Barriers designed to deter a pitch invasion during tonight’s cricket matchbetween Australia and Pakistan at Trent Bridge are little more than meshedsheets of plastic nailed to advertising boards around the boundary.But Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club officials believe they will beenough to deter invaders, as is the case at rugby union matches.The barriers will be lifted head-high by about 350 stewards around theground when the match is close to a result – 15 runs or two wickets from theend.They will also be raised whenever officials sense trouble and Australianteam manager Steve Bernard will have a say in this.Any spectator wanting to raid the field will do so with ease but the plan isfor them to be delayed long enough to allow the players to reach thepavilion untouched.
ScorecardJames Hildreth cuts during his unbeaten 118•Getty Images
A James Hildreth century and another key innings from Marcus Trescothick saw Somerset into a strong position at the end of the first day against Warwickshire at Taunton.Needing seven points to guarantee his side’s First Division survival, skipper Trescothick shared valuable partnerships with Tom Cooper and Hildreth, who ended the day unbeaten on 118, as Somerset closed on 360 for 5, collecting four of those precious points in the process.After a slightly delayed start, it was Trescothick who took charge of the first part of the day after opting to bat first. The 39-year-old veteran produced an array of shots, the pick of which was a classic cover drive off Oliver Hannon-Dalby in the eighth over.Along with Tom Abell, the former England man helped to take the total onto 30 when Abell played back to a good ball from Hannon-Dalby and was caught by wicket-keeper Tim Ambrose.Tom Cooper joined Trescothick and it was the new batsman who brought up the fifty when he took two off Patel to square leg. Trescothick looked in fine form and brought up his half-century with a four off Rikki Clarke to third man, his runs coming from 68 balls with nine fours.The second-wicket pair had taken the total to 98 when in the last over before lunch Cooper was bowled by Clarke for 43.Hildreth joined Trescothick and it was the new man who brought up the 100 in the first full over after the interval.In the hour after lunch Hildreth was in full flow and went to his half-century with a single off Mark Adair, having faced 52 balls and hit nine fours.Trescothick took his own score onto 87 when he looked to drive Adair and was caught by Ambrose with the total on 199, his partnership with Hildreth being worth 101.Jim Allenby and Hildreth added 55 together, but after moving to 29 the former was caught by Ambrose off Barker, with the total on 254. Pete Trego made a brisk 24 before he was caught at backward point by Freddy Coleman off Keith Barker.Hildreth brought up the Somerset 300 and secured another crucial point with a square driven boundary and in the next over from Clarke went to his fifth first-class century of the season with a single into the off side, his runs coming off 150 balls with 15 fours.Luke Ronchi was unbeaten on 38 at the end of a day reduced to 84 overs by the weather.
West Ham have now made an approach to sign a Premier League striker with Niclas Füllkrug also agreeing to join AC Milan, according to reports.
West Ham accelerate new striker plans ahead of January
Nuno Espírito Santo’s side are accelerating their search for attacking reinforcements ahead of the January transfer window.
The Hammers currently languish in 18th with just 13 points and sit three points adrift of safety. Their lack of a reliable goalscorer up front has placed enormous pressure on the club’s recruitment team to identify solutions, especially with Fullkrug nearing the exit door.
Fullkrug’s imminent departure will undoubtedly intensify the urgency surrounding West Ham’s striker search.
The German international has endured a nightmare spell since his £27 million arrival last year, managing just three goals in 29 appearances.
West Ham’s results in the Premier League so far
Sunderland 3-0 West Ham
West Ham 1-5 Chelsea
Nottingham Forest 0-3 West Ham
West Ham 0-3 Tottenham
West Ham 1-2 Crystal Palace
Everton 1-1 West Ham
Arsenal 2-0 West Ham
West Ham 0-2 Brentford
Leeds 2-1 West Ham
West Ham 3-1 Newcastle
West Ham 3-2 Burnley
Bournemouth 2-2 West Ham
West Ham 0-2 Liverpool
Man United 1-1 West Ham
Brighton 1-1 West Ham
West Ham 2-3 Aston Villa
His agent has also practically confirmed the 32-year-old wants out of London, with Fabrizio Romano sharing this week that Fullkrug has given total priority to Milan despite interest from the Bundesliga.
