.
Thu, May 16, '02
The red-hot bats of Carl Hooper and Shivnarine Chanderpaul have
catapulted the Guyanese pair into the top 20 of the latest
PricewaterhouseCoopers Test batting rankings.
They join out-of-touch batting maestro Brian Lara (number two) as
the three Caribbean batsmen in the top 20. Hooper, the West Indian
captain who is having a dream series (556 runs, avg. 111.20),
continued his steady ascent in the rankings, moving up two spots to
number thirteen.
A slate comprising former Test cricketers Andy Roberts, Joe
Solomon and Maurice Foster has been put forward to make up the West
Indies selection panel and well-placed sources say the Guyana
Cricket Board (GCB) has promised its full support.
Not much is known about the procedure used by the West Indies
Cricket Board (WICB) to pick the selection committee, leading to
conjecture that the three-man panel will be chosen after
behind-closed-doors negotiations among WICB executives.
Wed, May 15, '02
The fourth Test between India and West Indies may have resembled
a funeral march towards the end but there were quite a few
statistical accomplishments (good and bad) coming out of that match
at the Antigua Recreation Ground.
From Sachin Tendulkar's first ball duck to both wicketkeepers
getting centuries in the same match for the first time ever in the
history of Test cricket, our resident statistics guru digs
up the milestones:
The lame-duck West Indian selectors met over the weekend during
the fourth test in Antigua, for what could possibly be one of their
last meetings to name an A team that will tour England and Canada
later this summer.
It has taken this group of selectors five years to finally get a
representative team partly right. And I say partly right because
they have still retained the annoying proclivity to leave the fans
scratching their heads across the region.