For West Ham, signing a proven replacement for Fullkrug is imperative as they look to battle their way out of the relegation zone.
A host of strikers have already been linked with moves to the London Stadium, with the Irons holding discussions over a move for ex-Brentford star Ivan Toney, only to be told a Saudi exit for the player is unlikely next month.
West Ham hold informal talks for striker who's spoken to Frank about joining Spurs
The Hammers have reached out.
ByEmilio Galantini
West Ham were also believed to be in pole position for Promise David, but the Jupiler Pro League star is now more inclined to remain at Union Saint-Gilloise.
As their striker pool runs low, journalist Graeme Bailey has told TEAMtalk that Nuno could bring his search closer to home.
West Ham make approach for Everton striker Beto
According to his information, Fullkrug has agreed personal terms with Milan already, and West Ham have made an approach for Everton striker Beto.
Bailey reports that West Ham have made contact with Everton regarding Beto’s availability, though any potential deal hinges entirely on the Toffees securing their own forward replacement first.
The Portuguese striker has struggled for consistent opportunities under David Moyes this season, making him receptive to a January move.
Subscribe for in-depth Premier League transfer insight Follow moves like West Ham’s striker hunt – subscribe to the newsletter for focused transfer coverage and analysis, with player profiles, negotiation context and realistic assessment of possible targets. Subscribe for in-depth Premier League transfer insight Follow moves like West Ham’s striker hunt – subscribe to the newsletter for focused transfer coverage and analysis, with player profiles, negotiation context and realistic assessment of possible targets.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
West Ham have also enquired about former Middlesbrough forward Emmanuel Latte-Lath, currently plying his trade with Atlanta United.
Emmanuel Latte Lath celebrating for Middlesbrough.
The striker apparently harbors ambitions of returning to European football, making him another viable candidate for Nuno’s struggling frontline.
In Beto’s case, the thought of him being an answer for West Ham is very debatable.
The 27-year-old has bagged just 12 goals in 76 total Premier League appearances for Everton, but the number nine could be a cheaper option financially considering his second-string status under Moyes and the fact his contract expires in 2027.
West Ham now set to enter talks to sign "unstoppable" former Barcelona star
The Hammers are looking to improve their forward line next month.
Not only is there a divide between the haves and have-not counties, if Leicestershire chairman Neil Davidson is to be believed, but there is also disagreement between the chairmen themselves.On Wednesday Davidson claimed there was a gulf between the counties who host international cricket and the rest. He said that the major counties, plus Kent and Sussex, earned £17.6 million between them in 2006 while the other nine shared £6.6 million. He also claimed that Surrey received the most – £10.1 million – while Derbyshire at the other end of the scale got £2.4 million.Clarke, whose relationship with Davidson is best described as civil, dismissed the claims in coldly polite terms. “It was deeply regrettable that Mr Davidson saw fit to release a paper which contained factual inaccuracies and ignored the findings of last year’s independent KPMG report, which concluded that the international grounds did not obtain financial benefit after taking into account facility and operating costs from international matches.”And in today’s Daily Telegraph Surrey chairman Paul Sheldon also disputed Davidson’s comments. “We can refute every financial argument that he puts,” he said. “The Test-match playing counties give £2 million a year to the centre, which is then redistributed among the smaller counties.”His research and reporting, although some of it is quite interesting, is flawed by the fact that his figures are erroneous. I cannot understand why he would do this without checking his facts. It does not seem anyone supports his views because his facts are just wrong.”
Steve Waugh has been named captain of Australia’s greatest ODI team at the celebration of one-day cricket in Sydney. The current leader Ricky Ponting took the vice-captaincy role and the No. 3 spot while Michael Bevan won the fight for the finisher’s position.However, there was no place for Allan Border, who led Australia to their first World Cup in 1987, or Michael Hussey, who averages 66.88 in 61 matches. The line-up was dominated by names which had carried Australia to consecutive World Cup titles.Bevan edged out Border and Hussey for the No. 6 spot while Dean Jones, who played in the successful 1987 side, was picked at No. 4 and followed by Waugh. The openers were Mark Waugh and Adam Gilchrist – neither Ian Healy nor Rod Marsh were in the short-list of 30 – and Andrew Symonds’ all-round skills won him a berth at seven while Greg Chappell was 12th man.The attack included the senior figure of Dennis Lillee, who took one of the three fast-bowling slots with Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee. Shane Warne, who has not played an ODI for Australia since 2003, was picked after being a central figure in the 1999 campaign. Overall the players had appeared in 2370 matches, scored 55,831 runs and taken 1532 wickets.
The naming of the squad showed how much Australia value the injured Lee and Symonds. Lee was ruled out with an ankle injury last week while Symonds continues to recover from surgery on his arm. Symonds will leave with the squad for the Caribbean on Wednesday after the current group’s official World Cup farewell at the celebration dinner.”There’s some great players who have missed out on the side and that’s always going to be the case,” Steve Waugh said. “Going across different eras, it’s almost impossible to pick the side.”I think everyone here feels very privileged to be picked, especially myself being captain. There’s a number of players that could have been sitting here in the side, Allan Border, a number of other players.”Australia’s 163 ODI representatives since 1971 were invited to vote for their best team, with about 80% casting their nominations. Approximately 120 of the players attended the function, which also recognised Border’s 1987 squad almost 20 years after the breakthrough triumph in India.Australia’s greatest ODI XI Adam Gilchrist (wk), Mark Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Dean Jones, Steve Waugh (capt), Michael Bevan, Andrew Symonds, Shane Warne, Brett Lee, Dennis Lillee, Glenn McGrath, Greg Chappell (12th man).
He may be just one good game away from trumping Pakistan on their hometurf but Rahul Dravid continues to stress on the strategies, plans andprocesses, rather than results. Returning to the ground where he led Indiato their first Test win in Pakistan, on that memorable March morning in2004, Dravid spoke about Pakistan’s ability to bounce back and hoped thathis side could continue to excel in all three departments of the game.”We need one more day of good cricket to win the series and we’reconfident we can do it here [Multan],” he said while speaking ahead of the fourthODI. “We’ve shown in the last two games that we can do well in all threedepartments of the game and we need to continue to implement ourstrategies. It’s heartening to see our plans working well. If it helps uswin, then very good.”In the last year, though Pakistan have shown a tremendous ability tofight back and Dravid will remember the home series last year when Indiafrittered away a 2-0 advantage. “Pakistan are a very good team,” hecontinued and brushed aside suggestions that they were weakened byinjuries to a couple of key players. “They are a fine side even withoutShahid Afridi and Shoaib Akhtar and we can’t sit back and relax. We arealso missing Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag, two players who havebeen critical parts of our success, but it all comes down to the team thatplays better cricket on the day.”India have got on a hot chasing streak ever since Dravid took over asone-day captain, successfully overhauling targets in their last nineattempts, but he said there was no preference to bat second. “It all comesdown to playing good cricket,” he continued, “and we’re confident ofbatting first or chasing. We have a good record chasing but we have plansand strategies for any eventuality.”Flexibility has been the key to India’s triumphs while chasing and Dravidadmitted that having a player like Mahendra Singh Dhoni was a big advantage.”There’s been no rigid stand with his batting position. At Peshawar hebatted at No.4 and did well; at Rawalpindi, we kept him back. The idea isto give batsmen a chance to bat in all positions and challenge themselvesin tough situations.”India have been hampered by Harbhajan’s injury, and didn’t pick aspecialist spinner in their playing XI at both Rawalpindi and Lahore, butDravid looked at it as an opportunity for the part-time spinners to provetheir worth. “[Sachin] Tendulkar has bowled well in the last two games,”he said, “and we’re trying to develop him, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singhand Suresh Raina as the fifth bowling option. The only way of developingthem is by giving them a chance in important situations. We’ve usuallypicked a bowler as a Supersub but we will have more options if theseplayers bowl well.”
ScorecardNew South Wales moved to second place in the Pura Cup table with a comfortable five-wicket win against Victoria at Sydney. Resuming from their overnight total of 3 for 129, the Blues reached their victory target of 225 losing only two more wickets. Dominic Thornely and James Packman were the two batsmen to be dismissed, but both made significant contributions – Thornely collected 56 while Packman scored 48. With Western Australia denied outright victory in their match against Queensland, the win assured New South Wales a place in the final against the Bulls at the Gabba starting on Friday.
Russel Arnold, Sri Lanka A’s current captain, believes his young side ofhopefuls, who have started a super-intensive programme of A team tours, arequickly learning and growing in self-belief.
Sri Lanka played impressively to win the recent Kenstar triangulartournament in Kolkata over the festive season, beating the hosts India inthe final.The team’s performance was not as consistent as they would have liked –they won their first two games easily, twice chasing over 300, but then lostboth their second round matches — but they performed when it mattered most."Our bowlers were not up to the mark in those two games but we batted verywell to chase 300 and win,” recalled Arnold, who is now pushing hard for areturn to the national team.”But in the next two matches our batting let us down. It’s hard to tell whyit happened. Maybe it was due to the slowness of the pitch, a little bit ofover confidence on our part or the Indian and Pakistani bowlers had learnttheir lessons from the previous games and bowled to a line.”"The loss to Pakistan almost shattered us. We had to depend on the outcomeof the last qualifying match between India and Pakistan to know whether wehad got into the final. When we actually qualified, we got our act togetherand performed to our potential to beat India in the final," said Arnold."The two losses made us work harder for success. We showed glimpses of whatthe team is capable of achieving under pressure. This performance will haveto back up with consistency. What the last few months have shown is that wehave started to believe that we can do things and compete with any teamunder different situations."We were not as strong as India and Pakistan, who had more establishedplayers in their sides but on that day everyone contributed towards the win.The support given by coach Hemantha Devapriya and manager Nuski Mohamed atall times was encouraging from the team’s point. It helped lift our spiritswhenever we were down," Arnold said.
With scores of 96 not out, 100 not out, 9, 9 and 35 not out, Arnold easilytopped the tournament batting averages with 249 runs (avg. 124.50). NaveedNawaz (203 runs), Saman Jayantha (186), Shantha Kalavitigoda (148) and JehanMubarak (143) were the other top order batsmen amongst the runs."I am quite happy with my batting form, but I will have to constantly get asmany runs as possible," said the 30-year-old left-hander.Schoolboy Mohamed Maharoof, a budding right-arm medium pacer, topped thebowling averages with nine wickets taken at a cost of 11.77. He excelled inthe last two games to take eight wickets that included four in the final.Rangana Herath, a left-arm spinner who has performed consistently well inrecent tours to South Africa and India, finished with eight wickets.Nuski Mohamed, the manager, believes the new intensive A team programme willreap dividends and help narrow the gap between the senior team and theirreplacements."The whole purpose of each tour is to try and bridge this gap. We’ll have tofind star players who should be available to fill the vacancies at everybeck and call," said Mohamed. "It is less evident in teams like India andPakistan. We should also have a backup team of players ready to fill in thebreach like the Australians. The only way to achieve that is to have moretours of this nature."Sri Lanka A are due to tour New Zealand in March, England in May-June andZimbabwe in October this year.
With the notable exception of Steve Waugh, Australia’s batsmen ripped into what some consider South Africa’s second-best attack, rushing to 452 for five on the second day of their four-day match against the South African `A’ team at St George’s Park on Saturday.Justin Langer made 161, his 55th first-class century and his first hundred of the tour, while Mark Waugh hammered out a furious 110 as the two shared a 207-run partnership for the third-wicket, tearing the home team’s bowling to shreds during the final session of the day.With Darren Lehmann clubbing 60 and Ricky Ponting dashing to a run-a-ball 40, only Steve Waugh, given out caught at the wicket for four, failed to advantage of a flagging attack on a long, hot and windy day.The A side added only13 to their overnight 288 for seven before being bowled out for 301, thereby setting themselves up for a long day in the field. And by the time the Australians had finished in the evening, the A team might have felt they had been out there for longer than the 97 overs they eventually got through.By lunch the Australians had moved to 72 without loss with Lehmann the more aggressive of the opening pair. He made his intentions perfectly clear during the first over in the afternoon when he hoisted Gulam Bodi over mid-on for six and went on to take the Australians into three figures before falling leg before to Dewald Pretorius.Ponting dashed about for less than an hour before he miscued a pull off Charl Willoughby to be caught at mid-off and then the younger Waugh joined Langer to first wear down and then break the back of the A team’s bowling.No one escaped punished, but some suffered more than others, left-arm spinner Robin Peterson most particularly. At one point Waugh and Langer took 27 off two overs from Peterson with one of Waugh’s sixes sailing over the scoreboard, out of the ground, down the hill and quite possible rolling all the way down to the harbour.Justin Kemp also felt the sting of Waugh’s bat, conceding four boundaries off one over as Waugh took just 24 balls to race from 50 to his 80th first-class century.Langer, meanwhile, just kept going at the other end as Australia moved to 387 for two before both batsmen were out within five balls of each other. Dewald Pretorius bowled Waugh through the gate and Langer lifted Willoughby to cover without a run being added."I’ve worked really hard in the nets," said Langer afterwards. "I wanted to spend some time in the middle. It’s a massive Test match, the next one in which we can retain the number one spot which we think is ours."Waugh, meanwhile, described St George’s Park as one of his favourite grounds. So he should. It was here where he scored a century in 1997 to enable Australia to clinch their last series victory in South Africa.It very nearly became 387 for five – Shane Watson surviving an appeal for a catch at the wicket off the first ball he faced – before Steve Waugh was the fifth man out, given out caught behind off Pretorius for 4 off the sixth ball he received.The Australian captain did appear to agree entirely with umpire Rudi Koertzen’s decision, standing at the wicket for an age before trudging off. Not that it made a great deal of difference to the overall picture, Watson and Adam Gilchrist adding a further 61 before the close.The A team bowling figures made ugly reading with the two spinners almost completely ineffective. Peterson conceded 128 off 20 overs and Bodi 63 off 12 with neither ever looking like taking a wicket.Pretorius toiled hard for his three for 101 as did Willoughby for his two for 74, but at no stage did the bowling give any hint of how South Africa might bowl Australia out twice in the second Test match at Newlands next weekend.
Former Cambridge Blue Ed Smith scored his second Championship century of the summer and took his match aggregate to 190 to put Kent into a commanding position going into the final day of their clash with Glamorgan in Maidstone.Smith became the fourth Kent batsman to pass 500 runs for the season as the hosts recorded 358 in their second innings for an overall lead in the match of 376.Glamorgan reached 36 without loss after 12 overs by the close, but will have to bat well on the final day to score the 341 runs required on a Mote pitch that is starting to help the spinners.Indeed, but for Dean Cosker’s haul of three for 93, Glamorgan may not have been in with a victory chance whatsoever.The Welsh left-arm spinner ended Smith’s 190-ball stay to a catch at the wicket by Mark Wallace, the Glamorgan stand-in keeper who claimed eight catches in the match after his first-morning call-up – just one catch short of Colin Metson’s club record.Smith had featured in a fourth-wicket stand worth 108 with Matthew Walker and then a further partnership of 52 with Paul Nixon before Kent’s tail crumbled.Cosker also accounted for Walker, who went for 53 after misjudging a sweep, having earlier sent back Kent opener David Fulton (43) after he chopped on to his own stumps.Darren Thomas was rewarded for his unstinting work on a pretty flat pitch with a haul of four for 84, the last of which was the scalp of home skipper Matthew Fleming (46) who picked out third man with an upper-cut over the slips